The Assassins Read online

  One major property owner, Albert Wollfolk, refused to discuss such an arrangement and continued to bid his eight hundred feet of docks and large warehouse independently of everyone else.

  There were many contracts to bid for, and Wollfolk was no threat, until the army and navy arrived and began to seek huge amounts of space and cargo handling. The members of the Ring became fearful that Wollfolk’s bids, being so much lower than theirs, would alert the military procurement officers to the collusion in bidding by the members of the Ring.

  “It’s over, Stanton,” Rawlins said. “Nothing can change the fact that Wollfolk escaped Lott’s head-busters.”

  Shattuck, his anger white-hot, whirled toward the voice. He was ready to lash out at the person who had dared go against him.

  Rawlins stared calmly back. There was an amused twist to his thin lips as he idly rubbed the thick curved handle of his cane.

  Shattuck caught himself. These men were scoundrels. All had committed fraud and murder. All the killings had not been done by contract. The men had murdered with their own hands. He had some measure of control over them because the cartel he had organized was outrageously profitable, but much more important, they did not -want to face him in a fight.

  However, Shattuck did not control one man, Rawlins. The man was hard and tough, but crippled in one leg. A heavy cane held him upright when he walked. He was very rich, and the new money he made was but a marker, a method of scoring his success over his business foes and the military, which he deeply hated.

  Shattuck had once tried to bully Rawlins. The crippled man had lifted his cane and pointed it at Shattuck. “My game leg prevents me from fighting you, so I’ll just have to use my cane on you if you come near me.”

  Shattuck was confident he could take the cane away from Rawlins and beat him to death with it. Still, there had been some look in the man’s eyes that had stopped Shattuck. He had never been able to sort out the basis for his decision not to spring upon Rawlins.

  “Give Lott another chance,” Rawlins said. “He has done many successful jobs for us.”

  Shattuck laughed, more a growl. He raked his view over the remaining two members of the Ring, trying to determine what they were thinking.

  The Frenchman Russee Loussat looked worried. He had inherited his section of waterfront. The property had been in his family for several generations. Over the years the Loussats had done what was necessary to retain possession during the Spanish and American control of New Orleans.

  Loussat enjoyed dueling, kept a quadroon mistress in the Ramparts, and raised a large white family in the east end of the Vieux Carre.

  He came from an old and respected French family. Due to that, he represented several absentee French dock-owners. They gave him free rein to manage their properties, caring only that they remain very profitable.

  The hatchet-thin face of the last man, Edward Tarboll, was unreadable, as usual. He had appeared in New Orleans several years back. He never talked about his past.

  But he had brought money, and that was sufficient in New Orleans. He too had recognized that the waterfront was the heart of the city, and that controlling a portion of it would bring him much wealth. He had quietly begun to purchase short segments that joined one another. By combining them he was the owner of a major stretch of docks.

  Shattuck knew little of Tarboll’s private life, only that he lived in a large mansion in the Garden District. It was staffed with a bevy of young black female slaves. Shattuck had heard tales from the Swamp that Tarboll had once been captain of a pirate ship. At times, when Shattuck was practicing with his pistol in one of the dueling gymnasiums, he would see Tarboll there. The man was an expert with both the sword and pistol.

  “Lott, are you certain your two fellows attacked the right man?” Rawlins asked.

  “Ask Loussat,” Lott said.

  Loussat spoke, “My nephew who works in Rosiere’s office as a law clerk has been on the lookout for the young Wollfolk. He came to me and told me Wollfolk had arrived and what he looked like. I gave Lott this information.”

  Lott nodded. “That’s right. Then I reason Wollfolk would go to the docks and check the property he owned. My men went there looking for him. They were to rough him up enough that he’d be in the hospital a few days.”

  “Then this Ohio lad puts your two toughs in the hospital,” said Rawlins. “I’d like to have seen that.”

  “They weren’t expecting him to pull a pistol. But he almost missed, just wounding them.”

  “Unless that was what he wanted to do,” Rawlins said.

