"It's not our intention to compromise your privacy," I said.
But his eyes grew heated, as though he were remembering an unfinished, angry thought. "Back there at the house site, you made a serious accusation about my electrician. Did you file charges against him?" he said.
"In New Iberia we have no inspection system outside the city limits. Also, in Louisiana an electrical contractor has no liability one year after the work is done. You like building homes in Louisiana, Mr. Guillot?"
"I think you've got an ax to grind, Mr. Robicheaux. Let me say this up front. When I get pushed, I push back."
"Really?"
"Yeah, really," he said.
I tossed my business card on his desk. "Give me a call when I can be of service," I said.
That same afternoon the phone rang on the desk in Father Jimmie Dolan's office. He stared at the phone as it rang four times, then listened to the voice that came through the speaker on the message machine.
"Are you there, Father? Excuse me if I sound strange, but I have a broken nose, a mouth that looks like a smashed plum, and a tooth knocked out of my head. All done by a Catholic priest," the voice said.
In the background Father Jimmie could hear piano music and the sounds of street traffic.
"I know you're listening, Father. Would you please have the courtesy to pick up the fucking phone," the voice said.
"What is it this time?" Father Jimmie said.
"Because of you I'm up to my bottom lip in Shite's Creek and the motorboat is about to go roaring by."
"Could you do something about your language, please?"
"My language?" Coll said, his voice like a nail being pried out of dry wood. "I took ten thousand dollars up front for the whack on you. Now I have to pay it back or prepare to go through life with no thumbs."
"Then return it."
"I lost it at the dog track."
"Change your way, Coll."
"Sir, please don't be talking to me like that. I'm miserable enough."
"I called the police on you yesterday. If you won't worry about your soul, you might give some thought to what New Orleans' finest will do to you."
"If there's a trace on your line, it won't help. I'm on a cell."
"You're close by the little alcove in the French Market. I know the pianist who plays there. She's playing her theme song, "Down Yonder," right now."
"You leave a man no dignity. Can you help with the ten thousand? Maybe I could borrow it from one of your charities?"
"I'm hanging up now. I don't want you to contact me again."
"Oh, sir, don't do this to me. Don't fucking do this to a man who "
"Who what?"
"Maybe wants to remember who he used to be."
Father Jimmie replaced the receiver in the phone cradle, the plastic surface as warm as human tissue against his palm, his hand trembling for reasons he couldn't readily explain.
Early the next morning I drove to Abbeville and interviewed Gretchen Peltier, the woman whose name had been given to me by Will Guillot as his alibi witness. She was middle-aged, slightly overweight, her hair dyed a deep black to hide the white roots. She worked as a secretary for an insurance agency and her hands trembled on the desktop when I asked her about her whereabouts Monday night. Her employer was inside a glass-windowed office, his door closed.
"Can't we do this somewhere else?" she said.
"Sorry," I replied.
"I was with Mr. Will. At his camp. We're friends."
"What hours were you with him?"
"I left his camp at dawn. The next day. Does that satisfy you?" Her eyes were filmed with embarrassment.
Later the same morning, Helen Soileau and I and another plain-clothes served the search warrant on Dr. Parks at his home. His face looked sleepless; he had just finished shaving and a piece of bloody tissue paper was stuck to a cut on his chin. He stared at the warrant incredulously. "Search for what?" he said.
"Let's start with your shoes. Take them off, please," I said.
He stared long and hard at me, then the resolution seemed to go out of his eyes. He sat on a footstool in the living room and unlaced each of his black dress shoes and handed them to me. The shoes were new and the leather on them was buffed and smooth and bright as mirrors. "Let's take a look in your closet, Doctor," I said.
We went inside the master bedroom. The curtains were closed, the air oppressive. I felt almost claustrophobic inside the room. "Could you open the curtains, please?" I said.
He started to turn on the overhead lighting.
"No, sir. Open the curtains," I said.
"Why?" he said.
"Because I see better with natural light," I said.
When he pulled back the curtains the room was immediately flooded with sunshine. The window gave onto a patio and a beautiful view of the bayou and the live oaks in the side yard. But the potted plants on the patio were dead, the glass-topped table marbled with dirt and the dried rings of evaporated rainwater. Helen and I pulled all the shoes out of the closet and bagged two pairs of black ones.
Dr. Parks sat on the side of the bed, his shoulders rounded. His wife opened the bathroom door, looked at us briefly, then closed it again. "Look, you've got your job to do. I accept that. But I heard.. " he said.
"Heard what?" I said.
"You people found the gun that killed the daiquiri-shop operator," he said.
"The man who owns the weapon makes a convincing case it was stolen," I said.
"You think I go around stealing guns from people?"
"You attend gun shows, Dr. Parks?" Helen asked.
"Sure. All over the country."
"Ever buy a firearm at a tailgate sale?" she asked.
He rubbed his brow. "It's hopeless, isn't it?" he said.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"I've heard about stuff like this. You can't make your case and you zero in on the survivors of the victim," he said.
There were many rejoinders either Helen or I could have made. But you don't break off the barb of a harpoon in a man who has already been ripped from his liver to his lights.
We got back in the cruiser and crossed the drawbridge in Loreauville, then headed up the state highway toward New Iberia. We passed cane trucks and the old Negro quarters left over from plantation days and an emerald green horse farm with big red barns and pecan trees next to a white house.
"Why'd you want the curtains open back there?" Helen asked, watching the road.
"Their bedroom was like a grave. I couldn't breathe."
She glanced sideways at me.
"You didn't feel it?" I asked.
"You worry me, bwana," she said.
CHAPTER 8
On Saturday morning I drove with Clete to New Orleans to check out his apartment, which he had loaned to Gunner Ardoin and his little girl. We crossed the Atchafalaya on the arched steel bridge at Morgan City, the docked shrimp boats and old brick buildings and tile roofs and palm-dotted streets of the town spread out below us in the sunshine. Then we drove into rain that seemed to blow out of the cane fields like purple smoke, and by the time we approached the giant bridge spanning the Mississippi, Clete's Cadillac was shaking in the wind, the fabric in the top denting with hailstones.
We drove into the French Quarter and parked in front of his apartment on St. Ann. He ran through the rain and went upstairs into his apartment. A few minutes later he was back in the car, his brow knitted.
"Gunner taking care of the place?" I said.
"Yeah, everything looks fine," he said.
"What's wrong?" I said.
"He left a message on the machine. He said an Irish guy was asking around in the neighborhood a couple of days ago. A weird-looking dude with little ears. Gunner thought maybe this guy had business with me."