Fat Tuesday Read online

  other way. Anytime you get a policeman on the witness stand, you'd

  better be on your toes."

  "Please, Pinkie," one of the men in the group scoffed."A policeman's

  credibility in the courtroom was destroyed forever when Mark Fuhrrnan

  testified at the O. J. Simpson trial."

  Pinkie shook his head in disagreement."Granted, Fuhrman did that

  prosecution more hamm than good. But Burke Basile is a different animal

  altogether. We searched his past for something that would discredit him.

  His record was impeccable."

  "Until the night he shot his own man," one of the guests chortled.

  He whacked Pinkie on the shoulder."You really raked him over the coals

  on the witness stand."

  "Too bad the judge refused to let the trial be televised," another guest

  remarked."The public would have seen live coverage of cop meltdown."

  Another said, "It wouldn't have surprised me if the jury had stopped the

  trial during Basile's testimony and asked if they couldn't close up shop

  and go home right then."

  "We're talking about a man's death," Remy blurted. She considered their

  joking and laughter obscene."Regardless of the outcome of the trial, Mr.

  Stuart would not have been shot if Bardo hadn't used him as a human

  shield. Isn't that right?"

  The laughter died a sudden death and all eyes turned to her.

  "Technically, my dear, that's precisely right," Pinkie replied.

  "We acknowledged in court that Mr. Bardo was holding the wounded officer

  against him when he was shot, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that

  Stuart was being used as a shield. What happened was a tragic accident,

  but that doesn't warrant sending an innocent man to prison."

  Remy had never been invited to attend a trial and see Pinkie in action,

  but she was well acquainted with the facts of this case because she'd

  followed the media coverage. Narcotics officers Stuart and Basile had

  been the first of their unit to arrive at a warehouse where it was

  suspected that drugs were being manufactured and distributed.

  Those inside the warehouse had been alerted that a raid was imminent.

  When Stuart and Basile approached the building, they were fired upon.

  Without waiting for backup, Stuart had charged into the warehouse,

  exchanging gunfire with and killing a man named Toot Jenkins.

  Toot Jenkins lay dead, Stuart was badly wounded. His bullet-proof vest

  had deflected potentially fatal shots, but he'd been hit in the thigh,

  the bullet narrowly missing his femoral artery. Another bullet had

  shattered his ulna.

  "The doctor testified at trial that Stuart was probably in shock, but

  that he would have recovered from those wounds," Remy said."They were

  serious, but not life threatening."

  "But your husband destroyed the doctor's credibility."

  Pinkie held up a hand as though to say that he didn't need anyone to

  come to his rescue, particularly since the one challenging him was his

  own wife."Put yourself in Mr. Bardo's place, darling," he said.

  "One man lay dead, another was wounded and bleeding. Mr. Bardo reasoned

  correctly that he had inadvertently walked into a very dangerous

  situation.

  "He thought that perhaps the men outside weren't police officers as they

  claimed, but were in fact Mr. Jenkins's business rivals impersonating

  officers. Toot Jenkins had been dealing with an Asian gang.

  These gang members can be extremely clever, you know " "Officer Stuart

  was red-haired and freckled. He could hardiy be mistaken for an Asian."

  One of the guests chuckled and said, "Touche, Pinkie. Too bad for the

  D.A. Remy wasn't arguing his case."

  Pinkie laughed along with the others at the mild put-down, but perhaps

  only Remy noticed that his laughter was forced. His eyes moved over her.

  "Remy in a court of law? I hardly think so. Her talents lie elsewhere."

  As he said that, he ran his fingertip across her low neckline.

  Everyone else laughed, but a hot flush of humiliation and anger surged

  through her."Excuse me. I haven't eaten anything yet." She turned away

  from the group.

  She had an opinion on what had happened the night Stuart died but it

  wouldn't be prudent to air it in front of Pinkie and his friends.

  They were celebrating his client's acquittal, not his innocence, which

  weren't necessarily one and the same.

  She didn't believe for a moment that Wayne Bardo had been confused when

  gunfire erupted. He had known exactly what he was doing when he lifted

  the wounded policeman off the floor of the warehouse and used him as a

  shield when he went through the dark, open doorway, drawing fire from

  any other law enforcement agents who might have taken cover outside the

  building.

  Unfortunately, Burke Basile had excellent reflexes, and he was an expert

  marksman. Believing he was firing at an assailant, he'd gone for a head

  shot, and his aim had been true. The jury's verdict had laid all the

  blame for Stuart's death at his feet.

