Confused, he pulled his gun and inched along the concrete walkway, suspiciously searching the green boughs above him for signs of a potential ambush. A cracking branch. A glint of color. The smell of human sweat. Yet the only thing he noticed was insects, dozens of chirping insects wailing their summertime song. Next he examined the massive trunks of the live oak trees that surrounded him, the decorative cast-iron benches that lined the sidewalks, and the Civil War fountain in the center of the park. But everything in the vicinity seemed clear.
Too clear for his liking.
Puzzled by the lack of activity, Payne paused for a moment and considered what to do next. He was tempted to call Greene for advice, but before he did, he heard the faint sound of horns seeping through the trees several hundred yards to the south. Relieved, he strolled toward the music and eventually found the scene that Greene had described. Thousands of drunken revelers frolicked on the banks of the Mississippi River, enjoying the hell out of the city’s Third of July extravaganza.
“Damn,” Payne grumbled. “This place looks like Go morrah.”
Clowns with rainbow-colored wigs trudged by on stilts while tossing miniature Tootsie Rolls to every child in sight. A high-stepping brass band blared their Dixieland sound as they strutted past an elaborate barbecue pit that oozed the smoky scent of Cajun spareribs and grilled andouille. Vendors peddled their wares, ranging from traditional plastic necklaces to fluffy bags of red, white, and blue cotton candy. And a group of scantily clad transsexuals, dressed as Uncle Samanthas, pranced in a nearby circle, chanting, “We are gay for the USA.”
But Payne ignored it all. With a look of determination on his face, he blocked out the kaleidoscope of diversions that pleaded for his attention—the gleaming streaks of light as kids skipped by with sparklers, the sweet smell of funnel cakes that floated through the air, the distant popping of fire-crackers as they exploded in the twilight like Rebel cannons on the attack—and remained focused on the only thing that mattered: finding the Plantation witness.
Unfortunately, Payne had little experience when it came to tracking civilians on American soil. He was much more accustomed to finding soldiers in murky swamps than buckwheats at carnivals, but after giving it some thought, he realized his basic objective remained the same.
He needed to locate his target as quickly and quietly as possible.
To do so, he tried mingling with the locals, slyly shifting his gaze from black man to black man as he made his way through the festive crowd. But his efforts to blend in were almost comical. No matter what he attempted, the scowl on his face made him stand out from the lively cast of characters that surrounded him. He tried smiling and nodding to the people that he passed, but the unbridled intensity on his face made him look like a serial killer.
After making a few children cry, Payne realized he needed to change his approach. Drastically. So instead of trying to hide in the crowd, he decided to stand out in it, making his anxiety work for him instead of against him.
Why be cautious when there was no risk in being bold? The Plantation witness had never seen his face, so it made little sense for Payne to slink through the crowd, hiding. He figured, why not approach every Rastafarian in sight and just talk to him? To do so, he simply needed an excuse, one that would allow him to talk to strangers without raising their suspicion. But what could he use? What could he ask anyone that would seem so harmless that a person wouldn’t flinch at the query? The question needed to be simple, yet something that explained the frazzled look on his face, a look with so much intensity that it actually scared kids.
Kids! That was it! He could pretend he’d lost his kids. He could move from person to person, pretending to look for his lost kids, while actually searching for the Plantation witness. Heck, in the few seconds it took for a person to respond to his query, Payne could study the man’s face, hair, teeth, and height. And if that wasn’t enough, Payne could listen to the man’s voice and see if it possessed the backwater accent of a buckwheat.
Damn! Payne thought to himself. The plan was ingenious.
It was bold, daring, creative . . . and completely unsuccessful.
Payne talked to every black man he saw, every single one, but most of them turned out to be way too short to be his suspect. And the few he found who actually stood over Greene’s height of 6’4” didn’t have the Fort Knox dental work or the redneck speech pattern that Greene had described. In fact, nobody in the crowd even came close.
