"What's his problem?" Remeta said.
"Our space is full up with local wise guys. We don't need imports. Why'd you come to New Iberia?"
"A guy looks for friends where he can."
"I'm not your friend. You were hanging around New Orleans to pop the guys who took a shot at you, weren't you?"
"You blame me?"
"You know who they are?"
"No. That's why I hung around." I looked at him a long time. He dropped his eyes to the floor.
"You told the cop at the museum you were an artist," I said.
"I paint ceramics. I've done a mess of them."
"Good luck, kid. I think you're going to need it," I said, and started to go.
He rose from the bunk and stood at the bars. His face was no more than three inches from mine.
"I've got money put away for a lawyer. I can beat the beef on Zipper Clum," he said.
"So?"
"I have a feeling my kite's going down before I ever see that lawyer."
His breath was like the stale odor of dead flowers.
His grief was his own, I told myself as I went home later that evening.
But I couldn't rest. Zipper Clum's dying statement, taped on the boom box in the lawn-mower shop off Magazine, said Johnny Remeta was the trail back to my mother's death.
I ate a late supper with Bootsie on the picnic table in the backyard and told her about Johnny Remeta's fears. I expected her to take issue with my concerns, which I seemed to bring home as a matter of course from my job. After I stopped talking, she was pensive, one tooth biting into her bottom lip.
"I think Remeta's right. Zipper Clum was killed because of what he knew about your mother's death. Now Connie Deshotel has taken a special interest in you. She called again, by the way."
"What about?"
"She said she wanted to tell you Clete Purcel's license problems have been straightened out. How nice of her to call us rather than him."
"Forget her."
"I'd like to. Dave, I didn't tell you everything about my relationship with Jim Gable. He's perverse. Oh, not with me. Just in things he said, in his manner, the way he'd stand in his undershorts in front of the mirror and comb his hair, the cruelty that was threaded through his remarks."
The blood had risen in her face, and her eyes were shiny with embarrassment.
"You didn't know what he was like, Boots."
"It doesn't help. I think about him and want to wash my body with peroxide."
"I'm going to help Batist close up, then we'll go for some ice cream," I said.
I walked down to the bait shop and called Dana Magelli, my NOPD friend, at his home and got the unlisted number for Jim Gable's condo in New Orleans.
"Why are you messing with Gable?" Magelli asked. "Cleaning up some paperwork, interdepartmental cooperation, that sort of thing."
"Gable leaves shit prints on everything he touches. Stay away from him. It's a matter of time till somebody scrambles his eggs."
"It's not soon enough."
I punched in Jim Gable's number. I could hear opera music playing in the background -when he answered the phone.
"Y'all are picking up Johnny Remeta tomorrow," I said.
"Who is this?" he asked.
"Dave Robicheaux. Remeta thinks somebody might want to blow up his shit."
"Hey, we owe you a big thanks on this one. You made the ID through that home invasion in Loreauville, didn't you?"
"He'd better arrive in New Orleans without any scratches on the freight."
"You're talking to the wrong man, my friend. Don Ritter's in charge of that case."
"Let me raise another subject. I understand you've made 'some remarks about my wife."
I could hear ice cubes rattle in a glass, as though he had just sipped from it and replaced it on a table.
"I don't know where you heard that, but it's not true. I have the greatest respect for your wife," he said.
I stared out the bait shop window. The flood lamps were on and the bayou was yellow and netted with torn strands of hyacinths, the air luminescent with insects. My temples were pounding. I felt like a jealous high school boy who had just challenged a rival in a locker room, only to learn that his own words were his worst enemy.
"Maybe we can take up the subject another time. On a more physical level," I said.
I thought I heard the voice of a young woman giggling in the background, then the tinkle of ice in the glass again.
"I've got to run. Get a good night's sleep. I don't think you mean what you say. Anyway, I don't hold grudges," Gable said.
The woman laughed again just before he hung up.
But the two New Orleans detectives who were assigned to take Johnny Remeta back to their jurisdiction,
Don Ritter and a man named Burgoyne, didn't show up in the morning. In fact, they didn't arrive at the department until almost 5 p.m.
I stayed late until the last of the paperwork was done. Ritter bent over my desk and signed his name on a custody form attached to a clipboard, then bounced the ballpoint pen on my desk blotter.
"Thanks for your help, Robicheaux. We won't forget it," he said.
"You taking the four-lane through Morgan City?" I said.
"No, 1-10 through Baton Rouge," Burgoyne, the other detective, said.
"The southern route is straight through now. You can be in New Orleans in two hours and fifteen minutes," I said.
"The department uses prescribed routes for all transportation of prisoners. This one happens to go through Baton Rouge," Burgoyne said. He grinned and chewed his gum.
He was young, unshaved, muscular, his arms padded with hair. He wore a faded black T-shirt and running shoes and Levi's with his handcuffs pulled through the back of his belt. He wore his shield on a cord around his neck, and a snub-nosed.38 in a clip-on holster on his belt.
"We've had Remeta in a holding cell since this morning. He didn't eat yet," I said.
"We'll feed him at the jail. I'll ask him to drop you a card and tell you about it," Burgoyne said, his eyes merry, his gum snapping in his jaw.
Ten minutes later I watched Ritter and Burgoyne lead Johnny Remeta, in waist and leg chains, to the back of a white Plymouth and lock him to a D-ring anchored on the floor. When they pulled out of the parking lot, Remeta stared out the side window into my face.
I went back inside the building, the residue of a burned-out, bad day like a visceral presence on my skin.
Why had they waited until quitting time to pick up Remeta? Why were they adamant about returning to New Orleans through Baton Rouge, which was the long way back? I was bothered also by the detective named Burgoyne. His clothes and looks and manner reminded me of the description that Micah, Cora Gable's chauffeur, had given of one of the cops who had beaten and terrorized him.
I signed out a cruiser, hit the flasher, and headed for the four-lane that led to Lafayette and Interstate 10 East.
It was almost sunset when I crossed Henderson Swamp on the causeway. There was no wind, and the miles of water on each side of the road were blood-red, absolutely still, the moss in the dead cypress gray and motionless against the trunks. I stayed in the passing lane, the blue, white, and red glow of the flasher rippling across the pavement and cement railings in the dying light.
Then I was on the bridge above the Atchafalaya River, rising above its wide breadth and swirling current and the deep green stands of gum trees along its banks. Only then did I realize the white Plymouth was behind me, off the highway, in the rest area on the west side of the river.
I'd blown it. I couldn't remember the distance to the next turnaround that would allow me to double back and recross the river. I pulled to the shoulder, put the cruiser in reverse, and backed over the bridge to the rest area exit while two tractor-trailers swerved around me into the passing lane.
The rest area was parklike, green and freshly mowed and watered, with picnic tables and clean rest rooms, and a fine view of the river from the levee.
But the Plymouth was not by the rest rooms. It was parked not far from the levee and a stand of trees, in a glade, its doors open, its parking lights on.