"I already know Helen. You used to be a meter maid at NOPD," he said.
"Yeah, you were tight with Jim Gable," she said, smiling.
I turned and looked directly into Helen's face. But she didn't allow herself to see my expression.
"Jim's working liaison with the mayor's office," Ritter said.
"How about that Zipper Clum getting wasted? Remember him? You and Jim used to leave him hooked up in the cage," Helen said.
"A tragic event. Everybody laughed for five minutes at roll call the other day," Ritter said.
"We have to go. Thanks for your help, Ms. Deshotel," I said.
"Anytime, Mr. Robicheaux," she replied. She looked lovely in her white suit, her olive skin dark with tan, the tips of her hair burned by the sun. The silver angel pinned on her lapel swam with light. "Come see us again."
I waited until we were in the parking lot before I turned my anger on Helen.
"That was inexcusable," I said.
"You've got to make them wince sometimes," she said.
"That's not your call, Helen."
"I'm your partner, not your driver. We're working the same case, Dave."
The air rising from the cement was hot and dense with humidity and hard to breathe. Helen squeezed my upper arm.
"In your mind you're working your mother's case and you think nobody's going to help you. It's not true, bwana. We're a team. You and I are going to make them religious on this one," she said.
If indeed the man who had broken into Little Face's cabin was the same man who murdered Zipper Clum, the jigger named Steve Andropolis had been halfway right about his identity. The National Crime Information Center said the print we had sent through AFIS belonged to one Johnny O'Roarke, who had graduated from a Detroit high school but had grown up in Letcher County, Kentucky. His mother's maiden name was Remeta. At age twenty he had been sentenced to two years in the Florida State Penitentiary at Raiford for robbery and possession of burglar tools and stolen property.
While in prison he was the suspect in the murder of a six-and-one-half-foot, 280-pound recidivist named Jeremiah Boone, who systematically raped every fish, or new inmate, in his unit.
Helen sat with one haunch on the corner of my desk, reading from the sheets that had been faxed to us by the Florida Department of Corrections in Tallahassee.
"The rapist, this guy Boone? He was Molotoved in his cell. The prison psychologist says O'Roarke, or Remeta, was the regular punch for eight or nine guys till somebody turned Boone into a candle. Remeta must have made his bones by torching Boone," she said, then waited. "You listening?"
"Yeah, sure," I replied. But I wasn't. "Connie Deshotel seemed to be on the square. Why's she hanging around with a wrong cop, the gel head, what's his name, Ritter?"
"Maybe they just ran into each other. She started her career at NOPD."
"She stonewalled us, then fell over backwards to look right," I said.
"She got us the ID. Forget it. What do you want to do about Remeta, or O'Roarke, or whatever he calls himself?" Helen said.
"He probably got front money on the Little Face hit. Somebody besides us isn't happy with him right now. Maybe it's a good time to start jacking up the other side."
"How?" she said.
I glanced out the window just as Clete Purcel's maroon Cadillac pulled to the curb, with Passion Labiche in the passenger's seat.
9
I WALKED DOWN the hallway toward the building's entrance, but the sheriff cut me off.
"Purcel's out there," he said.
"I know. I'm going to meet him," I said.
"Keep him out of here," he replied.
"You're too hard on him."
"You want my job, run for office. I don't want him in the building."
I looked at his back as he walked away, his words stinging in my face. I caught up with him.
"It's not Purcel. It's who he's with. I think she bothers a few people's conscience around here," I said.
"You're out of line."
"With respect, so are you, sir," I replied, and went outside.
Clete was walking toward me from the curb. He wore a light suit and a tan silk shirt and a dark tie with tiny flowers on it, and his porkpie hat had been replaced by a Panama with a green-tinted visor built into the brim.
"What are you doing with Passion?" I asked.
"I took her to the clinic over in Lafayette."
"What for?"
"She sees a dermatologist there or something. She didn't want to talk about it."
"You didn't answer my question. What are you doing with her?"
"None of your damn business, Streak."
We stood there like that, in the heat of the afternoon, the shadows of the huge white courthouse falling on the lawn behind us. Then Clete's face relented and his eyes went away from me and came back again.
"I took her for a drive because I like her. We're going to dinner and a movie. You want to tag along?" he said.
"I want to talk to you in private."
"Yeah, anytime I can be useful. Thanks for the hospitality," he said, and got back into the Cadillac and drove away. Passion smiled at me, brushing her hair out of one eye with the ends of her fingers.
Clete came into the bait shop when I was closing up that night. He opened a bottle of Dixie beer and drank it at the counter. I sat down next to him with a Dr Pepper. "I'm sorry about today. I just worry about you sometimes, Cletus," I said.
"You think I'm over-the-hill for Passion?"
"You carried me down a fire escape with two bullets in your back. I don't like to see you get hurt."
"She makes me feel young. What's wrong in that?"
