Bayou Brigade Read online

  Winship was growing tired of the old boy’s reluctance, and deposited both hands on the table, head looming over Scott’s, considering his next move. “If you wish to play one department against the other, I can make a few phone calls and open those files without your assistance, if that be necessary.”

  The General was licked. Flustered, he retrieved his overcoat and gazed at Slayton. “I’ll give you full cooperation.” He walked out the door, followed by the other men.

  As they left, Winship returned to his desk, holding his authoritative stance for a moment. Then he relaxed and grinned. “Ben, I think you should know that your mission has not been given any official authorization. You’re completely alone on this one. We can’t risk another collision with the brass unless you bring in solid evidence to support your theory.”

  “In other words,” said Slatyon, “you pulled a few strings to avoid the usual red tape?”

  “General Scott countersigned your orders.”

  Slayton was astonished. “The renegade conservative brass hat?”

  “Don’t be too hard on him, Ben. He’s old Army, a career man. He wanted to make certain you knew what you were talking about. He and I don’t always see eye-toeye on matters, so a certain amount of friction is inevitable. But we’re both after the common enemy.”

  Slayton nodded, shoveling computer data sheets and assorted paper work inside his briefcase. Winship didn’t want to send him on this assignment—they both realized the chances of his not returning. Shaking hands, they acknowledged a sentimental trust, a sincerity spanning many working years. Their hands held tighter and a moment longer than usual.

  “I’ve worked this game before, isolated from the Department’s usual resources,” said Slayton.

  “Yes, but I’ve also been able to send the rescue squad in a tight pinch. You’re flying solo now, son.”

  Slayton smiled laconically. “I like doing business that way, Ham.”

  6

  SENATORS MURDERED—WASH MON DETONATED

  The Washington Post ran its first double banner in thirty years. Tossing her purse on the floor under her desk, Wilma made a beeline for the newsroom lavatory. Four hours on the road covering two front-page stories, following leads and having doors slammed in her face—no wonder she looked like hell; hair tousled in disarray, bloodshot eyes that told her editor she’d been out carousing all night he said,

  The newsroom never saw peace. Papers shuffled, reporters scrambled after leads, phones rang constantly—a twenty-four-hour Roman circus, Wilma thought. Editor Bernie Daughton, a coarse, unromantic, but endearing teddy bear, sat in his office staring at Wilma. She had missed her deadline, but he usually overlooked it.

  When her first story on the bombing drew parallels between it and the senators’ slayings, Daughton received an anonymous call suggesting he look into Willard Parfrey’s financial ventures, which included some questionable transactions with a South American sea freight business he co-owned.

  Several of Parfrey’s business associates crawled out of the woodwork, pointing to other suspected wrongdoings.

  Daughton had a lot of nerve to unload an assignment like this one on her just after promising time off and vacation pay. For Wilma, writing about Parfrey’s double-dealings in Louisiana and South America was akin to working to spec—for nothing—and this sort of coverage did not seem justified by the paucity of solid facts. Daughton, however, was known for his vendettas against corrupt civil officers, and usually overplayed his angles and raked a bit of muck when it came to exposing or condemning highlevel criminals.

  “Quick business thinking,” he said, “relating Parfrey to the other murders. Even the Herald didn’t try to milk the story for that angle!”

  “There’s more on Parfrey,” said Wilma, producing a steno pad of scribbled notes. “According to his secretary, about four hours before he was killed he made two phone calls to a John Barker of Kentucky Avenue. The address was an empty warehouse. The foreman there told me it had been used to store heavy shipping crates destined for New Orleans and was clearly labeled ’explosives.’ ”

  Daughton grinned and rubbed his hands together. “The bastard was sneaky, all right. Congress was already investigating him and his transactions in South America, the ones involving his freight company. They couldn’t amass enough evidence to convince the Federal prosecutor to suspend him.”

  They decided Wilma should continue pressing Parfrey’s relatives and business associates by phone.

