Too Far Gone

8

Manseur had driven a good two miles before he spoke. “Would have been nice if you’d mentioned you and Jackson Evans knew each other,” he said.

“He had only praise for me, right?”

“He didn’t go into any detail. But if he was ever in love with you, he’s gotten over it.”

Alexa laughed.

“He wasn’t happy about seeing you at the scene.”

“What was he telling you on the porch?”

“Just that Mr. Gary West married up. There’s a prenuptial agreement. He gets nothing but a small allowance to live on, which he wastes. He’s something of an embarrassment to the family. He is verbal about his extremely liberal points of view, which are not always in line with those LePointe thinks are constructive. He’s also frivolous, and has Casey pouring money into causes like the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the like. The LePointes have their own bylaws and Gary West is never going to get his hands on any of the LePointe fortune. The impression I got is that LePointe hopes his niece will come to her senses and end the relationship. He thinks this abduction is just Gary West playing some game for sympathy or to get attention.”

“And yet Gary’s wife seems genuinely distraught,” Alexa pointed out. “It’s possible she agrees with her husband’s politics, or at least respects his idealism.”

“Either way, Evans wants this deal handled as quickly as possible. It looks like Katrina is going to kick our ass. This storm keeps coming our way, we’re likely to have a lot of wind damage, electricity out, a little looting, and maybe some flooding. We’ve been waiting for the big one for years.”

“The big one?”

“The whole city is below sea level, surrounded by levees and pumps. Someday some mean-ass hurricane is going to push the Mississippi River down her throat and Lake Pontchartrain up her butt.”