Bayou Pirates Read online

  It was my turn to blink at him. Was he not in contact with the rest of his cartel? What was going on here? He should know that Holm and I made it out of the water after he blew up the ghost ship, but apparently, he did not.

  “Look, are you still talking to the rest of your guys, or not?” I asked.

  “My guys?” Solomon repeated, raising his thin eyebrows. “You mean, in my home country? Oh, no, of course not.” He laughed as if this idea was patently absurd.

  “So, how is it you got the supply of the drug that’s on this ship?” I asked, genuinely confused.

  “I’m not in communication with them anymore,” Solomon clarified with a sneer, though his eyes lingered on the barrel of my gun. “I don’t need those idiots now. I’m on to bigger and better things, and so is my drug.”

  His eyes drifted in Madame Rosaline’s direction. I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “What’s this about?” I asked her, hoping our rapport from earlier would remain intact even now that my secret identity was revealed.

  “Oh, as I told you earlier, Ethan, I have a great academic interest in this substance that the Haitians have managed to recreate out of an old recipe,” she said, giving me one of those eerie, wide smiles of hers. “And I’m more than happy to take up the mantle after they’ve had so much trouble down there if you catch my drift.”

  I did catch her meaning, unfortunately.

  “You’re going to make the drug for them?” I asked, gaping at her. “Really?”

  I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought of it before. After all, the key ingredient in the zombie drug was an old voodoo recipe. It would make sense that Solomon would have to enlist someone else to make it for him, especially now that he had fled Haiti and left everyone behind, including those trained by Samuel, the old witch-doctor down there.

  And if anyone had the skill and wherewithal to take on that task, it was Madame Rosaline. However, if she really thought that the drug shouldn’t be used the way the gang was using it, why would she agree to such an undertaking in the first place?

  “You’re surprised?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the couch cushion looking like she was itching to get out of her seat and cross over to me, but was reticent to do so because of my gun. “I thought you recognized my ambition, Ethan. Perhaps even admired it.”

  “Your ambition, yes, but you also expressed disgust at how the drug was being used,” I said. “Why would you participate in that?”

  “Ambition always comes with a price,” she sighed, examining her fingernails as if she didn’t want to look me in the eye. “I’m willing to pay it if it means getting what I want.”

  “You care more about your own ambition than the lives of the people in your city?” I asked, acting as if I was disappointed in her, which in a way I was, even though it didn’t surprise me in the least. “You should’ve seen this girl in the hospital. She’s probably going to die because of what one of those clients did to her. All because of this drug. You want to be a part of that?”

  Madame Rosaline looked away but then met my eyes again as if making a decision.

  “As I said, everything has its price,” she said coolly.

  “So does everyone, apparently,” I shot back, my tone bitter. She narrowed her eyes and then looked away again.

  “So, how is it that you too know each other?” Solomon asked, holding out his arms and giving both myself and Madame Rosaline a toothy grin. “You didn’t lead him to me, did you?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” I said quickly, not wanting to out Madame Rosaline since she still could be of use to me. “I dropped in on her earlier, pretending to be a customer. Didn’t get much information, just that she didn’t have the drug on hand.”

  Madame Rosaline shot me a grateful look when Solomon wasn’t looking. I returned it with a curt, almost undetectable nod.

  “That does seem to be an MO of yours, doesn’t it, pretending to be someone you’re not?” Solomon asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

  I had pretended to be Clifton Beck when I first met Solomon. Speaking of which, I wondered if he was one of the goons up on the main deck. I imagined he would be there, being the leader of the gang and all.

  “I’m not alone in that,” I said. “I seem to remember you hiding behind your goons instead of doing any of the dirty work yourself.”

  “I killed Abel,” Solomon reminded me, waggling his eyebrows at the memory.

  I shook my head slightly.

  “I don’t think you did,” I said. “I think you sent one of your guys to kill him. Why would you risk leaving the ghost ship like that? Plus, you don’t look like you’ve ever shot anyone in your life.”

