“What kind of car was it?” I said.
“A silver one, just like I said.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police about this?” I asked.
“Mr. Cesaire said I ain’t had to. Since I’d already give him the numbers, he was gonna take care of it. Didn’t need to talk to no police.”
A flock of crows rose from the cane field and patterned against the sky. “What numbers, podna?”
“The first t’ree numbers on the license plate. Wrote ’em in down in my li’l book. I keep a li’l book on everyt’ing I pick up from the road ’case the taxman call me in. I still got them numbers inside. You want ’em?”
I could hear clothes popping on a wash line, or perhaps the sound was in my own ears. Chapter 26
I WENT EARLY to the office the next morning and ran the registration on Tony Lujan’s silver Lexus and looked once again at all my notes concerning Cesaire Darbonne’s background. But what stuck in my mind about Cesaire was not written down in a notebook. Instead, it was his absorption as a duck hunter and the fact he had told me the scars on his left hand and arm had come about from a hunting accident. I called Mack Bertrand at the crime lab.
“I’m doing a little background work on Cesaire Darbonne. Did you tell me he’s a distant cousin of your wife?” I said.
“That’s right,” he replied.
“He was in a duck-hunting accident?”
“Yeah, as I remember. He poked his shotgun barrel into the mud and almost blew his arm off.”
“What did he do with the gun?”
“Pardon?”
“After the barrel exploded, what did he do with it?” I asked.
“How should I know?”
“You told me a couple of guys tried to rob his bar and he ran them off by firing a gun in the air.”
“Yeah, about fifteen years back. Why you pumping me, Dave?”
“You know why.”
“Hasn’t the guy had enough grief?”
“That fact won’t change what happened. What did Cesaire do with the shotgun after it exploded?”
“Ask him. I’m signing off on this.”
“Sorry to see you take that attitude, Mack.”
“The guy is already down for one murder and you want to put Tony Lujan’s on him, too?” He hung up.
I searched the department computer but found nothing on an attempted robbery at the bar run by Cesaire Darbonne. I spent the next two hours searching through our paper files with the same result. Then I called a retired plainclothes by the name of Paul LeBlanc who had worked for the department forty years before deafness and diabetes forced him to hang it up. Now he lived in an assisted-care facility by Iberia General and at first did not recognize my name.
“Dave Robicheaux,” I said. “I was with NOPD before I went to work for Iberia Parish. I used to own a bait shop and boat-rental business south of town.”
“The one wit’ drinking problems?” he said.
“I’m your man.”
“How you doin’?” he said.
“You remember an attempted robbery at a bar owned by Cesaire Darbonne? It was a ramshackle hole-in-the-wall joint up the bayou. We’re talking about maybe fifteen years back.”