I cupped my hand on the back of his neck. The baked scales on his skin were as stiff as blistered paint. "Nothing's wrong with it," I said.
"So why did you want to talk in private?"
"We think the Zipper Clum shooter is a Kentucky product by way of Michigan. His real name is Johnny O'Roarke but he goes by Remeta. He did a two-bit in Raiford. He also got to be an expert in jailhouse romance."
"Same guy who was going to do Little Face?"
"That's the way I see it."
"The jigger said Remeta didn't have a sheet."
"You ever know a gumball yet who had the whole story right?"
"So Remeta blew off the hit and now he's in the shit-house with whoever gave him the contract. Is that what you were going to tell me?"
"That's about it."
He grinned and drank out of his beer. "And you think we should make life as messed up as possible for all bad guys involved?"
"Who's the best source for cold pieces around New Orleans?" I asked.
"It used to be Tommy Carrol, till somebody flushed his grits for him. Right now?" He scratched his hairline and thought. "You ever hear of the Eighteenth Street gang in Los Angeles? They're here, kind of like sewer growth metastasizing across the country. I never thought I'd miss the greaseballs."
I DROVE DOWN East Main at sunrise the next day, under the arched canopy of live oaks that lined the street, and picked Clete up at the apartment he had rented downtown. The moon was still up, the air heavy with the smell of night-blooming flowers and wet trees and bamboo and water that has seeped deep into the soil and settled permanently around stone and brickwork.
But three hours later Clete and I were in a rural area north of New Orleans that in terms of toxicity probably has no environmental equivalent in the country. The petrochemical plants on the edge of the wetlands bleed their wastes into the drainages and woods, systemically killing all life in them, layering the soil with a viscous, congealed substance that resembles putty veined with every color in the rainbow.
The man we were looking for, Garfield Jefferson, lived at the end of a row of tin-roofed shotgun shacks left over from the days of corporate plantations. The rain ditch in front was blown with Styrofoam litter, the yard heaped with upholstered furniture.
"This guy's a gun dealer?" I said.
"He creat
es free-fire zones for other people to live in and keeps a low profile in Shitsville. Don't be deceived by his smile, either. He's a mainline grad of Pelican Bay," Clete said.
Garfield Jefferson's skin was so black it gave off a purple sheen, at least inside the colorless gloom of his tiny living room, where he sat on a stuffed couch, legs spread, and grinned at us. The grin never left his face, as though his mouth were hitched on the corners by fishhooks.
"I'm not following y'all. You say you a cop from New Iberia and some dude give you my name?" he said.
"Johnny Remeta says you sold him the piece he did Zipper Clum with. That puts you deep down in the bowl, Garfield," I said.
"This is all new to me, man. How come the guy is telling you this, anyway? He just running around loose, popping people, calling in information from the phone booth?" Jefferson said.
"Because he fucked up a hit for the wrong people and he knows his ass is hanging over the fire. So he wants to cut a deal, and that means he gives up a few nickel-and-dime pus heads like yourself as an act of good faith," Clete said.
Jefferson looked out the window, grinning at nothing, or perhaps at the outline of a chemical plant that loomed over a woods filled with leafless trees. His hair was shaved close to the scalp, his wide shoulders knobby with muscle under his T-shirt. He fitted a baseball cap backwards on his head and adjusted it, his eyes glowing with self-satisfaction.
"A turned-around cap in Louisiana mean a guy don't do drugs. You white folks ain't caught on to that. You see a nigger with his hat on backwards, you think 'Mean-ass motherfucker, gonna jack my car, get in my daughters bread.' I ain't dealt no guns, man. Tell this cracker he be dropping my name, I be finding his crib. I got too much in my jacket to sit still for this shit," he said. He grinned innocuously at us.
Clete stood up from his chair and remained standing on the corner of Jefferson's vision. He picked up a ceramic lamp, the only bright object in the room, and examined the motel logo on the bottom of it.
"You got a heavy jacket, huh?" I said.
"Eighteen Streeters always get Pelican Bay. Twenty-three-hour lockdown. But I'm through with all that. I come back here to be with the home folks," Jefferson said.
Clete smashed the lamp across the side of Jefferson's head. Pieces of ceramic showered on the couch and in Jefferson's lap. For a moment his face was dazed, his eyes out of focus, then the corners of his mouth stretched upward on wires again.
"See, when people got a weight problem, they go around pissed off all the time, big hard-on 'cause they fat and ugly and don't want no full-length mirrors in their bathrooms," Jefferson said.
"You think you're funny?" Clete said, and hit him with the flat of his hand on the ear. "Tell me you're funny. I want to hear it."
"Clete," I said softly.
"Butt out of this, Streak." Then he said to Jefferson, "You remember those three elementary kids got shot at the playground off Esplanade? The word is you sold the Uzi to the shooter. You got something to say about that, smart-ass?"
