Chapter Thirty
AN HOUR AFTER leaving the scene of Leigh Ann Staub’s murder, Lieutenant Cornelius Bates leaned back in his Aeron office chair, cracked his knuckles, and cursed the city manager for the thousandth time.
The air-conditioning in the NOPD headquarters on Royal Street had failed again.
Typical. The building—a peach-colored Greek Revival wedged between antique shops and tourist traps—was beautiful, historic, and utterly dysfunctional.
An uncharitable observer might consider it a metaphor for the city it served.
Tonight, the heat was a slow, sticky crawl. The window was open, the ceiling fan spun lazily, and Bates fanned himself with a manila folder, muttering about bureaucratic sabotage. In New Orleans, even air-conditioning was political currency.
A knock at the door.
“You ready for me?” came the female voice.
“Yeah,” Bates said, rising to shake her hand.
Tilda Marchand, the department’s public relations officer, stepped inside. Sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, and always two steps ahead. She took the seat across from him, smoothing her crisp blouse.
“You can hear the music from here,” she said, nodding toward the window. A trumpet wailed over the humid air, followed by the thump of a bass drum.
“Perks of the downtown office,” Bates replied. “Be nicer if I could close that damn window. Maybe we should leak that to the press.”
“Don’t bother. They’ll just cut the power.”
He forced a smile, but his mind was elsewhere. Bourbon and a sixty-two-degree thermostat were calling.
“All right,” he said. “What are you hearing?”
Tilda tapped her pen against a yellow legal pad. “That reporter, Evan Greer, he’s been calling every ten minutes. Says he’s got sources in the Garden District. Bloodbath, he says. Wants to run with a gang angle. He’s pushing for home invasion. You know how they love that phrase. Sells papers.”
Bates didn’t respond. He reached for his glass of Diet Coke, condensation causing it to weep, took a slow sip, and let the silence stretch.
“Icy’s office called too,” Tilda added. “They’re nervous. This kind of thing, in that neighborhood? Not good for her campaign.”
Bates nodded slowly. Isaacson had built her platform on a cleanup narrative: crime down, streets safer, the city reborn. A massacre in the Garden District didn’t fit the script. He could already see the headline: BLOODBATH IN THE GARDEN. Icy would lose her mind.
“Greer said he’s going to print by two a.m.,” Tilda said.
“Then we don’t have time to clear this with anyone else.”
“Your call, Lieutenant. I’ll spin it however you want.”
Bates rocked in his chair, eyes narrowing. In New Orleans, everything was connected: departments, favors, secrets.
Manus manum lavat.
One hand washes the other. Year one Latin class, ninth grade.
“Tell Greer it was a cartel hit,” he said. “Mexicans. Probably came through Eagle Pass, Texas. Shift the blame. Make it sound like a turf war that spilled the banks: Sinaloa, Jalisco, Gulf. Let Homeland Security take the heat.”
Tilda raised an eyebrow. “You sure you want to throw shade at DHS?”
“Not shade. Context. Four of the vics looked like cartel guys. They were in the home of a woman whose son died of an overdose a month ago, meaning there were drug ties. Don’t give Greer the name, just hint at it. Let him think he’s cracked something.”
“Greer’s already got an angle on the woman. Nurse at Tulane. Good rep. He wants to paint her as a martyr.”
Bates hesitated. Based on the narrative he and his crew had set up, Staub was the mother of a junkie who brought this mess to her door. But martyrdom had its uses. If the public saw her as a victim, Icy could spin it as sympathy by association.
“Let him run with the martyr angle.”
“And the brutality? That’s the obvious question. He heard she was tortured. Somebody said a hammer was involved.”
Bates swore inwardly. Someone had already leaked something to Greer. One of the CSIs? Detective Kile, pissed off that he’d been bounced from the case?
“Cartels were looking for something,” he said. “Kid’s drugs, maybe cash. The house was torn apart. Jewelry was gone so at least one perp got away with it.”
A buzz in his pocket. Not the phone on his desk, the other one. The one that never left his side.
Tilda glanced at the desk. “That you?”
Bates stood. “Confidential informant. I take these outside. Don’t want them hearing police chatter.”
He buttoned his collar, tightened his tie, and stepped into the hallway. The building was quiet, the fluorescent lights humming. He took the stairs two at a time and pushed through the rooftop door.
The night hit him like a warm wet towel. From here, he could see the Mississippi, dark and slow beyond the rooftops. He dialed the missed call.
“It’s me,” he said.
“I call, you answer.”
“I was in a meeting. About the thing.”
Cuchillo’s voice came through like a blade. “The thing,” he seethed. “Four men gone. Do you have a leak? You got my men the address and now they are dead. You said it would just be the woman.”
For all the clinging heat, Bates felt a chill. “There’s no leak. We think she had a date, someone we didn’t know about.”
“Some random date didn’t kill four of my men. This was a pro.”
“We have not ruled anything out yet.”
“Did one of my competitors hire someone to send me a message?”
“We don’t have a complete picture. The press is hungry. For now, I’m feeding them Mexican food.”
Cuchillo liked that, Bates could tell. The silver lining might just be some added heat to his competition over the border.
“We have a good thing, you and me. We have for a long time.”
What was that he heard in the background? Bates wasn’t sure whether it was the ocean outside one of Cuchillo’s El Salvador homes or simply the static of a satellite bounce.
“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.