“I read your notebook. It doesn't seem to have any great illumination in it, Sonny.”
“Maybe I'm a lousy writer.”
“Why do these bozos want to kill people over your notebook?”
“They're called cleanup guys. They hose a guy and everything around him right off the planet.”
“I'll put it to you, partner, that girl died a miserable death. You want to help me nail them or not?”
A pinched light came into his face. His hand tightened on the edge of the table. He looked out toward the bayou.
“I don't know who they were,” he said. “Look, what I can tell you won't help. But you're a cop and you'll end up putting it in a federal computer. You might as well swallow a piece of broken glass.”
I took Roy Bumgartner's dog tag out of my shirt pocket and laid it on the table beside Sonny's Styrofoam coffee cup.
“What's that mean to you?” I asked. He stared at the name. “Nothing,”
he said.
“He flew a slick in Vietnam and disappeared in Laos. Somebody left this in my bait shop for me to find.”
“The guy was an MIA or POW?”
“Yeah, and a friend of mine.”
“There's a network, Dave, old-time intelligence guys, meres, cowboys, shitheads, whatever you want to call them. They were mixed up with opium growers in the Golden Triangle.
Some people believe that's why our guys were left behind over there.
They knew too much about ties between narcotics and the American government.” I looked at him for a long time. “What?” he said. “You remind me of myself when I was on the grog, Sonny. I didn't trust anyone. So I seriously fucked up my life as well as other people's.”
“Yeah, well, this breakfast has started to get expensive.”
“I've got a few things to do in town. Can you take yourself back to the jail?”
“Take myself back to-”
“Yeah, check yourself in. Kelso's got a sense of humor. Tell him you heard the Iberia Parish lockup is run like the public library.” I stuck my business card in his shirt pocket. “When you get tired of grandiose dog shit, give me a call.” I picked up my coffee cup and walked back toward my truck. “Hey, Dave, this isn't right,” he said behind me. “You want to hang from a cross. Do it without me, partner,” I said. At one that afternoon I called Kelso at the lockup. “Did Marsallus make it back there?” I asked. “Yeah, we're putting in a special cell with a turnstile for him. You're a laugh a minute,” he said. “Kick him loose.”
“You know what kind of paperwork you make for me?”
“You were right, Kelso, the prosecutor says we can't hold him. He wasn't a witness to anything. Sorry to inconvenience you.”
“You know your problem, Robicheaux? You don't like doing the peon work like everybody else-filling out forms, punching clocks, going to coffee at ten A.M. instead of when you feel like it. So you're always figuring out ways to work a finger in somebody's crack.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, keep that punk out of here.”
“What's he done now?”
“Giving speeches to the wet-brains in the tank. I don't need that kind of shit in my jail. Wait a minute, I wrote the names down he was talking about to these guys. Who's Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie?”
“Guys from another era, Kelso.”
“Yeah, well, two or three like your redheaded friend could have this town in flames. The wet-brains and stew-bums are all trying to talk and walk like him now, like they're all hipsters who grew up on Canal Street. It's fucking pathetic.”
Two days later Helen Soileau called in sick. An hour later, the phone on my desk rang.