  “Hallo?” The voice was faint and fading over the long-distance connection. The woman repeated, “Hallo?”

  “Yes, yes,” Wilma said, searching her mind for the correct phrase. “Buenos dias, se habla Ingles?”

  “Si, ah, yes,” came the reply.

  “Is this Dartmouth Internationale?”

  “Yes, for whom do you wish to speak?”

  “I realize it’s Saturday, but are any of the corporate officers there, please?”

  “For who do you wish to talk to, miss?”

  “Willard Parfrey.”

  The line fell silent. “Hold please,” she said.

  A man came on the line. “This is Jaime Sanchez. May I help you?”

  “Hello, my name is Wilma Christian from the Washington Post— I’d like to ask a few questions about Willard Parfrey?”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “I understand he was part owner of your company, and that he was authorizing shipments of explosives for delivery in New Orleans.”

  “From where does this information come?” The Spanish accent was thick but intelligible.

  “His name was connected with some explosives found in a Washington, D.C., warehouse,” she bluffed. “Would you care to comment?”

  “I do not know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mr. Sanchez, the evidence is sitting in downtown Washington, waiting for the FBI to examine.”

  “Okay, Miss… ah… Christian, did you say? We were aware that Willard handled a few personal accounts which did not pass through the usual clearance channels.”

  “What accounts were these?”

  “I’m not sure I should be telling you all this, but now that he is dead, I suppose it will come out eventually. You understand Dartmouth Internationale cannot be held responsible. Mr. Parfrey was a co-owner—you don’t tell him not to meddle in such dangerous affairs.”

  “What affairs are these, Mr. Sanchez?”

  “We don’t exactly know what the shipments contained. He frequently sent through bills of lading which had been processed through a subsidiary office in Hong Kong.”

  “How many bills of lading were authorized?”

  “We don’t know. There was no indication that Mr. Parfrey was sending these fakes through our accounting department until our Hong Kong office found several other bills with identical numbers that didn’t match up to our copies.”

  “Two different copies of each bill?”

  “For example, we have a bill of lading for nine cases of electronic equipment. We found the same bill number in Hong Kong listing twenty-five cases of explosive detonators and fuses. When several other bills came through our accounting office in a similar condition, we conducted an internal investigation and traced the authorization to Mr. Parfrey.”

  “Why didn’t you notify the FBI in our country?”

  “The investigation is not yet complete. Besides, the way these bills were forged, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what he had shipped.”

  “I’m working to find out what was shipped, but there’s very little to follow at this end.”

  “Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.”

  “I am grateful to you, Mr. Sanchez, for this information. Have you talked to any other American newspapers?”

  “Yours is the first.”

  “Can you withhold the story from other papers until we run this in tomorrow’s edition?”

  “Yes. Our inquiries will be complete by Tuesday or Wednesday. After that, if there is reas
on to suspect Parfrey was shipping arms illegally, we will notify the authorities, the policia here, and your Treasury Department.”

  “Highly advisable.”

  “Now I may ask for your help and information?”

  “What can I do?”

  Sanchez wanted a list of Parfrey’s investments in America, to determine if Dartmouth could be implicated in a scheme to move weapons, using the services of a Chicago-based gun mail-order business.

  He said, “This organization, ‘Chicago Gun Company,’ appears as a consignee on bills shipped from Hong Kong, paid by Parfrey. There is no such company listed in the business directories for Chicago. I require a detailed summary of what was delivered, and to whom. I cannot do that from here in Argentina.”

  “I may not have the information until sometime next week,” Wilma replied.

  “That would be soon enough. And if you’re ever in Buenos Aires, look me up.”

  “Thank you, Sefior Sanchez.” They hung up.

  When Wilma filled him in on the conversation, Daughton was certain the Chicago Gun Company was an illegal fence for the shipments. “Everything points to most of the deliveries coming in at New Orleans. Get Eddie Crosby on the phone; maybe you can wrap up this story down there. Ever been to New Orleans in March?”