"Free enterprise, motherfucker," Jefferson said, evenly, grinning, his tongue thick and red on his teeth.
Clete knotted Jefferson's T-shirt with his left hand and drove his right fist into Jefferson's face, then pulled him from the couch and threw him to the floor. When Jefferson started to raise himself on his arms, Clete crashed the sole of his shoe into his jaw.
"It looks like you just spit some teeth there, Garfield," Clete said.
"Get away from him, Clete," I said.
"No problem. Sorry I lost it with this outstanding Afro-American. Do you hear that, Garfield? I'll come back later sometime and apologize again when we're alone."
"I mean it, Clete. Wait for me in the truck."
Clete went out into the yard and let the screen slam behind him. He looked back at me, his face still dark, an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth. I helped Jefferson back onto the couch and found a towel in the bathroom and put it in his hand.
"I'm sorry that happened," I said.
"You the good guy in the act, huh?" he replied.
"It's no act, partner. Clete will tear you up."
Jefferson pushed the towel tight against his mouth and coughed on his own blood, then looked up at me, this time without the grin, his eyes lackluster with the banal nature of the world in which he lived.
"I didn't sell the piece to the cracker. He wanted one, but he ain't got it from me. He got some wicked shit in his blood. I don't need his grief," he said.
"What are you talking about?"
"He do it for hire. But if there wasn't no money in it, he'd do it anyway. You say he fucked up a hit? I don't believe it. He gets off on it, man. Somebody done reamed that dude good."
Clete and I drove into the French Quarter, then across the river into Algiers. We talked to hookers, pimps, house creeps, stalls, dips, strong-arm robbers, fences, money washers, carjackers, petty boosters and addicts and crack dealers, all the population that clings to the underside of the city like nematodes eating their way through the subsoil of a manicured lawn. None of them seemed to know anything about Johnny Remeta.
But an ex-prizefighter who ran a saloon on Magazine said he'd heard a new button man in town had bought a half dozen clean guns off some black kids who'd burglarized a sporting goods store.
"Who's he working for, Goldie?" I asked.
"If he waxed Zipper Clum, the human race," he answered.
At dusk, when the sun was only an orange smudge over the rooftops and the wind was peppered with grit and raindrops, we found one of the kids who had broken into the sporting goods store. Clete pulled him out of a fig tree down the street from the St. Thomas Welfare Project.
He was fourteen years old and wore khaki short pants and tennis shoes without socks. Sweat dripped out of his hair and cut lines in the dust on his face.
"This is the mastermind of the group. The ones who got away are younger than he is," Clete said. "What's your name, mastermind?"
"Louis."
"Where's the guy live you sold the guns to?" Clete asked.
"Probably downtown somewhere."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"'Cause he drove toward downtown. The same direction the streetcar go to."
"Pretty smart deduction, Louis. How much did he give you for the guns?" Clete said.
"A hunnerd dollars."
"For six guns?" Clete said.
"He said he didn't have no more money. He showed us his wallet. It didn't have no more money in it."
"One of those guns was used to kill somebody, Louis," I said.
He looked into space, as though my words and the reality they suggested had nothing to do with his life. He must have weighed eighty pounds. He looked like an upended ant, with small ears, hooked teeth, and eyes that were too large for his face. His knees and elbows were scabbed, his T-shirt glued to his chest with dried food.
"What'd you do with the money, partner?" I asked.
"Didn't get no chance to do nothing. Big kids took it. We was going to the show. Y'all got any spare change?"
His eyes blinked in the silence while he waited for an answer.
What had we accomplished? There was no way to tell. We had put the word on the street that Johnny Remeta was willing to give up people in the New Orleans underworld. Maybe either he or the people who had given him the contract on Zipper Clum and Little Face Dautrieve would be forced into the sunlight. But that night I was too tired to care.
When I was nineteen I worked on an offshore seismograph rig, called a doodlebug outfit in the oil field. It was the summer of 1957, the year that Hurricane Audrey pushed a tidal wave out of the Gulf of Mexico on top of Cameron, Louisiana, crushing the town flat, killing hundreds of people.
For weeks afterward bodies were found in the forks of gum trees out in the swamp or inside islands of uprooted cypress that floated out of the wetlands into the Gulf. Sometimes the long, rubber-coated recording cables we strung from the bow and stern of a portable drill barge got hung on a sunk
en tree in the middle of a bay or river and a crew member on the jugboat would have to go down after them.
The water was warm with the sun's heat, dark brown with mud and dead hyacinths. The kid who went over the gunnel and pulled himself hand over hand down to the fouled place on the cable did so without light. The sun, even though it was absolutely white in the sky, could not penetrate the layers of silt in the water, and the diver found himself swimming blindly among the water-sculpted and pointed ends of tree branches that gouged at his face like fingers. If he was lucky, the cable came loose with one hard tug in the right direction.