Cold Winter Rain (15 page)

“
The producers were buying protection,” I said.

“
Protection from lawsuits, protection from prosecution,” Godchaux nodded.  “But the information you have is conclusory and derivative.  No proof.

“
I provided the proof to Kramer.  Names, deposits, bank transfers, bank account numbers.”

“
How?”

Godchaux sighed.  “Well.  Short version of the whole story.  In my last semester at LSU, I encountered a little problem with a professor in a senior tax accounting class.  For some reason the guy must have thought I was gay.  I’m not.  This professor came on to me in his office, and I rejected him.  I had to reject him physically.  Shoved him away and got out the door.

“I didn’t tell anyone, and I figured it was over.  Then, after the final exam, but before graduation, the department head summoned me to his office.  This professor had accused me of cheating on the final.  I did not cheat.  I could have aced that exam before the semester started.  It was an easy class.

“
I had to tell someone.  I had this uncle, my mother’s brother, who worked as the business manager for a big commercial fishing outfit.  My parents were dead; they died in a car crash when I was five.  Various uncles and aunts took turns raising me.

“
So I told my uncle about this thing with the professor.  Twenty-four hours later the department head saw me walking into CEBA, the college of business building.  They renamed the building a few years ago.  Now it’s Patrick Taylor Hall.  Anyway, the accounting department head asked me again to step into his office.  I figured this was it.  I was being expelled.

“
The department head sat down behind his desk and looked out the window.  He told me to sit down, but he never looked at me.  After a few seconds, he said in a very calm manner -- he had this very deep, resonant voice, probably from smoking a pipe -- ‘A very serious mistake has been made.  Your final grade in the tax course has been reinstated.  Professor Downey has withdrawn any charges about academic misconduct, and all documents related to those allegations have been destroyed.’”

Godchaux sipped his espresso.  “After graduation my uncle told me I should go to see a named partner in one of the big downtown law firms.  I’ve forgotten his name, and I think he’s passed on.  I laughed and said, ‘Uncle Ray, I’m not a lawyer.’  And he said, ‘The lawyer will introduce you to someone.  You need to go,’ and he gave me the telephone number and address.

“So I made an appointment, put on my interview suit and drove down from Baton Rouge.  The lawyer turned out to be one of those half-retired guys who put on their suits every day and go to their offices just to have a place to go and read the paper and drink coffee in peace.  I don’t think he had an assistant; the receptionist showed me in.  Great office.  Top floor, great view of the city.  Lots of trinkets from the oil business lying around, stock and bond announcements in Lucite -- you’ve seen this stuff.  I guess the old man was quite the oil and gas lawyer in his day.  Exceedingly polite.  Perfect combover.  Blue seersucker suit with white bucks.  Comes around the desk, shakes my hand.  Then he opens an inner door and gestures.  Shows me into what was obviously once his work room, not that he worked much anymore.  An antique table, old, made of smooth but unstained wood.  Maybe barn wood.”

Godchaux shrugged.  “Anyway.  Sitting at the table is a guy who looks like Paul Sorvino.”  Godchaux raised his eyebrows.  “You know the movie
Goodfellas
?  That’s the guy.  So this guy half stands, shakes my hand, tells me to sit down.  ‘I understand you’re a fine accounting student,’ he says.  Sounds like he’s from Brooklyn, like some natives of New Orleans do.

“
I say something self-effacing, then he says, ‘So would you like to come work for me?’ And I say, I don’t even know what business you’re in.  He cocks his head a little and then he says, ‘The money business.’  Then he makes that apologetic palm-up gesture, you know?  Mostly oil and gas properties, he says, a few other things.  We need someone young, eager to learn, he says.  Someone both competent and discreet.  Then he names a salary that I’m sure is fifty per cent more than any other recent LSU accounting graduates are earning.

“
So I took the job.  That was eleven years ago.”

“
But you are no longer employed there, I assume,” I said.

“
Correct.”

“
You take some precautions.  But you don’t mind walking around New Orleans during the day.  Are you sure that’s safe?”

“
The Michael they know has dark hair, doesn’t wear glasses, dresses well, and is thirty pounds lighter.  Hey,” he said, “If De Niro could gain sixty pounds to play Jake LaMotta, I figure I can do thirty to stay alive.”

“
If this becomes a federal criminal matter, you could end up in the witness protection program.”

Godchaux shook his head.  “I don’t think so.  If I learned -- or taught myself -- anything in those eleven years, it’s how to disappear.”  He patted his jacket pocket.  “Second passport.  Different name.”

When I didn’t respond, Godchaux went on.  “Right. So, you need to know whether I can help you find Kris Kramer.  Sorry.  I have no idea where she is.”

