But she appeared to have little in common with her family, at least that I could see. In fact, Eunice Kovick’s father once said of his daughter, “The poor girl’s face would make a train turn on a dirt road, but she’s got a decent heart and feeds every stray dog and nigra in the parish.”
Why she had married Sidney Kovick was beyond me.
“How you doing, Eunice?” I said.
“Just fine. How are you, Dave?”
“Sorry about your house. Y’all have pretty good insurance?”
“We’ll find out.”
“Do you have any idea why those guys would rip your walls and ceilings out?”
“What did Sidney say?”
“He didn’t speculate.”
“No kidding?”
She had one of the sweetest smiles I ever saw on a woman’s face.
“See you, Eunice,” I said.
“Anytime,” she said.
MY LAST STOP was at the hospital where Bertrand Melancon had dropped his gun-shot brother. Chapter 12
B UT I DISCOVERED that Eddy Melancon had been moved to a hospital in Baton Rouge. I headed up I-10 into heavy traffic, the cruiser’s emergency bar flashing. By the time I reached the Baton Rouge city limits, the streets were jammed with automobiles, trucks, buses, and utility repair vehicles. Even with the priority status my cruiser allowed me, I didn’t arrive at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital until midafternoon.
I almost wished I hadn’t. I suspected that Eddy Melancon had probably caused irreparable injury to many people in his brief lifespan, but if such a thing as karma exists, it had landed on him with the impact of a spiked wrecking ball.
He looked weightless in the bed, raccoon-eyed, as though the skin around the sockets had been rubbed with coal dust. His body was strung with wires and tubes, his arms dead at his sides. I opened my badge holder and told him who I was. “Do you know who popped you?” I asked.
He focused his gaze on my face but didn’t respond.
“Can you talk, Eddy?”
He pursed his lips but didn’t speak.
“Did the shot come from in front of you?” I said.
His voice made a wet click and a sound that was like air leaking from the ruptured bladder inside a football. “Yeah,” he whispered.
“You saw the muzzle flash?”
“No.”
“You heard the shot but you saw no flash?”
“Yeah. Ain’t seen it.”
“Are you aware you guys ripped off Sidney Kovick’s house?”
“Ain’t been in no house.”
“Right,” I said. I pulled my chair closer to his bed. “Listen to me, Eddy. If people you don’t know come to see you, make sure they’re cops. Don’t let anybody you don’t recognize check you out of this hospital.”
&nbs