"Yeah, I think so. This guy give you Leon's name?"
"Come out with it like it was nothin'," Armand said. "Made like he knew all about that other business, too."
Merle had to puzzle over that one for a moment. Other business? Finally, it came to him that Fortier was making reference to the purge of prosecution witnesses for which Leon had been retained. The knowledge made his flesh crawl uncomfortably. The way he felt right now, his mama would have said someone had walked across his grave. But how the hell could they do that, when he was still alive?
"He say what boys was talkin'?" Bettencourt inquired.
"One name he give me," Armand said. "The pig man."
Pig man. Pig man? Wait, he had it! "Yeah, okay. Who else?"
"I said one name! You got spuds in your ears?" When Merle made no reply, the Cajun godfather continued. "Another thing. Some shit about Leon and Gypsies."
"Gypsies?"
"That's what I said! You got a fuckin' parrot on your shoulder?"
Bettencourt was reaching up to check before he caught himself, "Uh-uh," he said.
"So check this out," said Fortier. "Leon and Gypsies. All I know. And take care of that other thing."
"Okay."
"You keep a lookout for this bastard, Merle, you hear me?"
"Right. "
The line went dead without so much as a goodbye, and Bettencourt returned the telephone receiver to its cradle. Jesus Christ, as if he didn't have enough problems to deal with as it was. Now one of the prosecution witnesses was still out there, and old Armand was nagging him to get the job done. He had started thinking lately that it wouldn't be so bad if Armand lost his damn appeal and had to spend a few more hundred years inside. Like anyone would miss him but his bimbos.
Bettencourt could run the show himself. God knew he had been handling the grunt work long enough, while Armand got the cream and accolades. So much for justice. Now this shit about the Gypsies, and he couldn't even find out what it was supposed to mean, because Armand was worried that the pay phone in the joint might sprout an extra pair of ears.
Leon and Gypsies. What the hell? Of course, the more he thought about it, turned it over in his mind, the more they seemed to go together. Gypsies had that spooky reputation, and old Leon, well, they didn't come much spookier than that.
Merle knew exactly what he had to do, and while he didn't like it one damn bit, there was no viable alternative.
He grabbed the telephone again, but it was dead. Now, what the-? Instantly it came to him. His houseman, who had taken Armand's call, had left the damn extension off the hook. Merle cradled the receiver, biting off an urge to slam it down with crushing force, and reached the playroom's door in three long strides.
"Arno? Arno, you idjit, where you at?"
"What, boss?" Arno emerging from the kitchen with a turkey leg in hand, grease smeared around his lips.
"Would you be kind enough to go hang up the telephone?"
"Okay."
Sweet Jesus. Now Merle had to make the call he had been dreading ever since the Feds sent Armand to Atlanta. There was no way to avoid it any longer.
He was bound to fix himself a meeting with a goddamn loup-garou.
THE ROUND-TRIP To Atlanta took four hours, not including time spent at the prison, picking up and dropping off his rental car and dawdling through the traffic-crowded streets. All things considered, it was well into midafternoon when Remo disembarked at New Orleans International Airport, west of town, and bid a sad farewell to the incessant squalling of the two brats who had occupied the seats behind him. The whole way back, he had been mulling over Fortier's reaction to the bits of information he had dropped. The Cajun boss was hanging in there, had let nothing slip from his side, but the grim expression on his face when Remo mentioned "Leon," although quickly covered by a sneer, had shown that he was stung. The mobster's brain was working overtime when Remo left him, that was obvious, and he would not allow the game to start unraveling if there was anything that he could do to bring it back on course.
Remo was counting on it.
The sooner Fortier demanded swift results of his staff, the quicker Remo would be treated to a one-on-one with his pet loup-garou.
And what would happen then?
Before he left New Orleans, Remo had inquired about the Gypsies and was told that five were dead, two others barely hanging on with life support, six others treated and released for injuries that ranged from broken bones to multiple dog bites. Survivors who were capable of talking told police a pack of wolves had burst into their camp and run amok. Of course, the only wolves known to reside within Louisiana's borders lived in zoos, and so police assumed the Gypsies were mistaken, possibly hysterical. There had been problems in the past with feral dogs-some wild-born, others cast-off pets who joined a roving pack in order to survive. They came in from the bayous now and then, attracted by the city lights and smell of food, reacting viciously if humans tried to run them off.
