Claude Devereux knew this story well, but few others did. Claude also knew the full extent of his richest client’s ambitions. He wondered whether Brody was finally going to reveal his plans to Forrest Knox.

“My daddy owned two stores,” Brody went on, speaking softly. “He sold bootleg whisky on the side, and he used the profits to buy land. We lived in St. Bernard Parish. In 1927, as the floodwater came downriver, the bankers who controlled New Orleans started to panic. In the end, they hijacked the government in Baton Rouge and extorted permission to dynamite the levee that protected our parish.” Brody nodded, his eyes focused on some faraway scene and time. “They dynamited for three straight days. Everything we had went underwater. When the water finally went down, months later, we’d been wiped out. The stores were gone, and three feet of mud covered the land.”

Brody blinked once, which emphasized the stillness of his aquiline features. “Those bankers had promised full reparations before the dynamiting, but they lied. They left us in the mud to rot. Our total compensation, according to those bastards, was twelve dollars and fifty cents. Twelve-fifty for everything we owned. That’s when Daddy started bootlegging full-time. He got in with Carlos Marcello, and he never looked back. Along with Huey Long’s people, they put slot machines into every parish in this state. In the end, my daddy made back all his money and more. Far more. So did I. But every goddamned day, I thought about the bastards who’d done that to us. And ever since that day, I’ve worked to destroy them.”

Forrest nodded but did not speak, obviously sensing that he would gain nothing by interrupting Brody. Claude also figured Knox knew that information was power, and knowing Brody’s deepest motives might well come in handy someday.

“One of the highest and mightiest of those New Orleans bankers was originally from Natchez,” Brody said. “Twenty years after the flood, I married his daughter. She got me what money couldn’t: social position. Fifteen years after that, she climbed into the bathtub drunk, and I held her head under the water until she stopped breathing.”

Claude nearly swallowed his tongue when he heard this admission. Forrest and Randall Regan kept poker faces, but Alphonse Ozan actually smiled. Brody pushed on like he didn’t give a damn who heard him. “By that time I was managing a lot of her daddy’s money. With the stroke of a pen, I cut him out of more than half of it the next day, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He wanted his daughter buried in New Orleans. I didn’t care where they put her, but I told him I wanted to take care of the funeral expenses.” Brody took another sip of scotch. “I sent him a check for twelve dollars and fifty cents.”

No one in the room made a sound.