"But we'll probably finish by eight-thirty, if that's not too late. I live by Audubon Park," she said.
See, don't argue with design and things will work out all right after all, I told myself.
But things did not go well back at the District the next day. They never did when I had to deal with the people in vice, or with Sergeant Motley in particular. He was black, an ex-care
er enlisted man, but he had little sympathy for his own people. One time a black wino in a holding cell was giving Motley a bad time, calling him "the white man's knee-grow, with a white man's badge and a white man's gun," and Motley covered him from head to foot with the contents of a can of Mace before the turnkey slapped it out of his hand.
But there was another memory about Motley that was darker. Before he made sergeant and moved over to vice, he had worked as a bailiff at the court and was in charge of escorting prisoners from the drunk tank to morning arraignment. He had seven of them on a wrist-chain in the elevator when a basement fire blew the electric circuits and stalled the elevator between floors. Motley got out through the escape door in the elevator's roof, but the seven prisoners were asphyxiated by the smoke.
"What do you want to know about her?" he said. He was overweight and had a thick mustache, and his ashtray was full of cigar butts.
"You busted her three times in a month—twice for soliciting, once for holding. You must have had an interest in her," I said.
"She was a ten-dollar chicken, a real loser."
"You're not telling me a lot, Motley."
"What's to tell? She was freebasing and jacking guys off in a massage parlor on Decatur. She was the kind a john cuts up or a pimp sets on fire. Like I say, a victim. A country girl that was going to make the big score."
"Who went her bail?"
"Probably her pimp. I don't remember."
"Who was he?"
"I don't remember. There's a new lowlife running that joint every two months."
"You know anybody who'd have reason to give her a hotshot?"
"Ask me her shoe size. When'd she become your case, anyway? I heard you fished her out of the bayou in Cataouatche Parish."
"It's a personal interest. Look, Motley, we cooperate with you guys. How about being a little reciprocal?"
"What is it you think I know? I told you she was just another brainless whore. They all come out of the same cookie cutter. I lost contact with her, anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"We busted the massage parlor a couple of times and she wasn't working there anymore. One of the other broads said Julio Segura moved her out to his place. That don't mean anything, though. He does that all the time, then he gets tired of them, gives them a few balloons of Mexican brown, and has that dwarf chauffeur of his drive them to the bus stop or back to the crib."
"You're unbelievable."
"You think a guy like him is interested in snuffing whores? Write it off, Robicheaux. You're wasting your time."
Fifteen minutes later, Captain Guidry walked into the office I shared with Clete. He was fifty and lived with his mother and belonged to the Knights of Columbus. But recently he had been dating a widow in the city water department, and we knew it was serious when the captain began to undergo a hair transplant. His gleaming bald scalp was now inlaid with tiny round divots of transplanted hair, so that his head looked like a rock with weeds starting to grow on it. But he was a good administrator, a straight arrow, and he often took the heat for us when he didn't have to.
"Triple-A called and said they towed in your car," he said.
"That's good," I said.
"No. They also said somebody must have broken all the windows out with a hammer or a baseball bat. What went on over there with the sheriff's department, Dave?"
I told him while he stared at me blankly. I also told him about Julio Segura. Cletus kept his face buried in our file drawer.
"You didn't make this up? You actually cuffed two sheriff's deputies to their own car?" the captain said.
"I wasn't holding a very good hand, Captain."
"Well, you probably had them figured right, because they haven't pursued it, except for remodeling your windows. You want to turn the screws on them a little? I can call the state attorney general's office and probably shake them up a bit."