"You got me."
"From what I hear about that scene in the restaurant, you tried to tear that fellow apart."
"Those guys think they're in the provinces and they can do what they want. Sometimes you have to turn them around."
"It looks like you got your message across. Balboni had to take the guy to the hospital. You broke his tooth off inside his gums."
"It was a bad morning. I let things get out of control. It won't happen again."
He didn't answer. I could hear him breathing through his nose.
"You want some coffee?" I said.
"No."
I got up and filled my cup from my coffee maker in the corner.
"I've had two phone calls already about your trip to New Orleans last night," he said.
"What about it?"
He took a folded-back notebook out of his shirt pocket and looked at the first page.
"Did you ever hear of a black guy named Robert Brown?" he asked.
"Yep, that's Downtown Bobby Brown."
"He's trying to file charges against you. He says you smashed his face into a men's-room door at the bus depot."
"I see."
"What the hell are you doing, Dave?"
"He's a pimp and a convicte
d child molester. When I found him, he was scamming two girls who couldn't have been over sixteen years old. I wonder if he passed on that information when he filed his complaint."
"I don't give a damn what this guy did. I'm worried about a member of my department who might have confused himself with Wyatt Earp."
"This guy's charges aren't going anywhere and you know it."
"I wish I had your confidence. It looks like you got some people's attention over in Jefferson Parish, too."
"I don't understand."
"The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department seems to think we may have a loose cannon crashing around on our deck."
"What's their problem?"
"You didn't check in with them, you didn't coordinate with anybody, you simply went up and down the Airline Highway on your own, questioning hookers and bartenders about a pimp with no name."
"So?"
He rubbed the cleft in his round chin, then dropped the flat of his hand on his thigh.
"They say you screwed up a surveillance, that you blew a sting operation of some kind," he said.
"How?"