Chapter 12
You suck. The slogan stands. I’m the King of Cash, and I’m staying the King of Cash. Don’t bug me about it again or I’ll switch advertising agencies. If I pull my account, your agency will fire you.”
“No, I wouldn’t want that, Mr. Busby. You’re our most valued client. I just thought—”
“Didn’t I just tell you what I thought about what you thought? Now get out of here. They’re waiting for me on the set.”
The humiliated young man left the makeup room with his laptop tucked under his arm and his tail between his legs.
Allen Busby sat at a dressing table in front of a lighted mirror. He smiled into it at the young woman who was applying under-eye concealer with a sponge. “Do you think I was too hard on him?”
She smiled back and asked him to look up, please. “I’d say he got what he had coming. Why would you fix something that ain’t broke?”
He laughed. “Why indeed?” She finished with one last dab and stepped back so he could assess her handiwork. Turning his head this way and that, and liking what he saw, he said, “Thank you, sweetheart. Another excellent job.”
He whipped the protective towel out from under his white shirt collar and walked into the studio, eagerly rubbing his hands together. “Ready to roll!” he called out to the production crew.
Over the course of the next two hours, Allen Busby recorded six new commercials for his namesake law firm, which handled personal injury cases exclusively and was dedicated to exposing and crushing the alleged rip-off schemes of insurance companies.
With his hand over his heart, he pledged never to abandon a case until a client was awarded the money he or she was rightfully owed for the pain and suffering they’d endured.
Phone lines were open twenty-four/seven to take calls.
“I’m the King of Cash. If you’ve been injured in an accident, call me first! Call me now!”
His sixty-second commercials were overblown productions of which he was the undisputed star.
These high-octane recording sessions would have exhausted an ordinary individual, but they were energizing to Allen Busby.
He was pumped as he strode off the set, hailing the production team as the best in the world, thanking them for making him look and sound good.
The King of Cash was known by millions of TV viewers whether they wanted to be exposed to him or not.
His commercials ran around the clock on multiple networks.
His face was on billboards and the sides of city buses.
In his flagship office in New Orleans and in annexes in three states, hundreds of minions toiled like worker bees to keep up with the demand for the firm’s services.
The irony was that Allen Busby had never handled a lawsuit, in court or out.
He’d earned a law degree, but the flamboyant, high-profile pitchman on TV was a caricature that he had conceived and perfected for another purpose: to protect his reclusive alter ego, Oz.
While the law firm was ridiculously lucrative, it earned only 10 percent of his wealth. The other 90 was generated not by the King of Cash, but by Oz, the kingpin.
Twelve-year-olds selling fentanyl-laced pills to their middle school classmates probably had never heard of Allen Busby, or the King of Cash, for that matter.
But they knew Oz’s name. They were in awe of him, revering and fearing him in equal measure.
Undoubtedly some harbored a secret aspiration to one day overthrow him and become head of the cartel themselves, but none would ever speak of such an audacious ambition.
It would be like trying to unseat God from his throne in heaven.
Feeling exceptionally springy today, Busby exited the building where he’d recorded. His chauffeur, having been notified that he was on his way out, was standing by to open the car door for him. “There’s ice in the cooler, Mr. Busby.”
“Thank you.”
Allen Busby didn’t use any of the controlled substances he peddled. He didn’t smoke tobacco. He didn’t drink alcohol.
Once he was settled into the luxurious back seat of his Bentley, he filled a glass with ice from the cooler built into the door, poured a can of Mountain Dew over it, and drank it while en route to his sixteen-room mansion in the Garden District.
The property was enclosed by a wall ten feet high and shrouded in leafy ivy that concealed concertina wire and the components of a continually monitored security system that was more sophisticated than that of the White House.
He lived there alone. No wife. No kids. No thank you.
For appearance’s sake, he occasionally squired an attractive woman to this or that social or charity event.
He slept with a few of them. But the accumulation of wealth was what really turned him on.
On the ecstasy chart, sex ranked much lower than maintaining the secret that he was amassing a fortune, illegally and directly under the nose of the entire world.
Throughout history, had there ever been a better inside joke?
Upon arriving home, he sequestered himself in a soundproofed room that he personally swept each day for listening devices.
He got a fresh Mountain Dew from the mini fridge and set it on the table next to his favorite easy chair.
