“I can’t and the New Orleans cops can’t, either,” Helene says. “The pervert Russian who’s been buying these girls and selling them was having them loaded into a van to take them to his plane.”
“For the flight to Saudi Arabia, you said?”
“Apparently, that’s where this month’s buyers were from,” Helene says. “I guess this rich fucking pimp found some prince who likes them blond and young.”
“Some world.”
“There and here, unfortunately,” Helene says. “So Holly had been planning this since she got to the fucker’s big house in the Garden District. Acting even more drugged up than the rest of them when she was ready to make her move, because she said they were going to have to kill her before she got on that plane. When one of the guys guarding them turned his head, she kicked him in the balls and just ran.”
I see Helene smile now.
“Did you know she was a sprinter at Cross Rivers High?”
“I think I did know that,” I say. “Guess I forgot.”
“Ran like the wind, through old houses in that old neighborhood. Finally made it all the way to New Orleans PD in Central City,” she says. “The big Russian must have figured out that he better get out of the country without her, while the getting was good. So he was in the air before the New Orleans cops could stop the plane from getting in the air.”
“Then they called you,” I say.
“And I called the governor, and he arranged to hire the plane,” Helene says.
Somehow she is driving even faster.
“And now here we are,” she says, “on our way to take those fuckers down.”
ONE HUNDRED ONE
BRIAR CROCKETT IS waiting for us in front of his house when Helene Mayes and I pull up in her car, as if he knew we were coming.
Jake and the boys are right behind us in the van.
As Helene and I are out of the car and approaching Briar, he smiles broadly, like he’s a one-man welcoming committee, and points to Jake and Eli and Sammy and Michael Gola, the sniper, all of them having fanned out behind us, none of them showing the guns I know they’re all carrying.
“I’m intuiting this isn’t a social call,” Briar says.
“I need to speak with your sons,” Helene says.
Briar puts out his hands in a helpless gesture.
“I’m afraid they’re not here,” he says. “But I’ll certainly make sure to tell them you stopped by.”
He looks over at me. “Nice to see you again, Silas.”
“Wish I could say the same.”
“I remember that I used to get that kind of attitude from your father,” Briar says.
“Yeah, he did have some snark to him on occasion,” I say. “But at least he managed not to raise any criminals.”
He stares at me for a long time, an almost curious look back on his face.
“Everybody around here is aware by now how big a man you are,” he says. “In terms of your physical self, I mean, in terms of your celebrity, even the size of your loss because of that automobile accident. But it has become clear to me, in this short amount of time since you’ve been back, that your arrogance has grown all out of proportion as well.”
“This isn’t about arrogance, Briar,” I say. “It’s just about making things right. And justice, not that you seem to have much of an understanding about that.”
“Actually,” he says, “it’s about you and Ms. Mayes here continuing to be all wrong about my family. And about me.”
Helene pulls out her arrest warrant, holding it up for Briar Crockett to see.
