Page 40 of The Fourth Option
Matheson nodded, though he saw it differently. Kimbel was a technician, good at execution, blind to the architecture required to build an enterprise. He didn’t see the scaffolding beneath the speech. The ethos. The logos. The pathos.
But as Bates soaked in the spotlight, Kimbel caught on. “That’s smart,” he murmured. “Depending on where she goes next.”
And on Isaacson went, slicing through the crowd, name by name, favor by favor. She knew who she owed. She knew who would owe her. She recognized judges and clerks. She recognized Augustus Lloyd, the FBI New Orleans SAC and his deputy, Jarrett Stanton, both of whom stood up, claiming a share. It was a neat trick, Matheson thought. She had managed to make it look like they all worked for her.
She recognized the key sponsors of the event: hoteliers, restaurateurs, the New Orleans Saints football team, and finally, Genyra Pharmaceuticals. Pointedly, though she knew Matheson was there, she didn’t call him out, a calculated slight, he thought.All’s fair in love and war. This was New Orleans, where the rules were fluid and the game was rigged, but only if you didn’t know how to play. Isaacson competed at a master-class level.
Matheson watched her, his mind drifting as she spoke. These days, the wealth ensured that when it came to women, he had his pick of young, eager ones who didn’t ask questions. But none of them could match Icy. His hubris had driven her away. And suddenly, he regretted it.
Would she take him back?
No, he concluded. She knew him too well.
“We’ll get to that auction in a moment,” she said.
The crowd was glowing now, lubed up by alcohol and admiration. The pathos had lowered their guards. The jokes had landed. Someone new to the game might have guessed Isaacson’s act was meant to increase the haul for New Leaf. She had been a lobbyist once, after all. But Matheson knew Icy did not work like that. The speech was too good. Something bigger was coming.
“Before we all start shaming each other with bids,” she continued with an enchanting smile, “I thought I would address something to avoid the distraction, to keep the attention on New Leaf. You know how it is here in our beloved Crescent City. Nothing can distract like rumors and gossip. Sometimes I hear gossip about myself that I find so delicious that I even wish it was true!”
After the laugh, she turned serious, the killer prosecutor who never lost. Depending on the stakes and the juice that flowed between the state and defendant, she might take the case, she might not. But when she did, the result was never in doubt. “So let me say what some of you have been expecting of me for some time.”
Her words drifted outward, landing in silence. No clinking glass. No coughs.
“This city raised me. It shaped me. And it taught me that our problems are never solved in one night. Or at one gala. Or by one worthy organization. Those can all help, but real systemic change can only come through force of will, with clarity of purpose, and above all, accountability. So let me take accountability right here, right now.”
Matheson gauged the pause before her next sentence, created to maximize the yield for whatever was to come.
“My name is Irene Catherine Isaacson. And tonight, I am announcing my candidacy to be the next governor of the great state of Louisiana.”
Silence turned to thunder.
Matheson didn’t clap. He didn’t breathe. His hyper-intelligence kicked into gear as he thought through the innumerable angles of what he had just heard. Favors and secrets would be turned around, new ones created, old ones betrayed.
Beside him, Kimbel muttered, “Well, no need to report this to Vargas. He’s got eyes in the room, right now.”
Matheson thought through the repercussions of Icy’s announcement, hoping the drug lord’s eyes weren’t focused on him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WALKER HAD CONSIDEREDcamping behind an abandoned two-bedroom house in the Lower Ninth to get a feel for the place. He even tucked his van beneath the drooping arms of a weeping willow with branches that shielded him from the street. His VW bus was well hidden, but not invisible, and in a place that looked dead but wasn’t, movement drew attention. The slow-rolling cars, the flickers of light in otherwise dark homes were signs, territory markers. And Walker could not shake the feeling that he might have parked on someone’s invisible line. A gang leader’s turf. A dealer’s drop zone. A place where strangers weren’t just noticed, they were shot.
This is a bad idea. You need a FOB, a forward operating base.
He decided to drive it at night before conducting a foot patrol. Many of the houses that looked abandoned during the day weren’t empty. Walker saw flashlights flickering behind boarded windows. He witnessed fires in barrels. In some houses, he caught the dull glow of a phone screen or a lighter’s spark betraying the presence of squatters or addicts. A few blocks had vehicle traffic, cars creeping up, idling, pulling away.
By day, the Ninth was a graveyard of broken promises. By night, it was something else, feral and alive.
The district stretched wide, hemmed in by the Mississippi to the south, a twelve-foot levee wall to the west, and swamp to the north. Leigh Ann had managed to decode street names from Connor’s notes, but no addresses. Walker still had ground to cover before he could pinpoint the drug houses Connor had written about, those tied to Officer Slate.
He noted white NOPD vehicles with crescent-star logos andCOPEon their doors. He thought they might pull him over as the van looked out of place. He was prepared to tell them he was driving from Washington to Florida and had gotten lost without a GPS.
Having pushed his frogman luck enough for one day, he steered thevan north, hugging the edge of the swamp along Florida Avenue. He rolled over a crumbled curb, tires crunching over a broken sidewalk, and picked up a dirt track that snaked across rusted rail lines and into a patchwork of neon-green grass and stagnant brown water. Out here, cover came easy: switchgrass towered like sentries, and shaggy gum trees leaned in like they were listening. It was just what he was looking for.
He fed Paladin and boiled water to make ramen noodles before cracking Connor’s journal and going to work, his finger tracing over the smeared pages.
Leigh Ann had already mapped out some patterns: phrases, symbols, fragments of street names. Walker suspected a Vigenère cipher, the kind that needed a key, maybe a book or phrase.
He fell asleep in the roof tent, the journal open on his chest, the swamp air drifting in through the mesh triangle of the pop-top. It might’ve been a decent sleep, the air cooled by the swamp, if Paladin hadn’t nudged him awake.