“
The memory stick.”

Godchaux nodded slowly.  “Amazing how the capacity of those little thumb drives has grown in just a few years.  Have you spoken with anyone else about it?”

I went over Moeller’s efforts without using his name and explained in a general way that the United States attorney’s office had expressed interest in the data on the memory stick.  Godchaux listened without comment. 

“
Have the feds offered you anything in exchange for the data?” Godchaux asked when I had finished.

I had decided what I wanted from the feds, but I wasn’t about to share that with Godchaux.  “Not exactly.  More on the order of you give us the stick, we do the decryption and share the data with you.  And in the interim allow you the pleasure of working with a real live U.S. government agency.”

Godchaux cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly.  “I trust you, Slate, so here goes.    He lowered his voice a couple of decibels.  “I created the file on the memory stick, Slate.  And I can give you the password.  I could give you the decryption key as well, but why not let the government have their fun?  It’s not unbreakable.  And you should get something out of their desire for those data.  So I’d suggest you extract some exchange from the government in addition to their agreeing to decrypt the information on that thumb drive.  At the very least, it will give you more time while they work on the data.”

“
Why don’t you just tell me what’s there?”

Godchaux sighed.  “It’s pages and pages of data.  Real pump volumes and reported ones.  Information about payments and payoffs.  It’s all there.  Everything you need.  I don’t have the details.  That’s why you create the document.”

I nodded.  “I think I know what the government will give me in exchange.  But surely Kramer wasn’t ready to file a lawsuit based on the notes I saw in his file.  Did you give him any other information?”

“
Yeah, I did.  But I don’t believe any of that information would assist you in finding Kris Kramer.”

Godchaux went up to the bar and borrowed a pen, then returned to the table and unfolded a cocktail napkin to one sheet.  He wrote the password, an email address and a telephone number on the thin paper.

“Here,” he said.  “I’ve communicated past my comfort zone with the telephone number you used to contact me.  This one is untraceable.  So is the email address.  Memorize.”

The password and the telephone number were easy; the Hushmail email address, random numbers at Hushmail.com, not so easy.  I looked at the information for a few moments, the rhythm of the numbers playing through my head like a melody.  “Okay,” I said.

Godchaux tore off the square of the napkin containing the numbers, produced a cigarette lighter, and before the bartender knew it had happened, the paper had turned to smoke and ash.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Back at Lakefront Airport, I called Bill Woolf on his cell and told him I needed to see him at his office first thing in the morning.  He did not seem all that pleased to hear from me on Sunday morning, but he promised to meet me at seven-thirty in his office the next day.

On the other hand, Sally seemed quite pleased to hear from me.  I sent her a text and caught her shopping at Whole Foods.  “Sunday morning is the best time to do anything in Alabama except any time when an Alabama football game is on TV,” she texted back.  “All the Baptists are in church.  Both times?  LOL!”  I told her I would connect with her when I landed in Birmingham.

In the FBO to check the aviation weather, I reflected on my conversation with Michael Godchaux and the questions it raised.

By nature, I’m a skeptic.

A few years after the first Gulf War ended, a lawyer in Houston with a hundred dollar haircut and a beach house once featured in
Southern Living
called and wanted me to help investigate the complaints of so-called Gulf War veterans the media had named “Gulf War Syndrome.”  My Birmingham law firm had played a minor role in one of his mass tort cases.

The lawyer told me he’d interviewed two dozen Gulf War veterans, most of them women, and that he and some biologist had a theory that Gulf War syndrome was caused by a bacteriological agent invented in the United States and sold by this country to Iraq when it looked as though Iran was winning its war with Iraq.  The bug was manufactured from part of the AIDS virus, he added.

I asked Mr. Haircut, Esquire, how many regular Marine officers he’d interviewed.  He was silent for twenty seconds.  Then he said, “Well just because these victims are female. . . .”

“
How many female regular Army Rangers, officers or enlisted personnel, have you interviewed?” I said.

There was another long pause.  “Well, most of these ladies are reservists or members of National Guard units,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said.  “I appreciate your calling, but I don’t think I’m interested.”

I wondered briefly whether in Michael Godchaux I had encountered another Mr. Haircut.

The damp Southeastern weather had deteriorated since my flight down to New Orleans.  The ceiling was now one thousand overcast, and a light rain was falling on Lake Pontchartrain.  No safe choice but to file IFR and climb above the liquid atmosphere.  Fortunately, the cloud tops were only at nine thousand feet, about two minutes of climbing through the gunk in the Albatros if the Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center would allow me the uninterrupted climb.