  Wilma didn’t want to go. It meant cancelling a visit to her relatives in Michigan. “But I was going to take a week off, starting next Thursday.”

  “Not if you’re going down South,” answered Daughton. “Call Crosby.” He returned to working on the dummy newspaper layout boards for the afternoon edition. As she angrily walked away, he called out, “Anything else new on the Monument bombing?”

  “Nothing,” she snapped. “You’ll have to run this morning’s copy again tonight.”

  Daughton scowled. “Could ya rewrite the story and tie it to the explosives found in the warehouse?”

  “There’s no connection, unless you want to invent one.”

  “Naw,” he said, “just a thought. Go to work. Keep me informed, dear.” The office door was closed by a sharp kick.

  Sonofabitch, Wilma thought. She hadn’t spent four years at Northwestern to write speculation pieces. Her desk was cluttered beyond recognition, clippings, notepaper, unfiled news releases scattered across the blotter. It was a depressing sight. And at two-thirty, she had another three hours of substantial research ahead.

  Taking a break, she phoned Ben’s farm in Mount Vernon. Max picked up the line.

  “Any word from our super-sleuth friend?” she said.

  “He’s off for parts unknown,” he laughed. “Came in about an hour ago and packed his gear. Left fifteen minutes later, saying somethin’ about visiting the Midwest.”

  “We won’t see him for a while.”

  “Two weeks… at least.”

  Trim and sun-tanned, worried about the wrinkles showing on his forehead, Eddie Crosby was deskbound for the rest of his life. A failed college athlete, the victim of a knee injury that football coaches mistreated with neural anesthetics, his weakened leg forced him onto the bench permanently—he was no longer able to detect any feeling in his right kneecap.

  Procuring his Post wire service manager’s job was a fluke; he’d worked in a similar capacity for a paper in Baton Rouge. The pay was decent, and the newspaper union offered terrific insurance benefits (he was a sucker for “being prepared,” having three separate life insurance policies worth $50,000 apiece).

  Eddie took pride in his sexual prowess, having given pleasure to nearly all the secretaries in the four-person office-those who didn’t agree with his hiring policy were out of a job. Elva June, a career typist Eddie had hired three weeks ago, was a real ball-buster. Their morning meetings couch-side were filled with raw, hard-breathing sexual acrobatics; the energy release kept him slugging, with a bright, cheery attitude, well into the night.

  He and Elva June were going at it again, during lunch break, he on top, arching his back with each pulsating midriff jab. The phone rang.

  “I thought you took it off the hook,” moaned Elva June between gasps.

  “Shit, baby, I forgot,” complained Eddie, as he placed a tube of KY jelly on the nearby table.

  Elva June relaxed, a sensational rush of blood and heat pulsating through her body. Eddie went into the outer office, yanking his pants up and diving for the receiver, now on its eighth ring.

  “Crosby here; may I help you?”

  A peppy feminine voice answered, “Eddie, this is Wilma Christian in Washington. I need some help with a story.”

  “I’m your man.”

  “Ever hear of Dartmouth Internationale? It’s a freight company in Buenos Aires.”

  “Yep, the name’s familiar. The Port Authority is having trouble locating some of their merchandise. Six shipments vanished off the pier without a trace.”

  “That’s marvelous!”

  “Tell that to the Board of Commissioners.”

  Explaining the possible arms smuggling and Senator Parfrey’s involvement, Wilma suggested he .dig into the dock authority’s records and compare Dartmouth’s original shipping memorandums with the actual bills of lading. “If there are any major discrepancies,” she said, “I’ll be joining you tomorrow to follow up the case myself.” Elva June poked her head around the door. “Are we gonna screw around or what?” she huffed.

  “Hold on a minute, honey,” he replied, covering the mouthpiece.

  Crosby returned the call from Washington two hours later. “Wilma, I have both sets of bills,” he said. “They’re almost identical.”

  Wilma’s voice grew impatient. “What’s the difference?”

  “Signatures aren’t the same. The shipping labels stapled to the port’s receiving copies show Costa Rica as the point of origin for six of the shipments. But the bill of lading memo lists Argentina.”

