weeds.'
'I can't fly, sir. I have to do something useful,' Griffin replied, embarrassed by the praise.
'You do.' Kelly handed over his notes. Under his eyes they were placed in an envelope that was then sealed with red wax. 'Courier the package to this address.'
'Yes, sir. You're due some time off. Did you get any sleep at all?' Captain Griffin asked.
'Well, I think I'll depressurize in New Orleans before I fly back.'
'Not a bad place for it, sir.' Griffin walked Kelly to his car, already loaded.
One other bit of intelligence had been stunningly easy, Kelly thought, driving out. His room in the Q had contained a New Orleans telephone directory in which, to his amazement, had been the name he'd decided to look up while sitting in James Greer's office in CIA.
This was the shipment that would make his reputation, Tucker thought, watching Rick and Billy finish loading things up. Part of it would find its way to New York. Up until now he'd been an interloper, an outsider with ambition. He'd provided enough heroin to get people interested in himself and his partners - the fact that he had partners had attracted interest of its own, in addition to the access. But now was different. Now he was making his move to be part of the crew. He would be seen as a serious businessman because this shipment would handle all the needs of Baltimore and Philadelphia for... maybe a month, he estimated. Maybe less if their distribution network was as good as they said. The leftovers would start meeting the growing needs in the Big Apple, which needed the help after a major bust. After so long a time of making small steps, here was the giant one. Billy turned on a radio to get the sports news, and got a weather forecast instead.
'I'm glad we're going now. Storms coming in later.' Tucker looked outside. The sky was still clear and untroubled. 'Nothing for us to worry about,' he told them.
He loved New Orleans, a city in the European tradition, which mixed Old World charm with American zest. Rich in history, owned by Frenchmen and Spaniards in their turn, it had never lost its traditions, even to its maintenance of a legal code that was nearly incomprehensible to the other forty-nine states, and was often a matter of some befuddlement to federal authorities. So was the local patois, for many mixed French into their conversations, or what they called French. Pierre Lamarck's antecedents had been Acadians, and some of his more distant relatives were still residents in the local bayous. But customs that were eccentric and entertaining to tourists, and a comfortable life rich in tradition to others, had little interest to Lamarck except as a point of reference, a personal signature to distinguish him from his peers. That was hard enough to do, as his profession demanded a certain flash, a personal flair. He accentuated his uniqueness with a white linen suit complete with vest, a white, long- sleeved shirt, and a red, solid-color tie, which fitted his own image as a respectable, if ostentatious, local businessman. That went along well with his personal automobile, an eggshell-white Cadillac. He eschewed the ornamental excesses that some other pimps placed on their automobiles, nonfunctional exhaust pipes. One supposed Texan even had the horns of a longhorn steer on his Lincoln, but that one was really poor white trash from lower Alabama, and a boy who didn't know how to treat his ladies.
This latter quality was Lamarck's greatest talent, he told himself with great satisfaction, opening the door of his car for his newest acquisition, fifteen years old and recently broken in, possessed of an innocent look and demure movement that made her a noteworthy and enticing member of his eight-girl stable. She'd earned the pimp's unaccustomed courtesy with a special service of her own earlier in the day. The luxury car started on the first turn of the key, and at seven-thirty, Pierre Lamarck set off on another night's work, for the nightlife in his city started early and lasted late. There was a convention in town, distributors for something or other. New Orleans attracted a lot of conventions, and he could track the cash flow of his business by their comings and goings. It promised to be a warm and lucrative night.
It had to be him, Kelly thought, half a block away, behind the wheel of his still-rented car. Who else would wear a three-piece suit and be accompanied by a young girl dressed in a tight mini? Certainly not an insurance agent. The girl's jewelry looked cheap-showy even from this distance. Kelly slipped the car into gear, following. He was able to lay back. How many white Caddies could there be? he wondered, crossing the river, three cars back, eyes locked on his target while peripheral parts of his mind dealt with the other traffic. Once he had to risk a ticket at a traffic light, but otherwise the tracking was simple. The Caddy stopped at the entrance to an upscale hotel, and he saw the girl get out, and walk towards the door, her stride a mixture of the businesslike and the resigned. He didn't want to see her face all that closely, afraid of what memories might result from it. This was not a night for emotion. Emotion was what had given him the mission. How he accomplished it had to come from something else. That would be a constant struggle, Kelly told himself, but one he would have to contend with successfully. That was, after all, why he'd come to this place, on this night.