The ARTCC controller nixed my proposed flight plan to go direct to flight level one eight zero and required me to hold at nine thousand feet.  Turbulence would lurk at the horizontal condensation boundary. 

I read back the amended clearance and taxied out to the hold-short line.  I was number two for takeoff behind a Cessna Citation I that had seen better days.

One minute after takeoff and just after the tower handed me off to Center, the controller in Houston gave me approval to continue to eighteen thousand feet.  I broke out into bright winter sunshine around nine thousand feet, rode a few bumps there and continued to the lowest of the flight levels.

A few minutes later, I was handed off to Atlanta, and by then it was time to start down.  I was cleared to descend in a series of steps and a couple of turns until I came dripping down out of the low clouds on the ILS approach to runway two-four in Birmingham.  I landed, and, since no aircraft were holding for takeoff, I used air braking to save the brakes, holding the nose wheel off the centerline down to fifty knots.

Back in the FBO, I texted Sally again.  She was home on the Southside, and, having little else to accomplish on a Sunday afternoon, I stopped at the hotel, picked up my running shoes and gear, a change of clothes, and on impulse, red carnations at the gift shop, and drove to her place.

Warm and filled with midday light, Sally’s condo felt like a haven from the cold, damp day.

“Hey,” Sally said when she opened the door.

“
Hey yourself.”  I handed her the carnations.  “Here.  For you.”

“
Thanks!  Carnations.  Love them.  My father used to wear a white one in his lapel sometimes.  Aren’t you coming in?”

“
I suppose I might,” I said.

Sally filled a crystal vase with water for the carnations.  “There.  Not just for me,” she said.  “For us.”  Barefoot, she wore an Alabama Southern sweatsuit and, I soon discovered, nothing else. We spent the next two hours in her bedroom.

Afterwards, I made a late lunch for us, shrimp salad, goat cheese, and cranberry crackers Sally had bought at the Whole Foods store.  We sat at her little bar to eat while I gave her a general outline of the Michael Godchaux meeting.

“
I’ve been thinking while you’ve been jousting about the South,” Sally said.  “You know it’s not as though I don’t have a stake here.  One of my girls is missing, another dead, and you know about my relationship with Don.  You asked me why I said what I said in the dorm.  ‘We have to get them.’  Remember?”

“
Yes.”

“
I do want to participate.  I know I’m just a soccer coach, so tell me if I’m intruding, but I do have some questions about all this.”

I nodded.  “Understandable.”

“So, why did you go to New Orleans today?”

I explained the purpose of my visit to the Crescent City without naming Michael Godchaux.

Sally frowned.  “So, how is this person related to Kris Kramer’s disappearance, exactly?”

“
I barely know whether it’s related vaguely.  Much less exactly.  But I do know Don Kramer was working on a big case involving the oil business and politicians on the take.  Maybe payoffs from the New Orleans Mob.  And I know somebody sent muscle to try to scare me off.  That’s the style of that sort of crowd.  I’m just pulling on strings.  Somewhere there’s a string connected to Kris Kramer.”

“
And someone killed Akilah.”

“
Yes.”

“
Same someone?”

“
I’m sure that question has occurred to the police.  I’m just trying to concentrate on finding Kris.”

“
I appreciate that.  It’s just. . . .”

“
What?”

Sally hugged herself and shook her head slowly from side to side.  “Don led a . . . a complicated life.  He worked on more than one legal matter.  When I was with him, he’d take calls from people.  Not just related to his law practice.  Politicians.  College friends.  Lawyers he’d met traveling for cases.  People he’d met in bars.  All sorts.”

“I think I understand.  I should not approach this with tunnel vision.  Could be related to some other case.”

Sally shrugged.  “Just keep pulling on those threads.”

We finished eating, mostly in silence.  As the dark afternoon grew darker, the rain began again, a steady downpour that didn’t look as though it might abate for hours.

Sally collected the plates and rinsed them and placed them in her dishwasher.  She came around behind me, leaned her head on my back, and spoke softly into my neck.  “You don’t really want to go back to that convention hotel tonight, do you?  After all, if you’re concerned about my safety, what better protection could I have than your presence?” she said.

I didn’t want to spend another night in a convention hotel, not this night, not any night.  “Actually, I see no reason to go back there at all except to pack my bags and check out.”

“And stay here for . . . for the duration?”

“
What saves a man is to take a step,” I said.  “Saint-Exupery.”

“
It seems like the right step to me if it does to you,”  Sally said.  “Sally Kronenberg.”

I couldn’t argue with Saint-Exupery and Kronenberg.  I called the hotel and told them I would be checking out this afternoon, then drove to the hotel, collected my things, checked out, and moved in with Sally.