Yet Payne remained undeterred. He had waited his entire life to find someone like Ariane—intelligent, witty, beautiful—so he wasn’t about to give up hope after an hour. If it was necessary, he would stay in New Orleans for the rest of his life, spending every cent of his family’s fortune, searching for the one witness that could bring her back into his arms.
But as it turned out, none of that was necessary.
His best friend was having a lot more luck on the eastern end of the park.
Payne hardly noticed it at first. The sound was too soft, too timid, to be heard above the cacophony of the boisterous crowd. But when it repeated itself a second and third time, it grabbed his attention. It was his cell phone.
“Hello?” he mumbled.
“Jon, it’s D.J. You’re not going to believe this, but I nabbed the bastard!”
“You what?”
“You heard me! I found him!”
A huge smile formed on Payne’s lips. “Are you serious? I was beginning to think this was a waste of time.”
“Me, too,” Jones admitted. “But I got the Bob Marley wannabe right here.” There was a brief pause on the line before he spoke again. “Say something, you little prick.”
For a minute, Payne thought he was being scolded. Then he heard a meek squeal on Jones’s end of the phone. “Howdy, sir. How is you?”
The accent brought a smile to Payne’s lips. “What’s your name?”
“Bennie Blount.”
“Well, Bennie, it’s nice to meet you. Now do me a favor and put my friend back on.”
Jones got on the line a second later. “Polite sucker, isn’t he?”
Payne ignored the question. “Where are you? I want to chat with this guy
now
.”
“We’re near the main road, about five minutes from the basketball courts where you dropped me off. How about you?”
“Not too far.” Payne paused to collect his thoughts. “Listen, get to the courts as quietly as possible. I don’t want our conversation to draw a crowd, and the courts should be deserted.”
“No problem. And I’ll give Levon a buzz on my way there.”
“No,” he growled. “I’ll call Levon. I want you to keep two hands on this guy at all times.”
Jones laughed at the indirect order. “Don’t worry, Jon. This boy ain’t going anywhere. I’ve got a gun shoved in his back. Plus, I’m using his hair as a leash.”
Payne chuckled at the image. “Well, don’t hurt him too much, you big bully. I want Bennie to be talkative, not comatose, when I meet him.”
After calling Greene, Payne ran to the basketball courts, hoping to survey the territory before his partners arrived. As he’d hoped, the courts were completely deserted. Plus they were far enough from the festivities to attract unwanted attention, which would come in handy if they had to pacify Bennie with force.
As for the area itself, it was divided into two contrasting regions. Three concrete basketball courts with tattered nets and bent rims sat off to the left, next to a jungle gym and an old swing set that had clearly seen better days. A sandbox sat dormant, decorated with a number of sandcastles that crumbled like many of the structures in the surrounding neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the second region was in impeccable shape. Finished in smooth black asphalt and recently painted with bright white lines, the full-length basketball court was tournament ready. It was surrounded on all sides by metal bleachers and a large barbed wire fence, designed to keep the ball in and vandals out. To get inside the compound, a person normally had to file past an armed park guard, but on this night, the only people who were armed were Payne and his friends.
“Yo, Jon!” called a voice in the night.
Payne turned from his perch on the metal bleachers and saw the massive form of Levon Greene jogging toward him. “Over here, Levon.”
Greene lumbered closer, a limp fairly obvious in his stride. “Where is he? I want to make sure you got the right guy.”
Payne shrugged as he watched Greene enter the main gate and approach the bleachers. “D.J. was the one who found him, but he hasn’t shown up yet. I hope he didn’t run into any problems.”
“None at all,” Jones bellowed from the shadows. Payne and Greene whipped their heads sideways, searching for the source of the sound. “I was just waiting to make a big entrance.”
Payne struggled to see him, but after a while, two dark faces emerged from the night.
“Gentlemen,” Jones announced, “let me introduce you to our new best friend and a future witness for the prosecution, Mr. Bennie Blount.”
CHAPTER 29
PAYNE
had seen thousands of people in his life, folks from dozens of different lands and cultures, yet despite all of his experiences, he could not remember seeing a more unique character than Bennie Blount.
