Crusader's Cross

At age nineteen he carried a union card with both the Teamsters and the Operating Engineers. That's when he met the Calucci brothers and picked up a cool five hundred bucks for popping the snitch who sent Tommy Fig's old lady to the women's prison at St. Gabriel.

He'd always heard the first hit was the hard one. Not so. It was a breeze. The guy was in his car at the Fair Grounds, eating a chili dog with melted cheese on it. Joh

If Joh

Joh

Just outside of West Palm, the sun went down in the 'Glades and a black shade fell across the land. Joh

Then one of the most peculiar moments in Joh

On his second hit he had found the secret few button men shared: Clipping a rat or a dirtbag was scut work for pay; clipping a king was both an acquisition and a high that had no equal.

But times had changed. The Giacano family had crashed and burned with the death of Didi Gee, and Asians and black street pukes had flooded the projects with crack and turned New Orleans into a septic tank. Punks the Italians would have thrown off a roof now jackrolled family people and sometimes shot them to death just for fun. There was no honor in the life anymore. There was no money in it, either.

The pukes ran the dope and did drive-bys on school yards. The government not only legalized lotteries and casinos but encouraged addiction in its citizenry. The income for a fence or good house creep was chump change compared to the amounts corporate CEOs scammed off their investors through stock options.

But a guy still had to pay the bills. The twenty grand Jericho Joh

It was dark when he parked his car in a turnrow between two sugar cane fields and began walking up Bayou Teche toward the ancient plantation home that was legendary for the strange people who lived inside it and the overgrown trees and plants that seemed intent on pulling the house back into the earth. The moon was down, the sky black with rain clouds. Through the oaks in the yard he could see lights in the windows, a gas lamp burning in the driveway. Jericho Joh

A candy-striped awning swelled with the breeze off the bayou. There were white feathers scattered on the grass and the crumpled bodies of pigeons floating among the lily pads along the bayou's bank. What kind of geek shoots pigeons in his yard? Joh

He was starting to feel uncomfortable about the job. Maybe he was over the hill for it. No, it was something else. He was fooling around with guys who thought real men hit golf balls. Their wives were all neurotic, talked constantly in hush-puppy accents, and treated their husbands like dildos. So their men whocked golf balls like they wanted to kill the tee, got their ashes hauled in Miami, then went back home and pretended they weren't cooze-whipped dipshits. Another bunch that should be humping a pack in a sandstorm, Joh

But his cynicism and bitter humor provided no relief for the quickening of heart that he felt, the dryness in his mouth, and the loops of sweat under his armpits. What was wrong?

He pulled back the receiver on his silenced Ruger and checked to see if a.22 long round was seated in the chamber. Up ahead he saw fireflies in the trees and smelled an autumnal odor of dead leaves and gas on the wind. Time to get it over with, pop the dude, and get back to New Orleans, he thought. In his mind's eye, he saw himself back in his saloon, eating a small white bowl of gumbo, the rain falling on the elephant ears and banana trees outside his back windows.

He moved along the edge of the trees at the back of the Chalonses' property, past the back porch, the lighted kitchen, the porte cochere that glowed an off-yellow from a bug lamp. Then he stopped under a cedar tree and gazed at the shotgun house down by the bayou. It was paintless and gray, made of very old cedar, with a tin roof and a brick chimney that reminded him of a decayed tooth. The wind puffed off the bayou and Jericho Joh

In the light of the gallery, he could see a little boy playing in the yard. Bad news, Joh

He went up the slope toward the main house, into trees black with shadow, his face pointed at the ground so no light would reflect off it. Then he made an arc that took him back down toward the water, past the yard where the child was playing.

He moved quickly along the grassy slope, through a vegetable garden and over a half-collapsed rick fence. Through a side window of the shotgun house he could see a fat black woman rolling pie dough on top of a table.

Nobody had said anything about a woman being home. This gig was starting to suck worse and worse. Maybe he should just blow it off, he thought. But the thought of continuing to pay a point and a half a week on twenty large didn't sit well with him, either.

Then he saw a man get up from his chair and step out on the gallery and speak to the little boy. The little boy began picking up his toys from the yard and putting them in a wagon. Joh