The Cadillac moved on a few more blocks, finding a parking place by a seedy, flashy bar close enough to the nice hotels and businesses that a person could walk there quickly, yet never be far from the safety and comfort of civilized safety. A fairly constant stream of taxicabs told him that this aspect of local life had a firm, institutional foundation. He identified the bar in question and found himself a place to park three blocks away.
There was a dual purpose in parking so far from his objective. The walk in along Decatur Street gave him both a feel for the territory and a look at likely places for his action. Surely it would be a long night. Some short-skirted girls smiled at him as mechanically as the changing of the traffic lights, but he walked on, his eyes sweeping left and right while a distant voice reminded him of what he had once thought of such gestures. He silenced that voice with another, more current thought. His clothes were casual, what a moderately comfortable man might wear in this humid heat and heavy atmosphere, dark and anonymous, loose and baggy. They proclaimed money, but not too much, and his stride told people that he was not one to be trifled with. A man of understated substance having a discreet night on the wild side.
He walked into Chats Sauvages at eight-seventeen. His initial impression of the bar was smoke and noise. A small but enthusiastic rock band played at the far end. There was a dance floor, perhaps twenty-five feet square, where people his age and younger moved with the music; and there was Pierre Lamarck, sitting at a table in the corner with a few acquaintances, or so they seemed from their demeanor. Kelly walked to the men's room, both an immediate necessity and an opportunity to look the place over. There was another extrance on the side, but no closer to Lamarck's table than the one through which both he and Kelly had entered. The nearest path to the white Caddy led past Kelly's place at the bar, and that told him where his perch had to be. Kelly ordered a beer and turned conveniently to watch the band.
At nine- ten two young women came to Lamarck. One sat on his lap while the other nibbled at his ear. The other two men at the table watched with neutral interest while both women handed over something to him. Kelly couldn't tell what it was because he was looking towards the band, careful not to stare too often in Lamarck's direction. The pimp solved that problem immediately: it turned out, unsurprisingly, to be cash, and the man somewhat ostentatiously wrapped the bills around a roll removed from his pocket. Flash money, Kelly had troubled himself to learn, an important part of a pimp's public image. The first two women left, and Lamarck was soon joined by another, in what became an intermittent stream that didn't stop. His table mates enjoyed the same sort of traffic, Kelly saw, sipping their drinks, paying cash, joshing with and occasionally fondling the waitress who served them, then tipping her heavily by way of apology. Kelly moved from time to time. He removed his jacket, rolling up his sleeves, to present a different image to the bar's patrons, and limiting himself to two beers, which he nursed as carefully as he could. Tedious as it was, he disregarded the unpleasant nature of the evening, instead noticing things. Who went where. Who came and left. Who stayed. Who lingered in one place. Kelly soon started recognizing patterns and identifying individuals to whom he assigned names of his own creation. Most of all he observed everything there was to see about Lamarck. He never took off his suit jacket, kept his back to the wall. He talked amiably with his two companions, but their familiarity was not that of friends. Their joking was too affected. There was too much emphasis on their interactive gestures, not the casual comfort that you saw among people whose company was shared for some purpose other than money. Even pimps got lonely, Kelly thought, and though they sought out their own kind, theirs was not friendship but mere association. The philosophical observations he put aside. If Lamarck never took off his coat, he had to be carrying a weapon.
Just after midnight, Kelly put his coat back on and made yet another trip to the men's room. In the toilet stall he took the automatic he'd hidden inside his slacks and moved it to the waistband. Two beers in four hours, he thought. His liver ought to have eliminated the alcohol from his system, and even if it hadn't, two beers should not have had much effect on one as bulky as he. It was an important statement which, he hoped, wasn't a lie.
His timing was good. Washing his hands for the fifth time, Kelly saw the door open in the mirror. Only the back of the man's head, but under the dark hair was a white suit, and so Kelly waited, taking his time until he heard the