It was a logical description of events, one that the media could swallow and regurgitate with sidebars about leash laws and the tragedy of heartless bastards who dumped their unwanted pets without a second thought. King Ladislaw, one of the evening's battle-scarred survivors, had spent time enough with the police in several states to know that there was no point in disputing the official version of events. As soon as he was reasonably satisfied as to his daughter's short-term safety, he had packed up the remainder of his tribe and hit the road. Aurelia had her ways of keeping in touch.
When she had spoken with her father, he had told a vital bit of trivia. The attackers had witnessed her leaving. The Romany had, as well, and they assumed she was fleeing, leaving them to their fate. Until the attackers ran off after her. Then the Gypsies had understood that the loups-garous were after her specifically. She had done a brave thing leading them away from the camp, alone and unprotected. And they all agreed it would be the best thing for her to stay away for the time being.
That was when she and Remo decided it would be best if she stuck with them.
Remo was getting his own little merry band of followers. Chiun spent most of his time lost in his own little world of meditation or Spanish-language TV. He was being uncharacteristically aloof, and he wasn't interested in telling Remo why. This was standard behavior for Chiun, who loved to create his little mysteries and impart wisdom by letting Remo learn things for himself. Right now Chiun claimed that he was allowing Remo to immerse himself fully in the role of Reigning Master of Sinanju. As far as Remo could tell, that meant he did all the work while Chiun "meditated" in front of the Mexican soap operas. With Chiun only physically present and with his two new companions, Remo felt like the guy in some bad TV show who wakes up to find himself living with the wrong family.
But between Cuvier and Aurelia, he sure had a full bait bucket.
"The best way I can help my people," Aureiia told Remo, "is to stay with you and see these monsters finally destroyed."
Since Remo was trying to accomplish exactly that, it was hard to turn her down. Come to think of it, it would have been hard to turn her down on anything.
But he knew he couldn't guarantee her safety, because he still didn't know for sure what they were up against. Was there one loup-garau, Leon, and a pack of trained dogs? Or were there several loups-garous?
Was he-or were they-really the product of the mad genius of Judith White? Or was there something different, something less explicable?
Remo frankly didn't have a clue what he was up against, except that Armand Fortier and company were at the root of it, their blood-stained Cajun fingers pulling strings behind the scenes.
With that in mind, he had decided on a visit to Atlanta, no real plan in mind except to meet the Cajun godfather in person, try to shake him up and crank his paranoia up an octave with the news that members of his home team in New Orleans had begun to crack.
Aside from Ham DuBois, in fact, it wasn't strictly true. The three gorillas in the cemetery would have talked, he was convinced, but they were simple button men, the kind of bottom feeders who digested rumors from the street and spit them back in garbled form. They would admit to serving Armand Fortier and "knew" he had a loup-garou on call for "special jobs," but anything beyond that point was garbled nonsense. Remo exhausted their meager store of intelligence and left them there, fresh customers for the New Orleans boneyard.
Which left Remo with his most important unanswered question-how to get to the loup-garou, the one he now knew was named Leon. But nobody really seemed to know how to get to Leon.
Fortier and friends would have no difficulty tracking down the stiffs in the graveyard, but short of scheduling a seance, there was no way to discover what, if anything, they had divulged before they died. With any luck at all, the prospect of informers in the ranks would amplify the innate paranoia that was part of every gangster's personality, alert to treachery from "friends" and relatives around the clock.
The first rule of organized crime had always been, would always be to do unto others before they could do it to you. Armand had come up through the ranks the hard way, killing or subverting those who blocked his path to power, and he knew damn well that others had been waiting in the wings, hoping for him to fall. His prison term had cleared the way for Bettencourt, but now that Fortier was trying for a comeback, with his bid for a new trial, he had to know that some of his old buddies would be just as glad to have him stay exactly where he was.
And maybe, if the Cajun godfather got anxious, if he started pushing hard enough, something would snap. If he began to whistle for his loup-garou...
That's what Remo was hoping for. That someone, anyone would draw out the werewolf. And the sooner the better. Every hour in New Orleans gave the enemy another chance to tag Jean Cuvier, another chance to kill Aurelia Boldiszar. He knew the woman and his witness were secure with Chiun, for now.
It was a dicey business, he decided, when you had a werewolf by the tail.
THE CROWDED STREETS PUT Leon off, disturbed him, conjuring sensations that were almost claustrophobic, but the summons had permitted no denial. If he had refused, as he was first inclined to do, there would be trouble. Exposure, on some level. He and the pack would have to flee their home and find another place to hide, outside the bayou country.