Over his shoulder I could see an elevated flat-bottomed metal trough in the center of the room.
“It’s going to be in a closed coffin. His relatives will never see inside it,” he said.
He stepped aside, and I saw the bloodless, shrunken form stretched out inside the trough, glowing in a cone of electric light that shone from overhead.
“There’s morticians won’t work on these kinds,” he said. “I got a government contract, though, so I do everything they send me... Is that him?”
“That’s not a human form anymore.”
“Your friend had red hair?” I didn’t reply. He waited. I heard him put on his glasses, fiddle with a fountain pen. “I’ll show you the bullet wounds. There’re four,” he said. He leaned over the trough, pointing with the pen. “Two through the chest, one in the groin, one through the side. They look like dimples in oatmeal now.”
“There weren’t any rounds,” I said. “Believe me, Mr. Robicheaux, those are exit wounds. I worked in the mortuary at Chu Lai, Republic of South Vietnam. I took guys out of body bags been in there a long time, get my drift?... Look, the government doesn’t make the kind of mistake you’re thinking about.”
“Then how’d we all end up in Vietnam?” I asked. He walked to the door and put his hand on the wall switch. “I’m turning off the lights now. You coming?” he said.
I dreamed all night, then got up just before dawn and fixed coffee in the kitchen and drank it on the back steps. The sun was still below the treeline in the swamp and the air was moist and cool and smelled of milkweed and the cattle in my neighbor’s field. I kept seeing Sonny’s bloodless face and sightless eyes and red hair, like the head of John the Baptist on a metal tray. I flung my coffee into the flower bed and drove to Clete’s apartment off East Main.
“You’re starting the day like a thunderstorm, Streak,” he said, yawning in his Jockey underwear, pulling a shirt over his wide shoulders.
“Alafair and Pogue both saw him. So did Ruthie Jean Fontenot.”
“People see Elvis Presley. How about James Dean or Adolf Hitler, for God’s sakes?”
“This is different.”
“You want to go crazy? Keep living inside your head like that.” He slid a carton of chocolate milk and a box of jelly doughnuts out of the icebox and started eating. “You want some?” he asked. “I want to jump-start Patsy Dap.”
“How you going to feel if he takes down Johnny Carp?”
“I won’t feel anything,” I said.
“Yeah, I bet.”
“I won’t ever believe Sonny’s dead,” I said. “Don’t talk to me about this stuff anymore.”
“One way or another, Sonny’s out there, Clete.”
“I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it,” he said, walking into the bathroom, working one hand into his shorts.
We drove in my truck out to Patsy Dapolito’s rented cottage on the edge of town, but no one answered the door. Clete shielded the sun’s glare from his eyes and squinted through the blinds on the side window.
“Look at the litter in there. I bet this guy takes a shit inside his clothes,” he said.
“I’ll check with the landlord.”
“Patsy’s in a trick pad in Lafayette.”
“How do you know?”
“A guy I wrote a bond on said he’s got a couple of chippies at Four Corners who aren’t too selective.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s there.”
“When your name is Patsy Dap, you’re either thinking about getting laid or blowing out somebody’s light. I’m seldom wrong about these guys. That bothers me sometimes.”
I looked at him strangely.
“Be happy you got your badge, Streak. It means you get to walk on the curb instead of in the gutter,” he said.
A half hour later we walked into the office of a motel at Four Corners in Lafayette. Raindrops were tinkling on the air-conditioner inset in the window. I showed my badge and a picture of Patsy Dap to the motel operator.
“Do you know this man?” I asked.
He crinkled his nose under his glasses, looked vague, shook his head.
“Lot of people come through here,” he said.
“You want to get your whole place tossed?” I said.
“Room six,” he replied.
“Give us the key... Thanks, we’re putting you down for a good citizen award,” Clete said.
We walked down to Dapolito’s room as the rain blew underneath the overhang. I tapped with one knuckle on the door.
“It’s Dave Robicheaux. Open up, Patsy,” I said.
It was quiet a moment, then he spoke in a phlegmy, twisted voice: “Leave me alone ‘less you got a warrant.”
I turned the key in the lock, nudged the door open with my foot, my hand on my .45.
“Ooops,” Clete said, peering over my shoulder.
“You guys get out of here,” Patsy said from the bed.
Clete pushed the door back slowly with the flat of his hand, sniffed at the air as we both stepped inside.
“You paying for your broads to smoke China white? High-grade stuff, my man,” Clete said.
She was not over sixteen, blond and beautiful in a rough way, with thick arms and shoulders, a heart-shaped face that wore no makeup, hands that could have been a farm girl’s. She gathered the top sheet around her body. I pulled the bedspread off the foot of the bed, wrapped it around her, then handed her her clothes.
“Dress in the bathroom while we talk to this man,” I said. “We’re not going to arrest you.”
Her eyes were disjointed, one pupil larger than the other, glazed with fear and Oriental smack.
“Listen, this man kills people for a living. But if he didn’t get paid, he’d do it for free. Don’t ever come here again,” I said.
“Why the roust this time?” Patsy said. He sat with his back against the headboard, his hard, compact body as white as the skin on a toadstool, one hand kneading the sheet that covered his loins. A bluebird was tattooed above each of his nipples.
“I think you might still want to pop me, Patsy. Earn some points with Polly Gee,” I said.
“You’re wrong. I’m going on a trip, all over the world, places I ain’t ever got to visit.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah, I got an itinerary, everything. A Japanese travel service put it together. They even give you a booklet tells you how to get along with everybody, what things to watch out for. Don’t get on elevators with Iranians ‘cause of the BO they got. Don’t shake hands with Arabs ‘cause they wipe their ass with their bare hand.”
“Sounds great, except I don’t believe you,” I said. I saw the girl go past the corner of my vision, out the door. “Click on the tape, Clete.”
Clete set the portable tape player on the desk and snapped the Play button. Patsy’s scarred face looked confused at first as he heard Mingo Bloomberg’s voice, then Clete’s and Johnny Carp’s and mine.
“What is this?” he said.
“I’ll start it again. We don’t want you to miss any of this. Particularly when they start laughing at you,” Clete said.
As Patsy listened, the skin on one side of his face seemed to crinkle like the surface of paint in a bucket. He lit a cigarette, one eye watering with the heat of the flame.
“You going to do hits for a guy like that?” Clete said.
Patsy’s teeth protruded above his bottom lip like a ridge of bone. He huffed smoke out of the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t want you thinking about whacking out Johnny, either. If Johnny gets capped, this tape goes to NOPD,” I said.
“I can hurt Johnny in ways you ain’t thought about. You’re stupid, Robicheaux. That’s why you’re a cop,” he said.
Clete and I walked outside and closed the door behind us. The rain was swirling in the wind.