In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead (Dave Robicheaux 6)

"What is it?" she said.

"The Teamsters. Why does a Hollywood production company want to come into a depressed rural area and contract for services from the Teamsters? They can hire labor around here for minimum wage."

"Maybe they do business with unions as a matter of course."

"Nope, they usually try to leave their unions back in California. I've got a feeling this has something to do with Julie Balboni being on board the ark."

I watched her expression. She looked straight ahead.

"You know who Baby Feet Balboni is, don't you?" I said.

"Yes, Mr. Balboni is well known to us."

"You know he's in New Iberia, too, don't you?"

She waited before she spoke again. Her small hands were clenched on her purse.

"What's your implication?" she said.

"I think the Bureau has more than one reason for being in town."

"You think the girl's murder has secondary importance to me?"

"No, not to you."

"But probably to the people I work under?"

"You'd know that better than I."

"You don't think well of us, do you?"

"My experience with the Bureau was never too good. But maybe the problem was mine. As the Bible says, I used to look through a glass darkly. Primarily because there was Jim Beam in it most of the time."

"The Bureau's changed."

"Yeah, I guess it has."

Yes, I thought, they hired racial minorities and women at gunpoint, and they stopped wire-tapping civil-rights leaders and smearing innocent people's reputations after their years of illegal surveillance and character assassination were finally exposed.

I parked the truck in the shade of a moss-hung live-oak tree, and we walked toward the shore of the lake, where a dozen people listened attentively to a man in a canvas chair who waved his arms while he talked, jabbed his finger in the air to make a point, and shrugged his powerful shoulders as though he were desperate in his desire to be understood. His voice, his manner, made me think of a hurricane stuffed inside a pair of white tennis shorts and a dark blue polo shirt.

"—the best fucking story editor in that fucking town," he was saying. "I don't care what those assholes say, they couldn't carry my fucking jock strap. When we come out of the cutting room with this, it's going to be solid fucking gold. Has everybody got that? This is a great picture. Believe it, they're going to spot their pants big time on this one."

His strained face looked like a white balloon that was about to burst. But even while his histrionics grew to awesome levels and inspired mute reverence in his listeners, his eyes drifted to me and Rosie, and I had a feeling that Murphy Doucet, the security guard, had used his radio after all.

When we introduced ourselves and showed him our identification, he said, "Do you have telephones where you work?"

"I beg your pardon?" I said.

"Do you have telephones w

here you work? Do you have people there who know how to make appointments for you?"

"Maybe you don't understand, Mr. Goldman. During a criminal investigation we don't make appointments to talk to people."

His face flexed as though it were made of white rubber.

"You saying you're out here investigating some crime? What crime we talking about here?" he said. "You see a crime around here?" He swiveled his head around. "I don't see one."