  Solomon scoffed at this.

  “I shot many in my time,” he spat.

  “In your time,” I repeated. “So, who killed Wallace?”

  “Oh, just some idiot,” he said, waving a hand dismissively in my direction. “I think you killed him already and stole his car.”

  I had to stop myself from groaning by gritting my teeth and locking my jaw. Holm and I had needed transportation to the ghost ship and run into a gangbanger with a car, but he was hopped up on something and in a rage. He came at us, gave me a concussion, and forced our hand.

  Well, at least that murder case was finally shut tight.

  “Thank you for your honesty,” I managed, un-gritting my teeth. “Now, how about we talk about this expanded operation you’re planning for here in New Orleans.”

  “Expanded operation?” Solomon repeated, raising his eyebrows and feigning innocence.

  “Come on, man, you just all but admitted to it,” I scoffed. “Now out with it! How are you going to set up your base of operations here? I imagine it’ll take some time to get production up and running in a new setting, so do you have enough product with you on this ship to tide you over until then?”

  Solomon narrowed his eyes at me, but his gaze lingered on the barrel of my gun. He was a coward above all else, after all.

  His eyes drifted to the door that was now lying on the ground behind me as if he was expecting someone to be there to rescue him. I glanced back as well, just to make sure, only to see the empty hallway behind me. Solomon heaved a long sigh of defeat.

  “Fine,” he muttered. “No, we don’t have enough on this ship, just some leftovers from our back stock in Haiti. I have another supply coming in with the rest of our back stock later this week. That should be enough until the beautiful lady can adapt the recipe to her liking.”

  He turned and smiled in Madame Rosaline’s direction. She smiled back, though her eyes lingered on me.

  “I believe I can make the product even less deadly than it is now,” she clarified when she saw my questioning look. “It is of the highest priority. I’ve heard how horrible it can be when things go wrong.”

  “When things go wrong?” I repeated, giving her a piercing glare meant to make her uncomfortable. “You mean when the victims die a mercifully fast death as opposed to having to live through what that poor girl in the hospital went through, only to likely die of her injuries after a slow and painful process?”

  This had its desired effect, and Madame Rosaline stared down at her hands in her lap in shame.

  “Don’t let him scare you off, Madame!” Solomon cried, seeing this turn in her demeanor. “Think of the good that can come from our partnership if you only pay this one little price. As you said, my dear, there is always a price such as this when it comes to reaping significant rewards.”

  Solomon looked back at me, or rather, my gun, as if he hoped that I’d lowered it by then so he could return to Madame Rosaline’s side. But I had done no such thing, and I narrowed my eyes at him to show that he should not make a single move. He stayed put.

  The woman raised her head again, and I could see the gleam in her eye. For her, the possibilities with this drug were endless. She could learn so much from what the old witch-doctor Samuel had managed to reproduce that she would be willing to sacrifice a great many people in pu
rsuit of that knowledge.

  “Is it really worth it?” I pressed her. “Is anything really worth this? Do you need me to give you a laundry list of the girl’s injuries? What she looked like? How scared she was? How the doctors called her parents to come in from up north because they don’t think she has much time left?”

  Madame Rosaline looked away again, shaking her head vigorously.

  “No, please, don’t,” she pleaded. “I don’t need to hear it.”

  She blinked rapidly, and I could’ve sworn that I saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

  Solomon looked from me to her and back again, his expression panicked. He made as if to move in her direction again, but I took a step closer to him and trained my gun right in front of his forehead.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” I warned, my voice low and threatening.

  Solomon threw his hands up in the air again and froze.

  “Now, how about you answer me one more thing,” I said slowly, not taking my own eyes off the man’s dark and beady ones. “You told me before, back on the ghost ship, that your best supply was on that ship, and then you sunk it to the bottom of the ocean. So, how did you come up with such a large supply in so little time, or is this back stock you’re talking about from old recipes?”

