They had arranged a late meet on the old Honey Island dock. Squib reckoned he would be allowed to collect from Carnahan’s own dock if he proved himself, but tonight he was being tested.
In case I’m some class of juvenile narc, thought Squib, keeping an eye out for Willard from his pirogue in the cattails on the west bank across the layered slate water from Honey Island itself.
The view was just fine, with the moonlight bouncing off the cypress leaves, and Squib saw Carnahan standing right there at the water’s edge in his drainpipe jeans and cut-off T-shirt. But Carnahan wasn’t alone. There were two people on the dock: Carnahan, with his Twisted Sister–style ratty hair, and one big refrigerator-sized guy. The big one was Regence Hooke, no doubt about that whatsoever.
What the hell? thought Squib. Why would Hooke be communing with a criminal like Carnahan?
He couldn’t tell what was going on from this distance—Hooke could be simply interrogating a suspect—but Squib doubted that. Regence Hooke wasn’t a man to put himself out, and especially not in the middle of the night.
There was too much bayou between Squib and the suspicious twosome on the far bank to hear what was going on, a fact which would have to be remedied. And if a person had to put his finger on exactly when things went ass-over-balls down the crapper, then that moment was imminent.
I need to get myself closer, thought Squib. Maybe I can get myself a little intelligence on Hooke in case I ever need a get-out-of-jail-free card.
And there it was: the moment that would change the course of young Everett Moreau’s life. Squib was about to commit the cardinal sin of watchers, spies, and stalkers everywhere, that being: Don’t put yourself in the picture. Keep the hell out of whatever’s being spied upon, and do not muddy the waters with your own person.
In Squib’s exact case, the waters were already plenty muddy, but the boy went right ahead and muddied them further. He cranked his propeller out of the water and paddled to the Honey Island bank, paying no heed to the bullfrogs croaking ominous warnings. His paddle grazed the rough hide of an alligator, but still Squib ignored the omens as he was at that age where every idea he had seemed like the best damn idea in the universe. So the boy forged ahead, keeping his torso bent over low and wishing he had some class of camouflage gunk to smear on his face and arms. Not that he possessed any of that specific stuff, but Momma had every cream under the sun and surely to Jesus one of her pots would have done the job. Still, too late to fret on that now. It wasn’t like he could have seen into the future and bargained on this encounter.
It didn’t take more than half a dozen strokes to propel the pirogue across the bayou to the overhanging levee of Honey Island. Squib grabbed a fistful of cattails and tugged, sliding his craft into the cover of reeds and roots. The entire maneuver was whisper-quiet, and Squib congratulated himself on his own sneakiness, thinking that in another life he could have been Special Forces, maybe, or one of those ninja characters who favored black slippers and headbands.
Hooke and Carnahan were still jawing away, and now Squib could catch snatches of conversation. He heard Hooke say, “I never saw any sign of it apart from a bend in the middle . . .”
Which could have been pertaining to just about anything from Santa Claus to a police snitch.
And a few seconds later Willard Carnahan remarked, “That wasn’t nuthin’ compared to this guy I met in Slidell.”
Which was even more vague apart from the mention of the parish’s main city.
This kind of harmless back-and-forth went on for an age, or so it felt, and Squib was beginning to doubt that anything useful could come of this eavesdropping. With the reeds rustling and the goddamn bugs kicking up their nightly swamp racket, he couldn’t track any conversation threads from end to end, and what he could hear sounded like regular bar bullshit.
Willard: “Totally serious, Constable. Motherfucker eyeballed me, ’fore I opened his . . .”
And Regence: “I swear, boy, Momma Hooke had this thing she did where two earthworms . . .”
It was all useless jabber, so all in all, his big plan was proving itself something of a clusterballs. And Squib was reckoning he might as well shut up shop and hunker down till Regence took himself off upriver.
I’ll shimmy in a little closer, he decided. Give ’er five minutes, then fuck it, I’m out.
Squib crawled from the bed of his pirogue to the bank proper and, figuring he couldn’t get much lower in life, slithered through the reeds like a serpent, making his way ever so slowly round back of the dubious midnight pair, hoping that he wasn’t literally going to get bitten on the ass by some real shithead snake.
He came around the bend of a stump just in time to see a swamp rat the size of a cantaloupe saunter off into the bush. The rat threw him a you’re lucky I ain’t hungry look before its hindquarters disappeared, and Squib was so rattled it took him a moment to pick up on a new tone in the Hooke-Carnahan conversation. Felt like the temperature was dropping a little between those boys.
I should take a photo, thought Squib, and pulled his smartphone from the waterproof pocket of his camouflage-type work jeans. And as is so often the case, things would’ve turned out a whole lot better if the kid could’ve kept it in his pants.
HOOKE WAS WONDERING whether there might be some way to avoid dropping the hammer on Willard.
I could just let the idiot walk. Tell him to shave his head and buy a suit. Start calling himself Wilbert instead of Willard. Ivory would never know the difference.
But Carnahan was one of those guys who was just too dumb to grasp the concept of consequences. Sooner or later he’d be shooting his mouth off down in the French Quarter about how he dodged Ivory’s bullet, and then Hooke himself would be in the crapper alongside Willard.
Shit, he thought. I ain’t got a choice.
Hooke took the job hoping he might find a little wiggle room somewhere along the line, but now that he was at the end of that line, so to speak, he could see that there was nothing for it but to complete the mission and then figure out some way to fill the Carnahan-sized hole in his own plans.
Because Hooke had big plans that extended a tad further than running out his years as constable in this shithole parish. He had his beady eyes on Ivory’s entire operation, which he aimed to consolidate and extend north to Canada, cutting out South America altogether.
He had been drip-feeding factoids about these plans, needing the smuggler to check out his theories, and Willard raised the subject now.
“I talked to my guy at the truck stop,” he said. “Ain’t no limit to the number of truckers he can bring over to us. Ivory’s guys are bored out of their minds, nothing but gas station hookers for distraction. They’ll carry anything, crank or guns. Makes no never mind to those boys so long as they get paid.”
“That’s good,” said Hooke, “real good, Willard. You write those names down?”
“Sure did, just like you told me.” Willard handed Hooke a scrunched-up till receipt with names scrawled on the back.
“I gotta say it, Willard,” said Hooke, pocketing the list, “you surely are rising to the challenge.”
Carnahan accepted the compliment with shining eyes, like a puppy. “Thanks, partner. So, how long ’fore we make our move on Ivory?”
“Soon, son,” said Regence. “I got to beef up my own end. I did some surveillance on G-Hop, found myself a few of my brethren. Two definite possibilities.”