what seemed an endless rota of lightweight suits, and he’d been around Khao Lak pretty much every day since the tsunami: giving interviews to the world’s media, glad-handing those unfortunate souls who’d lost everything, and generally strutting around like some latter-day Napoleon. As far as Patrese could make out, Wattana was a hybrid of politician and businessman. Clearly, the two roles were seen as complementary, even indivisible. Equally clearly, the concept of a conflict of interest was a very remote one round these parts.
‘The great Stakhanovite!’ Wattana exclaimed, clasping Patrese’s hand in both of his own. ‘I have heard much about you; the American who works like a Soviet!’
Patrese mumbled something noncommittal about just doing his bit.
‘Come, come, Mr Patrese. You are too modest, and we all know it. I just want to thank you on behalf of the people of Khao Lak, of Takua Pa district, of Phang Nga province, of Thailand itself …’
Patrese half-wondered whether Wattana was going to keep on, rather as Patrese himself had addressed envelopes when a child: name, street, city, country, earth, galaxy, universe.
‘…and to tell you that if you ever need anything in America, three of my sons are there, and I’ve instructed them specifically to do anything you ask.’
‘Where are they based?’ Patrese asked, more out of politeness than a genuine desire to know.
‘Johnny’s in Baltimore. Tony, New Orleans. Mikey, San Diego.’
Johnny, Tony, Mikey – damn, Patrese thought, they sound more Italian than I do.
‘Well, I’m in Pittsburgh, but if I ever go visit any of those places, I’ll be sure to look them up.’
The Bureau might not have caught Marie discussing anything concrete about her drugs business – the ‘arrangement’ she’d spoken about could have meant anything – but they’d got something better: audio evidence of a murder. The cough of the suppressed pistol hadn’t been loud enough to carry outside the room, so neither Marie’s bodyguards nor Ortiz’ had heard; but it was clearly audible on the surveillance tape.
Back-up had been there inside three minutes; barreling through astonished diners into the back of the restaurant, shouting at the bodyguards not even to fucking think about it, and into the private room, where Marie was sitting calmly across the table from a very dead Ortiz.
The surveillance might have been a Bureau operation, but the murder squarely and clearly belonged to the New Orleans Police Department. Homicide detective Selma Fawcett took charge of the investigation. Selma – named after the Alabama city of civil rights movement fame – was black, which didn’t make her a minority in the NOPD, and female, which did.
Short of actually catching Marie with a smoking gun, this seemed to Selma pretty much as clear-cut as cases went. Marie was so guilty, she made OJ look innocent.
Under Louisiana law, murder in the first was reserved for killings with aggravated circumstances. Since none of those circumstances applied here – there’d been no kidnap, rape, burglary, robbery, and the victim hadn’t been a member of law enforcement – Marie could only be charged with second-degree murder, which in turn meant the maximum sentence she could receive was life rather than death.
That suited Selma fine. She’d seen firsthand what Marie’s kind of drugs did to people, and if the last, best option was putting Marie inside to the end of her days, then that would have to do. Selma was less keen on the fact that the second-degree charge allowed Marie to be released on bail – $500,000 bail, to be precise – but since there was little Selma could do about that, she tried not to let it bother her too much.
The world and his wife grandstanded on this one. The Bureau trumpeted the success of their surveillance operation. The police department pointed to the speed of their officers’ response and the efficiency of their investigators. The assistant district attorney took personal charge of the prosecution. Even the state governor himself went on television to restate Louisiana’s commitment to drug-free streets. Impressively, he even managed to get all that out with a straight face.
Marie said she wanted a quick trial, as was her right. She also said she wanted to defend herself. This, too, was her right. She started to keep a tally of everyone who quoted to her the maxim about a man who is his own lawyer having a fool for a client.
Trial date was set for late June; and pretty much everyone who came across Marie said that, for a woman facing the prospect of life imprisonment, she seemed about as concerned as someone putting the cat out for the night.
It was ten below freezing when Patrese arrived back in Pittsburgh, and the welcome he got at police headquarters wasn’t a whole lot warmer. He’d worked there almost a decade, he’d always thought of himself as fairly popular, yet pretty much not a single person asked how he was, said it was good to have him back, suggested they go for a beer. They must have known about the tsunami: even the most inward-looking of America’s TV networks couldn’t have ignored it. They just didn’t seem to care.
Patrese knew why, of course. The case which had so consumed him had done for his partner, Mark Beradino. Beradino had lost his career and more because of it, and since Beradino had been a legend in the department, and since the department didn’t like to see a legend brought low, they’d looked around for someone to blame. Patrese was clearly that someone. That this was unfair – Beradino had brought all the bad luck and trouble on himself – was irrelevant. A scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb, had been sought, and Patrese was its name.
There’d been a time, perhaps as recently as a month ago, when Patrese would have said ‘screw the lot of you’ and put up with it until people came to their senses. But as he walked through the endless institutional corridors, catching snatches of discussion about the Steelers’ upcoming championship game in Foxborough, he realized that he simply couldn’t be bothered. He’d just spent three weeks among people who really had lost everything. The static he was getting now seemed so petty in comparison.
He found an empty meeting room and dialed his old college buddy Caleb Boone, now in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office.
‘Franco! Man, am I glad to hear from you! Been trying you for weeks.’
‘Caleb, you want to grab a beer?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. I want to grab many beers.’
Patrese laughed, relieved. ‘I believe that’s the recognized international signal for a serious FatHeads session.’
‘I believe it is. Seven?’
‘Sounds good. And listen; we can talk about this more when we’re there, but I was wondering … I was wondering if the Bureau has any vacancies. For a cop.’
‘Vacancies? In the Pittsburgh field office?’
‘No. In any field office apart from Pittsburgh.’
The FatHeads session indeed turned out to be serious; seriously liquid and seriously long. Patrese stumbled to bed sometime nearer dawn than midnight, and trod gingerly through the next day as a result. He was just about feeling human again by the time he went round to his sister Bianca’s for dinner, and for a few hours lost himself in the uncomplicated and riotous warmth of her own family’s love for him; her briskly efficient doctoral clucking, her husband Sandro’s watchful concern, and the endless energy and noise of their three kids.
‘Here,’ Bianca said suddenly, as they were clearing away. ‘Meant to give you this.’
She reached up to the highest shelf and pulled down a small jar. There was some kind of fabric inside, Patrese saw. It looked old and frayed.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘It’s your caul. I found it while packing up Mum and Dad’s stuff.’ Their parents had been killed in a car crash a few months before.
‘Funny thing to keep around the place.’
‘Mom,