“I probably didn’t see the message slip. Don’t take it out on her.”
I waited a beat before I spoke again. “I’ll be at your office in about forty minutes. If I were you, I’d be there. If you’re not, we’ll have you picked up by Lafayette PD.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
I thought it was time for Bo to experience a little anxiety. “You’re about to find out,” I said, and hung up.
The traffic was thin and I made it to the Lafayette Oil center in a half hour. Bo’s office was spacious and full of windows that gave a sense of airiness to an environment that was purely utilitarian. He was standing at his desk behind his glass partition, talking on the phone. He peered at me over his reading glasses and gestured for me to come in, as though he were anxious to see me.
“You tie one on last night?” he said.
“Where’s your secretary, the woman who was at the casino with Bobby Mack Rydel?”
“She’s out sick.”
“That’s funny. Your receptionist said she’s on vacation.”
Bo made an exasperated expression, as though his newly acquired Christian charity were indeed being tested. “Why do you want to treat me like this, Dave? Something I did back in co
llege? Maybe I punched you when I was drunk? I always got the sense you thought I was hard on black people, hard on folks that maybe had more than I did. Well, if that’s how you felt, you were right. But I’m not like that today.”
He grinned, his eyes on mine, waiting for me to respond. His modesty, his candor, his vulnerability were a study in manipulation. But to portray him as a hypocrite would not be fair. James Boyd Wiggins had learned his value system from the oligarchy that had created him. In Louisiana, as in the rest of the South, the issue was always power. Wealth did not buy it. Wealth came with it. Televangelist preachers and fundamentalist churches sold magic as a way of acquiring it. The measure of one’s success was the degree to which he could exploit his fellow man or reward his friends or punish his enemies. In our state’s history, a demagogue with holes in his shoes forced Standard Oil to kiss his ring. Bo Diddley might have valued money, but I suspected he would fling it into an incinerator a shovelful at a time rather than take down the name of James Boyd Wiggins from the entrance of his office building.
“Why you looking at me like that?” he said, a grin still on his mouth.
I shook my head. “How long has Bobby Mack Rydel been working for you?”
“A security guy?”
“Among other things.”
“I retain a security service out of Baton Rouge for all my shipyards. They subcontract some of the work. I think Rydel might be a subcontractor for them, but I’m not sure. He’s out of Morgan City, isn’t he? Is this about the fight between him and your friend at the casino?”
As with all fearful people, Bo’s agenda always remained the same: Every action he took, every word he spoke, was an attempt to control the environment and the people around him. He filled the air with sound and answered questions with questions. Most disarming of all was his ability to include an element of truth in his ongoing deceptions.
“Rydel is a merc. He specializes in interrogation. That’s a bureaucratic term for ‘torture,’” I said. “Ever seen a woman who’s been suffocated with a plastic bag over her head?”
“No, get out of my face with this stuff.”
Bo was wound up like a clock spring. It was time for the changeup.
“You said you wanted to help me find a priest who went missing in the Lower Nine,” I said. “I think your interest lay elsewhere. I think you’re interested in blood diamonds that were looted from Sidney Kovick’s house.”
His eyes stayed locked on mine and never blinked.
“You know Sidney, don’t you?” I said.
“This is Louisiana,” he replied. “You don’t do business in New Orleans without crossing trails with people like Sidney Kovick. Say that stuff about diamonds again?”
Don’t let go of the thread, I told myself. “But you know Kovick personally.” I didn’t say it as a question.
“No, I don’t associate with gangsters. Neither does my wife. You should come to our charity golf tournament sometime and find out who our friends are. You know me, Dave. I burn stringer-bead rods. Everything I got I earned with my own sweat.”
His eyes had still not blinked. His facial skin was tight against the bone, his forearms thick and vascular, his nostrils swelling with air. I knew he was lying.
“Bobby Mack Rydel hangs with a misogynist and degenerate by the name of Ronald Bledsoe. I think they both serve the same employer. This man Bledsoe has done injury to my daughter. Before this is over, I’m going to square it.”
“You want to hear what I found out about the priest?”