  “What does this Wollfolk look like?” questioned Shattuck.

  “Young, mid-twenties,” Lott said. “He’s medium height, maybe a little taller, and thick through the chest. Gray-eyed and brown-haired.”

  “Very well, Lott,” Rawlins said. “You can go. We’ll call you when we need you again.”

  Lott gave Rawlins a grateful look and hurried from the room.

  Shattuck was silent for a full minute, staring at the door through which Lott had disappeared. Then he turned a hard face to Rawlins. “We have just made a very dangerous mistake. The man should have been killed. We can’t have failures.”

  “You are totally correct,” Rawlins said. “Have Kelty kill Lott today. After your threats, he can no longer be trusted to remain silent about us.”

  Shattuck threw back his head and laughed. “You played a trick on Lott. He actually believed you were on his side.”

  “I didn’t want you to kill him here. Kelty will do it someplace far away from us. Lott will just be another one of the twenty or so killed this week.”

  “We can have Kelty finish the job Lott failed at and disable Wollfolk,” Tarboll said.

  “Kelty would never take a job just to disable a man,” Rawlins said. “He never leaves a victim alive.”

  “Albert Wollfolk was a problem and we eliminated him,” said Shattuck. “Now we have this young Wollfolk to contend with. We must do something.”

  “He may not know the business and therefore will not be a competitor,” Rawlins said. “It is very possible he will not bid against us for the rich military contracts. I think it best not to go after him again, but just watch him for a few days and see what kind of man he is. He may not be as troublesome as his uncle.”

  Shattuck looked first at one man and then the other. Loussat and Tarboll nodded in agreement. “All right,” Shattuck said. He spoke to Rawlins. “I think Gunnard should slow down the work at Wollfolk’s docks and warehouses even more than he has up to now. We can drive up Wollfolk’s costs and make his contracts unprofitable. Gunnard can do that without Wollfolk ever realizing what’s happening.”

  “Let’s not underestimate Wollfolk again,” said Rawlins. “How is Gunnard controlling the blacks?”

  “They know he can kick them off the job anytime it pleases him. Also he has told them that the young Wollfolk hired someone to kill his uncle so that he could inherit the property.”

  “Are the blacks believing that?” Tarboll asked.

  “The free blacks all liked Wollfolk, for he was a generous man to work for,” Shattuck said. “He paid the best wages of any employer on the docks. He never whipped the slaves that he contracted from the plantation-owners in their slack season. All the blacks will dislike Wollfolk and will do what Gunnard tells them to.”

  “Then, for now we wait and watch,” Rawlins said.

  “And if he turns out to be trouble?” Shattuck asked.

  Rawlins smiled his thin smile. “I think we all know someone who can kill him in broad daylight, and it’ll be completely legal.”

  “He will fall for the trap where his uncle was too wise,” Loussat said.

  “I’m certain he will,” Rawlins said.

  * * *

  The tables, crowded with patrons, overflowed the Cafe Rubin and spilled out into the courtyard in the rear. Shattuck sat against the back wall beneath a large eucalyptus tree and listened to the noisy babble of the people. Now an
d then he sipped at his glass of wine. He was damned tired of waiting and would leave in one more minute.

  A broad-bodied man with a full black beard came in by the small door in the wall of the courtyard. He threaded a path through the tables and immediately sat down, across from Shattuck. He said not a word, merely folding his big, calloused hands on the wooden top of the table.

  “Hello, Kelty,” Shattuck said. He was certain Kelty was not his true name. He was dressed in a gray broadcloth suit and white shirt. A hat was pulled down low on his forehead. Black eyes, glinting with an oily sheen, stared back from beneath the brim of his hat.

  “You’re an hour late,” Shattuck said. He wondered if Kelty had spent the hour watching the men in the cafe and prowling the surrounding area searching for a trap that could be sprung on him.

  “I’m here now,” Kelty said, his voice a coarse rasping sound. “What do you want?”

  “I want a man to take a very long trip. Would you help him to make the journey?”

