“He was different how?” I asked.
“Like he’d been in a fight.”
“Say that again?”
“His face was swole up. I called to tell you everything is all right and you don’t need to worry no more. I got ahold of Mr. Spade.”
“Back up, Babette.”
“He ain’t in the phone book, but a waitress I know had his number. So I told him about me talking to you and me seeing the guy again and how I don’t want no trouble or to be saying anything bad about nobody.”
I could feel the floor shifting under my feet. “Listen to me, Babette. Don’t talk any more with Spade Labiche. Stay away from him. He’s not a good guy.”
“I ain’t supposed to talk to the police?”
“The man with the swollen face is a dangerous and violent career criminal. I don’t know why he was with Labiche, but I’m going to find out. What happened after you saw the man at Walmart?”
“Nothing. He just walked away.”
“What did Labiche tell you?”
“He said not to worry. He said the guy was just axing him directions and he didn’t know nothing about him. That ain’t true?”
“It could be,” I said.
“It could be? Oh, Mr. Dave, what I’m gonna do?”
“If you feel threatened, you can stay with my daughter and me.”
“That don’t sound right. I cain’t live off other people.”
I didn’t know what to say. Who is usually the victim of a criminal? The most innocent of the innocent, and usually those who can least afford the attrition.
“Are you there, Mr. Dave?”
“I’m going to talk to my friend Clete Purcel. He’s a private investigator. If you’re with him, no one will ever hurt you. Give me your address.”
I went into Labiche’s office the next morning. “How you doin’, Spade?” I said.
He was drinking coffee from a white mug with Wonder Woman on it. “What’s on your mind, Dave?”
“You know Babette Latiolais? She works at the bar-and-grill.”
“What about her?”
“She call you?”
He set the mug down. “Yeah, she did. What do you want to know?”
“She’s a nice lady, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Nice. Good-looking tits. Probably a sweet piece of barbecue. What else you want to know?”
“Why don’t you show some respect?”
“I don’t know what it is with you, Robicheaux. You’ve got a two-by-four with nails in it shoved up your ass every time I see you.”
“She saw you with a guy who sounds a lot like Kevin Penny. She doesn’t know Penny. She has no connection with Penny. She didn’t dime you about Penny. She simply described a man who looks like him. You were talking to him in the parking lot outside the bar-and-grill where she works. What about it? Is Penny a confidential informant?”
“Number one, I never heard of this guy. Number two, if he was my snitch, I wouldn’t meet him in a public place.”
“I’m glad you’ve cleared all that up, Spade. I heard you were undercover in Liberty City. How’d you get along with the Jamaicans?”
“Fine. They love the color green.”
“You ever see their transporters land in the Glades?”
“A few times.”
“Did you know the guys transporting coke on I-10?”
“Most of them were blacks the Colombians used like Kleenex.”
“They sure did a number on us. In three years this whole area was full of dope. New Orleans became the murder capital of America.”
“What’s your point?”
“I was just thinking about the systemic nature of the problem. It’s like a virus. Those women who were killed in Jeff Parish all had some relationship to the drug culture. The sales are five-and-dime stuff. All those lives were snuffed out for chump change.”
He toasted me with his cup before he drank, his fingers spread across Wonder Woman’s patriotically dressed body. “Close the door on your way out, will you?”
Be seeing you later, you lying motherfucker, I thought.
But Labiche had little to do with the origins of my anger. Maybe he was on a pad, maybe not. I suspected he was a sociopath. Every organization or institution has sociopaths. The objective is always power. People like Labiche function because they’re useful idiots.
Prostitution and drug trafficking cannot exist in a community without sanction. Vice is symbiotic and, like a leech, must attach itself to a cooperative host. That’s not hard to do. Once it’s established, digging it out of the tissue takes years, maybe generations. The majority of victims are people no one cares about. Even though the street sales seem nickel-and-dime in nature, the aggregate can be enormous. The coke is stepped on half a dozen times before it reaches the projects; the skag might have roach powder in it; the speed comes out of labs at Motel 6. But the number of addicts always grows; it never declines. The health and psychiatric problems of the afflicted are pushed off on social services. The big bonus for the dealers is the female trade. They’re compliant and easily managed; they provide freebies for corrupt cops; they’re never more than one day away.
Since Prohibition, vice on America’s southern rim has been run by individuals and families in Tampa, Miami, New Orleans, and Galveston. When Huey Long gave the state of Louisiana to Frank Costello, slot and racehorse machines appeared in every hotel lobby, drugstore, and saloon in the state, followed by an invasion of pimps, hookers, and even commercial fishers (they worked for the Mob in New Orleans and drained the lakes of crappie and sold them by the hundreds of thousands in Chicago). The system was like a pyramid. Everything at the bottom contributed to the top of the structure. In the life, it’s called piecing off the action. A working girl who didn’t understand that could get a cupful of acid in the face. I knew a black girl who was soaked with gasoline by two pimps and set on fire.
The minions at the bottom of the organization are myriad and need lead shoes on a windy day. But there is always one person at the top, and only one. In this case, the head guy was a steaming pile of gorilla shit known as Tony Nine Ball. All the elements in this story started with Fat Tony and the Civil War sword he planned to give to Levon Broussard, probably to involve Levon in one of Tony’s movie productions.
I told Helen I was checking out a cruiser and also where I was going with it.
“What for?” she said, hardly able to conceal the ennui in her voice.
“I think the deaths of the Jeff Davis Eight are indirectly on Nemo. I think the dope in Iberia Parish is, too.”
“What you’re really saying is somehow he’s connected to the murder of T. J. Dartez. That’s what you want to believe, isn’t it?”
“If you bruise Tony’s ego, he never forgets.”
“Do what you need to,” she said. “Watch your ass. Tony Nemo is a cruel man.”
“Does Spade Labiche have any reason for being around Kevin Penny?”
“Not to my knowledge. You know something I don’t?”
I told her how Babette Latiolais had tried to return Labiche’s lighter to him in the parking lot outside the bar-and-grill and had seen Penny talking with Labiche.
“Did you bring this up with Labiche?” Helen said.
“He denies knowing Penny or having any connection with him.”
“Did you tell him the barmaid informed on him?”
“She had already called Labiche. She knows him from the bar-and-grill. I was trying to put out the fire and indicate to Labiche that the girl wasn’t conspiring against him.”
“Take a breath.”
“It’s frustrating, Helen. This guy is a son of a bitch, and you’re pretending he’s not.”
“I’ll have a talk with him.” She got up from her desk and bit a hangnail, avoiding my eyes. “I’m worried about where the Dartez investigation is going. Your prints were on the broken window glass. How do you explain that?”