"What's happening', Theo?" I said.
"I heard about your visit to my father's house."
"Your father has a problem with the truth. He doesn't think he needs to tell it."
"He says you talked to him as though he were a criminal."
"I talked to him as though he were an ordinary citizen. He didn't like it. Then, rather than confront me about it, he used his attorney to report me to the sheriff."
"He comes from a different generation, Dave. Why don't you have a little compassion?"
Time to disengage, I said to myself. The streetlights were coming on under the oak trees, and the air was cool and damp and I could smell an odor like scorched brown sugar from the mills. Theo set down the cat and stroked his back, then stood up. "You want to see my new guitar?" she asked.
"Sure. I didn't know you played," I said.
She came back from the car with her guitar and unsnapped the case. "I'm not very good. My mother was, though. I have some old tapes of her singing some of Bessie Smith's songs. She could have been a professional. The only person I've ever heard like her is Joan Baez," she said.
Theo removed the guitar from its case and sat down again on the steps. She made a chord on the neck and brushed her thumb across the strings, then began singing "Corina, Corina" in Cajun French. She had been much too humble about her ability. Her voice was lovely, her accompaniment with herself perfect as she ran each chord into the next. In fact, like all real artists, she seemed to disappear inside the thing she created, as though the identity by which others knew her had nothing to do with the inner realities of her life.
She smiled at me when she finished, almost like a woman delivering a kiss after she has made love.
"Gee, you're great, Theo," I heard myself saying.
"My mother used to sing that. I don't remember her well, but I remember her singing that song to me before I went to sleep," she said. She began putting away her guitar.
The cat she had named Snuggs nuzzled his head against her knee. The wind riffled through the oak and pecan trees overhead, and a group of children on their way to the library rode by on bicycles, laughing, the streetlights glowing in the dampness like the oil lamps in a Van Gogh painting. There was not a mechanized sound on the street, only the easy sweep of wind and the scratching of leaves on the sidewalk. I didn't want the moment to end.
But like the canker in the rose or the serpent uncoiling itself out of an apple tree, there had been an element in Theo's song that disturbed me in a way I couldn't let go of.
"The melody for "Corina, Corina' is the same as "The Midnight Special,"" I said.
"Un-huh," she said vaguely.
"That was Leadbelly's song. The Midnight Special was a train he rode into the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. According to the prison legend, the convict who saw the headlight on the locomotive shining at him in his sleep was going to be released in the coming year."
But I saw she had still not made the connection.
"Your father didn't want to answer questions about Junior Crudup, Theo," I said. "Crudup was Leadbelly's friend inside Angola. They probably composed songs together. I think Crudup was a convict laborer on your father's plantation."
She continued snapping her guitar case shut and never looked at me while I spoke. But I could see what I thought was a great sadness in her eyes. She reached over and petted the cat good-bye, then turned toward me. "You have an enormous reservoir of anger inside you, Dave. I guess I feel sorry for you," she said.
The next morning events kicked into overdrive, beginning with a phone call from Clotile Arceneaux, the black patrolwoman who Helen said was an undercover state trooper.
"We've got Father Jimmie Dolan in custody," she said.
"Are you serious?" I said.
"As a material witness. He won't give up Max Coil's whereabouts."
"Which administrative moron is behind this?" I said.
She paused before she spoke again. "Coll tried to kill the priest but he won't press charges. So a couple of detectives figured Father Jimmie is not a friend of N.O.P.D. and decided to put the squeeze on him. Look, the word on the street is there's an open contract on Max Coll. We need this guy out of town or in lock-up. We also don't need trouble from Catholic priests."
"Can't help you," I said, and hung up the phone.
She called back three hours later. "Guess who?" she said.
"Same answer as before," I said.
"Try this. We just heard from Miami-Dade P.D. Max Coll flew into Ft. Lauderdale, whacked two grease balls who were getting laid on a yacht, then caught the last flight back to New Orleans. At least that's what they think. Get Dolan out of Central Lock-Up. Better yet, get him out of the state," she said.
But I didn't have to spring Father Jimmie. The bishop and Father Jimmie's conservative colleagues at his church came through for him, evidently making trouble from the mayor's office on down through the chain of command at N.O.P.D.
Father Jimmie called me at home that evening. "You know the story of Typhoid Mary?" he said.
"A nineteenth-century cook or kitchen helper who caused problems everywhere she went?" I replied.
"The bishop is recommending I travel somewhere that's quiet and rustic. Maybe do a little bass fishing. I think anywhere outside of New Orleans would be fine with him," he said.
I shut my eyes and tried not to think about what he was obviously suggesting. "Straight up, Jimmie. Do you know where Max Coll is hiding?"
"Absolutely not," he said.
"Why didn't you file charges against him?"
"The cops need a Catholic minister to tell them Coil's a killer?"
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Want to entertain the bass?" I asked.
Father Jimmie moved into a back room of my house and the weekend passed uneventfully. On Monday Clete called the department and asked me to meet him for lunch at Victor's Cafeteria.
It was crowded with noontime customers, the wood-bladed fans turning high above us on the stamped-tin ceiling, the steam tables arrayed with Friday specials featuring shrimp or catfish or etoufee. Clete's plate was piled with dirty rice and brown gravy, kidney beans, and two deep-fried pork chops. He wore an electric blue shirt and white sports coat, his face red with sunburn from a tarpon-fishing trip out on the salt. "Dolan's at your place, huh?" he said.
I nodded, waiting for him to begin one of his lectures. But he surprised me.
"There's an N.O.P.D. snitch I pay a few bucks to. He called me this morning about a bail skip who's hid out in Morgan City. Then he mentions this guy Max Coll. He says Coll capped two high-level Miami grease balls and there's a fifty thou open whack on him. Which means every street rat in New Orleans is crawling out of the sewer grates."
"Yeah, I heard about it."
"Right," Clete said, feeding a half piece of bread into his mouth. "Well, tell me if you've heard this. At seven this morning either Frank Dellacroce or his clone was in the donut shop by the railway tracks."
"Here, in New Iberia? The guy you saw shooting pool in Fat Sammy's house?"
"He came out of the donut shop just when I was going in. At first he couldn't believe his bad luck. Then he puts on a wise-ass grin and says, "You fish for green trout over here, Purcel?" I go, "No, I'm looking for a needle dick who puts his own child in a refrigerator. Know anybody like that, Frank?"
"He goes, "That story is a lie my wife's lawyer spread about me during our divorce. So why don't you either pull your head out of your ass or mind your own fucking business?""
People around us were quietly picking up their plates and trays and moving to tables farther away from us.
"Just then two more grease balls come out of the donut shop. One used to be a shooter for the Giacanos. The other one I don't know."