  “Could it be a clerical mix-up?”

  “Not likely. The discrepancy is too consistent. Listen, this has the whole dock baffled. How d’ya find out about this?”

  Wilma giggled.

  Sunday morning at ten, Eddie met her at the New Orleans airport. Upon seeing him—strong build, square shoulders, standing just over six feet with light brown hair and a minor graying of sideburns—it was lust at first sight. But the manner in which he constantly eyed the girls, no matter what they looked like, reeked of male chauvinism. His conversation, when not confined to the business at hand, flew into tangents regarding body building, and subtle suggestions that he wanted to land her in the sack. It threw a wet towel on Wilma’s aspirations for the evening; Eddie Crosby was a self-acknowledged sex god, the kind most intelligent women tried to avoid.

  “Have you contacted Mr. Sherr, the port manager?” she asked between his boasts.

  “Oh, sure,” he replied, as they drove downtown to the La Grange Hotel. “He’s tryin’ to keep his nose clean, but the shit’s piling up awful fast.”

  “You mean the bills of lading?”

  “Also the fact all that merchandise shipped in from Costa Rica—or Buenos Aires, wherever—disappeared off his dock. There’s a lotta city officials wonderin’ if city longshoremen are ripping off the gun payload as it comes in.”

  “Can I interview him?”

  “This afternoon at three. But remember, he’s’ as confused about this as we are.”

  Wilma smirked. “Conveniently so, it seems.”

  “Don’t go rough on the man. The state, city, and Federal government mucky-mucks are always on his butt. New Orleans is a prime entry port for contraband and illegals floating in from south of the border.”

  “Granted. But how many ways can you smuggle a ton of weapons and explosives off the docks without being seen?”

  “It wasn’t agreed that the cargo was strictly arms, was it?”

  “The facts add up to that much. Has the dock crew been checked out?”

  “Sherr told me they’re clean.”

  “Well, if he’s in the practice of fending off any possible investigation, then
why should he be straight with either of us?”

  “Why would he lie?”

  How naive, Wilma thought. “Ed, the smuggling might be sancitioned by his office, for all we know. After all, Senator Parfrey was racketeering, and he was a senator, for God’s sake.”

  “We can check my back file of news stories for any previous gun-running activities on the dock.”

  “Jesus, I thought you’d be prepared when I got here.” “We can dig together, maybe at dinner?”

  Wilma sighed.

  “After dinner,” he remarked, raising an eyebrow, Groucho-style.

  “Don’t you ever quit?” said Wilma.

  A cursory look at the wire service files revealed no published accounts of this brand of gun smuggling, although fourteen cases of drug-trafficking and one of suspected (though unproven) gun-running gave the Port Authority plenty of headaches. The Feds had the place under constant scrutiny.

  The port manager was a rotund barrel of a man, constantly under pressure from an intolerant Board of Commissioners and his own doctor, who warned him to lose weight or die an early death. He chain-smoked Camel filters and talked in an irritating stop-start manner which grated on Wilma’s nerves.

  “Did you ever hear of Senator Parfrey’s involvement with Dartmouth Internationale?” she asked, while he ran a pencil through an electric sharpener.

  “No. And if you’re going to suggest that Parfrey’s influence with the Texas dockworkers’ unions had spread to Louisiana, you’d better forget it. I run a clean shop here.” He shredded the brand new lead-tip down to a ludicrous two-inch nub.

  “If it were all that clean, there’d be no need for me t talk with you about this.”

  “Don’t get uppity with me, girlie. I’m breaking a very important appointment as a favor to Eddie-boy, her Any more accusations, and you can leave.”

  Wilma bit her tongue. “Sorry. But how can you explain . the discrepancy on the bills of lading?”

  “Yes, it’s obvious someone is pulling a very sophisticated con job on us, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Parfrey had been behind it, God rest his soul. The bills should have been cross-referenced in our files, but they weren’t. A clerical error.”