He shrugged out of his suit jacket, loosened his tie, toed out of his shoes, and put his feet on the ottoman.
Allen Busby was done for the day.
Oz’s workday was just beginning.
He called Roland Malone, who answered on the second ring. “You done recording?”
“I just got home.”
“How’d it go?”
“Another day at the salt mine.”
Malone made a grunting sound that passed for his laugh. “Did you fire the ad guy?”
“Didn’t have to. I issued a threat. It took.”
“Good.”
Oz said, “As you predicted, the lead story on last night’s news was about the two bodies found in Bayou Coeur. Any buzz about how the investigation is faring?”
“Last I heard, no identity on the girl yet. No leads on where the two were killed. No motive. My worry factor is at negative five.”
Busby’s worry factor was never that low. “I asked you to be on standby this week.”
“I always am. But why particularly this week?”
“Because, as of last night, the Caballeros are short three truckloads of product, now headed east.”
Roland went still. He even stopped turning his ring. “Holy shit, you really did it.”
It smarted a bit that Oz had carried out a scheme that he’d proposed to Roland months earlier, and which Roland had advised against.
Oz had presented a large-scale heist as a way to profit by “brokering a deal,” when what it amounted to was stealing product from a notoriously vicious Mexican cartel, then turning around and selling it to a customer in St. Louis who was eagerly standing by with suitcases of cash.
“Then,” Oz had told Roland, “as an act of good will, I’ll give a share to the Caballeros.”
Roland thought the idea stunk. First off, you didn’t mess with the Caballeros unless you were looking to die.
Second, they weren’t accustomed to being treated as a Johhny-come-lately cartel and having someone, even the mighty Oz, brokering their deals for them.
Certainly without their prior knowledge.
They would regard the theft of their product as theft, pure and simple, and weren’t likely to favor settling for a good-will-gesture share when they could have trafficked it themselves and kept every peso.
But rather than squelch Oz’s enthusiasm, apparently Roland’s cautionary advice had done just the opposite. Roland figured the ballsy move had appealed to Oz’s ego and tipped the scale in favor of his going through with it. It had been a challenge he’d been unable to resist.
He said now, “Our people got in, got out. I doubt the Caballeros even know it’s missing yet.”
“Congratulations.”
“A little soon to be popping corks. Those trucks have a lot of ground to cover. ETA by the end of the week, but could be earlier or later. That’s why I wanted you ready to act at a moment’s notice. And why I didn’t want anything going wrong this week.”
“Understood, boss. So maybe I should hold off on this.”
“What? A problem?”
“A nuisance. The homeless riffraff around here are getting bold. Last night a bunch of them showed up at my kitchen door. Staff were giving them handouts.”
“Bad for your business, bad for mine.”
“Exactly. I’m thinking of putting this kid, El Paso, on it.”
“What’s his real name?”
“I think we’re better off not knowing.”
“Put him on it how?”
“Have him dole out some discouragement to the derelicts. Send a message that they’re not to come anywhere near my place again, or else.”
“Hmm.”
“But the kid is officially your employee, so I wanted to run it past you first. One or two unfortunate incidents ought to fix the problem.”
“Fine. Use him. But nothing fancy that would draw attention. Have him keep it low-key.”
“Absolutely.”
Thoughtfully, Busby reached for his drink and took a sip straight from the can. “You haven’t mentioned Mitch Haskell.”
“Oh, yeah. Forgot. He went to see a shrink yesterday.”
“So he gave in to Bowie?”
“Not entirely.” Roland told him about another quarrel between the two. “I’m told it was more heated than the previous ones. Haskell kicked his desk chair before storming out.”
“What set it off?”
“Haskell didn’t want to continue therapy. Bowie stuck to his guns. At this point, how the feud unfolds is anybody’s guess.”
“Hmm,” Busby said again. He wasn’t a big fan of guesswork. “Who’s the shrink?”
“A Dr. Dylan Reede.”
“What do you know about him?”
“It’s a her.”
“Interesting choice.”
“My plant says she was a random pick. And actually, the more I got to thinking about it, the more I believe a female is a good thing.”
“How’s that?”
“Maternal instinct. If Haskell talks to her about the death of his wife, she’ll mother him. Sympathize, urge him to stop drinking, make amends with Bowie, find a new love. Like that. Now, whether or not Haskell takes her advice remains to be seen.”