  Making good her lie about being hungry, she went into the formal dining

  room, where, as she had expected, the buffet was a gourmand's delight.

  Sterling silver chafing dishes were brimming with steaming crawfish

  etouffee, red beans and rice, and barbecued shrimp steeping in a sauce

  so fiery that the aroma alone caused her eyes to tear.

  Raw oysters on the half shell lay upon trays of ice. A chef was carving

  slices of ham and roast beef off enormous slabs of meat. There were

  deviled eggs and deviled crab, along with salads and side dishes and

  sausages, breads and desserts to suit every palate. The sight and smell

  of so much rich food didn't pique Remy's appetite, but rather made her

  slightly queasy.

  Glancing around, she saw that Pinkie was now conversing with some of the

  recently dismissed jurors. They appeared to be enthralled by whatever he

  was saying, and he loved having an audience, so he wouldn't miss her for

  a while.

  Unnoticed, she slipped through a French door into the relative quiet and

  seclusion of the backyard. The air was cold enough to make vapor of her

  breath, but the chill actually felt good against her exposed skin.

  She moved along the pathway that led to the gazebo. The lacy

  wrought-iron structure with the onion-shaped dome roof was located in a

  far corner of the property. It was one of her favorite spots.

  Whenever she desperately needed seclusion, or a semblance of it, she

  retreated to the gazebo.

  Stepping into the circular structure, she leaned into one of the support

  posts, practically hugging it while resting her cheek against the cold

  metal. She was still embarrassed over what Pinkie had insinuated in

  front of his guests. Comments like that underscored what everyone

  already believed about her, that she was a pampered trophy wife, with

  limited intelligence and trivial opinions, whose only purpose in life

  was to accessorize her flamboyant husband in public and satisfy him in

  bed.

  It also appeared they thought she had no feelings, that their subtle

  insults bounced off her without leaving a mark. They thought she was

  happy wi
th the sheltered life she led and had everything her heart

  desired.

  They were wrong.

  Wild horses couldn't have kept him away.

  Burke Basile acknowledged that being here was inadvisable.

  Inadvisable, my ass, he thought. It was downright stupid that he was

  lurking in the shadows of a hedge of tall, dense azalea bushes, glaring

  malevolently at Pinkie Duvall's Garden District mansion.

  The house was as fancy and white as a wedding cake, gaudy as hell in

  Basile s estimation. Golden light from the tall windows spilled onto the

  lawn, which was as perfectly tailored as a green carpet. Music and

  laughter wafted from the shimmering rooms.

  Burke hugged his elbows to ward off the cool evening air. He hadn't even

  thought to wear a jacket. Autumn had come and gone. The holidays had

  passed virtually unnoticed. New Orleans' mild winter was on the wane,

  but the changing seasons and encroaching spring were the last things on

  Burke's mind.

  Kev Stuart's death eight months ago had consumed him, immobilized him,

  and anesthetized him to his environment.

  Barbara had been the first to notice his preoccupation, but then she

  would because she lived with him. When his grief evolved into obsession,

  she had lodged a legitimate complaint. And then another.

  And another, until she exhausted herself with nagging. Her attitude of

  late had been indifference.

  As Wayne Bardo's trial date approached, it became obvious to everyone

  within his division that Burke's heart was no longer in his work.

  He couldn't concentrate on present cases because he was still hung up on

  the case that had taken him and Kev to that warehouse.

  For more than a year prior to that night, they'd been shrinking the size

  of that particular operation, chipping away at it bit by bit by taking

  out key dealers one by one. But the really big players had continued to

  elude them, and were probably laughing their asses off at the bungling

  and self-defeating efforts of the authorities, local and federal.

  To frustrate the division further, their success rate dwindled into

  nonexistence. Each time a raid was organized, it was foiled. No matter

  how tight the security, how secret the bust, the criminals were always

  tipped off beforehand. Drug labs were deserted with the chemicals still

  cooking. Huge inventories were abandoned moments before the squad

  arrived for the takedown. These were sacrifices the dealers could afford

  to make, they simply factored in the loss as a cost of doing business.

  The next day, they relocated to a new place of operation.

  The sons of bitches scattered quicker than roaches when the lights went

  on. Cops were made to look like fools. After each failed raid, the

  division was forced back to square one, and the painstaking procedure of

  rooting out the suppliers started all over again.

  Having worked Narcotics for years, Burke knew the drill. He knew to

  expect setbacks and delays. He knew it took months to build a case.

  He knew the undercover guys had to cultivate relationships and that

  these matters took time and patience. He knew the odds against success

  were overwhelming, and that even when they did succeed, the rewards were

  few.

