'Don't let them kick her. Give me the address that's on her driver's license.'
I read it to him off the arrest report.
'Salt the shaft if you have to. You know why everybody loves straight shooters? Because they usually lose,' he said.
'See you later, Cletus,' I said, and hung up the phone just as the sheriff tapped on my glass and motioned me toward his office at the other end of the hallway.
He drank from his bottle of ulcer medicine, then leaned back in his swivel chair, bouncing the heels of his hands on the padded arms, and gazed at the potted plants and hand-painted flowered tea-pot on his windowsill. His stomach wedged over his hand-tooled gunbelt like a partly deflated football. He poked at it with his stiffened fingers.
'You never had ulcers, did you?' he said.
'No.'
'I think I'm getting another one. I eat grits and baby food and get up in the morning with barbed wire in my stomach. Why's that?'
'You got me.'
'What are we supposed to do with that gal you locked up last night?'
'We try to keep her there till we find out who she is.'
'She's got no arrest record. Also the charge you've got against her is a joke.'
'Not to me it isn't.'
'At arraignment, what do we tell the judge?'
'The truth.'
'How's this sound? "Your Honor, this lady represented herself as a Catholic nun in order to get the wife of Detective Robicheaux drunk. Because everybody knows that's what nuns do in their spare time."'
I opened and closed my right hand on my thigh. I fixed my gaze on a place about three inches to the side of his face.
'I apologize, I shouldn't have said that,' he said. 'But at best all we've got is a misdemeanor.'
'I think she murdered Charles Sitwell in the hospital.'
'Put her there, in the hospital, in the room, in her nun's veil, around the time of death and we have something. Look, the driver's license and Social Security card are real. She says she never told you or your wife or anybody else she was a nun.'
'You talked to her?'
'I went to the jail early this morning. The jailer's got her in isolation. A couple of the dykes were getting stoked up.'
'They like her?'
'Are you kidding? They were scared shitless. One of them claims your gal threatened to put out a cigarette in her eye.'
'Look, Sheriff, there's no easier ID to get than a driver's license and Social Security. But she had no credit cards. That's because credit bureaus run a check on the applicants. She's dirty, I think she's mixed up with Buchalter, and if we let her walk, we lose the only thread we have.'
'I admit, she puts on quite a performance. If I didn't know better, I'd probably let her baby-sit my grandchildren.'
'What explanation did she give you for being in my house?'
'She says she used to be a part-time librarian and now she's trying to become a freelance magazine writer. According to her, she met Bootsie in a lounge and befriended her because she thought she was a sad lady. She's pretty eloquent, Dave.'
He looked at my face and glanced away.
'Librarian where?' I said.