Standing 6’6” with an elaborate web of dreadlocks that added an additional three to five inches of puffiness to the top of his head, Blount looked like an exaggerated stick figure, created in the mind of a warped cartoonist. He lacked muscle mass of any kind; instead, he resembled a limbo pole turned vertically, topped off with a poorly crocheted black wig. Gold front teeth were the only remarkable thing about his face, and his dark eyes revealed absolutely nothing, like the lifeless props often found in a taxidermist’s shop.
“How’d you find him?” Payne asked as he watched them enter the court.
“It wasn’t very tough,” Jones joked. “Some kids were using him to break open a piñata.”
Payne smiled despite the seriousness of the situation. “And does our new friend know why you’ve brought him here?”
“Not yet.” Jones released Blount’s hair and pushed him forward. “I figured you’d want to provide him with all the details.”
Payne nodded as he walked toward the witness. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Blount raked the dreadlocks from his eyes with his E.T.- like fingers, then responded. “I gets the feeling it ain’t to play basketball.”
“You got that right,” Greene growled from the bleachers. “You’re lucky I’m resting my knee, or I’d come down there and kick the shit out of you.”
Blount trembled as he cowered from the angry voice. “Mr. Greene, is that you? My lord, that is you! Did I do somethin’ bad that I don’t remember?”
“It’s not what you did,” Payne interjected, “it’s what you didn’t do. You failed to tell Levon the things that he wanted to know during your earlier conversation.”
Blount glanced at Payne and frowned. “Do I knows ya, sir? I don’t mean to be rude none, but ya don’t looks like someone I knows.”
“My name’s Jonathon Payne, and we talked on the phone a few minutes ago.” He pointed to Jones before continuing. “And that over there is David Jones.”
Blount instinctively massaged the top of his sore scalp. “Oh, yes, I knows him. We’s already been introduced.”
Payne tried not to laugh as he pictured Jones using Blount’s hair as a leash. “Bennie, as I mentioned, the reason that Mr. Greene is angry with you is because of your behavior earlier today at the Fishing Hole.”
“But I didn’t do nothin’ wrong! I didn’t drinks too much or cause no problems! Mr. Murray warns me about touching the gals, and I swears I didn’t do none of that today! I swears!”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Mr. Greene is upset because you weren’t willing to answer his questions about the man with the tattoo. He asked you some simple questions, and you refused to answer.”
Blount glanced at Greene and shivered slightly. “Is that why you’s mad at me, Mr. Greene? ’Cause I wasn’t in a talkin’ mood?”
“I gave you an autograph, Bennie, and you weren’t willing to give me any information. That was kind of disappointing.”
“More like rude,” Jones chimed in. “You should be ashamed, Bennie.”
“Real ashamed,” Payne added.
As Blount considered his actions and studied the men that surrounded him, guilt flooded his face. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Greene! I didn’t know that it meant that much to ya! If I’d known things was that important, I’d’ve told ya everything I known. I promise I woulda!”
Grinning, Payne slowly reached out his hand and placed it on Blount’s rail-thin shoulder. “Well, Bennie, maybe it’s not too late to make amends. If you act nicely, I bet Mr. Greene would give you a second chance. In fact, I know he would.”
“Does ya think so, Mr. Payne?”
“I know so, Bennie.” Payne stepped aside, allowing Blount to get a full view of Greene. “Go ahead, Bennie. Apologize to my friend.”
Blount lowered his head in shame and looked at Greene’s feet as he spoke. “Mr. Greene, I swears I didn’t do nothin’ wrong on purpose. If you gives me one mo’ chance, I promise I make things up to ya!”
Greene sighed deeply, as if he actually had to weigh the consequences of Blount’s apology. “All right, kid. I’ll let this one slide. But you better tell us everything that we want to know, or I’ll never forgive you. Ever!”
Blount’s face erupted into a wide smile. “Anything, Mr. Greene. Just ask it and I’ll tells ya. I promise, Mr. Greene. I don’t wants ya to be mad at me. Really I don’t!”
Greene grinned with satisfaction, enjoying every moment of this mini drama. “I’m glad, Bennie. That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”