The Drake Family

Maggie’s World

On days like today, Maggie Drake wished she had a nine-to-five job, a husband, and three little kids running around under her feet. She wanted normal. What she had, instead, was a controlling father, a position she hated, and a life that was so far from the average person that she couldn’t even spell normal.

Maggie walked reluctantly through the halls of her father’s home, a Victorian mansion built on the outskirts of New Orleans proper some time around the turn of the nineteenth century. Classical oil paintings hung on the walls, softly illuminated by directed tract lighting. While the house was no where near as big as some of the huge structures built in the modern era, the winding hallways and stairways gave it an unexplained vastness.

Arriving at the door to her father’s office, Maggie stopped short and took a deep breath. She brushed her hand through her raven hair and thought of all the reasons she should turn around and leave. She knew that as bad as she felt right now, she’d feel twice as bad after she was finished speaking with her father.

Warin Drake was an intimidating man, even to those who supposedly held his confidence. He ran his family, if the term could be used, as sternly as he ran his business. His hammer fist was notorious in the circles in which he ran, and there was no question among those who knew him that any threats made would be backed up with full force. Drake would profess that he administered even handed justice on his “flock” as he liked to call them. Maggie considered herself lucky that his hammer didn’t always come down on her.

Maggie wrapped on the ornately carved mahogany door and waited. Drake called to her to open it after only a moment. When Maggie entered, her father was sitting behind his desk, the light from his flat panel computer screen illuminating his face. The rest of the room, consisting of wall to wall bookshelves and file cabinets, was swathed in darkness. Much to his daughter’s surprise, Warin Drake was smiling. She rarely saw the expression on the man’s face, which took ten years off his already youthful appearance. With his fit build and wavy blondish brown hair, no one ever believed he was actually her father.

“Maggie, dear. How are you?” he asked, a broader smile taking over his face.

“Fine. I was told you wanted to see me.”

He motioned to the overstuffed chair on the far side of his desk. She ignored him and remained standing. “Don’t you want to ask how I’ve been?” he said in his smooth, sophisticated accent, a cross between British and French.

“I can see you’ve been fine, Father.”

“You know, we can have a civilized discussion every now and then, Magnolia.”

Maggie had no desire to spar with her father. He always won. She stepped forward and sat down in the chair, crossing her arms on her chest. “Fine. How have you been?”

Drake’s smile turned predatory. “I have a job for you,” he said.

The dark-haired woman sighed, bored with the constant game she had to play with him. Doing her father’s bidding was a necessary and unavoidable part of her life, but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy it. “What is it?”

“We’ve got an informant that needs to be handled,” Drake said.

“Handled? Do you mean reformed or neutralized?” she asked.

The middle-aged gentleman steepled his fingers in front of him and took another dramatic pause. “You’ve been working for me since you were thirteen. You know what needs to be done.”

“Okay,” she said. Sometimes she guessed she had hope that her father’s directions would mean something different. They never did.

“I’d also like you to accompany me to the port this evening to meet our new suppliers.”

“I’ve got plans,” Maggie responded, feeling not one bit guilty about lying.

Drake’s face twisted into the disapproving frown she’d become used to over the last seventeen years. “Break them. Whether you like it or not, you’re my daughter and I expect you to be by my side when needed.” His dark eyes bored into her.

“Yes, Father,” she said. “Does Marco know the informant?” Maggie asked, changing the subject.

Turning back to his computer screen, Drake nodded. “He does. You two can take care of it together. You could teach Marco how to perform a job correctly. That last debacle of his landed on the front page.”

Maggie remembered that incident clearly. Though she’d had nothing to do with Marco’s mistake, everyone who spent any time around Drake was punished. Marco only managed not to die by the sheer fact that Drake had a strong conviction about not killing one of his flock. If not for that, he would have strung pieces of Marco around New Orleans like Mardi Gras beads.

Without another word, Maggie left her father’s office to begin her new assignment. She’d first have to track down Marco, who spent most of his time carousing in the less desirable parts of town hunting for people to help fulfill his more base desires. After he identified their target, a new hunt would begin that would give her no pleasure whatsoever.

That nine-to-five job looked more attractive all the time.

Marco Breaux met Maggie in front of the six car garage of her father’s home. He sauntered up to her in his slow, carefree style. The lack of responsibility and stress in his life showed in his smooth, young skin, and his perpetual smile. His short brown hair blew in the soft, damp Louisiana breeze.

Maggie tapped her foot against the concrete as she waited. She wanted to get the job over with as much as she didn’t want to do it at all. Marco, despite his recent dangerous brush with Warin Drake, probably didn’t feel any pressure to please him. Someday, the man’s attitude would catch up to him and Maggie hoped she wasn’t there to see it.

“Who has pissed him off this time?” she asked.

“Jo Jo got busted and starting singing about his dealer,” Marco said.

Shaking her head, Maggie was not surprised. Jo Jo was an addict and a perpetual hanger-on. He wanted to be part of their group—their Family—but couldn’t get his life straight enough for Drake to consider admitting him. “Where is he?”

“The police let him go yesterday, so we can probably find him downtown.”

Maggie hit the garage door button. “Let’s go,” she said.

