"Sounds right. He used to shake down fudge packers in the Quarter. What's he doing with the attorney general of Louisiana?"
"Go easy, Helen. Don't make him cut and run," I said.
"It's your show," she said, walking ahead of me between the tables before I could reply.
As we approached Connie Deshotel, her eyes moved from her conversation onto my face. But they showed no sense of surprise. Instead, she smiled good-naturedly.
"You want some help with access to AFIS?" she said.
"How'd you know?" I asked.
"I called your office this morning. But you'd already left. The sheriff told me about your problem. I had him fax the latents to the pod. The ID should be on your desk when you get back to New Iberia," she said.
The confrontation I had been expecting was suddenly gone. I looked at her in dismay.
"You did it," I said.
"I'm glad my office could help. I'm only sorry I couldn't get back to you earlier. Would you like to join us? This is Don Ritter. He's at the First District in New Orleans," she said.
Ritter put out his hand and I took it, in the way you do when you suppress your feelings and know that later you'll wish you hadn't.
"I already know Helen. You used to be a meter maid at NOPD," he said.
"Yeah, you were tight with Jim Gable," she said, smiling.
I turned and looked directly into Helen's face. But she didn't allow herself to see my expression.
"Jim's working liaison with the mayor's office," Ritter said.
"How about that Zipper Clum getting wasted? Remember him? You and Jim used to leave him hooked up in the cage," Helen said.
"A tragic event. Everybody laughed for five minutes at roll call the other day," Ritter said.
"We have to go. Thanks for your help, Ms. Deshotel," I said.
"Anytime, Mr. Robicheaux," she replied. She looked lovely in her white suit, her olive skin dark with tan, the tips of her hair burned by the sun. The silver angel pinned on her lapel swam with light. "Come see us again."
I waited until we were in the parking lot before I turned my anger on Helen.
"That was inexcusable," I said.
"You've got to make them wince sometimes," she said.
"That's not your call, Helen."
"I'm your partner, not your driver. We're working the same case, Dave."
The air rising from the cement was hot and dense with humidity and hard to breathe. Helen squeezed my upper arm.
"In your mind you're working your mother's case and you think nobody's going to help you. It's not true, bwana. We're a team. You and I are going to make them religious on this one," she said.
If indeed the man who had broken into Little Face's cabin was the same man who murdered Zipper Clum, the jigger named Steve Andropolis had been halfway right about his identity. The National Crime Information Center said the print we had sent through AFIS belonged to one Johnny O'Roarke, who had graduated from a Detroit high school but had grown up in Letcher County, Kentucky. His mother's maiden name was Remeta. At age twenty he had been sentenced to two years in the Florida State Penitentiary at Raiford for robbery and possession of burglar tools and stolen property.
While in prison he was the suspect in the murder of a six-and-one-half-foot, 280-pound recidivist named Jeremiah Boone, who systematically raped every fish, or new inmate, in his unit.
Helen sat with one haunch on the corner of my desk, reading from the sheets that had been faxed to us by the Florida Department of Corrections in Tallahassee.
"The rapist, this guy Boone? He was Molotoved in his cell. The prison psychologist says O'Roarke, or Remeta, was the regular punch for eight or nine guys till somebody turned Boone into a candle. Remeta must have made his bones by torching Boone," she said, then waited. "You listening?"
"Yeah, sure," I replied. But I wasn't. "Connie Deshotel seemed to be on the square. Why's she hanging around with a wrong cop, the gel head, what's his name, Ritter?"
"Maybe they just ran into each other. She started her career at NOPD."
"She stonewalled us, then fell over backwards to look right," I said.
"She got us the ID. Forget it. What do you want to do about Remeta, or O'Roarke, or whatever he calls himself?" Helen said.
"He probably got front money on the Little Face hit. Somebody besides us isn't happy with him right now. Maybe it's a good time to start jacking up the other side."
"How?" she said.
I glanced out the window just as Clete Purcel's maroon Cadillac pulled to the curb, with Passion Labiche in the passenger's seat.
9
I WALKED DOWN the hallway toward the building's entrance, but the sheriff cut me off.
"Purcel's out there," he said.
"I know. I'm going to meet him," I said.
"Keep him out of here," he replied.
"You're too hard on him."
"You want my job, run for office. I don't want him in the building."
I looked at his back as he walked away, his words stinging in my face. I caught up with him.
"It's not Purcel. It's who he's with. I think she bothers a few people's conscience around here," I said.
"You're out of line."
"With respect, so are you, sir," I replied, and went outside.
Clete was walking toward me from the curb. He wore a light suit and a tan silk shirt and a dark tie with tiny flowers on it, and his porkpie hat had been replaced by a Panama with a green-tinted visor built into the brim.
"What are you doing with Passion?" I asked.
"I took her to the clinic over in Lafayette."
"What for?"
"She sees a dermatologist there or something. She didn't want to talk about it."
"You didn't answer my question. What are you doing with her?"
"None of your damn business, Streak."
We stood there like that, in the heat of the afternoon, the shadows of the huge white courthouse falling on the lawn behind us. Then Clete's face relented and his eyes went away from me and came back again.
"I took her for a drive because I like her. We're going to dinner and a movie. You want to tag along?" he said.
"I want to talk to you in private."
"Yeah, anytime I can be useful. Thanks for the hospitality," he said, and got back into the Cadillac and drove away. Passion smiled at me, brushing her hair out of one eye with the ends of her fingers.
Clete came into the bait shop when I was closing up that night. He opened a bottle of Dixie beer and drank it at the counter. I sat down next to him with a Dr Pepper. "I'm sorry about today. I just worry about you sometimes, Cletus," I said.
"You think I'm over-the-hill for Passion?"
"You carried me down a fire escape with two bullets in your back. I don't like to see you get hurt."
"She makes me feel young. What's wrong in that?"
I cupped my hand on the back of his neck. The baked scales on his skin were as stiff as blistered paint. "Nothing's wrong with it," I said.
"So why did you want to talk in private?"
"We think the Zipper Clum shooter is a Kentucky product by way of Michigan. His real name is Johnny O'Roarke but he goes by Remeta. He did a two-bit in Raiford. He also got to be an expert in jailhouse romance."
"Same guy who was going to do Little Face?"
"That's the way I see it."
"The jigger said Remeta didn't have a sheet."
"You ever know a gumball yet who had the whole story right?"
"So Remeta blew off the hit and now he's in the shit-house with whoever gave him the contract. Is that what you were going to tell me?"
"That's about it."
He grinned and drank out of his beer. "And you think we should make life as messed up as possible for all bad guys involved?"
"Who's the best source for cold pieces around New Orleans?" I asked.
"It used to be Tommy Carrol, till somebody flushed his grits for him. Right now?" He scratched his hairline and thought. "You ever hear of the Eighteenth Street gang in Los Angeles? They're here, kind of like sewer growth metastasizing across the country. I never thought I'd miss the greaseballs."