minute or so—and shoved it under the front seat. The suppressor, which didn’t look like much, went into the back of the glove compartment, where it was barely visible. He didn’t have ammo for the gun, but that wasn’t a problem in Las Vegas. There was a gun shop three blocks away, and he picked up a box of Federal Premium Hydra-Shok.
The remaining four boxes each contained a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in used hundred-dollar bills, wrapped in crumpled sheets of newspaper so the stacks of currency wouldn’t shift around. The bills made two stacks, each a little more than three inches high, which fit nicely, and with plenty of room, in a standard FedEx box. They’d wanted the boxes to be lightweight, because they’d seem less worth stealing; and they’d broken the money into four boxes so, in case of theft, they wouldn’t lose it all at once. All four came through fine.
* * *
—
THE DAY BEFORE Santos left New Orleans, he and Smith had gone for a walk in Audubon Park, across the pond from the golf course. The day was humid, but they were used to it, and the bees were out on the flowers and interesting to watch as they went about their work.
As they walked, Smith told Santos he was writing off the money. “It’s a lot,” he said with a shrug. “But we can always go out and get more. Anyway, what you do with it is up to you. Give the money to Deese and tell him to get lost and never come back to New Orleans. Or, if you can get away with it, shoot him and keep the money. I don’t care one way or the other because, for me, when you walk out the door, the money is gone.”
Santos: “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” Smith said. He stopped to sniff a rose, frowned, said it didn’t smell like anything. “What the fuck kind of rose is that?”
“I’m not a rose connoisseur,” Santos said.
Smith nodded, and they moved on, picking up the conversation. “From my point of view, I’d rather you get rid of Deese permanently,” Smith said. “He’s never going to do me any good, not now, not with all the murders and the fuckin’ cannibalism. The feds could use that to turn him. Against me. And you, too, maybe. So, it’s either his money to get lost with or your money to make his disappearance permanent.”
“I’ll think about it,” Santos said.
“Think about this, too. He’s a killer. You don’t want to falter, because if you do, he’ll kill you. And even worse, he’ll probably try to kill me, and I’d have to jump through my rectum to keep that from happening.”
“I’ll think about that, too,” Santos said.
“Lot to think about,” Smith said. They passed another rosebush and, after checking for park cops, Smith reached out and plucked a blossom and twiddled it in his fingers as he walked, every few steps sniffing it. “Now I’ve got a rose. And it smells like something,” he said.
Santos said, “You know what you sound like, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know,” Smith said, with a tight, toothless grin. “This business is full of macho assholes. They think you’re a fag, they relax. They believe it right up to the time you pull the church key out of your pocket and carve out an eyeball.”
They walked on.
“You have to think about Deese’s brother,” Smith said. “I never really understood that relationship because they are so very different. At the same time, in their own psychopathic way, they seem to care for each other. Maybe because their father repeatedly beat the shit out of them when they were children.”
“Shared experience.”
“Exactly. Shared trauma,” Smith said. “So if you kill Deese, you might have to do something about Beauchamps. That is, if he knew you were responsible for Deese’s death.”
“Okay. How about the others?”
“Don’t care. They don’t know about me, so I don’t care what happens to them. If they see you kill Deese, if they’re witnesses, then you might care. But I don’t.”
“That’s all very clear,” Santos said.
“You see any problems?”
“Not really. Well, maybe one: Davenport.”
“Don’t touch him,” Smith said. “I don’t doubt that you could take him, but the bigger problem is, he’s part of a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy never stops. It keeps coming. If it takes years to pull you down, doesn’t matter to them, they’ll take the time. To them, you’re just an active file in a computer and the computer keeps looking. That’s why I