171877.fb2 Cadillac Jukebox - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 11

Cadillac Jukebox - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 11

CHAPTER 9

A day later Clete Purcel's chartreuse Cadillac convertible, the top down, pulled up in front of the sheriff's department with Mingo Bloomberg in the passenger's seat. Clete and Mingo came up the walk, through the waiting room, and into my office. Mingo stood in front of my desk in white slacks and a lemon yellow shirt with French cuffs. He rotated his neck, as though his collar were too tight, then put a breath mint in his mouth.

"My lawyer's getting me early arraignment and recognizance. I'm here as a friend of the court, so you got questions, let's do it now, okay?" he said. He snapped the mint in his molars.

"Mingo, I don't think that's the way to start out the day here," Clete said.

"What's going on, Clete?" I said.

Clete stepped out into the hall and waited for me. I closed the door behind me.

"Short Boy Jerry gave me two hundred bucks to deliver the freight. Don't let Mingo take you over the hurdles. Jerry Joe and NOPD both got their foot on his chain," he said.

I opened the door and went back in.

"How you feel, Mingo?" I said.

"My car was boosted. I didn't drown a black girl. So I feel okay."

"You a stand-up guy?" I said.

"What's that mean?"

"Jerry Ace is giving us an anchovy so we don't come back for the main meal. You comfortable with that, Mingo? You like being an hors d'oeuvre?" I said.

"What I don't like is being in New Orleans with a target painted on my back. I'm talking about the cops in the First District who maybe stomped a guy's hair all over the cement… I got to use the John. Purcel wouldn't stop the car."

He looked out the glass partition, then saw the face looking back at him.

"Hey, keep her away from me," he said.

"You don't like Detective Soileau?" I said.

"She's a muff-diver. I told her over the phone, she ought to get herself a rubber schlong so she can whip it around and spray trees or whatever she wants till she gets it out of her system."

Helen was coming through the door now. I put my hand on her shoulder and walked her back into the corridor.

"Jerry Joe Plumb made him surrender," I said.

"Why?" she said, her eyes still fastened on Mingo.

"He's tied up somehow with Buford LaRose and doesn't want us in his face. Mingo says he's getting out on his own recognizance. I think he's going to head for our witnesses."

"Like hell he is. Has he been Mirandized?"

"Not yet."

She opened the door so abruptly the glass rattled in the frame.

A half hour later she called me from the jail.

"Guess what? Shithead attacked me. I'll have the paperwork ready for the court in the morning," she said.

"Where is he?"

" Iberia General. He fell down a stairs. He also needed twelve stitches where I hit him with a baton. Forget recognizance, baby cakes. He's going to be with us awhile."

"Helen?"

"The paperwork is going to look fine. I went to Catholic school. I have beautiful penmanship."

Clete and I ate lunch at an outdoor barbecue stand run by a black man in a grove of oak trees. The plank table felt cool in the shade, and you could smell the wet odor of green cordwood stacked under a tarp next to the stand.

"Because I was up early anyway, I happened to turn on the TV and catch 'Breakfast Edition,' you know, the local morning show in New Orleans," he said. His eyes stayed on my face. "What the hell you doing, Streak?"

"Aaron Crown bothers me."

"You went on television, Dave, with this Hollywood character, what's-his-name, Felton, whatever."

"I was taped here while he interviewed me on the phone, then it was spliced into the show."

"Forget the technical tour. Why don't you resign your job while you're at it? What's your boss have to say?"

"I don't think he's heard about it yet."

"You don't take police business to civilians, big mon. To begin with, they don't care about it. They'll leave you hanging in the breeze, then your own people rat-fuck you as a snitch."

"Maybe that's the way it's supposed to shake out," I said.

He drank from a bottle of Dixie beer, one eye squinting over the bottle at me. "Something else is involved here, mon," he said.

"Don't make it a big deal, Clete."

"It's the broad, isn't it?" he said.

"No."

"You got into the horizontal bop once with her and you're worried you're going to do it again. So you got rid of temptation with a baseball bat. In the meantime maybe you just splashed your career into the bowl… Wait a minute, you didn't pork her again, did you?"

"No… Will you stop talking like that?"

"Dave, rich guys don't marry mud women from New Guinea. She's one hot-ass piece of work. We all got human weaknesses, noble mon. All I got to do is see her on TV and my Johnson starts barking."

"You were a fugitive on a homicide warrant," I said. "The victim was a psychopath, and his death was a mistake, but the point is you killed him. What if you hadn't beat it? What if you were put away for life unjustly?"

He wiped a smear of barbecue sauce off his palm with a napkin, looked out at the sunlight on the street.

"This guy Crown must mean a lot to you… I think I'm going to Red's in Lafayette, take a steam, start the day over again," he said.

An hour later the sheriff buzzed my extension and asked me to walk down to his office. By now I was sure he had heard about my appearance on "Morning Edition," and all the way down the corridor I tried to construct a defense for conduct that, in police work, was traditionally considered indefensible. When I opened the door he was staring at a sheet of lined notebook paper in his hand, rubbing his temple with one finger. His Venetian blinds were closed, and his windowsill was green with plants.

"Why is everything around here hard? Why can't we just take care of the problems in Iberia Parish? Can you explain that to me?" he said.

"If you're talking about my being on 'Morning Edition,' I stand behind what I said, Sheriff. Aaron Crown didn't have motivation. I think Buford LaRose is building a political career on another man's broken back."

"You were on 'Morning Edition'?"

The room was silent. He opened the blinds, and an eye-watering light fell through the window.

"Maybe I should explain," I said.

"I'd appreciate that."

When I finished he picked up the sheet of notebook paper and looked at it again.

"I wish you hadn't done that," he said.

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

"You don't understand. I wanted to believe the Mexican with the machete was simply a deranged man, not an assassin. I wanted to believe he had no connection with the Crown business."

"I'm not with you."

"I don't want to see you at risk, for God's sake. We got two calls from Mexico this morning, one from a priest in some shithole down in the interior, the other from a Mexican drug agent who says he's worked with the DEA in El Paso… The guy with the spiderweb tattoos, the lunatic, some rurales popped holes all over him. He's dying and he says you will too… He says 'for the bugarron.' What's a bugarron?"

"I don't know."

"There's a storm down there. I got cut off before I could make sense out of this drug agent… Get a flight this afternoon. Take Helen with you. Americans with no backup tend to have problems down there."

"We have money for this?"

"Bring me a sombrero."