"Sir?"
"Do you want this guy out on the ground? It seems you and he and Purcel have the same enemies."
"I don't think that's a cool speculation to make, Sheriff."
"Let me put it this way. The next time I hear this guy's name, it had better be in conjunction with either his arrest or death. I don't want one of my detectives telling me about his phone conversations with a psychopath or his family's involvement with same. Are we clear?"
"There're pipe ashes on your boot," I said, and left the room.
Ten minutes later I received a phone call from a woman who did not identify herself but just started talking as though I already knew who she was. She had a heavy Cajun accent and her voice was knotted with anger and dismay and a need to injure.
"I t'ought you'd like to know what you done. Not that it makes no difference to somebody who t'inks he got the right to twist a sick man up wit' his words," she said.
"Who is this?" I asked.
But she kept wading in. "You was a lot smarter than him, you. You know how to put t'oughts in somebody's head, make him full of guilt, fix it so he cain't go nowhere in his head except t'rew one door. So it ain't enough leprosy eat him up and turn his hands to nutria feet. Man like you got to come along and push him and push him and push him till he so full of misery he gonna do what you want."
Then I remembered the duck-shaped blind woman who had been hanging wash behind the cabin of Bobby Cale, the ex-constable, down by Point au Fer.
"Did something happen to Bobby?" I said.
She couldn't answer. She started weeping into the phone.
"Ma'am, tell me what it is," I said.
"I smelled it on the wind. Out in the persimmon trees. He was gone t'ree days, then I found him and touched him and he swung in my hands, light as bird shell. You done this, suh. Don't be telling yourself you innocent, no. 'Cause you ain't."
The side of my head felt numb after I hung up, as though a dirty revelation about myself had just been whispered in my ear. But I wasn't sure if my sense of regret was over the possibility that I was a contributing factor in the suicide of Bobby Cale or the fact I had just lost my only tangible lead back to my mother's killers.
25
THE SHRIMP FESTIVAL was held each year at the end of summer down by the bay. On Friday, when the day cooled and the summer light rilled the evening sky, shrimp boats festooned with pennants and flags blew their horns in the canal and a cleric blessed the fleet while thousands wandered up and down a carnival midway, drinking from beer cups and eating shrimp off paper plates. College students, the working classes, and politicians from all over the state took part. Inside the cacophony of calliopes and the popping of.22 rifles in the shooting galleries and the happy shrieks that cascaded down from a Ferris wheel, the celebrants took on the characteristics of figures in a Brueghel painting, any intimations about mortality they may have possessed now lost in the balm of the season.
Belmont Pugh was there, and Jim Gable and his wife, and by the Tilt-A-Whirl I saw Connie Deshotel in an evening dress, carrying a pair of silver shoes in one hand, her other on her escort's arm for balance, her cleavage deep with shadow.
But the figure who caught my eye was outside the circle of noise and light that rose into the sky from the midway. Micah, Cora Gable's chauffeur, sat beside the Gables' limo on a folding canvas stool, tossing pieces of dirt at a beer can, his jaws slack, like a man who doesn't care what others think of his appearance or state of mind. A rolled comic book protruded from the side pocket of his black coat.
I left Bootsie at the drink pavilion and walked into the parking area and stood no more than three feet in front of him. He raised his eyes, then tinked a dirt clod against the beer can, his face indifferent.
"Looks like you're in the dumps, partner," I said.
He flexed his mouth, as though working a bite of food out of his gums. "I'm finishing out my last week," he replied.
"You're not working for Ms. Gable anymore?"
"She thinks I sassed her. It was a misunderstanding. But I guess it helped her husband."
"Sassed her?"
"We were passing all these shacks where the sugarcane workers used to live. Ms. Perez says to herself, 'The glory that was Rome.'
"So I say, 'It sure wasn't any glory, was it?'
"She says, 'Beg your pardon?'
"I say, 'Rich man got the poor whites to fight with the coloreds so the whole bunch would work for near nothing while the rich man got richer.' It got real quiet in the car."
"Sounds like you got your hand on it, Micah," I said.
"Tell me about it," he said resentfully. "I looked in the rearview mirror and her face was tight as paper, like it had got slapped. She says, 'This land belonged to my family. So I suggest you keep your own counsel.'"
He removed the comic book from his pocket and tapped it in his palm, his anger seeming to rise and fall, as though it could not find an acceptable target.
"Doesn't seem like that's enough to get a person fired," I said.
"Gable's been acting good to her lately. I think she's gonna let him have the money to build that racetrack out in New Mexico. I had to be a smart-ass at the wrong time and give him what he needed to get me canned."
"You cut up Axel Jennings, Micah?"
He opened his comic book and flopped the pages back on his knee, thinking, his deformed face like a melted candied apple in the glow from the midway.
"You're always trying to get another inch, aren't you? I'll give you something better to chew on," he said. "You know a woman named Maggie Glick, runs a bar full of colored whores in Algiers? It was Jim Gable got her out of prison. Gable's got a whole network of whores and dope peddlers working for him. That's the man gonna be head of your state police, Mr. Robicheaux. Play your cards right and there might be a little pissant job in it for you somewhere."
He smiled at the corner of his mouth, a glint in his good eye.
"Some people enjoy the role of victim. Maybe you've found what you were looking for, after all," I said, and walked away, wondering if I, too, possessed a potential for cruelty I had chosen not to recognize.
When I returned to the pavilion I realized I had made a mistake. Belmont Pugh had cornered Connie Deshotel and Bootsie and there was no easy way of getting away from the situation. Belmont had launched into one of his oratorical performances, guffawing, gesturing at the air like Huey Long, slinging shrimp tails out into the darkness, the damp rawness of his body reaching out like a fist. He squeezed Connie with one arm while his wife, a black-haired woman with recessed dark eyes and a neck like a hog, looked on sternly, as though her disapproval of Belmont 's behavior somehow removed her from all the machinations and carnival vulgarity that had placed her and her husband in the governor's mansion.
Sookie Motrie stood at Belmont 's elbow, dressed in the two-tone boots and clothes of a horse tout at a western track, his salt-and-pepper mustache clipped and trim, his snubbed, hawk nose moving about like a weather vane. For years he had been an ambulance chaser in Baton Rouge and had self-published a detective novel that he tried to unload on every movie representative who visited the area. But he had found his true level as well as success when he became a lobbyist for Vegas and Chicago gambling interests. Even though he had been indicted twice on RICO charges, no door in the state legislature or at any of the regulatory agencies was closed to him.
He laughed when Belmont did and listened attentively to Belmont 's coarse jokes, but still managed to watch everyone passing by and to shake the hand, even if quickly, of anyone he deemed important.
Jim and Cora Gable stood at the makeshift plank bar that sold mint juleps in plastic cups for three dollars. He wore a pale pink shirt and dark tie with roses on it and a white sports coat, his face glowing with the perfection of the evening. No, that's too simple. I had to hand it to Gable. He exuded the confidence and self-satisfaction of those who know that real power lies in not having to demonstrate its possession. Every gesture, every mannerism, was like an extension of his will and his ability to charm, a statement about a meticulous personality that allowed no exception to its own rules. He walked toward Belmont 's circle and lifted a sprig of mint from his drink and shook the drops from the leaves, bending slightly so as not to spot his shoes.