  “Yes.”

  One word, and a man’s death was sealed. Kelty’s terse method of conversing had not changed at all in the two years Shattuck had known him. He had first heard Kelty’s name whispered by Russee Loussat as they had watched a boxing match. Loussat in a moment of excitement had referred to the killer instinct of the fighter that won the contest to the instinct of an assassin named Kelty.

  Shattuck had questioned Loussat and learned the assassin could be contacted by leaving a name at a French bakery on Saint Peter Street. When Shattuck had tried that, the baker had refused to take the message. The man seemed much afraid. It had taken Shattuck two months to pull the elusive assassin into the open, and he had accomplished that by talking to people who told him to talk with other people. Finally he had left a message at the laundry on the Esplanade. Kelty had appeared one day, swinging into step beside him as he walked along the street to his office.

  Shattuck made an agreement with Kelty to kill a man, not an important man. Shattuck wanted only to test Kelty. The targeted man vanished permanently.

  “What is the man’s name that should take a trip?” Kelty asked.

  “Ed Lott,” Shattuck replied.

  “I know Lott. He’s one of your men. A drunkard. You were a fool ever to have hired him.”

  Shattuck’s temper rose. To be called a fool by Kelty was the worst of insults. He wondered if he could take Kelty in a no-holds-barred fight. He thought he could, but it would be a dangerous, and certainly a painful game to play.

  “I want Lott to take his trip today.”

  “I’m busy for the next few days.”

  “It has to be today.”

  Kelty studied the well-dressed man. He sensed they were much alike. Shattuck had accumulated sufficient money to hire his killing done, that was the only difference. But if the need arose, Shattuck could easily revert to doing the deed himself.

  Kelty spoke, “I always take time to plan my work. That’s why I never fail.”

  “You can think of a way to do it safely, and do it sometime today. I’ll pay a bonus of two hundred dollars.”

  “Do you know where Lott is?”

  “An hour ago, or a little longer, I saw him going into the Pretty Lady. He’s probably still there.”

  “Just in case he’s not in the whorehouse, where does he live?”

  “On Barracks Street.” Shattuck gave Kelty the number.

  “What about the body?”

  “Leave it on the street, or in his room, or wherever. I don’t care if it’s found.”

  “All right. I’ll do it. That’ll be seven hundred dollars.”

  “Half now and half when it’s done,” Shattuck said, reaching for his wallet.

  “No,” said Kelty. “All of it now. You know I always keep my word.”

  Shattuck knew Lott was as good as dead. He took several bills from his wallet and slid them across the table.

  Kelty palmed the money in his hand and left by the rear exit. Shattuck realized Kelty had been at the table less than two minutes. The assassin was a wary animal.

  6

  Lott took, his loving a dollar at a time with the redheaded whore in the Pretty Lady brothel. He left the room of the woman and walked along the hallway toward the front entrance. He staggered once and smiled to himself. He was a little drunk, and a dollar poorer, but he felt damn fine.

  Instead of going back through the parlor, Lott unbolted the side door and stepped outside into the evening dusk. Mary Margret wouldn’t like the door being left open, but who cared what the hell she liked. Lott moved off along the street.

  “Hey, mate, you got two bits for a beached and broke sailor?” called a raspy voice.

  Lott turned. A man in a U.S. sailor’s uniform and carrying a ditty bag was walking toward him.

  “I’m down on my luck temporarily like, but I got a billet on a ship starting tomorrow,” said the sailor. “Then I’ll have a place to hang my hammock.”

  The sailor slowed as two men passed on the sidewalk. Then he came on closer to Lott.

  “Sure, I got a two-bit piece for a sailor. I was once a sea dog myself.” Lott wobbled some as he dug into his pocket and began to finger through some coins.

  The sailor swung the ditty bag to hold it under his left arm, the side toward the street. His right hand brought a knife from the mouth of the bag.

  Lott looked up as the sailor bumped into him, crowding him into the wall of the whorehouse. A hot, searing pain ran through Lott’s stomach, up high near his ribs. His lungs froze in midbreath.

