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  “Yep. Tell all.”

  “Guess I walked right into that one.”

  “That’s right.” Jackie sat and looked at him calmly, waiting for him to talk. Her hands were busy crumpling a sheet of paper.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Ok. You asked for it. What do you want to know?”

  She stopped the paper-crumpling and leaned back in her chair. “All-righty. That’s better. Let’s see. You grew up in New Orleans?”

  “Yup.”

  “Lived here all your life?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re a fountain of information, you know that?”

  He smiled. “Okay, okay. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was seven. We lived in Biloxi at the time. I came to live with my grandmother here in New Orleans. She managed a liquor store over on St. Charles. Great life for a kid, huh?”

  Jackie kept silent.

  “Actually, it was fun. She was great. Then she died when I was 13.”

  “Oh,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah, “ he said. “Not good. A friend of my grandmother’s took me in. Larue Hebert, a little Creole guy who owns a barber shop on Magazine. I lived with him until I joined the Navy right out of high school.”

  “No college, huh?”

  Forte shifted in his chair. “No. Larue would have sent me to college probably if I would’ve asked. I got offered a couple of football scholarships at small schools but I opted for the Navy.”

  “And you became a Navy SEAL?’

  “You been doing your homework.”

  “I can see the tattoo,” she said, pointing to his left arm.

  He looked down at the seal on his forearm. “Oh, right.”

  Jackie picked up the wadded paper. “See much combat?”

  “Some. Panama, Desert Strike. Some super secret stuff. Shhhh.”

  She nodded. “So, how did you get from that, being a SEAL, to this?” She waved her arm over her head in a circle. “The Refuge. Protector and rescuer of children.”

  He smiled but there was something different around his eyes now. “That was my wife Ruth’s idea. She dreamed about something we could do together, a mission we could share. She was a social worker.”

  Jackie set the paper wad on the desk and leaned back again.

  Forte was focused on nothing in particular as he continued. “She was killed by a 14-year-old gang member. It was an accident, an initiation prank that went wrong. He shot her by accident. About five years ago.”

  Jackie was very still. “I’m sorry.”

  Forte remained expressionless. “Yeah, it was a bitch for sure.” The room seemed colder now. “So, after trying to kill myself with booze and cocaine for a couple of years, I got sobered up and started this place. Ruth had inherited a lot of money and she specified in her will that most of it go to a foundation set up specifically to fund a shelter like this one.”

  Jackie nodded. “Yeah, I saw the plaque for the foundation in the lobby.”

  Someone put some Zydeco on the sound system. The spicy mixture of soul-flavored Cajun-French lyrics completely smothered the quietness of the office. Both Forte and Jackie smiled with relief.

  “Just in time,” she said. “It was getting too serious there for a minute.”

  The phone rang and for a brief moment it sounded like it was part of the song.

  Jackie picked up the handset. “Hello?” She paused, then handed the receiver to Forte.

  “Forte,” he said. He listened for 10 seconds then handed the phone back to Jackie.

  “Showtime,” he said to her. “See you later.”

  He walked out of the office, down the hallway and passed through the ID scanners to get into the offices of Forte Security. At the front door, he paused, then opened it to a dozen camera flashes and a chorus of reporters.

  Chapter 9

  Saturday, 5 p.m.

  The image in the bathroom mirror was starkly different from the one that had appeared there earlier. Blue eyes, blond-white hair in a brush cut, bare face, no earring, sharp features. The man leaned forward and examined his image closely. Even the eyebrows had been dyed blond. It was close to his original coloring.

  He resumed toweling dry his head as he walked into the den. On the television, the afternoon movie featured “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Butch and The Kid are holed up above a saloon. They watch through a gash in the curtains as Sweet Face, the barkeep, tells the pursuing lawmen that the outlaw pair had ridden out of town. The lawmen ride away on their horses. “That Sweetface,” Paul Newman as Butch says. “If he told ME that I just rode out of town, I’d believe him.” The two outlaws tip their hats over their eyes and settle back for a snooze. Suddenly the clatter of hoofbeats rouses them. They jump up in time to see Sweetface pointing to their window, his face a mask of terror.

