to fall apart.
Maybe I’m crazy. That was what Mackey Pagano had said to Guidry when he begged Guidry to find out if Carlos wanted him dead. Maybe I’m crazy.
But Mackey hadn’t been crazy, had he? Carlos had wanted Mackey dead, and now, almost certainly, dead Mackey was.
What else had Mackey said Wednesday night at the Monteleone? Guidry tried to remember. Something about a guy from San Francisco, the hit on the judge a year ago that Carlos had eventually decided against.
That was the kind of work Mackey had been doing the last few years, arranging for out-of-town specialists when Carlos didn’t have someone at hand, local, to do the work he needed.
Specialists, independent contractors. Such as, perhaps, a sniper who could pick off the president of the United States and then afterward drive away in a sky-blue Eldorado.
Guidry could no longer stomach the high jinks on the screen. He left the theater before the movie ended and walked back to his apartment building. Nobody following him, he was ninety-nine percent sure.
The canceled hit on the judge last year. Maybe it had been one of Seraphine’s elaborate smoke screens. Guidry knew how she operated. She’d used the cover of darkness to line up the sniper that Carlos had sent to Dealey Plaza today.
Mackey must have figured out some corner of the puzzle a few days ago. He must have recognized that he possessed dangerous information.
And now Guidry had figured out the same corner of the puzzle. Now he possessed that same dangerous information. Throw another log on the fire, shall we? Ye gods. Guidry’s day was just getting shittier and shittier.
But there was still hope. It was still possible that what had happened to Mackey was a coincidence, that Carlos had bumped him for reasons entirely unrelated to the assassination.
Guidry knew a source who might be able to shed light. When he reached his apartment building, he bypassed the lobby and went straight to the garage. Chick was sitting crumpled in the booth and staring at the radio like it was his own sweet mother who’d been shot in Dallas. The Negroes thought that Jack Kennedy loved them. Hate to break the news, Chick, but Jack Kennedy was like every smart cat: He loved himself and himself only.
“Bring my car around for me, Chick, will you?” Guidry said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Guidry,” Chick said. “You been listening to the news? Good Lord, Good Lord.”
“You know what the Good Book says, Chick. ‘When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.’”
“Yeah you right.” Chick blew his nose into a handkerchief. “Yeah you right.”
Guidry drove over the bridge to the west bank. He tried the scrapyard first. Armand wasn’t in his little shack of an office, a surprise. Guidry knocked and knocked till his knuckles were numb. It was fine. He knew where Armand lived. Not too far up the road, a tidy little neighborhood of shotguns in Algiers Point.
Armand’s wife answered the door. Esmeralda, faded Cajun beauty, the crumbling ruins of a once-glorious civilization. Guidry wished he’d known her when. How a tubby motormouth gun peddler like Armand had landed such a prize, it was an enigma to unravel.
But another enigma had priority right now. Guidry crossed his fingers that Armand could help with the unraveling. Armand had known Mackey for almost half a century. The two of them had grown up together. Armand would know what Mackey had been up to.
“Sorry to trouble you, Esme, I know it’s late,” Guidry said. Late, but the lights in the house blazed and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee drifted out from the kitchen. Strange.
“Hello, Frank,” Esme said.
“I’m looking for Armand. He’s not at the office.”
“He’s not home.”
“I wish I could steal you away from him, Esme,” Guidry said. “I know you’ve been married a while, but give me the blueprints and I’ll do what it takes.”
“He’s not home,” she said again.
“No? Do you know where he is?”
Strange, too, that Esme hadn’t invited Guidry in yet, hadn’t offered him a cup of coffee. Every other time that Guidry had come round, now and then over the years, she’d dragged him through the door and pinned him to the sofa and flirted like she was seventeen years old. Usually Guidry had to make like Houdini just to wriggle free.
And why, if she was still up this late, wasn’t the television or the radio playing? Esme would throw herself in front of the St. Charles streetcar for Jackie Kennedy.
“He’s gone fishing,” Esme said. “Out to the Atchafalaya for a few days. You know how he loves it out there.”
In the spring, sure, when the bass were biting. But in November? “When’s he coming home?” Guidry said.
“I don’t know.”
She smiled, no strain showing. But Guidry could feel it. Something. Fear? He looked past her, into the house, and saw a suitcase by the kitchen door.
“My sister in Shreveport.” Esme answered the question before Guidry could ask it. “I’m taking the bus up to visit her this weekend.”
“How can I get hold of Armand?” Guidry said.
“I don’t know. Good-bye, Frank.”
She shut the front door. Guidry walked slowly back to his car. Armand was dead. Guidry resisted the conclusion, but it was the only one he could draw. Armand had been bumped, like Mackey, and Esme knew it. She was scared out of her wits that Carlos would come after her if she breathed a word. Smart lady.
Mackey had been bumped because he’d arranged for the sniper.
Armand had been bumped because … That was easy. Because he was Carlos’s most discreet and reliable source of weapons. You wouldn’t know to look at Armand, at the scrapyard shack, but he could get any kind of gun and move it anywhere.
The evidence mounted. Carlos was clipping the threads that connected him to the assassination. Who next but Guidry?
No, don’t be ridiculous. Guidry was a valuable asset, et cetera, his perch in the organization only a branch or two beneath Seraphine’s, et cetera. Though that wasn’t as encouraging a notion, Guidry realized, as he’d first assumed. From up here he could see it all, he could see too much, he could put all the pieces together.
And what about that jittery deputy chief in Dallas, the reason Seraphine had sent Guidry to Dallas in the first place? Did that count as another strike against Guidry?
As he crossed the bridge back over the Mississippi, the black water below reminded him of the dream he’d had last night. Omens and portents.
Carlos and Seraphine could have used anyone in the organization to stash the getaway Eldorado in Dallas, someone disposable. Why did they use Guidry? Because, maybe, they’d already decided that his time was up.
He rented a room at a cheap motel out in Kenner. He didn’t
