SNAKE KNOX STOOD on the tarmac of Concordia Parish Airport and watched Brody Royal’s Avanti turboprop scream down out of the gray sky. The fastest private plane of its kind in the world, the $5 million Avanti was one of the quietest aircraft you could buy—on the inside—but to anyone watching it take off or land, it sounded like the devil’s fingernails raked over a chalkboard. Touchdown looked a little rough by Snake’s standards, but as a crop duster he would likely have found fault with the technique of anyone short of a Blue Angel.

As the Avanti taxied toward the terminal, Snake saw Brody Royal himself at the controls. The old multimillionaire had lost his license due to some deficit on the flight physical, but since his son-in-law was licensed, Royal simply had the younger man perform the takeoffs, then took over the controls and did the flying himself, even the landings back in Concordia Parish.

An hour earlier, Royal’s maid had informed Snake that the businessman had made yet another trip to New Orleans. Brody Royal had been flying back and forth three or four times per week ever since Hurricane Katrina, and he sure as hell wasn’t delivering relief supplies. There had to be money in it—big money—or Brody wouldn’t be wasting his time or fuel. Snake gazed covetously at the Italian-built jet with the royal blue R on its tail fin and ROYAL OIL emblazoned aft of the seventh window, just above the low-mass wing with its backward-facing pusher props. A machine like that got Snake’s blood going quicker than any woman these days. There were women in every damned honky-tonk in America; there were only one hundred Avantis in the whole world.

When the plane stopped, its front door opened and two men with AR-15s slung over their shoulders came down the steps. The chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans had long since been tamped down, but Royal owned a lot of property in the Lower Ninth Ward, and he apparently figured he needed armed security on whatever business he’d been conducting.

After the guards came Randall Regan, Royal’s son-in-law, a rawboned, humorless man with the face of a prison guard (which was what he was, in a way, but that was another story). At last the man himself exited the plane: Brody Royal, five feet ten and whipcord-trim, moving with speed and assurance despite his advanced age. His thick silver hair fluttered in the wind as he moved toward the shelter of the terminal with his overcoat folded over his arm. His hawklike face had deep-set eyes that almost never ceased motion, and he caught sight of Snake even before his guards did. When Snake raised his hand in greeting, both guards moved toward him, but Royal called out that Snake was a friend.