“Then maybe you went into poppy farming with the Hmongs over in Laos. Is that a possibility, Emile?”
“You like cold beer? At the White Rose they had it so cold it’d make your throat ache. You could get ice-cold beer and a blow job at the same time, that’s no jive. You had to be up for it, though, know what I’m saying?”
“You should have gone out to Washington State,” I said.
“I’m a little slow this evening, you got to clue me.”
“That’s where your kind end up, right, either in a root cellar in the Cascades or fucking up other people’s lives in Third World countries. You shouldn’t have come here, Emile.” I tore off the page on my legal pad, which contained a list of items I needed for the bait shop and couldn’t afford, and threw it in the wastebasket. Then I unlocked his cuffed wrist from the D-ring.
He rose from the chair and his nostrils flared.
“I feel like I’m wrapped in stink,” he said.
“If you need a ride, a deputy will take you wherever you want,” I said.
“Thanks, I’ll get a cab. Can I use your John? I got to wash up.”
I pointed toward the men’s room, then I said, “Let me ask a favor of you, Emile.”
“You got it.”
“You’re a pro. Don’t come through the wrong man’s perimeter.”
“The house next to yours? Who the fuck wants to live on a ditch full of mosquitoes?”
He went down the hall and pushed through the men’s room door. The light from inside framed him like a simian creature caught in the pop of a flashbulb.
I worked open the window to rid the office of the peculiar odor that Pogue left behind, like the smell of a warm gym that’s been closed for days. Then I called home and went inside the men’s room. It was usually clean and squared away, but around one basin soap and water were splashed on the mirror and walls and crumpled paper towels were scattered all over the floor. I walked down the darkened hall to the sheriff’s office.
“Where’s Pogue?” he said.
“Gone.”
“Gone? I asked you to see me before—”
“That’s not what you said.”
“I was going to put a tail on the guy. I just called the FBI in Lafayette.”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“Would you care to explain that?” he said.
“His kind don’t disappear on you. I wish they would.”
“What are you talking about, Dave?”
“He’s evil incarnate, Sheriff.”
Bootsie and Alafair and I had a cold supper of chicken salad sandwiches, bean salad, and mint tea on the redwood table in the backyard. The new cane in my neighbor’s field was pale green and waving in the sun’s afterglow; he had opened the lock in his irrigation canal and you could smell the heavy, wet odor of the water inching through the rows.
“Oh, I forgot, Dave. A man named Sonny called while you were gone,” Alafair said. She had showered and put on makeup and baby powder on her neck and a dark pair of blue jeans and a lavender blouse with primroses sewn on the sleeves.
“What’d he have to say?”
“Nothing. He said he’d call back.”
“He didn’t leave a number?”
“I asked him to. He said he was at a pay phone.”
Bootsie watched my face.
“Where you going tonight?” I said to Alafair.
“To study. At the library.”
“You’re going fifteen miles to study?” I said.
“Danny’s picking me up.”
“Danny who? How old is this kid?”
“Danny Bordelon, and he’s sixteen years old, Dave,” she said.
“Great,” I said. I looked at Bootsie.
“What’s the big deal?” Alafair said.
“It’s a school night,” I said.
“That’s why we’re going to the library,” she said.
Bootsie put her hand on my knee. After Alafair finished eating she went inside, then said good-bye through the window screen and waited on the gallery with her book bag.
“Ease up, skipper,” Bootsie said.
“Why’d you call me that?” I said.
“I don’t know. It just came to mind.”
“I see.”
“I won’t do it,” she said.
“I’m sorry. It’s fine,” I said. But I could still hear that name on the lips of my dead wife, Annie, calling to me from the bed on which she was murdered.
“What’s troubling you, Dave?” Bootsie said.
“It’s Marsallus. We sat on the story about the body we pulled out of the slough by Vermilion Bay. It was the guy Sonny parked a couple of rounds in.”
She waited.
“He doesn’t know we’ve got a murder charge against him. I might have to set him up, the same guy who possibly saved my life.”
Later, Bootsie drove to Red Lerille’s Health and Racquet Club in Lafayette and I tried to find things to do that would take me away from the house and Sonny’s call. Instead, I turned on the light in the tree, spread a cloth over the redwood table, and cleaned and oiled an AR-15 rifle I had bought from the sheriff and a Beretta nine-millimeter that Clete had given me for my birthday. But the humidity haloed the light bulb and my eyes burned with fatigue from the day. I couldn’t concentrate and lost screws and springs in the folds of the cloth and finally gave it up just as the phone rang in the kitchen.
“Was that your kid I talked to?” Sonny said.
“Yes.”
“She sounds like a nice kid.”
I could hear traffic and the clang of a streetcar in the background.
“What’s up?” I said.
“I thought I ought to check in. Something wrong?”
“Not with me.”
“I heard about what you did to Patsy Dap,” he said.
“Are you in New Orleans?”
“Sure. Look, I heard Patsy got out of jail in Houston and he’s back in town. The guy’s got the thinking processes of a squirrel with rabies.”
“I need to talk with you, Sonny.”
“Go ahead.”
“No, in person. We’ve got to work some stuff out.”
“You put me in the bag once, Dave.”
“I kicked you loose, too.”
He was silent. I could hear the streetcar clanging on the neutral ground.
“I’ll be in the Pearl at ten o’clock in the morning,” I said. “Be there or stay away, Sonny. It’s up to you.”
“You got something on Delia’s murder?”
“How can I, unless you help me?”
“I eat breakfast at Annette’s on Dauphine,” he said.
I rose early in the morning and helped Batist open up the shop, fire the barbecue pit, and bail the boats that had filled with rainwater during the night. The sky was clear, a soft blue, the wind cool and sweet smelling out of the south, and I tried to keep my mind empty, the way you do before having surgery or entering into situations that you know you’ll never successfully rationalize.
He looked good at the table in Annette’s, with a fresh haircut, in a lavender shirt and brown suit with dark stripes in it, eating a full breakfast of scrambled eggs with bloodred catsup and sausage patties and grits off a thick white plate; he even smiled, his jaw full of food, when Helen and I came through the entrance with a murder warrant and a First District NOPD homicide cop behind us.
He kept chewing, his eyes smiling, while I shook him down against the wall and pulled the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson from the back of his belt and hooked up each of his wrists.
Then he said, “Excuse me, I almost choked on my food there. Don’t worry about this, Streak. A Judas goat has got to do its job.”
Chapter 15
Thursday morning Julia Bertrand walked into my office, her tan face glowing with purpose. She sat down without asking, as though we were both there by a prearranged understanding.