Page 85 of The Fourth Option
“What do we know?” the drug lord asked.
Bates felt better. What most people didn’t understand was that those who ran complex cartels were thoroughly talented managers. Sometimes that meant checking emotion at the door and getting to the facts. Not dissimilar to police work.
“We have a witness report from a neighbor. Saw a white guy. Described him as ‘homeless looking.’ Longer hair and a beard. Thinks the dude was blond but wasn’t sure. Had a dog with him. About all we got so far.”
“Unbelievable! My two men who got away thought a SWAT team was in the house. Are you sure it was one man?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Regardless of who it is and who they work for, it’s not good for my reputation. You need to find him.”
“I will.”
“I’ve got a boat coming upriver tomorrow,” Cuchillo said. “More of my people. Use them to help.”
Bates stiffened. He didn’t need a war in New Orleans. “We’ll find him.”
“Good. When you do,” Cuchillo added, “my men need to be the ones to kill him. And it needs to be visible. Ugly. It must send a message. Reputation is everything in this business.”
The line went dead.
Bates stood there for a moment, the phone still pressed to his ear, the sweat on his brow cooling in the night breeze. Below, the city pulsed with life; drunks shouted, sirens wailed, streetcars clattered.
He pocketed the phone and turned back toward the stairwell.
Cuchillo had it right. Reputation was everything.
He was also relieved not to have been pressed about the way in which Cuchillo’s men were dispatched. He did not want to be the one to tell the drug lord that one of his hitters was almost decapitated by a garden shovel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE CALL CAMEat 2:41 a.m.
Jarrett Stanton’s phone buzzed once on the nightstand. He stirred beneath the cotton sheets, the ceiling fan above him spinning shadows across the plaster. Alma lay beside him, one arm flung across the pillow, her breathing slow and even. Stanton reached for the phone, squinting without the aid of his glasses:AUGUSTUS LLOYD. He silenced the phone and slid out of bed like a man defusing a bomb, careful not to wake his wife.
The floor was cool under his bare feet as he padded down the hallway, past the girls’ rooms. Veronica’s door was cracked open, a faint glow from her night-light spilling into the hall. He descended the stairs and stepped into the kitchen, where the scent of jasmine from the courtyard still lingered in the air.
He called his boss back.
The SAC answered on the third ring. “Jarrett, sorry to wake you.”
Stanton rubbed his eyes. “What’s going on, sir?”
“Icy just called me. Direct. At home. She’s pissed.”
That woke Jarrett up. “What happened?”
“Local PD is reporting a federal crime. A cartel hit on a home in the Garden District. Tortured and killed a woman. A nurse from Tulane.”
“Why is a cartel killing a woman in the Garden District?”
“Apparently her son was mixed up in the trade and OD’d a month ago. But there is something else that doesn’t make sense.”
“What?”
“Four of the hitters were killed on scene.”
“By the cops?”
