"Will you shut up? They're saying Coll kills people because he feels he has a right to. He's not a psychopath or a schizophrenic or anything like that. He's just a very angry man. Have I got your attention?"
"Yes," I said.
"He had a wife and son in Belfast nobody in law enforcement knew about. They used a different name so Coil's enemies wouldn't find them. But about five years ago a Protestant death squad of some kind put a bomb under their car and killed both of them. They were on their way to Mass."
The subject wasn't funny anymore.
"Is there a tap on my home phone?" I asked.
"We're in the George W. Bush era. I'd keep that in mind," she said.
Fifteen minutes later Helen came into my office, a clutch of fax sheets in her hand. "Did you hear anything about an explosion on the drawbridge in Jeanerette?" she asked.
"No," I said.
She sat on the corner of my desk and studied the fax sheets in her hand. "This is from the St. Mary's sheriff's office. See what you think," she said. Her jawbone flexed against her cheek.
I took the sheets from her hand and read them, trying not to show any expression. The details of the investigator's report were incredible. In the early A.M. someone had evidently slim-jimmed a wrecker that was parked in a filling station located a half block from the trailer court by the Jeanerette drawbridge. After hot-wiring the ignition, the perpetrator drove the wrecker down to the trailer court, hooked up the winch to a trailer owned by one Bobby Joe Fontenot, and ripped it off its cinder blocks, tearing loose all the plumbing, electrical, phone and cable connections.
According to witnesses, the owner tried to exit the trailer but discovered the door had been sealed shut with a bonding adhesive used to repair the bodies of wrecked automobiles. The perpetrator skidded the trailer out of the court onto the surfaced road, bouncing it across a drainage ditch, smashing mailboxes and parked cars. When the trailer toppled on its side, witnesses thought they saw the owner trying to climb out of an exposed window. But the driver of the wrecker accelerated, knocking Fontenot, the owner, back inside. The driver then dragged the trailer across the steel grid of the drawbridge, geysering rooster-tails of sparks in the darkness.
A liquid blue flame enveloped one of the butane tanks on the rear of the trailer. The explosion that ensued blew burning paper, fabric,
and particle board all over the bayou. The owner, who by this time had broken out a window and cleaned the glass from the frame with a hammer, barely escaped with his life.
The perpetrator abandoned the wrecker and burning trailer, which was tightly wedged between the steel side beams on the bridge, and disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the bayou. A moment later an ancient Cadillac convertible was seen speeding down the road toward New Iberia, the engine misfiring, leaking oil smoke, the driver wearing a small, short-brim hat perched on the front of his head.
"Wow, that's something, isn't it?" I said, handing the fax sheets back to Helen.
"Any idea who could pull a stunt like that?" she said.
"There're a lot of old gas guzzlers like that around," I replied, my eyes drifting around the room.
"Right," she said.
"No mention of the Cadillac's color?"
"Nope," she said.
"It's not in our jurisdiction, anyway. Let St. Mary Parish do some work for a change."
"You get Clete Purcel in here right now," she said.
But Clete did not answer his phone, and when I drove by the motor court, the manager told me he had not seen Clete's car in the last day or two. I called Clete's office in New Orleans. The temporary secretary he sometimes used was an ex-nun by the name of Alice Weren-haus who put the fear of God in some of Clete's clients.
"You are Mr. Robicheaux?" she said.
"I was when I got up this morning," I replied, then quickly regretted my mistake in attempting humor with Alice Werenhaus.
"Oh, it is you, isn't it? I should have immediately recognized the quick wit at work in your rhetoric," she said. "Mr. Purcel left a message for you. Would you like me to read it to you?"
"Yes, that would be very nice, Ms. Werenhaus," I replied.
"It says, "Give Alice a pay phone number and a time. Fart, Barf, and Itch probably have you tapped.""
"What's going on?" I said.
"I suspect that's why he'd like to talk with you, Mr. Robicheaux. To explain everything to you. I'm sure by this time you're rather used to that," she said.
I walked downtown and got the number off a public telephone and called it back to Alice Werenhaus. "I'll be at this number at one P.M.," I said.
I expected another rejoinder at my expense. But she surprised me. "Mr. Robicheaux, be careful. Watch after Mr. Purcel, too. Under all his bluster he's a vulnerable man," she said.
At 1:04 P.M. the payphone across from Victor's Cafeteria on Main Street rang. I picked it up and didn't wait for Clete to speak. "Have you lost your mind?" I said.
"About what?" he said.
"You stole a tow truck out of a filling station. You almost burned Bobby Joe Fontenot to death in his trailer. The drawbridge in Jean-erette is still closed with the melted wreckage you left on top of it. Boat traffic is backed up ten miles."
"Oh, yeah, that,"" he replied. "Things got a little out of hand. Look, big mon "
"No, you look, Clete. Helen wants to feed you into an airplane propeller."
"She's emotional sometimes. I talked with Clotile Arceneaux. She says your phone is tapped."
"I already got that. Listen to me "
"You think the Feds are tapping a cop's phone because they're worried about an Irish button man whacking out a couple of grease balls These guys still haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. It's Merchie Flannigan and his wife they're worried about."
"You're making no sense."
"That broad's been giving you a hand job. I did some checking on Merchie's company. He's in line for some big drilling contracts in Iraq after Shrub turns it into an American colony. That means his father-in-law, what's-his-face, Castille Lejeune, is probably mixed up in it, too. The Feds are after Coll because he's about to pop somebody with a lot of juice, not because they're worried about Coll trying to kill a Catholic priest or smoking the Dellacroce brothers."
It was pointless to argue with Clete. He was the best investigative cop I ever knew, his blue-collar instincts for deception and hypocrisy and flimflam always on target. But his antipathy toward Federal law enforcement agencies, particularly the FBI, was unrelenting, and at best he considered them bumbling and inept and at worst lazy and arrogant.
"Why'd you say Theodosha Flannigan was giving me a hand job?" I asked.
"She and her husband are business partners. She set you up to either get drunk or clipped, she didn't care which. Rich broads look after their money first and think about the size of your Johnson second. You think she's going to let a guy like you screw up her family's finances?"
"You really know how to say it, Cletus."
"You want to be a dildo for this broad, that's your choice. She's dirty, Streak, just like her husband and her old man."
"What are you up to?"
"I told you before, I'm going to make cripples out of the shitheads who hurt you. Get this. I saw a guy in Franklin who looks just like your description of Max Coll."
"Stay away from him, Clete."
"Lose a resource like that? By the way, what's the name of that electrician who burned down your house?"
I started to give him the name, then refused.
"That's all right. I already had a talk with him. He might be contacting your department, but don't believe anything he says."
Later, I went into Helen's office. She was on the phone, nodding, while someone on the other end talked, her eyes on mine. "All right, we'll take care of it…. I agree with you. Absolutely…. This isn't the Wild West. You got it," she said, and hung up. Her face looked scorched.