he asked, “Are you buying it that DeVarnay really was the man with Old Jake?”
“I’m regarding it with extreme skepticism,” I said. “The waitress was a convincing witness, and the men weren’t bad, but before I can chew it thoroughly and swallow it, I’ll have to know what a person with his background could have been doing down there.”
“Did he fish or hunt?”
“Not according to what I know about him. I’ll have to find out for certain. In the meantime, I’m wondering whether there would be any money in smuggling antiques. He seems to have built a highly prosperous business quickly. Since smugglers play rough, it might explain his disappearance. He could have been done away with, or he could have found it expedient to go into hiding.”
John meditated for a moment. “I’m certain stolen antiques find their way into the New Orleans market all the time,” he said. “These would come from surrounding states, some of them peddled illegally by heirs without other heirs knowing about it. Of course my department wouldn’t come into that. An antique dealer shops around and picks up things at second hand stores, or discard sales where the owner doesn’t know their true value, or anywhere at all. Depending on his personal standards of honesty, he also may have contacts that steer stolen goods his way. It’s all in the day’s work to him.
“But I’ve never heard of any activity in smuggled antiques, and I don’t know of any instance where a legitimate firm in the French Quarter has brought contraband into this country by way of imported goods or antiques—hidden in hollowed out pedestals or some such thing. Handicrafts and jewelry have no duty if they’re imported from any of a list of disadvantaged countries, so there would be no point in smuggling anything from there. We do have to watch the possibility that goods might be sent to one of those countries from Europe and then shipped from there to the U.S. to avoid duties.”
“Antique stores frequently deal in jewelry,” I remarked. “Sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether it’s old or new. Does anyone smuggle jewelry these days?”
“Rolex watches are a problem right now, but these most commonly are smuggled in by individuals. They’ve bought one and don’t want to pay the duty on it. If DeVarnay is smuggling anything, it wouldn’t be antiques—jewelry or whatever. If a thing is a hundred years old, it’s duty free anyway, so why smuggle it?
“But it might be profitable to smuggle in expensive new jewelry disguised in some way. Another possibility is antique art. There’s a big underground market for pre-Columbian art from Central and South America. Pieces are stolen from archeological sites, or native temples, or even from museums. If they’re authentic, they can bring huge prices. They aren’t often brought in through New Orleans, though. The most common route is across the Mexican border with a tourist trying to pass the item off as a fake picked up cheap. There are plenty of fakes around, so sometimes it works. It’s illegal to take those things out of the originating country, and we have agreements to cooperate on this end, which makes the operation illegal all the way—and that results in scarcity and higher prices. Ivory goods are another profitable item. Anything relating to endangered species can’t be brought in legally, so the smuggling of fancy ivory carvings is highly lucrative.
“Except for those few things, I can’t see your antique dealer profiting from smuggling. Of course his store could be a sideline or a front, and his business down in the bayou country could have had nothing to do with antiques except that he uses them as a cover for his smuggling profits. We had a case here where two businessmen with legitimate operations went into drug smuggling to get rich quicker. They bought barges and leased them to smugglers. When caught, they claimed they were businessmen innocently leasing barges. Since they were on the scene at three in the morning, the court didn’t buy that.”
“I hadn’t thought of DeVarnay’s business being a blind,” I said. “I haven’t looked at the store, yet, but from what I’ve heard, it certainly sounds respectable.”
“It would,” John assured me.
“Then his smuggling—if he’s doing any—may have no connection with antiques?”
“The antique business would provide an excellent cover. Antiques come from odd places, some of them shady though perfectly legal. The markups can be tremendous on valuable items picked up cheap, so the store could be used to disguise the profits on something like drugs, which can be tremendous, too.”
“How would it be managed?” I asked.
“That depends on where your antique dealer stands in the hierarchy. Usually there’s a mother ship. Drugs are transshipped—maybe to something inconspicuous like shrimp or fishing boats or to a special small boat that’s fast and doesn’t draw much water. It may be extremely expensive with the very latest in electronic equipment, costing a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and the operators would have no compunction about abandoning it if circumstances require that. The profits are so huge they can write it off as one of the costs of doing business. They would need a safe place to take the drugs to, so it wouldn’t be unusual for them to have a way station down in the swamps.”
“Something like Old Jake’s cabon?”
“Right, but they would prefer a place where the drugs could be picked up by truck as well as by boat. The more options they have, the better. Or they might take them to a dock where there’s plenty of legitimate all-night activity and it wouldn’t be unusual for a truck to be picking up a load at two in the morning. There are all sorts of angles, and these people are ingenious.”
“And ruthless,” I suggested.
“Especially ruthless. There’s so much money involved. Down in the bayous, the smuggling business can easily get mixed up with legitimate business. It’s a cash operation, but so is fishing. People have their own boats, they set their own hours, and they have their own private fishing territories. They have no legal title to them, but they defend them as though they did. If they find someone else poaching, they may resort to gunfire.
A few years ago, there was a problem with Viet Nam refugees. The refugees had been fishermen in Viet Nam, so when they arrived in the U.S., they started fishing, and actual gun wars resulted when they encroached on someone else’s territory. No one down there is going to be concerned about how you make your money, whether it’s by fishing, or some kind of import business, or by smuggling. As long as you don’t interfere with them, they won’t interfere with you. An outsider could quickly get into trouble. You’d better know the people down there, and make sure they know you, before you start any kind of operation.”
“Then DeVarnay could have got in over his depth.”
“It’s possible. It’s even likely if he was trying to operate there without taking the necessary precautions.”
“But his antique business has been flourishing for years. If it’s founded on illegal imports, he must have been at it for some time. Presumably he would be established there by now. And if he got in over his depth, I suppose he might have been abducted, but why was Old Jake killed?”
“DeVarnay could have been trying to shift his territory or expand it, but of course all of this is sheer speculation. I don’t suppose you have a bit of evidence that he was anything but an especially shrewd antique dealer.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “But in that case, what was he doing down in Old Jake’s cabon?”
John grinned and shook his head.
“You aren’t impressed with my antique dealer as a
