Page 71 of Ace
The underworld was where men like Doctor Rudy John thrived. He smiled at how quickly he’d reduced Fontenette to an outlaw, while distracting him from the true power broker behind the scenes. RJ never planned for all those pretty little sparkly birds to live.
Too well he knew the secret underbelly of illegal smuggling. He also knew how to act dumb while sniffing out a wealthy client’s weakness, how to exact the best bargains while cheating your suppliers and your buyers.
That was where Fontenette fell short. He thought his fame and wealth translated into street cred. Dumb ass. All it did was make him an easy mark. Rudy John pegged him right from the start. The fancy Southern gentleman considered himself above the law and out of the reach of moral accountability. His greed and thirst for power, to be better than all other elite millionaires, made him easy to manipulate.
He’d wanted an idiot to lick his boots, say‘yes, suh’and‘no, suh.’So, RJ had stepped on up and acted the part. Why not? He’d been acting since he was nuthin’ but a wet behind the ears youngster up in Turkey Creek. It paid well then, and it was going to pay handsomely now. Just not how Fontenette expected.
Smiling to himself and as smug as a bloodsucking tick stuck to a mama coonhound’s dripping wet teat, RJ snapped shut the wide mouth of his restocked and newly filled-to-the-brim medical bag. The race wasn’t always to the fastest. No sirree Bob.
Doctor Rudy John was not the dummy folks thought he was, either. All those greedy rich folks who thought they could own birds so endangered that they only lived in limited populations in the rarified altitudes and valleys of the Andes, would’ve gotten quite the surprise. They’d ordered those birds sight unseen, but that wasn’t what they would’ve got. It wasn’t what those FBI agents back in Florida thought they had now, either. Almost made a man shiver with glee. Yes sirree Bob.
Doctor Rudy John was nothing short of a genius. A mastermind. Hell, he actually might rule the world at the end of the day—this day! For once, people would cringe when they heard his name. He couldn’t wait.
Because he knew what they didn’t. The special gas he’d concocted to keep those smuggled birds quiet was also alive with a rare strain of avian flu that came with a two-week incubation period. Once inhaled, it promised slow and bloody disintegration of an animal’s lungs. And those pretty birds had been inhaling it for days. Better yet, it only took one breath to pass the contagion from bird to beast to human. There was no cure, no antidote, because he hadn’t made one. Why spoil perfection? This was a dream come true. A chance to purge the earth and start again, only this time Doctor Rudy John would be king. Or God.
The original plan had been for Fontenette to transfer ownership of those hummingbirds to his elitist, millionaire friends and their snobbish wives. Once they fell ill, they’d contact their doctors to come save them and their friends to come cry over them. They contact their families. It’d be impossible to trace the point oforigin of the virus by then. The contagion would spread, killing the rich and powerful first, then filtering down to the working classes. Their maids. Their pool boys. Their waitstaff.
But plan B would work just as well. Maybe faster now that Fish and Wildlife had quarantined Fontenette’s inventory. If even one of those tiny, germ enhanced birds escaped...
Doctor Rudy John couldn’t suppress the smile that crinkled his amazing, but itchy goatee. It was officially too late. There was no way to contain the virus now. He stroked his chin, petting himself and thinking, ‘Look out, America. You folks are about to witness some real magic now.’And he didn’t even have to be there to make it happen.
Hefting the medical bag in his right hand, RJ hung the CLOSED sign in his clinic window for the last time. The sun didn’t set until well after seven these days. It was spring, and he had a plane to catch. He couldn’t be late. He was going… somewhere. Oh yeah. He was going back to Florida. Though precisely where and why…? Well, he couldn’t exactly remember. He had a lot on his mind, but he did have business back in Bruce Fontenette’s kingdom. Important business. Yes sirree Bob.
The only fly in the ointment was that he didn’t own old lady Church’s land. No matter how hard he’d tried, he’d never gotten close enough to Savannah Church to ask for a date much less her hand in marriage.
That’s too bad…
Yup, damned shame the way things worked out sometimes, but that was the risk of playing. You only won if you risked losing, and RJ didn’t plan to lose again.
