"we've got a real prize in the holding cell," Helen said.
I followed her down the corridor to the lockup area and waited for the deputy to open the cell. The biker inside had a gold beard and head of hair like a lion's mane. His eyes reminded me of red Lifesavers, pushed deep into folds of skin that were raw from wind-burn or alcohol or blood pressure that could probably blow an automobile gasket.
His name was Jody Hatcher. A year and a half ago the court had released him to the Marine Corps, in hopes, perhaps, that the whole Hatcher family would simply disappear from Iberia Parish. His twin sister achieved a brief national notoriety when she was arrested for murdering seven men who picked her up hitchhiking on the Florida Turnpike. The mother, an obese, choleric woman with heavy facial hair, was interviewed by CBS on the porch of the shack where the Hatcher children were raised. I'll never forget her words: "It ain't my fault. She was born that way. I whipped her every day when she was little. It didn't do no good."
"They treating you all right, Jody?" I said after the deputy locked me and Helen inside.
"I don't like the echoes, man. I can't tell what's out in the hall and what's inside," he said, grinning, pointing at his head. He wore skintight black jeans and a black leather vest with no shirt. His face seemed filled with a merry, self-ironic glow, like a man who's become an amused spectator at the dissolution of his own life.
Helen and I sat down on the wood bench against the far wall. In the center of the cell was a urine-streaked drain hole.
"They say your saddlebags were full of crystal meth," I said.
"Yeah, dude I lent my Harley to probably really messed me over. Wow, I hate it when they do that to you."
I nodded, as though we were all listening to a sad truth.
"I thought you were in Haiti," I said.
"Got cut loose, man. You saw that on TV about the firelight at the police station? That was my squad. See, this native woman was cheering us up on a balcony and an attache busted her upside the head with a baton. That's why we was down at the police station. We camied-up and set up a perimeter 'cause we didn't want these guys hurting the people no more. The Corps is peace makers, not peace keepers, a lot of civilians don't understand that. We got the word these guys was gonna light us up, so this one dude comes outside and starts to turn toward us with an Uzi in his hand, and pow, man, I see the tracer come out of the lieutenant's gun, and then a shit storm is flying through the air and before I knew it I burned a whole magazine on just one guy, like chickens was pecking him to death against the wall. I wasn't up for it, man. That's some real cruel shit to watch."
He was seated on a wood bench, his wrists crossed on his knees, his fists clenched, his face staring disjointedly into space.
"Tell Detective Robicheaux about the Mexican cowboy," Helen said.
"We already covered that, ain't we? I don't like remembering stuff like that." He puckered his mouth like a fish's.
"You got to work with us, Jody, you want some slack on the meth," Helen said.
"It was right before I went in the Crotch. I met the Mexican guys in a bar in Loreauville. I was doing dust and rainbows and drinking vodka on top of it, and we all ended up out in a woods somewhere. It was a real weirded-out hot night, with fireflies crawling all over the trees and bullfrogs croaking and nutrias screaming out on the water. These guys had some beautiful meth, high-grade clean stuff that don't foul your blood. But this one cowboy tied off and slapped a vein till it was purple as a turnip, then he spikes into it and whop, he doubles over and crumples on the ground, with the rubber tourniquet flopping in his teeth like a snake with its head cut off.
"It's not like skag. You don't drop the guy in cold water or a snowbank. The guy's eyes rolled, all kind of stuff came out of his mouth, his knees started jerking against his chest. What are you gonna do, man? I was wasted. Jesus, it was like watching a guy drown when you can't do nothing about it."
"Is that all of it, Jody?" I asked.
"Tell him," Helen said.
"They dug a hole and buried him," he said.
"Who?" I asked.
"Everybody. I run off in the trees. I couldn't watch it… Maybe he wasn't dead… That's what keeps going through my head… They didn't get a doctor or nothing… They should have put a mirror in front of his nose or something…"
"Who was there, Jody?" I asked.
"The guy who just got elected governor."
"You're sure?" I said.
"He was strung out, crying like a little kid. There was some other Americans there had to take care of him."
"Who?" I asked.
"I don't know, man. I blacked out. I couldn't take it. I can't even tell you where I was at. I woke up behind a colored bar in St. Martinville with dogs peeing on me."
His face was swollen, glazed like the red surfaces on a lollipop, decades older than his years. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
Back in my office, Helen said, "What do you think?"
"Take his statement. Put it in the file," I answered.
"That's it?"
"Somebody snipped Jody's brain stem a long time ago."
"You don't believe him?"
"Yeah I do. But it won't stand up. Buford LaRose won't go down until he gets caught in bed with a dead underage male prostitute."
"Too much," she said, and walked out the door.
Saturday morning Clete Purcel drove in from New Orleans, fished for two hours in a light mist, then gave it up and drank beer in the bait shop while I added up my receipts and tried to figure my quarterly income tax payment. He spoke little, gazing out the window at the rain, as though he was concentrating on a conversation inside his head.
