“Bella is a friend of mine,” I said.
“She’s a musician?”
“How’d you know?”
“Antoine Butterworth is always talking about blues musicians. I think he mentioned her name. She’s attractive.”
“She is.”
“I keep it simple and take care of my side of the street, Mr. Robicheaux. Where would you like to eat?”
“What do you mean, you take care of your side of the street?”
“I have no quarrel with the world and the way it operates.”
“That still begs the question, partner.”
His teeth were white, maybe capped. “Not for me. One thing intrigues me, though: the Maltese cross on her neck. You don’t see many of those around here.”
“Desmond has one tattooed on his ankle,” I said.
“He made a documentary on some bikers. Desmond doesn’t know the first thing about the subculture.”
“I think he can handle his own.”
“Des likes to be a man of the people. I could take him to places that would make him puke his guts. I suspect you could, too.”
“Not me,” I said.
“You didn’t get a whiff of the tiger cages or Charlie when he soiled himself after someone hooked him up to a telephone crank?”
“I never saw anything like that.”
“Lucky man.”
The ride was becoming an expensive one. I wondered how committed Alafair was in her relationship with Wexler. The images I had in my mind were the kind no father likes to look at.
“Hope I didn’t say anything offensive,” he said.
“Not a bit.”
We entered the tunnel of oak trees that led into the north end of New Iberia, and passed a home that had been built by a man of color who owned slaves and operated a brick factory prior to emancipation. The wood was desiccated, eaten from within by Formosa termites, painted over, the building stained an ugly off-white by dust clouds and smoke from stubble fires. To change the subject, I mentioned the origins of the house to Wexler.
“That’s nothing,” he replied. “You should have seen what the wogs could do with a burning tire. They’re at their worst when they turn on their own kind.”
I had him drop me off at a filling station on the edge of town, and I called Alafair for a ride home.
At four-thirty p.m. the same day, Helen called Bailey and me into her office. She was walking up and down in front of the window, her hands on her hips, her face conflicted. A yellow legal pad scrawled with blue ink lay on her blotter. “The sheriff of Cameron Parish called. Early this morning a couple of guys driving an expensive car with a Florida tag went into a motel room and fired two rounds through a shower curtain. The water was running, but the motel guest must have gone out the window. The shooter probably used a silencer. The sheriff thought it looked like a professional hit, so he dusted the sill and sent the latents to AFIS. Guess whose name popped up.”
“Tillinger?” I said.
“It gets better. Somebody in another room saw a weird-looking guy leave Tillinger’s room several hours earlier.”
“Weird-looking in what way?” Bailey asked.
Helen read from her legal pad: “ ‘A guy who looks like he was squeezed out of a toothpaste tube.’ ”
“Smiley?” I said.
“I don’t get the guys with the Florida tag,” Helen said. “Why would Smiley be with Tillinger? Why do the Florida guys want to pop Tillinger?”
“I think it has something to do with money laundering,” I said.
“But what the hell does Tillinger have to do with it?” Helen said.
“Maybe he’s a thorn in their side,” I said. “He’s got an obsession with Lucinda Arceneaux’s death. He also wants to have a documentary made about his life.”
Helen looked at Bailey. “What do you think?”
“None of this explains the tarot,” Bailey said. “Or the way Hilary Bienville died. I think our killer is driven by rage and the motivation is sexual. The implications of the baton down Devereaux’s throat are hard to ignore.”
“The mayor’s office and the chamber of commerce say our tourism has dropped probably fifty percent,” Helen said. “The mayor asked me this morning about our ‘progress.’ I didn’t tell him Smiley is back. Are you sure you saw him, Dave?”
“What kind of question is that?” I said.
“Frenchie Lautrec was in my office this morning. He says you beat the crap out of him.”
“Why’s he telling you that now?” I said.
“He’s dumping in his pants.”
“Why?” I said.
“He’s not big on sharing.”
“We gave him a uniform and a badge and power over defenseless people,” I said. “He’s a coward. That’s why he’s afraid. Not because of me.”
“You don’t look like you had a lot of sleep last night,” she said.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “What if Bailey and I go down to Cameron Parish?”
“Have at it,” she replied.
Bailey checked out a cruiser and lit it up, and we were at the motel in less than two hours. The sky was lidded with rain clouds, lead-colored, the wind blowing out of the south, the waves filled with yellow sand and seaweed and swelling over a dock that resembled a torn spinal cord. The motel owner took us to Tillinger’s room. The lock had been jimmied, and the interior of the room was crisscrossed with footprints, probably from cops at the scene. The owner pushed open the bathroom door. He was a small, nervous man who wore a tie and a white shirt and stank of cigarettes smoked in a closed room.
“You can see the two holes in the curtain,” he said. “The bullets hit the wall by the window. They left the shower running. It almost ran my tank empty.”
“What kind of vehicle did your guest drive?” I said.
“A truck like a painter or plumber uses. Full of dents.”
“Where is it?” Bailey said.
“The cops come back and towed it off,” he said. “They say this guy broke out of a prison hospital. He killed his family.”
I showed him a picture of Tillinger.
“That’s him,” the owner said. “Who’s gonna pay for all this?”
“All what?” Bailey said.
“The holes in the wall. The rug. The shower curtain. The door. My water bill.”
“How long was our guy with you?” I asked.
“Two weeks and three days. This is the state’s fault.”
“What is?” I said.
“The guy running loose. Vandalizing people’s property. The three guests that checked out when they saw cops all over the place.”
“We’ll look around a bit and let you know when we leave,” I said.
“Look at that lock,” he said, glaring at the doorjamb as he walked out. “Don’t mess up this room any more than it is.”
“You got it,” I said.
He slammed the door.
“What a happy guy,” Bailey said.
I pushed the door snug with the jamb and wedged a chair under the knob. “He’s going to be even unhappier.”
“What are you doing?”
“Tillinger was in the room for over two weeks. He left behind everything he owns.”
“The Cameron deputies or cops from Texas probably bagged it,” she said.
“They bagged what they saw. Tillinger has outsmarted all of us at every turn.”
The desk and closet and chest of drawers were empty except for a Gideon’s Bible in the desk drawer. A copy of Time magazine and a soiled shirt lay on the floor in the bathroom. I pulled the sheets and blanket and bedspread off the bed and upended the mattress against the wall. Nothing. I stood on the bed and unscrewed the vent high on the wall and reached inside. When I removed my hand, it was covered with cobwebs and dust. I climbed back down and ran the pages of the Bible against my thumb. They were heavily annotated with a ballpoint. The ink did not look old.