"Too bad."
"What does it take for you to get the message, Lieutenant?"
"I liked that kid, too."
"Then make a tribute to his memory by staying out of federal business."
He left without saying good-bye and I felt foolish and alone in the sunlit whiteness of my room. I was also starting to shake inside, like a tuning fork that starts to tremble at a discordant sound. There was a bottle of Listerine on my nightstand. I walked stiffly to the bath, rinsed my mouth, and spit into the sink. Then I sucked the juice out of my cheeks and tongue and swallowed it. Then I rinsed again, but this time I didn't spit it out. I could feel the alcohol in my stomach like an old friend.
A half hour later, two detectives from Internal Affairs stood over my bed. It was the same two who had investigated the shooting at Julio Segura's. They wore sports clothes and mustaches, and had their hair cut by a stylist.
"You guys are making me nervous. You look like vultures sitting on my bedposts. How about sitting down?" I said.
"You're a fun guy, Robicheaux, a laugh a minute," the first detective said. His name was Nate Baxter and he had worked for CID in the army before he joined the department. I had always believed that his apparent military attitudes were a disguise for a true fascist mentality. He was a bully, and one night a suspended patrolman punched him headlong into a urinal at Joe Burton's old place on Canal.
"We don't need too much from you, Dave," his partner said. "We're just vague on a couple of points."
"Like what you were doing in that snatch-patch out by the airport," Baxter said.
"I heard about a girl that wanted to turn a couple of Segura's people."
"You didn't find her?"
"No."
"Then why did you have to spend all that time out there watching the gash?" Baxter said.
"I waited to see if she'd come in."
"What'd you have to drink?"
"7-Up."
"I didn't know 7-Up caused people to shit their pants," Baxter said.
"You've read the report. If you don't believe me, that's your problem."
"No, it's your problem. So run through it again."
"Stick it up your butt, Baxter."
"What did you say?"
"You heard me. You get out of my face."
"Slow down, Dave," his partner said. "It's a wild story. People are going to ask questions about it. You got to expect that."
"It's supposed to be a wild story. That's why they did it," I said.
"I don't think there's any mystery here. I think you fell off the wagon, got a snootful, and crashed right on your head," Baxter said. "The paramedics say you smelled like an unflushed toilet with whiskey poured in it."
"I keep defending you. No matter what everybody says, I tell them that under that Mortimer Snerd polyester there's a real cop who can sharpen pencils with the best administrators in the department. But you make it hard for me to keep on being your apologist, Baxter."
"I think your mother must have been knocked up by a crab," he said.
His partner's face went gray.