  Solomon closed his eyes and made an expression as if he was groaning internally. When he reopened them, he practically spat at me.

  “You’re smarter than you look, agent,” he said bitterly.

  “Oh, so you’re just now catching on?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him. “Answer the question.”

  I practically growled that last part, and Solomon flinched.

  “Fine,” he said, groaning out loud this time. “Yes, it’s the old recipe. But it will only be in circulation for a very brief time if that. As I’m certain that the esteemed Madame Rosaline will be more than fast enough in replicating the recipe for us.”

  He shot another hopeful look back in the woman’s direction, but she was just staring down at her hands again, seemingly oblivious to the ongoing conversation.

  “How old?” I asked. “Dominican old or Haitian old?”

  I knew from our mission on the island of Hispaniola that the cartel had used two different batches, with two vastly different death rates, in both of the island’s countries. The Dominican batch ending up in the United States would be bad, to be sure, but not nearly as bad as the Haitian batch.

  “The first one, the one I sent with the ship ahead of me, is the second batch, the Dominican one,” Solomon said, clearly avoiding the brunt of my question.

  “And this one?” I growled.

  “That would be the first batch,” he admitted in a very small voice, physically recoiling away from me and the barrel of my gun. “Same with the next ship coming.”

  It was my turn to groan. I dropped one of my hands from my gun and pinched the bridge of my nose before returning it to its original position.

  “You said that the batch you sent on that ship a couple of days ago was from an old batch, too?” I asked, unable to believe my ears. It might already be in circulation by now.

  “Not the oldest!” Solomon cried, as if this made it more than marginally better, waving his hands wildly in the air. “The Dominican batch, not the Haitian one!”

  I gave him a hostile glare.

  “And do the gang leaders know this?” I asked bitterly. “Do they know that you’re practically putting a target on their backs before you even get started in your partnership with them?”

  “We do now,” a low, angry voice growled from behind me, and I whirled around to see a stocky, hard-looking man with a gun standing right in the previously empty doorway.

  CHAPTER 27

  It took me a split second to recognize the man since he looked as if he hadn’t shaved or possibly slept in a few days. But then I realized that it was the same man that Barrett had shown me a photo of back at the station a while back. It was Clifton Beck, Daryl Williams’s partner in crime and the gang’s most nefarious leader.

  He had sandy hair, and a chiseled jaw, and though he was shorter than I would’ve expected, he was still an imposing figure with his wide shoulders and gruff demeanor. I could immediately tell that he was used to being in charge.

  “Mr. Beck,” I said airily, trying to recover from my obvious alarm just a moment before. “I was hoping to run into you some time while I was in town.”

  This was a lie, obviously, since I absolutely did not want to run into him at this moment, when I was so close to taking down Solomon. But I had wanted to make sure Barrett caught his most prized criminal on top of his second-place prize, Williams, who was already in police custody.

  “Beck, did you know that this agent impersonated you when I first met him in my home country?” Solomon asked quickly, clearly trying to change the subject from his deceitfulness with the drug supply.

  It didn’t work.

  “I don’t particularly care right now,” Beck said coolly, examining the barrel of his gun closely and then making a point to eye Solomon right after this. “I’m more concerned with the fact that you seem to have given my guys some very suspect product. I came down here to talk to you about that, but it seems you’ve already confessed.”

  My stomach dropped. That could only mean one thing. Or rather, a myriad of bad things.

  “You knew there was something wrong?” I asked, practically able to feel the blood draining from my face. “Is it already in circulation? Is there a problem?”

  “A problem?” Back repeated, raising his eyebrows. “Just three of our customers, er… friends turning up dead and with their skin practically turned inside out in the past two hours.”

  “Friends,” Madame Rosaline scoffed, and I nearly jumped in surprise because I hadn’t realized that she had been listening. “Don’t you mean victims?”

  Maybe there was a chance to sway her yet. I had to remember that.

