Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

Thanks, Mots, I thought.

Then I put in a call to the robbery division of the Toronto Police Department and talked with a lieutenant named Rankin. No, he knew nothing about a stolen armored vest. No, he had no knowledge whether or not the department might have sold off some of its vests; no, he had never heard of a Will Buchalter and, after leaving me on hold for five minutes, he said their computer had no record of a Will Buchalter.

'This man's a Nazi?' he said.

'Among other things.'

'What do you mean?'

'He likes to torture people.'

He cleared his throat.

'About eight or nine years ago I remember a case… no, it wasn't a case, really, it was a bad series of events that happened with a detective named Mervain. We had a recruit who bothered Mervain for some reason. He couldn't get this fellow out of his mind. It seems like the fellow was suspected of stealing some guns from us, who knows, maybe it was some vests, too.'

'What was the recruit's name?'

'I'm sorry, I don't remember everything that happened and I don't want to say the wrong thing and mislead you. Let me check with a couple of other people here and call you back.'

'I'd appreciate it very much, sir.'

Arraignment for the nun impersonator was at 11:00 A.M., and my best throw of the dice kept coming back boxcars, deuces, and treys. Clete called collect from a pay phone in Metairie.

'Dead end,' he said. 'Her address is in an apartment building that a wrecking ball went through six months ago.'

'Did you ask around the neighborhood about her?'

'I'm in a phone booth in front of a liquor store that has bullet holes in the windows. There's garbage all over the sidewalk. As I speak I'm looking at a collection of pukes who are looking back at me like I'm an albino ape. Guess what color these pukes are? Guess what color the whole neighborhood is.'

Judge Robert Dautrieve presided over morning court, that strange, ritualistic theater that features morose and repentant drunks who reek of jailhouse funk, welfare cheats, deranged drifters, game poachers, and wife abusers whose frightened wives, with blackened eyes, dragging strings of children, plead for their husbands' release. Almost all of them are on a first-name basis with the bailiffs, jail escorts, bondsmen, prosecutors, and court-assigned attorneys and social workers, who will remain the most important people they'll ever meet. And no matter what occurs on a particular day in morning court, almost all of them will be back.

Judge Dautrieve had silver hair and the profile of a Roman legionnaire. During World War II he had been a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor at Sword Beach, and he had also been a Democratic candidate for governor who had lost miserably, largely due to the fact that he was an honorable man.

The woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux filed into court on the long wrist chain with the other defendants from the parish jail. Her clothes were rumpled and her face white and puffy from lack of sleep. On the back of her beige pullover was a damp, brown stain, as though she had leaned against a wall where someone had spit tobacco juice. When the jail escort unlocked her wrist from the chain, she straightened her shoulders, tilted her chin up, and brushed her reddish gold hair back over her forehead with her fingers. Her face became a study in composure and serenity, as if it had been transformed inside a movie camera's lens.

I sat three feet behind her, staring at the back of her neck. She turned slowly, as though she could feel my eyes on her skin.

'Tell Buchalter we've got his vest,' I said.

But she looked past me toward the rear of the courtroom, as though she had never visited one before, her gaze innocuous, bemused, perhaps a bit fearful of her plight. To any outside observer, it was obvious that this lady did not belong on a wrist chain, or in a jail, or in a morning court that processed miscreants whose ongoing culpability and failure were as visible on their persons as sackcloth and ashes.

Her lawyer had once been with the U.S. Justice Department. He now represented drug dealers and a PCB incinerator group. His bald head was razor-shaved and waxed, and he had humps of muscle in his shoulders and upper arms like a professional wrestler. His collar and tie always rode high up on his thick neck, which gave him a Humpty-Dumpty appearance.

'Tell Buchalter his prints were all over the vest,' I said to the nun impersonator's back. 'That means he's going down on premeditated double homicide. Nasty stuff, Marie. Lethal injection, the big sleep, that kind of thing.'

She looked straight ahead, her face cool, almost regal, but her lawyer, who was talking to another man at the defense table, glanced up, then walked over to where I sat, his eyes locked on mine.

'What is it that makes you think legal procedure has no application to you?' he said. His body seemed to exude physical power and the clean athletic-club smells of deodorant and aftershave lotion.

'I was just asking your client to pass on a message to one of her associates,' I said. 'He cut open two guys with a chain saw. These were his friends. He's quite a guy.'

'You're harassing this woman, Detective. You're not going to get away with it, either.'

'It's always reassuring to know you're on the other side, Counselor.'

'You, sir, belong in a cage,' he said.

For thirty minutes I watched the judge go through the process of trying to heal cancer with Mercurochrome, his face sometimes paling, his eyes glazing over when a stressed-out defendant would launch into an incoherent soliloquy intended to turn his role into that of victim.