That Fed, that FBI agent, that self-righteous prick, Special Agent Keller Boniface? It’d taken Doctor Rudy John a couple hours dwelling on that guy, worrying and ruminating on where he’d known Boniface from. But it’d finally come to him outta the clear blue sky, yes sir, just like a bolt of hundred-proof moonshine. The guy’s last name should’ve been his first clue.
Yes, it should have been…
But RJ’d been so preoccupied plying Savannah with his best, most sincere compassion at her Gran Mere’s passing that he’d missed the connection. Damned if that snotty Northerner was none other than Queen Elaine’s bastard offspring without the twang. Pretty boy had gone and got hisself a haircut and an education. Probably had a real college degree in a golden frame on his wall and everything. That was why RJ hadn’t recognized Boniface.
’Course, Queen Elaine always claimed she’d been legally married to the drunk when she birthed the boy, but RJ was past believing that lying bitch. Queen Elaine was as uppity as her son, just not as smart. She ought to stick to what she knew best, her needles and her voodoo dolls, her setting folks against each other. That was what she was good at, stabbing folks in the back while kissing their asses and making them think someone else had it out for them instead of her. That nothing was her fault when everything that went bad in Turkey Creekeventually led back to Queen Elaine. She really was a witch, just not a magical one.
Damn! Where’d that come from? RJ smoothed his hand over his head at the sudden sting. Must’ve been a hornet. Sure felt like a big one.
Locking the front door of his practice behind him, RJ strolled to his late model Ford, tossed the bag in through the open window to the back seat, and climbed behind the wheel. Damned shame about Miss Church, though. He hadn’t done a thing to her, well, other than whisper his dark black magic into her empty head long enough to make her believe she weren’t no better than other folks. He hadn’t even gotten to the good stuff when he’d lost his connection with her, and she’d slipped away. Which had to mean she was dead by now. That was the only thing that made sense. Well, good. Savannah deserved what she got.
Doctor Rudy John always kept his ability to get inside other people’s heads a secret. Why share? Seemed what folks didn’t know,wouldhurt them. Ha!
But the possibility of Savannah dropping dead made a smart man wonder. What if Queen Elaine’s bullshit black magic really worked? RJ knew Queen Elaine murdered Carol Marie all them years ago. ’Course, he knew. Doctor Scratch, the quack who’d given Queen Elaine the poison, was RJ’s old man. And RJ’d been there that day. He’d seen Elaine slap Keller square across his smug I’m-in-the-Army-now, you-can’t-touch-me face when he’d accused her of murdering his wife. RJ’d seen Keller pull back, his arm cocked and his eyes hard like he wanted to murder his ma. By then,blood poured down Keller’s cheek from one of his ma’s gaudy rings.
The only thing that stopped him that day was poor dead Carol Marie. One glance back at her, and he’d gathered her up and took off running for big-city help.
Now that he thought about it, RJ wouldn’t put it past Queen Elaine to have put a hex on Savannah, too. That actually made sense. Elaine might’ve already stabbed one of her ugly handmade voodoo dolls full of pins, all the while whispering her spells and her lies, cursing and killing Savannah with black magic.
RJ snorted.What the hell am I thinking?Her highness Queen Elaine Boniface was nothing but a big fat fake. If Savannah had dropped dead, it only meant that true love had once again struck Boniface—in the face. Bastard had to be dead by now, didn’t he?
Yes, he should be, but just in case…
Doctor John patted the medical bag at his side lovingly. Yup, no way Boniface could’ve survived what RJ had personally pumped into his chest. Damned straight. He’d been more than pleased to drag Boniface by one leg out of the ambulance and into that stall. Made RJ the bigger, better man for a change, and that alone was priceless. Boniface was bleeding plenty by then. Too bad Sand Dollar hadn’t stepped on him. That would’ve been a helluva great way to die, stomped to death by another old nag. Ha!
But no matter. Bleeding to death by an incurable flu bug would work just as well.
Jacksonville…