The two settled into one of Drake’s cars, a late model Mercedes painted jet black with silver accents. The drive up to Bourbon Street took only fifteen minutes unless it was rush hour. The compound on which they lived was far enough away from the city to provide the family with the privacy it needed, yet close enough to keep business or play in the more vibrant areas convenient.

Not that Drake needed to worry significantly about a lack of privacy. After years of manipulation of the police and most other citizens of New Orleans, he was left alone. The only blips came when idiots on the lower end of the food chain tried to get something in exchange for information. While it seemed most cops were on the take, there were a few good men still out there willing to take on crime, no matter who was behind it.

The sun began to set on the old buildings in the downtown area as they pulled into a parking space in a lot near the river. They didn’t need to slip any money in the parking fee board. The license plate reading Drake-4 was enough warning to the owner that he need not have the car towed. The breeze stirred a mist from the river that hung in the air, cooling what otherwise might have been a warm day. Maggie didn’t wait for Marco to get out of the car before she took off for the docking area, where she suspected their prey would be.

Of the warehouses lining the Mississippi River at the Port of Orleans, only a few were active. The rest were broken down by years of exposure and disuse, ultimately abandoned as encumbered real estate. More often than not, the ones secured less vigorously were occupied by homeless people who liked to sleep there by day, and wander the French Quarter at night. Fleecing the tourists could make a good bit of money for a talented thief, at least enough to live on. Most of the people who lived in the warehouse district thought buying a dime bag of blow—or five—was much more fun than paying rent. While most of her father’s customers were hard working folks who did afford themselves the luxury of a home, Jo Jo was not one of them. She knew they could likely find him here.

As Maggie stopped at the warehouse door and looked for ways to get in, Marco skidded to a halt behind her, out of breath from jogging to catch up. “What the hell is your hurry?”

“I thought we could finish this up and then get back to the house for some sex,” she said, testing the door to see if it would open.

“Really?” he said, a hopeful look on his dark features.

The door didn’t work. “No, stupid. I want to get this done so my father will leave me at peace for a while.”

“Hmmm,” Marco pouted. He followed Maggie as she began walking the perimeter of the building.

They came to a section of the structure where the sheet metal outer covering appeared warped, as if it had been pulled away, then pushed back into place, many times. Maggie bent over, grasped the edges with her hands, then pulled the cover back to form an opening. Looking through the hole, they could see into the dimly lit warehouse.

The people gathered into a loose circle of pallets didn’t notice Maggie and Marco until they were at the edge of their group. A small fire illuminated the area, making the remainder of the vast room seem twice as dark. Two people appeared asleep or otherwise unconscious, and two were sitting up talking. Maggie recognized one of the conscious ones as Jo Jo. His wild shock of hair, an unkept, unclean afro, made him hard to miss. After spending a few days in jail, he was probably rather clean, but she didn’t want to get close enough to him to test out that theory.

“Hey, Jo Jo,” she said, her tone cordial. “How’ve you been?”

The dark skinned man looked up, a shocked expression on his face. “Miss Drake? How you been?” he asked, a tremor in his voice. Jo Jo stood up and faced his new guests.

“Fine, and yourself?” Maggie asked.

Before the informant could answer, Marco had a grip on his throat and rammed him into the nearest wall. The hollow metal shell boomed under the collision from his back. Maggie sensed that Jo Jo’s friends were sneaking off as she advanced on him, but she didn’t care. They were smart enough not to tell anyone who or what they’d seen.

Maggie stopped beside Marco. Jo Jo’s eyes were bulging from his head and he gasped for breath under Marco’s firm grip.

“Seems you’ve been talking to the wrong people, Jo Jo. I’m sorry for this,” Maggie said.

Her partner shot her a withering glare. “Don’t apologize to this scumbag. He’s getting what should have come to him years ago.” Marco banged his captive against the wall again. “You don’t mess with Drake, fucker.”

“Marco, slow down,” Maggie said to her father’s flunky. She then turned her dark eyes on Jo Jo. “What did you tell the police?”

“Nothin’,” the addict gasped.

Maggie shook her head. “We can make this harder on you,” she said, leaving no doubt in her voice that she was serious.

Jo Jo began to cry. “Don’t hurt me, man,” he wailed. “I didn’t tell ‘em nothin’. I swear.”

Marco planted an elbow across the man’s face, forcing a gush of blood from Jo Jo’s nose. “Then why the hell do we got a detective sniffin’ up our asses?”

The homeless man clutched his nose and wailed. “I don’t know. Only think I told the police was that I scored some blow off a dude I met near Drake’s place. I didn’t tell ‘em that any one of you sold me nothin’.”

She didn’t know what part of Jo Jo’s story was a lie, but it didn’t really matter. Drake no longer trusted that the man was harmless, so he had to be eliminated. Maggie turned to Marco and nodded her head. A hungry smile formed on his young face.

“You want a piece?” he asked.

“No,” Maggie responded, and began walking toward the opening in the building.

Jo Jo began to scream, a high pitched, desperate sound, that would have been heard if not for their desolate location. Within moments, the screams stopped and a more guttural sound emerged. Maggie ignored it until she was able to duck into the opening in the wall and leave the warehouse. She’d heard enough to know that Drake’s orders had been carried out.

With any luck, she would have a few days reprieve until she had to speak with her father again.