  The television screen cut away to a news update from the local station. The screen showed a man standing on some steps in front of an office surrounded by reporters. A small sign on the wall behind the man bore the words “Forte Security.” The wide camera angle showed the worn brick of the renovated office and some gawkers standing under the street sign on the corner. The word “LIVE” was superimposed on the top right corner of the picture. A voice-over from an off-camera newscaster blanketed the on-camera shouts of the reporters. “Just an hour ago, security specialist Al Forte was attacked by three men just two blocks from his office. Two of the men were subdued and the third assailant escaped. Police spokespersons have been unable to identify the suspects in custody, but they deny that this attack has anything to do with Forte’s involvement in the murder investigation of Dr. Tyson Lamberth, the abortion doctor who was killed early this morning at his clinic. Forte was hired to provide security for the Lamberth family after Dr. Lamberth’s murder.”

  Outside the house in Gretna, a lawnmower droned somewhere down the street. Inside, the man had stopped toweling his hair as he watched the news.

  The news camera cut to a closeup of Al Forte. The killer studied the face. It had seemed like a fairly ordinary face from a distance. Now you could see the set of the jaw and the strange yellow eyes. Above the right eye was an X-shaped scar.

  “In our business, we make some enemies,” Forte told the microphones. “It’s not easy to sort them out sometimes.” The reporters immediately assaulted him with shouted questions, sounding like a pack of dogs yelping as they circled the tree where a raccoon smiled down at them. One voice rose sharply with a question. “Mr. Forte, do you think the murder of Dr. Lamberth was justified, considering your views on abortion?”

  The killer realized he had squatted in front of the television set, the towel draped over his shoulder as he peered at the screen.

  Forte’s brow furrowed at the question as he looked at the reporter who asked it. “First, let me say that I am not involved in the investigation of Dr. Tyson’s murder. The FBI is handling that. My company has been hired to provide security protection for the Lamberth family. And second, even though it is true that I oppose abortion, I don’t think that the doctor’s murder was justified. We have a justice system here in America and, like it or not, we have to live with its processes or change them within our democratic system.” The media crowd erupted in questions again but Forte had escaped into the office again.

  The killer spat at the television screen. “Fool,” he said aloud. “In your heart, you don’t really believe that.”

  He stood and walked into the bedroom and put the towel in a hamper. In the closet, he slid aside the shirts and pants on hangers. In the wall was a safe. He spun the dial of the combination lock. Seven right, 14 left, 52 right. The door of the safe clicked open. He reached in and brought out two zippered carrying cases and a leather cleaning kit. He walked back through the den. The television had switched back to the movie. He turned it off and turned on the stereo system. He examined the CDs and pulled one from the rack. “The Unfinished Symphony” by Schubert. He fed the disc to the machine and waited for the first strains of the
orchestra to drown out the distant hum of the lawnmower.

  He walked over to the dining room table in its alcove next to the den. From the corner of the table he took several newspapers from a stack. He spread them over the table at least four pages thick. He set the zippered cases on the newspapers next to the cleaning kit. Out of the zippered cases he took an Army issue Colt 45 automatic and a Ruger .22 caliber with an eight-inch barrel that had been machine-grooved on the barrel-end so you could screw on a silencer.

  He thought about Forte as he opened the cleaning kit, assembled the cleaning rod and threaded a clean white cotton patch through the notched tip of the rod. Forte was a traitor to his own beliefs. Worse, he was spouting off on TV about his double-faced notion of justice. Where was the justice for the millions of unborn children who had been murdered in their mothers’ wombs? The government’s idea of justice had led them to slaughter. Yet, you, Mr. Forte, stand there and say that lethal force is not justified when protecting a child? Who else will protect them?

  He took a bottle of nitro solvent from the case, then dipped the cotton patch into the bottle. He picked up the .22 pistol and stabbed the cleaning rod through the bore of the pistol. In and out. In and out. He realized he was cleaning in tempo to the Schubert piece. He closed his eyes. In and out, in and out.

