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

"It's a speculation, Rosie, and I just told you about it."

"Where do you think there might be a tie-in?" she said, and her face became clear again.

&nbs

p; "I'm not sure. But one of his hoods, a character named Cholo Manelli, told me that he and Julie had been talking about the girl's death. Then ten minutes later Julie told me he hadn't heard or read anything about it. So one of them is lying, and I think it's Julie."

"Why not the hood, what's his name, Cholo?"

"When a guy like Cholo lies or tries to jerk somebody around, he doesn't involve his boss's name. He has no doubt about how dangerous that can be. Anyway, what did you get from Hogman?"

"Not much. He just pointed at you and said, 'Tell that other one yonder ain't every person innocent, ain't every person listen when they ought to, either.' What do you make of that?"

"Hogman likes to be an enigma."

"Those scars on his arms—"

"He had a bunch of knife beefs in Angola. Back in the 1940s he murdered a white burial-insurance collector who was sleeping with his wife. Hogman's a piece of work, believe me. The hacks didn't know how to deal with him. They put him in the sweat box on Camp A for eighteen days one time."

"How'd he kill the white man?"

"With a cane knife on the white man's front gallery. In broad daylight. People around here talked about that one for a long time."

I could see a thought working in her eyes.

"He's not a viable suspect, Rosie," I said.

"Why not?"

"Hogman's not a bad guy. He doesn't trust white people much, and he's a little prideful, but he wouldn't hurt a nineteen-year-old girl."

"That's it? He's not a bad guy? Although he seems to have a lifetime history of violence with knives? Good God."

"Also the nightclub owner says Hogman never left the club that night."

She got in the truck and closed the door. Her shoulders were almost below the level of the window. I got in on the driver's side and started the engine.

"Well, that clears all that up, then," she said. "I guess the owner kept his eyes on our man all night. You all certainly have an interesting way of conducting an investigation."

"I'll make you a deal. I'll talk with Hogman again if you'll check out this fellow Murphy Doucet."

"Because he's with the Teamsters?"

"That's right. Let's find out how these guys developed an interest in the War Between the States."

"You know what 'transfer' is in psychology?"

"What's the point?"

"Earlier you suggested that maybe I had a private agenda about Julie Balboni. Do you think that perhaps it's you who's taking the investigation into a secondary area?"

"Could be. But you can't ever tell what'll fly out of the tree until you throw a rock into it."

It was a flippant thing to say. But at the time it seemed innocent and of little more consequence than the warm breeze blowing across the cane and the plum-colored thunderclouds that were building out over the Gulf.

Sam "Hogman" Patin lived on the bayou south of town in a paintless wood-frame house overgrown with banana trees and with leaf-clogged rain gutters and screens that were orange with rust. The roof was patched with R.C. Cola signs, the yard a tangle of weeds, automobile and washing-machine parts, morning-glory vines, and pig bones; the gallery and one corner of the house sagged to one side like a broken smile.

I had waited until later in the day to talk to him at his house. I knew that he wouldn't have talked to me in front of other people at the movie set, and actually I wasn't even sure that he would tell me anything of importance now. He had served seventeen years in Angola, the first four of which he had spent on the Red Hat gang. These were the murderers, the psychotics, and the uncontrollable. They wore black-and-white stripes and straw hats that had been dipped in red paint, always ran double-time under the mounted gunbulls, and were punished on anthills, in cast-iron sweatboxes, or with the Black Betty, a leather whip that could flay a man's back to marmalade.