"Say it," I said.
"After I got to Vietnam, I wished I hadn't joined the Corps," he said.
"So?"
"You already rolled the dice, big mon. You can't just tell these cocksuckers you don't want to play anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because I keep seeing Jerry Joe's face in my dreams, that's why… That's his jukebox back there?"
"Yeah."
"What's on it?"
"Forties and fifties stuff. Every one of them is a Cadillac."
"Give me some quarters."
"I sliced the cord in half."
"That's a great way to deal with the problem, Streak."
A half hour later the phone rang. It was Buford LaRose. I walked with the phone into the back of the shop.
"Meet me at the Patio restaurant in Loreauville," he said.
"No, thanks," I said.
"Goddamn it, Dave, I want to get this mess behind us."
"Good. Resign your office."
"Crown's a killing machine," he said.
"If he is, you helped make him that way."
"You don't know, do you?"
"What?"
"About the guy who was just fished out of Henderson Swamp."
"That's St. Martin Parish. It's not my business. Good-bye, Buford." I hung up the phone.
"That was dickhead?" Clete said.
"Yep."
"What did he want?"
I told him.
"You're just going to let it slide down the bowl?"
"That about sums it up."
"Mistake. Stay in their faces, Streak. Don't let them blindside you. I'll back your play, mon."
He turned toward me on the counter stool, his scarred face as flat and round as a pie tin, his eyes a deep green under his combed, sandy hair.
"Listen to me for once," he said. "That was Mookie Zerrang you saw in the pirogue. You want the button man out of your life, you got to find his juice."
The bayou seemed to dance with yellow light in the rain. I wiped down the counter, carried out the trash, stocked the cooler in back, then finally quit a foolish dialogue inside myself and dialed Buford's answering service in Lafayette so I wouldn't have to call him at home.
"This is Dave Robicheaux. Tell Mr. LaRose I'll be in my office at eight Monday morning."
He was in at ten, with Ciro Tauzin from the state police at his side. The St. Martin Parish sheriff's report on a body recovered from Henderson Swamp lay on my desk.
"You starting to get a better picture of Aaron Crown now?" Buford said.
"Not really," I said.
"Not really? The victim's stomach was slit open and filled with rocks. What kind of human being would do something like that?" Buford said.
"I have a better question, Buford. What was a New Orleans gum-ball, a hit man for the Giacano family, doing at Henderson Swamp?" I said.
"He celled with Crown," Buford said.
"So why would Crown want to kill his cell partner?" I asked.
"Maybe he was gonna turn Aaron in. The guy had some weapons charges against him. Criminals ain't big on loyalty, no," Tauzin said, and smiled.
"I think he was there to whack Crown and lost. What's your opinion on that, Mr. Tauzin?" I asked.
The coat of his blue suit looked like it was buttoned crookedly on his body. There were flecks of dandruff inside the oil on his black hair. He rubbed the cleft in his chin with his thumb.
"Men like Crown will kill you for the shoes on your feet, the food in your plate. I don't believe they're a hard study, suh," he said.
"You get in touch with him through his daughter," Buford said. "If he'll surrender to me, I'll guarantee his safety and I promise he won't be tried for a capital offense…" He paused a moment, then raised his hands off the arms of the chair. "Maybe down the road, two or three years maximum, he can be released because of his age."
"Pretty generous," I said.
Buford and Ciro Tauzin both waited. I picked up a paper clip and dropped it on my blotter.
"Dave?" Buford said.
"He bears you great enmity," I answered.
"You've talked with him." He said it as a statement, not as a question. I could almost hear the analytical wheels turning in his head. I saw a thought come together in his eyes. There was no denying Buford's level of intelligence. "He wants a meet? He's told you he'll try to kill me?"
"Make peace with his daughter. Then he might listen to you."
Buford's eyes wrinkled at the corners as he tried to peel the meaning out of my words.
"A short high school romance? That's what you're talking about now?" he said.
But before I could speak, Ciro Tauzin said, "Here's the deal, Mr. Robicheaux. You can hep us if you want, or you can tell everybody else what their job is. But if Aaron Crown don't come in, I'm gonna blow his liver out. Is that clear enough, suh?"
I held his stare.
"Should I pass on your remarks, Mr. Tauzin?" I answered.
"I'd appreciate it if you would. It's quite an experience doing bid-ness with you, suh. Your reputation doesn't do you justice."
I made curlicues with a ballpoint pen on a yellow legal pad until they had left the room.
Two minutes later, Buford came back alone and opened the door, his seersucker coat over his shoulder, his plaid shirt rolled on his veined forearms. His curly hair hung on his forehead, and his cheeks were as bright as apples.
"You'll never like me, Dave. Maybe I can't blame you. But I give you my solemn word, I'll protect Aaron Crown and I'll do everything I can to see him die a free man," he said.