  The smell of the solvent soothed him. It always made him feel that order was being restored. Order for the guns he cleaned. Order for his world.

  Chapter 10

  Saturday, 9 p.m.

  “Thanks for stirring up things with that question about ‘justified murder’ in front of the cameras,” Forte said to the slight man on the other side of the booth. Jonathan Brach smiled as he sliced a bite of redfish on the dinner plate and popped it into his mouth.

  “You are quite welcome,” Brach said. “I figured you would rather hear the question from a friend than from one of those TV bozos.”

  A third man stood next to the booth where Forte and Brach sat, holding a leather menu with “Mack’s” on the cover. His bulk blocked the light from the bell-shaped ceiling light.

  “Revenge of the dweebs,” he said, jabbing a thick thumb in Brach’s direction. “That’s why he became a reporter. So he could pay us jocks back for our glory-hogging days of high school yore.”

  The small man put a hand over his mouth in mock-yawn. “Mack, you might better sit down and rest now. That earth-shaking insight you just shared surely must have drained all the blood from your miniscule brain.” He paused and put his fingers over his mouth. “Oops. I used a word with more than two syllables.”

  Mack Quadrie solemnly held up a right hand the size of a dinner plate and scratched the corner of his eye with his middle finger. “Yes,” he said, “I was right proud of that remark.” The three men laughed. The giant walked over to shake hands with another patron of his restaurant. He moved with the grace of the ex-pro tackle he was.

  Forte watched Mack walk away from the table as he lit a Checkers. “He’s done well for himself, hasn’t he?”

  Brach lowered his coffee cup. “Yes, he has. I’m proud of him. Of course, if you tell him I said that, you will never again reap the magnificent informational harvest that is yours courtesy of the Times-Picayune. Via yours truly, of course.”

  “Such power.”

  “Yes, bow before me.”

  Forte let his gaze casually sweep over the crowd at the restaurant. In his days as a Navy SEAL on reconnaissance, he had been trained to look not for a particular sign of danger but for the thing that didn’t seem to fit into the normal background of the situation. Nothing seemed out of place here tonight. A large party of people in business suits and Chanel dresses had pushed four tables together to half-fill the center of the room. In the booths along the opposite wall, couples and foursomes sipped wine and waited for their jambalaya or gumbo or one of Mack’s dinner specials. Two tables away, a tall man with a white-blond military-style haircut smiled across their table at a woman in an evening gown, who was listening closely to some joke the man was spinning for her. The woman tilted her head with a perfectly cultured laugh.

  Brach snapped his fingers. “Your fingers are about to be burned.”

  Forte re-focused on his friend, then ground out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table.

  “Tough habit to break,” Brach said. “I remember.”

  “Yeah, big fun. That was cig number three for today. And I miss it already.”

  “Progress though.”

  “So they say.” Forte picked up his fork and pushed the remaining al dente broccoli around on his plate then set the fork down and picked up his coffee.

  “That incident this afternoon spook you?”

  “Just being watchful.”

  Brach sipped his coffee silently as he watched the people stroll past the front windows of the restaurant on Bourbon Street. The old street lamps outside were just beginning to flicker to life in the dwindling twilight.

  The reporter carefully set his coffee cup on the table. “You know, Al, you are different now. I mean, compared to how you used to be. Sometimes I wonder if you know that people notice that,” Brach said.

  “Different, huh,” Forte said.

  “Yeah, I mean different from the way you were in high school. I mean, we were friends then but … you know, you had this kind of toughness, this barrier that only let people so close. And when you got out of the Navy, it was even thicker, more impenetrable -- the barrier, I mean.”

  Forte nodded. “I can see that.”

  Brach leaned forward. “It’s just that… since Ruth's passing and everything… you seem more…” He paused and looked up at nothing as he searched his mind for a word. “You are more vulnerable. Not in a bad way. I mean, you are obviously still tough and all that or you couldn’t do the work you do. And we still joke around like we always did, you, me and Mack. You are just… more approachable, I suppose.” He leaned back. “It’s something I’ve meant to say for a while, since you…” His voice trailed off. “You wouldn’t think a wordsmith like me would have such a hard time expressing himself. Anyway, it’s a good thing.”