  But knowing all that and accepting it were miles apart.

  Patience wasn't one of Burke's virtues. Frankly, he didn't even look

  upon patience as a virtue. In his opinion, time equated failure.

  Because for every day it took to do his job right and to collect enough

  solid evidence for the D.A. to build a case around, kids by the dozens

  were yielding to the allure of neighborhood dealers. Or a yuppie stoned

  on a designer drug plowed the hood of his BMW into a vanload of senior

  citizens on an excursion. Another few crack babies were born.

  A teenager's heart burst from over use. Someone else OD'd and died a

  wretched death.

  But because the only alternative was complete surrender, he and the

  officers in his division kept at it. Painstakingly they built their

  cases. But each time they thought they were there, each time they

  thought that the next bust would be the mother of all busts, each time

  they thought they'd catch the bastards red-handed and nail their asses

  good, something got fucked up.

  There was a traitor within the Narcotics Division of the N.O.P.D.

  Had to be. There was no other explanation for why the dealers were

  always a step ahead of them. It had happened too many times to be

  attributed to coincidence or karma or bad breaks or rotten luck or the

  devil's handiwork. Someone in the department was working on the side of

  the bad guys.

  God help the bastard when Burke Basile discovered his identity, because

  it was that cop's betrayal that had turned Nancy Stuart into a widow and

  had left her two young boys fatherless.

  Burke had begged Kev not to go barging in before the van got there with

  the rest of the squad, equipped with rams, gas masks, and automatic

  weapons. The two of them had arrived a few minutes ahead of it, the

  arrest warrants in Basile's pocket. But Kev, frustrated over yet another

  failed raid, had lost his Irish temper. He had charged the building

  through the open overhead door. Burke had heard a hail of gunfire, seen

  the flashes, smelled the gunpowder.

  Then screams.

  For damn sure, someone was down.

  Frantic, Burke had called out to Kev.

  Silence.

  The longer he waited for Kev to answer, the more anxious he became.

  "Jesus, Jesus, no, no," he prayed."Kev, answer me, you goddamn mick!"

  Then a man came lurching through the open, black maw of the warehouse

  door. It was dark, Burke couldn't see why he was walking with such an

  awkward gait, but his gun was drawn and aimed at Burke. Burke shouted

  for him to drop the weapon, but he kept coming. Again, Burke shouted for

  him to drop the weapon and put his hands on his head.

  The man fired the pistol twice.

  Burke fired only once.

  But once was enough. Kev was dead before Bardo dropped his body to the

  ground.

  As Burke raced toward the friend he'd mistakenly killed, he heard

  Bardo's laugh echoing off the metal walls of the warehouse. He hadn't

  learned it was Bardo until he was captured by the backup unit arriving

  in time to see him running through an alley behind the warehouse.

  There were flecks of Kev's blood and flesh and brains and bone on the

  face of the repeat offender, but his three-piece Armani suit hadn't even

  been spattered. He'd walked away clean, literally and figuratively.

  The weapon he'd fired was never produced. In those few intervening

  minutes, Bardo had successfully disposed of it, refuting Basile's claim

  that Bardo had fired a weapon.

  Nor was it ever explained to the court what business Bardo was

  conducting in the drug lab with Toot Jenkins. Pinkie Duvall argued that

  Bardo's presence in the lab was irrelevant to what had transpired and

  that it might only serve to prejudice the jury against his client.

  No shit, Einstein, Burke remembered thinking. It was supposed to

  preJudice the Jury against Bardo.
>
  On that question, the judge had ruled in the defendant's favor. No

  mystery there. Duvall contributed heavily to the elections of judges.

  The candidates with the most money backing their campaigns usually won,

  and then went soft on the lawyers who helped put them on the bench.

  Duvall had most of them in his pocket.

  And that wasn't the only dirty pool Pinkie Duvall played. Wayne Bardo

  had been in that warehouse that night conducting business for his boss,

  Pinkie Duvall.

  It was an accepted fact throughout the division, although never proved,

  that Duvall was the primo operator they'd been after for years. He had

  more connections to drug trafficking than whores did to herpes.

  Every trail led to him, but ended just short of contact. There was no

  solid proof against him, but Burke knew the son of a bitch was a player.

  A big-time player.

  Yet, here he was, living it up in his fancy house, celebrating Kevin

  Stuart's death with a big, blow-out party.

  Movement at one of the rear doors interrupted Burke's bitter

  reflections. He shrank farther back into the foliage so as not to be

  seen by the woman who made her way along a path to a gazebo.