Page 10 of Road to Ruin
CHAPTER THREE
TOMMY
It would have been nice to fly back into Louis Armstrong, but Bastien has people working at the airport who would recognize me. It would be a death sentence to disembark from a plane and walk through arrivals there. Same goes for Biloxi and Baton Rouge, so David and I fly into Houston and drive for six hours in a fucking Prius rental that I just can’t seem to get comfortable in. David complains about my passenger seat fidgeting until he has enough, pulls over on the side of the road and gets out, demanding that I drive. He insists it has nothing to do with the fact that he has three broken ribs and a broken index finger, along with myriad bruises. No, that would be weak of him, so he cusses me out for not being able to sit still for five seconds, then promptly passes out on the back seat, muttering wretchedly in his sleep. Twice, he shouts. Alex really did a number on him before he sent him off to find me by the looks of things. I fucking hate the bastard. I hate that he hurt my brother and I wasn’t there to protect him. I really fucking hate that I have to travel back to my home city under a cloak of secrecy as well. I should be able to come and go as I please. It shouldn’t even occur to me that I might end up dead because I’m stepping foot into the French Quarter.
Five years ago, however, Alexander Bastien, my then boss and the craziest motherfucker I had ever met, decided that I was responsible for the death of his sister. He’d asked me to watch over Serena. He’d also commanded me to fight against Luc Alameda, the reigning title holder of the Champion Ultime underground fighting tournament in New Orleans. While I was kicking the guy’s ass and taking his title, Alameda’s boss kidnapped Selena and decided to remove her head from her body. They sent it back to Alex in a box stuffed with bloody packing Styrofoam and torn-up ticket stubs from the fight. A clear message: you might have won the battle in the cage, but we’re winning the motherfucking war. Alex obviously lost his fucking mind. He came after me, and that was that. I had to go.
I knew he would go after Genevieve. I fucking knew it. When I left New Orleans, David and I dosed her and drove her twelve hours away to Dallas, put her on a plane to Washington, D.C., and that’s where she has been living and working as an elementary school teacher under an assumed name. Until now.
Fuck knows how Bastien found her. There was no way he should have been able to. We left no clues or trace as to her location. WITSEC wouldn’t have been able to give her a safer existence. David thinks she went back to New Orleans for some reason, and I’m inclined to agree. To say I’m mad at her is an understatement. She knew what would happen to her if she ever went home. She knew it would spell disaster for every single one of us, and yet here we are in the most dangerous of predicaments.
He forced her to marry him. He forced her to fucking marry him. To someone who doesn’t know Alex, it might make no sense. I do know him, though. I know how his sick, depraved mind works. He wants to take my sister away from me once and for all, the same way he thinks I did to him, but he hasn’t decapitated her. He wants to sever her emotionally from me. He wants her to love him, because despite all his madness, his violence and his need to destroy everything he touches, he still craves adoration. He desires it above everything else. His actions are always driven toward one end goal: for his people to fall on their knees and worship him. To idolize him. To view him as more than just the king of New Orleans. He demands to be revered as a god.
It’s three in the afternoon by the time we roll up outside Robert’s place. Our cousin lives across the river in the Garden District, a fifteen-minute drive from the French Quarter; he may as well live on another planet from the Bastiens. We don’t need to be too paranoid about being spotted out here, which is not to say we shouldn’t be watching our backs all the same. There are eyes and ears all over the place in this town. David and I climb out of the rental just as Robert walks out of his front door. His face lights up into a broad grin when he catches sight of us.
“Well met, guys. Well fucking met!”
“You headed out somewhere?” David asks.
“Yeah, man. It’s D-Day for Junior. I’m just about to go pick him up.”
Fuck. Junior. Poor kid was locked up a couple of years ago, caught up in some bullshit with Alex, of course. There was nothing I could do from L.A. to save him from serving out his time. It’s fucking amazing that he’s being released today. “You wanna come with?” Rob asks, flipping his keys over in his hand.
I’ve already been sitting in a car for far too long today. And on top of that, I would rather fucking die than ever set eyes on Orleans Parish Prison again. I’ve spent enough time there for one lifetime and that’s being polite about it. Rob must register the cold, hard steel forming in my eyes.
“Come on, dude. You don’t need to go inside. And imagine the look on Petey’s face when he sees you. He’ll shit his fucking pants.”
David grimaces. “I’m gonna puke if I roll over another pot hole,” he says. “I’m gonna go inside, get high, and pass the fuck out on your couch, man. I’ll say hey to Junior when you bring him home.”
Rob pulls a face at him then points at me. “All right. It’s just you and me then, cuz. I’ll let you pick the music. Jesus Christ, have you actually gotten bigger since I saw you last?”
******
Rob doesn’t shut up the entire forty minutes to the prison. I stew in my thoughts, fighting the urge to grab the wheel of his Ford F-150 and careen across the highway so we can hit an exit and head back in the opposite direction. I only spent twenty-two months in the Parish. Ninety-nine weeks. Six hundred and ninety-three days. Would have been a nice, round one hundred weeks, seven hundred days, but the parole board were apparently feeling magnanimous and let me out early. My time spent behind bars wasn’t as terrible as it could have been, but it wasn’t a fucking vacation, either. It was claustrophobic and tense. I felt like I was sitting on top of a powder keg. Every passing moment was a moment that a fight could break out. Death threats were traded in looks across tables in the canteen each morning. I’m a big guy, so people tended to single me out, always wanting to fight, to prove a point, to forge their status, to demonstrate how dangerous or fearless they were. I got really good at leaning against walls. If your back was up against a wall or the fence during yard time, no one could sneak up on you. I still do that now, no matter where I am or who I’m with. Force of habit.