  Forte smiled. “Thanks. It’s a one-day-at-a-time thing.” He saw that the intensity on his friend’s face remained. “I don’t mean to simplify it, Jon, really. When I was in treatment, I got thrown a lot of the stuff that I thought was just a load of psycho-babble crap. But some of it was on target, for me. I had to admit that I wasn’t on this planet alone, able to control any situation I encountered. Hell, I couldn’t even control myself. The cocaine taught me that.” He paused and thought for a moment. “But, somehow, coming to that conclusion, that I wasn’t in charge of the world, started to give me some peace. And I try to get a little more of it every day.” He laughed softly. “Some speech, huh?”

  Brach’s face had softened. “Yeah, a good one.”

  Forte clapped his hands together and a few people at nearby tables looked up from their plates. “Enough of this tender spit-swappin’. Tell me if there’s any more news on the Lamberth murder investigation.”

  The reporter grinned. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want you to come across as an actual human being.” He motioned to a waiter for more coffee. “The Fibbee’s are tearing their hair out on this one. Big pressure all the way up to the new Attorney General. Because he’s a conservative, and because of all that flak he caught at his confirmation hearings, he’s bearing down on this case. Rosie Dent is catching a lot of flak in her new job as AIC, Agent in Charge.”

  Forte waved a hand impatiently and waited for the waiter to pour more coffee and leave the table. “Yeah, yeah, politics excites me so much. Tell me if they know anything else about the killer.”

  The reporter grinned again and slowly stirred sugar into his cup. “Okay, okay. I take back that other sappy stuff I said. Here’s the scoop. A city cop across the river found the doctor’s assistant on a bench in Algiers about 1:30 this afternoon. The guy, David Butler, was under some newspapers with his mouth, wrists and ankles bound with duct tape. H
e said he’d been mugged when he went out jogging early this morning, just as he was coming out of his apartment. He never saw what hit him. His car, a beat-up blue Pinto, is gone.

  “The other clinic employee is the one they haven’t caught up with yet, Brent Garrison.” He picked up his cup then set it down. “He’s the main suspect now. His fingerprints were all over the clinic but that’s not surprising; he worked there. The FBI finished running his prints through their computers and can’t find a match, so he has no criminal record. Some agents have been scouring the San Fernando Valley in California where Garrison was from.”

  He paused to sip more coffee as Forte motioned for him to continue. “You’re going to love this: Brent Garrison, the real one, died eight months ago. He was a security cop for some California state government office. He had retired last year at age 36 because of heart problems. And the kicker is this: some hacker had gone into the government computers and tinkered with his records. His death certificate had been erased from the system. The FBI had to bring in some file clerk manager on his day off at a family reunion to even track down the paper copy of the death certificate.” He grinned. “So who was the guy working at the clinic using Garrison’s name? They don’t know yet.”

  Forte leaned back in the corner of the booth and absorbed the information. “So, the killer stole the identity of a dead man, got himself hired at the clinic and worked there for six months before killing the doctor.” He unconsciously traced the scar above his eye. “He was committed.”

  The blond man at the next table was smiling as he perused the menu.

  “He must’ve been a Nazi. Like those guys who hold their hand over a flame to prove their commitment.”

  Snap. The blond man closed his menu abruptly.

  Forte realized he had been looking at the man as he listened to Brach talk. The man was still smiling but there was something different, around the edges of the smile. Forte looked at the woman across from the blond man. Her face seemed frozen into a look of forced pleasantness. Was he imagining it? Tiny lines of tension grew from the corner of her mouth.

  On the street outside the front window of Mack’s, a marching band erupted into “As the Saints Go Marchin’ In.” Even though it was a couple months past Mardi Gras, local school bands were occasionally hired by companies to lead their convention groups in mini-parades. As the high school band swept past the windows, half the people in Mack’s crowded up to the window to watch. A few people rushed out on the sidewalk to catch beads and doubloons emblazoned with the name of the company that had created the makeshift parade. People in business suits and party hats followed the band past the windows and down the street to another restaurant.