  Lott pushed at the sailor. Something awful was happening to him. He had to have room to breathe. But the sailor stood firm, holding him against the wall. Lott dropped the coins and struck at the man.

  The sailor swiftly jerked his head aside and the blow missed. He withdrew the knife from Lott. Then very deliberately he plunged it up under Lott’s ribs. The keen point of the weapon pierced the throbbing heart.

  Lott moaned and his eyes went blank.

  The sailor pulled his blade free and eased his pressure on Lott. The dead man slid down the wall, to lie on the sidewalk.

  The sailor bent over Lott. “Sleep it off, mate,” he said in a voice that could be heard in the street. He tucked the ditty bag more firmly under his arm. At the same time he shoved the knife into the open neck of the ditty bag. He went off nonchalantly along the street.

  Half a block later, Kelty entered the open door of a rooming house. Once inside, he hastened his step down the center passageway and out the rear door. A passing hack halted at his signal, and Kelty climbed inside.

  “To the waterfront and Saint Anne Street,” he directed the driver. “I’ll show you where to go from there.”

  Five minutes later, Kelty stood on a deserted section of the waterfront. He carried the ditty bag in between two mounds of cargo. Hastily he removed his suit from the bag and changed it for the sailor’s uniform. The uniform and bag were crammed into a break in one of the crates.

  Kelty strode across the quay, up over the levee, and down onto Front Street.

  * * *

  The onshore wind died before the merchantman Boston Maiden, chartered by the U.S. military, could reach the dock. Without headway and at the mercy of the strong current of the Mississippi, the ship veered away from its intended berth and started to drift backward. The captain of the merchantman began to shout through his megaphone at the harbor boats floating on the river and waiting for the call.

  The four boats, manned by strong oarsmen, darted up to the ship. The boatmen captured the lines thrown down by the sailors on the deck and, pulling mightily on their oars, took up the slack. The downriver movement of the Boston Maiden was halted, reversed, and the ship began to inch back toward the dock.

  Honoré Savigne, reporter for the Louisiana Courier, sat perched on the top of a tall mound of cargo near the water’s edge. He held his pad of paper on his knee and was writing the introduction to his article on the arrival of the shipload of wounded and ill men from
General Scott’s invasion of Mexico. Now and then he would glance up at the huge sailing ship and the tiny ant men in the rowboats hauling it safely to shore.

  Honoré slapped at the swarm of buzzing mosquitoes as he reviewed the course of the war. General Scott had captured the Mexican port city of Vera Cruz with negligible losses of men. Cerro Gordo, the next city sitting astride his invasion route, had been more costly, with nearly five hundred casualties. Now Scott was garrisoned in Puebla, seventy miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, waiting for reinforcements and supplies from the States. Only minor skirmishes were being fought with the Mexican army. However, the return flow to the States of soldiers unfit for duty was swelling.

  A fast mail packet had arrived in New Orleans from Vera Cruz two days earlier. The captain alerted the military and the hospital officials of the coming arrival of the Boston Maiden loaded with many sick and wounded soldiers.

  A command was shouted on the ship. Thick hawsers snaked down from the merchantman and dockworkers secured them to the stout cleats on the dock. Gangways were immediately swung out from the quarterdeck; and fantail of the ship and Lowered to rest on the dock.

  Honoré jumped down from the pile of cargo and moved toward the Boston Maiden. Many walking patients had gathered on the ship’s deck near the gangways as they were being lowered. Now the men came hurrying down to the dock. Medical corpsmen began to carry stretcher patients from belowdeck and down the slanting gangways. The ambulance wagons from the Marine Hospital and Charity Hospital came over the levee and rumbled out across the wooden dock.

  Honoré bent over a soldier on one of the stretches and looked into the pain-filled eyes. “Welcome back to the States and to New Orleans, soldier,” he said.

  “What the hell can a one-legged man do in New Orleans?” asked the soldier in a bitter voice.