base was a hospital in Mobile.
“I’ll be there. Tommy’s workload has tripled. He has to be in Mobile Saturday. I think the kids have social commitments.”
I was disappointed. I wanted to see Emily, Dorry’s daughter who was closest in age to Annabelle. “I’m glad you’ll be there.”
“Mom and Dad love you, Carson. They’re just worried.”
I couldn’t count the times Dorry had said that same thing to me. “I love them, too. I try not to worry them.”
“Good, then I’ll see you Saturday.”
The phone buzzed as she broke the connection. I took a sleeping pill and got ready for bed.
4
The ringing telephone dragged me from a medically induced sleep Friday morning. I ignored the noise, but I couldn’t ignore the cat walking on my full bladder. “Chester!” I grabbed him and pulled him against me. “Is someone paying you to torment me?”
He didn’t answer so I picked up the persistent phone and said hello.
“Where in the hell are you?” Brandon Prescott asked.
“In bed.” I knew it would aggravate him further.
“It’s eight o’clock,” Brandon said. “I believe that’s when you’re supposed to be in the office.”
“As I recall,” I answered, my own temper kindling, “when I took the job, we agreed there wouldn’t be rigid hours.”
“I expect you to be on time occasionally. That isn’t the issue. The newspaper has been swamped by families calling in, wondering if the unidentified bodies are someone they know. We need a follow-up story.”
In an effort to spare four families, I’d worried a lot of others.
Brandon continued. “I want you to go to Angola and talk to Alvin Orley. He might have an idea who the bodies are.”
“Mitch went yesterday. I’ll call him and do an interview.”
“He’s the D.A., Carson. That means he doesn’t want us to know what he found out.”
I gritted my teeth and said nothing.
“Besides, even if you get the same information, we can put it in a story. Quoting Rayburn about what Orley said diminishes the power. And the Orley interview will open the door for Jack to do a roundup of a lot of the old Dixie Mafia stories. It’ll be great. So head over to Angola. I got you a one-o’clock appointment with Orley. You can call in and dictate your story.”
I hung up and rolled out of bed. Hank would be righteously pissed off. Brandon was the publisher, but most of the time he acted like the executive, managing and city editor. He meted out assignments and orders, totally ignoring the men he’d hired to do the job. I called Hank at the desk and let him know where Brandon was sending me.
“I’ll call whenever I have something,” I told him.
“Jack’s already working on the old Mafia stories.” Hank’s voice held disgust. “Never miss a chance to drag up clichéd images from the past. We’re running an exceptional tabloid here.”
I made some coffee, dressed, ate some toast and headed down I-10 West toward New Orleans. Before I reached Slidell, I took I-12 up to Baton Rouge and then a two-lane north to St. Francisville and the prison.
Alvin Orley was serving twenty-five years on a murder charge in the slaying of Rocco Richaleux, the mayor of Biloxi at the time. Alvin didn’t actually pull the trigger, but he hired someone to do the job. He and Rocco had once been business partners in the Gold Rush and a number of other establishments that specialized in scantily clad women, booze, dope and gambling. Rocco’s political ambitions ended his affiliation with Alvin, and once elected, Rocco decided to clean up the coast, which meant his old buddy Alvin. Rocco ended up dead, and Alvin ended up doing time in Angola because the murder was carried out in New Orleans. It was a good thing, too. A jury of his peers in Biloxi might not have convicted him. Alvin had ties that went back to the bedrock roots of the Gulf Coast. And he was known to even a score.
Angola was at the end of a long, lonely road that wound through the Tunica Hills, a landscape of deep ravines that bordered the prison on three sides. Men had been known to step off into a hidden ravine and fall thirty feet. The steep hills were formed by an earthquake that created the current path of the Mississippi River, which was the fourth boundary of the prison. During its most notorious days, Angola was a playground for men of small intelligence and large cruelty. Inmates were released so that officers on horseback could chase them with bloodhounds. Manhunt was an apt description. But times had changed at Angola. It was now no better or worse than any other maximum-security prison.
I stopped at the gate. Angola was a series of single-story buildings. Decorative coils of concertina wire topped twelve-foot chain-link fencing. Hopelessness permeated the place. After my credentials were checked, I went inside to the administration building.
Deputy Warden Vance took me into an office where Alvin waited. He’d been in prison since he was convicted in 1983, more than twenty years ago. In the interim he’d lost his hair, his color, his vision and his body. He was a small, round dumpling of a man with a doughy complexion and Coke-bottle glasses. He sat behind a desk piled with papers. Two flies buzzed incessantly around him.
“I’ve read some of your articles in the Miami paper,” he said as I sat down across from him. “I’m flattered that such a star is interested in talking to me.”
“What do you know about the five bodies buried in the parking lot of your club?” I asked.
“Mitch Rayburn asked the same thing. Yesterday. You know I remember giving a check to an organization that helped put Mitch through law school. Isn’t that funny?”
Alvin’s eyes were distorted behind his glasses, giving him an unfocused look. I knew the stories about Alvin. It was said he liked to look at the people he hurt. Rocco was the exception.
“Mitch had a hard time of it, you know,” he continued, as if we were two old neighbors chewing the juicy fat of someone else’s misfortune. “He was just a kid when his folks died. They burned to death.” He watched me closely. “Then his brother drowned. I’d say if that boy didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all.” He laughed softly.
My impulse was to punch him, to split his pasty lips with his own teeth. “I found the building permits where a room was added to the Gold Rush in October of 1981,” I said instead. “The bodies were there before that. Sometime that summer. Do you remember any digging in the parking lot prior to the paving?”
“Mitch told me that it was the same summer all of those girls went missing,” Alvin said. “He believes those girls were buried in my parking lot after they were killed. Imagine that, those young girls lying dead there all these years.”
“Do you know anything about that?”
“No, I’m sorry to say I don’t. My involvement with girls was generally giving them a job in one of my clubs. It’s hard to get a dead girl to dance.” He laughed louder this time.
“Mr. Orley, I don’t believe that
