“Maybe.”
“This guy is a real creep, Dave.”
“How many PIs are normal people?”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m glad you explained that. Otherwise I would think you’re insulting as hell.”
CLETE HAD SAID that since Katrina he had heard the sounds of little piggy feet clattering to the trough. I think his image was kind. I think the reality was far worse. The players were much bigger than the homegrown parasites that have sucked the life out of Louisiana for generations. The new bunch was educated and groomed and had global experience in avarice and venality and made the hair-oil and polyester crowd in our state legislature look like the Ecclesiastical College of Cardinals. Think of an inverted pyramid. Staggering sums of money were given to insider corporations who subcontracted the jobs to small outfits that used only nonunion labor. A $500 million contract for debris removal was given to a company in Miami that did not own a single truck, then the work was subcontracted to people who actually load debris and haul it away. Emergency roof repairs, what are called “blue roof jobs,” involved little more than tacking down rolls of blue felt on plywood. FEMA provided the felt free. Insider contractors got the jobs for one hundred dollars a square foot and paid the subs two dollars a square foot. In the meantime, fifty thousand nonunion workers were brought into the city, most of them from the Caribbean, and were paid an average of eight to nine dollars an hour to do the work.
Why dwell on it? It’s unavoidable. It became obvious right after Katrina that the destruction of New Orleans was an ongoing national tragedy and probably an American watershed in the history of political cynicism. I knew early on that the events taking place in New Orleans now would lay large claim on the rest of my career if not my life. If I had been able to convince myself otherwise, the call I was about to receive from Special Agent Betsy Mossbacher would have quickly disillusioned me.
“Sorry to bother you again, but I’ve got some conflicting information here regarding a Felix Ramos, street name Chula Ramos. This guy and his buddy were supposed to be transferred from the Iberia Parish Prison into our custody,” she said.
“That’s right. He and his fall partner got nailed at a meth lab. I interviewed both of them. That was right before Katrina. You guys were supposed to pick them up.”
“Two informants, independently of each other, say Chula is working as an electrician and plumber in New Orleans. I’ve talked to five different people in Iberia Parish, including your jailer. No one seems to know where Ramos is or what happened to him or if he ever existed. Can you explain that?”
“How about his partner?”
“His partner is in the stockade. There’s no problem with his partner. Not unless you guys lose him before we can get down there.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
I called the parish prison and the district attorney. Then I went into Helen’s office. “The FBI thinks we’ve lost Felix Ramos, one of those guys who—”
“Yeah, the one who called me a queer in Spanish.”
“Yeah, that one,” I said, my eyes slipping off hers. “The ADA who caught the case says he was marked for transfer to federal custody, so she put everything on hold. In fact, she thought the FBI had already picked him up.”
“Maybe they did. Maybe they lost him in their own system.”
“Betsy Mossbacher isn’t one to screw up like that. She says Ramos may be drawing paychecks in New Orleans. A lot of MS-13 guys are in the trades.”
“Give me a few minutes,” she said.
I went back to my office. It was almost quitting time. I felt like I was in a bad dream, unable to extract myself from New Orleans and the Melancon-Rochon shooting and the probable homicide of Jude LeBlanc. I wanted to go home and eat a hot supper with my family and perhaps walk down Main Street with them in the twilight and have a dessert on the terrace behind Clementine’s restaurant. I wanted to have a normal life again.
My extension buzzed. “Ramos’s name got misspelled on the arrest report,” Helen said. “The misspelling went into the computer. We have three other inmates in custody who have similar names. One of them finished his sentence during Rita. The day he was supposed to get out he was at Iberia General for treatment of a venereal infection. Felix Ramos walked out in his stead. To top it off, the ADA says the bust probably won’t hold anyway. Ramos was a hundred feet from the lab when it was raided and there’s no evidence or witness statements to put him inside it. Nothing like drinkin’ rum and Coca-Cola on the bayou, huh, boss?”
IN THE MORNING I decided the only way to deal with the Melancon-Rochon file was to hit it head-on and to stop giving a free pass to people who had lied to me. There was no conventional telephone service in New Orleans and I doubted there would be any for a long time. I called Otis Baylor and asked if he had a cell number for his next-door neighbor, Tom Claggart. “There might be one in my Rolodex,” he said.
“Do you mind looking it up?”
After a pause, he said, “Just a minute.”
He came back to the phone and gave me the number, but he did not hide his impatience well. “Does your call to Tom Claggart concern us?”
“I’m not sure. But it’s a police matter, Mr. Baylor. We’re not obligated to inform the public about the content of an investigation or the procedures we follow. I think it’s important we all understand that.”
He eased the telephone back into the cradle, breaking the connection.
I punched in Claggart’s cell number. He answered on the third ring. “Tom Claggart,” he said.
“This is Dave Robicheaux again. I need to check a discrepancy between—”