Thrown-away Child

Powerful men killing for real estate?”
    “Men and real estate, it’s the stuff that wars are made of,” I said. “You can look it up.”
    “Can’t just look it up,” Claude said. “History books ’round here don’t tell you the real deal.”
    “Then here’s the short course. Real estate doesn’t mean just land and the buildings on it. It’s about the type of people on the premises, and in the neighborhood. Which comes down to the question of who has the money and who doesn’t.”
    “But money is restless, like people,” Ruby said, adding to my thesis. “And unless people are shuffled around, real estate just sits there making nobody a profit.”
    “Buy low, sell high, that gets you the big profits, as everybody knows,” I said. “You want to make a killing in real estate, so to speak, one way to do it is you buy cheap in poor neighborhoods—”
    “For instance, black neighborhoods,” Ruby cut in. “Right. Then you make sure the neighborhood gets good and run-down. And you get rid of anybody who hasn’t already left. After which you develop your empty space into high-rolling casino complexes, say.”
    “And neighborhoods where white folks aren’t afraid to live,” Ruby said.
    “It takes time,” I said. “And manipulation.“
    “ Manipulation.” Teddy said this like he was trying to taste the word. “To me that means doing something subtle. But what’s happening is... Well, murder’s so obvious.”
    “The subtlety comes in who gets it,” Claude said. “You want to make sure nobody going to care about who gets it.” He stopped and thought a moment, then said to me, “Tell me one thing, though. How you expect to connect up these murders lately with Willis dying all those years ago?”
    “That’s the point of us all going to church,” I said. And then with Teddy and Ruby nodding their heads, I filled in Claude about the Sunday plan, and finalized assignments. Claude was nodding his head by the time I was through.
    “Two things,” Ruby said, glancing up at the clock. “First, what about Mama and Janny? Are we going to clue them in?”
    “Not necessary,” I said. “But just make sure your sister shows up with a camera crew.”
    “Oh, there’s no problem there. Now what about Hippo?”
    “In his case, we just let the chips fall.”
    Ruby stood up. “Right now, gentlemen, come on with me. We’re going into the back office for a few minutes. I arranged it with the manager. We have to catch my sister on TV. She’s going to tell everybody what Hock figured—and what I confirmed.”
    All four of us left the table and resettled ourselves into chairs in the back office. Ruby switched on the eleven o’clock news.
    “Janny’s looking real nice,” Claude said. Janice was sitting next to an anchorman wearing a Gingrich-style helmet of silver hair as the opening credits of the evening news hour rolled. “Yeah, that sister of yours, she easy on the eyes.”
    “You always liked the Flagg women,” Ruby said. “True, true.”
    The hair helmet spoke.
    “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tragically, there are more MOMS murders in the news tonight...”
    “Oh yeah, like this guy going to lose sleep about it,” Teddy said. Ruby hushed him.
    “This afternoon, New Orleans police discovered twenty homeless men shot to death, their bodies then mutilated with a branding iron. These latest murders— third in a clearly apparent series of executions—were carried out in a public dumping ground along Paris Avenue. Here with an exclusive report on the possible motives behind these horrifying murders—shocking motives—is Jan Flagg.”
    Janice Flagg appeared on-screen. “Confidential sources tell us that the three separate sites of the brutal MOMS murders have two respected civic leaders in common—Alderman Hippocrates Beauregard Giradoux, and Minister Zebediah Tilton of the Land of Dreams Tabernacle...”
    “Go, girl!” Claude said. He apologized for the outburst, never taking his eyes from the television screen.
    “The names of the alderman and the minister have been traced through real estate records and tied to prospective multimillion-dollar casino and condominium deals in the near vicinity of all three killing fields...”
    “I don’t believe what I’m hearing!” Claude said. “We are about to show you news film that is extremely graphic...”
    Footage of the discovery of Cletus Tyler’s mutilated body beneath the levee not far from where we were sitting filled