'My name's Dave Robicheaux. The man you saw at Tommy's house.'
'No. Where work? Who are?'
'I live in New Iberia. I'd like to help you. That's on the square. Do you understand me?'
'I go to jail because of boys?'
'Forget those guys. They're pukes. Nobody cares about them.'
'No jail?'
'That's right. What do you know about the vigilante, Manuel?'
He twisted his face away from me and stared out the passenger window, his lips as tight as the stitched mouth on a shrunken head. His leathery, work-worn hands looked like starfish clutched around the sack in his lap.
It was still raining a half hour later when I drove down Tommy Lonighan's drive, past the main house to the cottage where Manuel lived. Steam drifted off the coral-lined goldfish ponds; the door to the greenhouse banged like rifle shots in the wind. I cut the engine. Manuel sat motionless, with his hand resting on the door handle.
'Good luck to you,' I said.
'Why do?'
'Why do what?'
'Why help?'
'I think you're being used.' I took my business card out of my wallet and handed it to him. 'Call that telephone number if you want to talk.'
But it was obvious that he had little comprehension of what the words on the card meant. I slipped my badge holder out of my back pocket and opened it in front of him.
'I'm a police officer,' I said.
His hairline actually receded on his skull, like a rubber mask being stretched against bone; his nostrils whitened and constricted, as though he were inhaling air off a block of ice.
'All cops aren't bad, Manuel. Even those guys at the jail wanted to help you. They could have called Immigration if they had wanted.'
Bad word to use. The top of his left thigh was flexed like iron and trembling against his pants leg. I reached across him and popped the door open.
'Adios,' I said. 'Stay away from the pukes. Stay off Dauphine Street. Okay? Good-bye. Hasta whatever.'
I left him standing in the rain, his black hair splayed on his head like running paint, and drove back down the driveway. The gateman, a rain hat pulled down on his eyes, open
ed up for me. I rolled my window down as I drew abreast of him.
'Where's Tommy?' I said.
'He went out to the St. Charles Parish jail to pick up the Indian. He's gonna be a little pissed when he gets back.'
'It's not Manuel's fault.'
'Tell me about it. I'm working his shift. The guy's a fucking savage, Robicheaux. He eats mushrooms off the lawn, he's got a fucking blowgun in his room.'
Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought. You frighten and confuse a retarded man, then leave him to the care of a headcase like Tommy Lonighan.
'Leave the gate open,' I said.
I made a U-turn in the street and headed back up the drive. I got out of the truck, a newspaper over my head, and walked toward Manuel's cottage. Then I stopped. At the rear of the greenhouse, kneeling in the rain, Manuel was chopping a hole through the roots of a hibiscus bush with a gardener's trowel. When the hole was as deep as his elbow, he dropped the trowel inside and began shoving the mound of wet dirt and torn roots in on top of it. The, hibiscus flowers were red and stippled with raindrops, puffing and swelling in the wind like hearts on a green vine.
Ten minutes later I called Ben Motley from a pay phone outside a drugstore. A block away I could see the water whitecapping out on Lake Pontchartrain and, in the distance, the lights glowing like tiny diamonds on the causeway.