A shudder runs through me as Rob turns onto the long, desolate priory road they built the prison on after the original monastery complex burned down at the turn of the twentieth century. The road runs for three miles from east to west, dirt and dust clouds kicking up from the tires as Rob puts his foot down and speeds towards the prison. The last time I found myself on this road, I was heading away from the grotesque, boxy complex of buildings before us now instead of toward them. It felt like the longest three miles of my life. I was fucking convinced one of the D.O.C. sedans was going to come chasing after us, to stop us, to take me back because there had been some kind of mistake and I wasn’t being released after all.
“You okay, man? You’re looking a little pasty over there.” Rob swings a glance in my direction. I grit my front teeth together, staring straight ahead.
“I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
Rob’s a forger. He makes fake government IDs for people who can afford them, along with birth certificates and other various forms of official paperwork. If you’re rich enough, he can build you a whole new life, complete with credit score and exemplary rental history…but not many people are that rich. Lucky for me he’s family. When we needed to spirit Gen away from New Orleans, he did the work for free. He’s always had a soft spot for her, and besides, he knew I’d beat the shit out of him if he didn’t. He’s never been caught forging papers. People protect him if they’re ever caught; the crime syndicates of New Orleans regard him as a valuable commodity, serving all groups and factions, so no one ever rats him out. If a gang member were to betray Rob’s identity to the police, their own boss would automatically have them killed, or at least have their hands sawn from their body as punishment. Not a pleasant prospect.
Because of this, Rob’s never been inside. He’s talking to me right now with judgment coloring his voice, like he thinks I’m a pussy for being uncomfortable as we draw closer and closer to the Parish. He has no idea, though. No fucking idea whatsoever. And if he doesn’t correct the way he’s speaking to me and really fucking fast, I’m going to break his nose, cousin or no cousin.
My mood is black as tar. Black as pitch. Black as midnight. There’s an anger inside me that runs deep, like a bottomless well. Sometimes it feels as if that well is about to flow over. Rob must have a sense that he’s said the wrong thing, because he clears his throat and tightens both of his hands on the steering wheel. He doesn’t say another word until we’re parking up outside the front gates of the complex.
“Stay in the car if you want? I’m sure this won’t take a second.” I shoot him a sideways glance heavily laced with violence, and he pales. “Or not. I mean, I could use the company while we wait. We’re fifteen minutes early.”
The clock on the dash reads four forty-five. Normally the C.O.s refuse to tell you what time they’re releasing you from the facility. Just another way of fucking with you, lording their power of you. Apparently Junior was told he was being let out at five, though, so we sit on the hood of Rob’s Mustang, heels resting up on the grill, and we stare at the huge, closed iron gates, waiting silently for them to swing open. David showed up on the morning of my release at 9:00 a.m., the earliest they would ever release an inmate. When I hadn’t walked through the gates by ten, he knew I was being rotated out in the late release, so he went to IHOP and ate three meals to kill some time, drank seven cups of coffee, and came back at five. They let me go at 11:30 p.m., thirty minutes before cut off. Bastards. David was fucking pissed to say the least. My smart mouth hadn’t made me many friends amongst the C.O.s, though. Turned out they weren’t inclined to do me any favors.
Five fifteen rolls around and I begin to suspect we’re going to be kept waiting with Junior, too. I’m wrong. The gates begin to slowly swing open at five twenty, and there he is, my cousin, taller, broader and stacked with muscle—a vastly different look than he was sporting last time I saw him. He’s not cuffed. He’s carrying a black backpack over one shoulder by the strap, and the C.O. walking him out has his hands in his pockets, head down, smiling at something Junior is saying to him.
Rob gets up and is about to walk right up to them, but I stop him with a hand on his shoulder. “Bad idea,” I growl. “Things look fairly civil. No point in changing that.”
Rob sits back down on the hood of the Mustang, tutting under his breath. He doesn’t like being told what to do, but fuck him. Junior’s leaving prison with a hell of a lot more dignity than I did. That’s worth delaying our family reunion a couple seconds for. Junior looks up. His expression flickers when he sees me, and then he breaks out into a huge smile. He shakes hands with the C.O. and then steps to one side, turning around behind him. I haven’t seen her until now—the woman with the long black hair and the highly-flushed cheeks. She’s average height, I suppose, maybe five seven, but she’s wearing heels. In her right hand, she’s holding a boyish briefcase. She shifts it to her left as she reaches out to shake with Junior, but he steps toward her and hugs her instead. She freezes for a second, then slowly returns the gesture, wrapping her arms around him, squeezing him tightly. She looks up, and I see her sadness. She’s upset, her eyes bright and shining. How strange. When her cool, pale blue eyes make contact with mine, she freezes, and her sadness transforms into something else. She pulls away and says something to Junior, who looks back over his shoulder and shakes his head.
“Uh-oh,” Rob mutters under his breath. “You don’t have any outstanding warrants, do you?”
