'I box here and I sweep up in the evening. You coming?'
'I'll think about it.'
I heard somebody begin to do a rat-a-tat-tat on a timing bag.
'You gonna tell her I called?'
'What's your name again?'
'Zoot.'
'That's a nifty name, Zoot. No, I'm not going to tell your mama that you called. But you listen to what I tell you, now. Don't be telling other people you know anything about vigilantes. Particularly around that gym. Okay?'
'Yes, suh. I mean, I got it. I'll be expecting you though. A deal's a deal, right? We got us a deal, ain't that right?'
'Wait a minute…'
'My mama said you was a nice man, said for me not to be blaming her trouble with Mr. Baxter on you. She's right, ain't she? I be here this evening, I be here early in the morning.'
He hung up before I could answer.
At three that same afternoon I received a call from the lawyer I had retained to represent Batist. He was the most successful criminal attorney in Lafayette. My five-minute conversation with him was another lesson in how the laws of finance apply to our legal system. The lawyer had confronted the prosecutor's office in New Orleans with the information given me by Lucinda Bergeron about the other murders; he also told them he could present a half dozen depositions to the effect that Batist was nowhere around New Orleans when they were committed. He also mentioned the possibility of civil suit against the city of New Orleans.
The homicide charge against Batist was to be dropped by tomorrow morning. 'That's it?' I said. 'That's it.'
'Did they bother to explain why he was ever charged in the first place?'
'They make mistakes like anybody else.'
'It sounds like they're pretty good at self-absolution.'
'I think we've done pretty well today.'
'How much do I owe you, Mr. Guidry?'
'There're no fees beyond what we originally agreed upon,' he said.
'You're telling me six thousand dollars for making some phone calls?'
'There was some investigative work involved as well.'
'Six thousand dollars without even going to trial?'
'I thought you'd be pleased to hear your friend was out of trouble.'
I was. I was also down eleven thousand dollars in attorney and bondsman's fees, which I would have to pay in monthly installments or with borrowed money.
That evening I took Bootsie and Alafair to a movie in New Iberia. It was raining when we got home, and the air smelled like fish left on the warm planks of a dock and wet trees and moldy pecan husks. Then, just when we were going to bed, Clete called from New Orleans and told me a strange story that had been passed on to him by a friend of his in the Coast Guard.
Two days ago, at sunset, out on the salt south of Cocodrie, a Coast Guard cutter had spotted a twenty-two-foot cabin cruiser anchored in the swells, the bow bouncing against the incoming tide. All week the cutter had been looking for a mother ship, perhaps a Panamanian tanker, that had been dumping air-sealed bales of reefer, with floating marker bottles, overboard for smaller, high-powered boats to fish out of the water and run through the bayous and canals to overland transporters who waited on high ground up in the wetlands.
There were two men in wet suits on board the cabin cruiser. They were lowering a cluster of underwater lights on a cable over the side when they saw the cutter approaching them. The Coast Guard
skipper was sure he had found a pickup boat.
He lost any doubt when the men on the cabin cruiser pulled the cluster of lights clattering back over the rail, sawed loose the anchor rope with a bowie knife, and hit it full-bore for the coastline and shallower water, where there was a chance the cutter would go aground on a sandbar.
But when they made their turn the late sun must have been directly in their eyes. Or perhaps in their attempt at flight they simply did not care that they had left a diver overboard, a man in a wet suit, with air tanks, whose head was shaved as bald as a skinned onion. He popped through a swell at exactly the spot his friends had cut the anchor rope. He probably had no explanation for the fact that the rope had suddenly gone slack in his hands and the gulf's placid surface had churned to life with the cabin cruiser's screws and the dirty roar of exhaust pipes at the waterline.