his attention—the gleaming streaks of light as kids skipped by with sparklers, the sweet smell of funnel cakes that floated through the air, the distant popping of fire-crackers as they exploded in the twilight like Rebel cannons on the attack—and remained focused on the only thing that mattered: finding the Plantation witness.
Unfortunately, Payne had little experience when it came to tracking civilians on American soil. He was much more accustomed to finding soldiers in murky swamps than buckwheats at carnivals, but after giving it some thought, he realized his basic objective remained the same.
He needed to locate his target as quickly and quietly as possible.
To do so, he tried mingling with the locals, slyly shifting his gaze from black man to black man as he made his way through the festive crowd. But his efforts to blend in were almost comical. No matter what he attempted, the scowl on his face made him stand out from the lively cast of characters that surrounded him. He tried smiling and nodding to the people that he passed, but the unbridled intensity on his face made him look like a serial killer.
After making a few children cry, Payne realized he needed to change his approach. Drastically. So instead of trying to hide in the crowd, he decided to stand out in it, making his anxiety work for him instead of against him.
Why be cautious when there was no risk in being bold? The Plantation witness had never seen his face, so it made little sense for Payne to slink through the crowd, hiding. He figured, why not approach every Rastafarian in sight and just talk to him? To do so, he simply needed an excuse, one that would allow him to talk to strangers without raising their suspicion. But what could he use? What could he ask anyone that would seem so harmless that a person wouldn’t flinch at the query? The question needed to be simple, yet something that explained the frazzled look on his face, a look with so much intensity that it actually scared kids.
Kids! That was it! He could pretend he’d lost his kids. He could move from person to person, pretending to look for his lost kids, while actually searching for the Plantation witness. Heck, in the few seconds it took for a person to respond to his query, Payne could study the man’s face, hair, teeth, and height. And if that wasn’t enough, Payne could listen to the man’s voice and see if it possessed the backwater accent of a buckwheat.
Damn! Payne thought to himself. The plan was ingenious.
It was bold, daring, creative . . . and completely unsuccessful.
Payne talked to every black man he saw, every single one, but most of them turned out to be way too short to be his suspect. And the few he found who actually stood over Greene’s height of 6’4” didn’t have the Fort Knox dental work or the redneck speech pattern that Greene had described. In fact, nobody in the crowd even came close.
Yet Payne remained undeterred. He had waited his entire life to find someone like Ariane—intelligent, witty, beautiful—so he wasn’t about to give up hope after an hour. If it was necessary, he would stay in New Orleans for the rest of his life, spending every cent of his family’s fortune, searching for the one witness that could bring her back into his arms.
But as it turned out, none of that was necessary.
His best friend was having a lot more luck on the eastern end of the park.
Payne hardly noticed it at first. The sound was too soft, too timid, to be heard above the cacophony of the boisterous crowd. But when it repeated itself a second and third time, it grabbed his attention. It was his cell phone.
“Hello?” he mumbled.
“Jon, it’s D.J. You’re not going to believe this, but I nabbed the bastard!”
“You what?”
“You heard me! I found him!”
A huge smile formed on Payne’s lips. “Are you serious? I was beginning to think this was a waste of time.”
“Me, too,” Jones admitted. “But I got the Bob Marley wannabe right here.” There was a brief pause on the line before he spoke again. “Say something, you little prick.”
For a minute, Payne thought he was being scolded. Then he heard a meek squeal on Jones’s end of the phone. “Howdy, sir. How is you?”
The accent brought a smile to Payne’s lips. “What’s your name?”
“Bennie Blount.”
“Well, Bennie, it’s nice to meet you. Now do me a favor and