For just a moment I saw the handsome, young L.S.U. quarterback of years ago who could be surrounded by tacklers, about to be destroyed, his bones crushed into the turf, his very vulnerability bringing the crowd to its feet, and then rocket an eighty-yard pass over his tacklers' heads and charm it into the fingers of a forgotten receiver racing across the goal line.
Some Saturday-afternoon heroes will never go gently into that good night. At least not this one, I thought.
Probably over 90 percent of criminal investigations are solved by accident or through informants. I didn't have an informant within Buford's circle, but I did have access to a genuine psychotic whose dials never failed to entertain if not to inform.
I called his restaurant in New Orleans and two of his construction offices and through all the innuendo and subterfuge concluded that Dock Green was at his camp on the Atchafalaya River.
The sky was gray and the wide expanse of the river dimpled with rain when I pulled onto the service road and headed toward the cattle guard at the front of his property. I could see Dock, in a straw hat and black slicker, burning what looked like a pile of dead trees by the side of the house. But that was not what caught my eye. Persephone Green had just gotten into her Chrysler and was roaring down the gravel drive toward me, dirt clods splintering like flint from under the tires. I had to pull onto the grass to avoid being hit.
A moment later, when I walked up to the trash fire, I saw the source of Persephone's discontent. Two stoned-out women, oblivious to the weather, floated on air mattresses in a tall, cylindrical plastic pool, fed by a garden hose, in the backyard.
"Unexpected visit from the wife, Dock?" I asked.
"I don't know why she's got her head up her hole. She's filing for divorce, anyway."
He poked at the fire with a blackened rake. The wind shifted and suddenly the smell hit me. In the center of burning tree limbs and a bed of white ash was the long, charred shape of an alligator.
"It got stuck in my culvert and drowned. A gator don't know how to back up," he said.
"Why don't you bury it?"
"Animals would dig it up. What d' you want here?"
"You've been out in front of me all the time, Dock. I respect that," I said.
"What?"
"About the body on the LaRose plantation and any number of other things. It's hard to float one by you, partner."
His face was smeared by charcoal, warm with the heat of the fire. He watched me as he would a historical enemy crossing field and moat into his enclave.
"I spent some time in the courthouse this afternoon. You've got state contracts to build hospitals," I said.
"So?"
"The contracts are already let. You're going to be a rich man. Eventually Buford's going to take a fall. Why go down with him?"
"Good try, no cigar."
"Tell me, Dock, you think he'll have Crown popped if I set up Crown's surrender?"
"Who gives a shit?"
"A grand jury."
He brushed at his nose with one knuckle, huffed air out a nostril, flicked his eyes off my face to the women in the pool, then looked at nothing, all with the same degree of thought or its absence.
"You're dumb," he said.
"I see."
"You're worried about a worthless geezer and nigger-trouble that's thirty years old. LaRose'll put a two-by-four up your ass."
"How?"
"He wants company."
"Sorry, Dock, I don't follow your drift."
His thick palm squeezed dryly on the hoe handle.
"Why don't people want to step on graves? Because they care about the stiffs that's down there? If he gets his hand on your ankle, he'll pull you in the box with him," he said.
My lips, the skin around my mouth, moved wordlessly in the wind.
Bootsie and I did the dishes together after supper. It had stopped raining, and the sky outside was a translucent blue and ribbed with purple and red clouds.
"You're going to set it up?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I want to cut the umbilical cord."
"What's the sheriff say?"
"Do it.'"
"What's the problem, then?"
"I don't trust Buford LaRose."
"Oh, Dave," she said, her breath exhaling, her eyes closing then opening. She put her hands on my arms and lay her forehead awkwardly on my shoulder, her body not quite touching mine, like someone who fears her embrace will violate propriety.
In the morning I called Sabelle Crown and told her of Buford's offer. Two hours later the phone on my desk rang.
"I can be out in two or three years?" the voice said.
"Aaron?"
"Is that the deal?" he asked.
"I'm not involved. Use an attorney."
"It's lawyers sold my ass down the river."
"Don't call here again. Understand? I've got nothing more to do with your life."
"You goddamn better hope you don't," he said, and hung up.
The rest of the workweek passed, and I heard nothing more about Aaron Crown. Friday had been a beautiful December day, and the evening was just as fair. The wind was off the Gulf, and you could smell salt and distant rain and night-blooming flowers and ozone in the trees, and you had to remind yourself it was winter and not spring. Bootsie and I decided to go Christmas shopping in Lafayette, and I asked Batist to close the bait shop and stay up at the house with Alafair until we returned.
It wasn't even necessary. She was playing at the neighbor's house next door. When we drove away, Batist was standing in our front yard, his overalls straps notched into his T-shirt, the smooth, saddle-gold texture of his palm raised to say good-bye.