  “Uh, we prefer to sugarcoat things a bit around here,” Beck said dismissively. “Makes things easier.”

  “Easier?” I growled. “Like any of you would ever care about those poor girls.”

  “I didn’t say it was for my benefit,” Beck pointed out, his eyes drifting back to where Madame Rosaline still sat on the couch. “We have all sorts of people working for us.”

  “You could say that again,” I said, giving a humorless laugh. “What was this you told those hotel owners about the long lost treasure of Jean Lafitte?”

  “You’re standing on it, Agent,” Beck laughed. His laughter wasn’t humorless, but it was dark. “It wasn’t any lie, though if you think I’m going to let those kooks have it, you’d be gravely mistaken. They’ll just waste it on some more old pirate crap for their lobby.”

  “I don’t know that I would consider nautical artifacts crap,” I said coolly, taking more than a bit of offense to this. “So, you’re telling me that this is really the refurbished old ship of Jean Lafitte?”

  “It is,” Beck said wryly, a gleam in his eye. “Pretty good make-up job we did, too, huh? But if you think I’m going to tell you where it came from, you’re also mistaken about that.”

  I glanced around the room again. It was a pretty good job, and unlike what I’d feared when I first laid eyes on it, whoever did it hadn’t really messed with the integrity of the original design. There was no electricity, for instance, just lamps hanging everywhere.

  “Well, I’ll just have to get the story out of you somehow,” I said, flashing him a lopsided grin as I trained my gun to his forehead just like I had with Solomon just a few minutes before.

  Beck let out a low, rumbling laugh, though the sound still had a kind of off-kilter quality to it like it was dark and hollow somehow.

  “You’re outnumbered, Agent,” he bellowed, raising his own gun to meet mine. There was only about a foot between them. “And despite being the master’s suite, this is a pretty tight place. You haven’t got a prayer.”

  I looked back around at Solomon and Madame Rosali
ne, though I didn’t move my gun and still kept lingering watch on Beck, in case he tried anything. Both the cartel leader and the voodoo woman were looking away from both of us.

  “Am I outnumbered?” I asked, more to them than to Beck. “Because it sounds to me like I might have two new unlikely allies.”

  Madame Rosaline opened her mouth as if to answer but then furrowed her brow and shut it again. Solomon looked to her and then to me. Confusion etched across his small face.

  “Why would I team up with you, Agent?” he asked, spitting out the last word as if it were profane.

  “Uh, because your buddy here looks like he wants to kill you almost as much as he wants to kill me,” I said, nodding my head in Beck’s direction. “He’s not wrong about this little stunt you pulled being a major nightmare for him. This drug of yours will be all over the New Orleans news, followed by the national news, unless something changes pretty fast for them.”

  Solomon’s eyes widened as he realized the truth of this. He cast a nervous glance in Beck’s direction as if expecting him to refute any of these things, but he did not.

  I was kind of surprised that Beck didn’t at least try to assuage Solomon’s concerns so the Haitian man wouldn’t help me, only to turn on him once they dealt with me together. But something told me that Beck was a straightforward man, for a drug kingpin at least. He wasn’t even going to try to pretend he didn’t hate Solomon’s guts right now.

  “But I have the drug!” Solomon practically wailed, giving Beck an imploring look as the other man just stared blankly back at him. “I can help you reconstruct it, and I gave you what you asked for, just a little behind schedule is all.”

  “What I asked for?” Beck practically roared back at him, his and his weapon’s attention momentarily diverted to the Haitian man as he stepped forward to train the gun on Solomon. “I asked for a good product, not this filth you gave me. And now I’m the one who will have to pay for it with my reputation and possibly with my freedom.”

  “More than possibly,” I said, stepping forward and placing the barrel of my gun against the back of Beck’s head, taking advantage of his momentary lapse in judgment as he turned away from me and toward Solomon. “You’ll be going away for a long, long time. I can promise you that much. I’ll even hand-deliver you to my friend, George Barrett. I think you already know him.”