“No haps.”
“Girl you looking for gonna need some he’p. You’ll find her in the trailer court by the drawbridge in Jeanerette, right acrost from the big plantation house.”
“Is she in danger?”
“She dimed Axel Devereaux wit’ your PI friend.”
“Where’d you get the scar on your neck?”
“I’m a Mississippi nigger. I got all kinds of stories.”
“You’re from New Orleans,” I said. “Don’t put yourself down, beautiful.”
“How you know I’m from New Orleans?”
“You’ve got an accent like an angel.”
She slipped her fingernails into my hair. “Come see me sometime when you ain’t working. I can burn away your blues.”
“I’m too green to burn,” I said.
She smiled, her gold-rimmed teeth glinting. “You got a gris-gris on you, baby. Let Mama know when you need some he’p.”
She picked my hand up off the steering and tenderly bit my finger.
I woke hard and throbbing in the morning, filled with all the desire and longing that old men never lose, no matter how dignified they may behave. The manifestation of that desire takes many forms, none of them predictable and none of them good.
At 8:16 a.m., I followed Axel Devereaux into the department men’s room. He wet his comb at the sink. I stood behind him but didn’t speak. He tapped the water off his comb and put it into his shirt pocket, watching me in the mirror.
“You look a little out of joint. Somebody cross her legs on your nose?” he said.
“I don’t like to talk to a reflection.”
He turned slowly, his eyes meeting mine. His forearms were thick and solid, wrapped with monkey hair. “Purcel been talking to you?”
I slapped him across the face. His skin was as coarse as emery paper. He stared at me unblinking, his face stark, as if someone had flashed a strobe on it in a dark room. I’ve known evil men, but I had never seen any man’s eyes look the way his did. There was a dirtiness in them that had no bottom.
“Speak disrespectfully about my partner again and I’ll hang you by your toes and cut your tongue out,” I said. “That’s not a metaphor.”
His gaze slipped off mine and focused on empty space.
“Did you hear me?” I said.
He walked past me and out the door, causing two deputies to step aside, water dripping from his hair onto his shirt.
I stood in the middle of the room, trembling with anger, my ears ringing. I washed my hands, trying to scrub the feel of his whiskers off my skin.
At five p.m., I drove down Bayou Teche to Jeanerette, past Alice Plantation, built in 1803, with its palm trees and elevated wide gallery and twin chimneys, and past another plantation home surrounded by live oaks that were two centuries old. I crossed a drawbridge and turned in to a trailer park that looked transported from Bangladesh.
The manager of the park pointed to the trailer rented by Hilary Bienville. It was set on cinder blocks, the seams orange with rust, the floor sagging. I tapped on the door.
A young black woman answered, hooking the screen door as soon as she saw my badge holder. “What you want?”
“I’m Dave Robicheaux, a friend of Clete Purcel. I’d like to talk with you.”
“I’m fixing to eat.”
“You tried to help out a worthless man named Travis Lebeau. Not everybody would do that, Miss Hilary.”
“Who tole you where I live?”
“A lady who sings the blues.”
“Somebody is after me?”
“You know Axel Devereaux?”
“I ain’t said nothing about Mr. Axel.”
“But you know him?”
“Everybody knows Axel Devereaux.”
“I work homicide and felony assault, not vice,” I said. I took a photo out of my wallet. It showed Clete and me together at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Florida. “Give me five minutes.”
She looked at my truck and studied my face, then stared at the other trailers and the clothes flapping on wash lines. She unhooked the screen. “I got to get my dinner out of the micro.”
I stepped inside. The walls were covered with pages cut from movie magazines. Most of the actors in the photos were black. A large green bottle of bulk wine stood on her kitchen table. She removed the frozen dinner from the microwave and set it on a place mat.
“I got a baby to feed before my gran’mama come over,” she said. “Make it fast, okay?”
“How many nights do you work?”
“Six. Don’t work Sundays. Sunday ain’t never good in my bidness.”
“You’re a better person than you think,” I said.
“Try to pay your bills with that.”
“If you’re lucky, the pimp who owns you takes only thirty-five percent. He pieces off another twenty percent to Axel. Once in a while your pimp runs a Murphy scam on a guy and you make a little more. Does that sound like a reasonable way to make a living?”
“It’s better than scrubbing a flo’ for a white man that spits on it.” She peeled the plastic off her dinner, indifferent to the heat, her eyes starting to film.
“The nuns at Southern Mutual Help can get you a new start,” I said.
She didn’t reply. She bowed her head and began taking small bites. She wiped her nose with her wrist.
I got a roll of paper towels off the drainboard and set it beside her. “It sounds like your baby is up.”
She set down her fork. “She needs changing.”
“I’ll do it.”
I went into a tiny side room where a baby of about nine or ten months lay on her side in a crib. I removed the dirty diaper and wiped her down and replaced it with a clean one. She looked curiously into my face and smiled when I rattled a toy and put it in her hand. A piece of red twine with an eight-point cross on it, stamped from brass, was knotted around her ankle.
I went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table without being asked. “That’s a sweet baby.”
“T’ank you.”
“Where’d you get that charm on her ankle?”
“Mine to know.”
“Don’t put it on the child’s neck.”
“I ain’t gonna do somet’ing like that.”
“You believe in the gris-gris?” I asked.
“I seen dead people. They got hungry eyes. It’s ’cause they cain’t eat or drink till they get inside someone and do it t’rew them.”
“You see these dead people at night?” I said.
“In the daylight. Standing right next to me in the grocery store. A lot of people ain’t what they look like. There’s a second person inside them.”
She did not speak like an ignorant person or even one who was superstitious. And for that reason she really bothered me. She looked through the window. “There’s my gran’mama.”
“The charm is called the Maltese cross. You won’t tell me where you got it?”
“A bubblegum machine,” she said.
“Who’s your pimp, Miss Hilary?”
“Like I’m gonna tell you?”
“Here’s my business card. If you want to get out of the life, call me. Don’t let Axel push you around. He’s a bully and a coward.”
“So how come he’s a deputy sheriff?”
Helen called me into her office the next afternoon. “Somebody poisoned Sean McClain’s pets.”
“When?” I said.
“He fed them last night. This morning they were dead. Whoever did it wanted to get both the cat and the dog. There was butcher paper with ground meat in the kennel, and a sardine can on the grass.”
“Did Sean have trouble with his neighbors?”