Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)
Page 10
”Mr. Moleen say different.“
”Who do you believe?“ I said, and smiled. ”It's what the people at the co'rthouse say. You want anything else, suh? I got to be about my work.“
”Thanks for your time.“ He walked off through the dappled light, his face turned innocuously into the breeze blowing across the cane field. Had I been a cop too long? I asked myself. Had I come to dislike someone simply because he'd been up the road?
No, it was the disingenuousness, the hostility that had no handles on it, the use of one's race like the edge of an ax.
But why expect otherwise, I thought. We'd been good teachers.
Five minutes after I walked into my office, Helen Soileau came through the door with a file folder in her hand and sat with one haunch on the corner of my desk, her wide-set, unblinking pale eyes staring at my face.
”What is it?“ I said.
”Guess who bailed out Sweet Pea Chaisson?“
I raised my eyebrows.
”Jason Darbonne, over in Lafayette. When did he start representing pimps?“
”Darbonne would hitch his mother to a dogsled if the price was right.“
”Get this. The health officer wouldn't let Sweet Pea transport the coffin back to Breaux Bridge, so he got a guy to haul it for ten bucks in a garbage truck.“
”What's the file folder?“
”You wanted to question Pissant again? Too bad. The Feds picked him up this morning .. . Hey, I thought that'd give your peaches a tug.“
”Helen, could you give a little thought as to how you speak to people sometimes?“
”I'm not the problem. The problem is that black four-eyed fuck at the jail who turned our man over to the FBI.“
”What does the FBI want with a house creep?“
”Here's the paperwork,“ she said, and threw the folder on my desk. ”If you go over to the lockup, tell that stack of whale shit
to get his mind off copping somebody' spud at least long enough to give us a phone call before he screws up an investigation.“
”I'm serious, Helen .. . Why not cut people a little .. . Never mind ..
. I'll take care of it.“
After she left my office I went over to see the parish jailer. He was a three-hundred-pound bisexual with glasses as thick as Coke bottles and moles all over his neck.
”I didn't release him. The night man did,“ he said.
”This paperwork is shit, Kelso.“
”Don't hurt my night man's feelings. He didn't get out of the eighth grade for nothing.“
”You have a peculiar sense of humor. Roland Broussard was witness to a murder.“
”So talk to the Feds. Maybe that's why they picked him up. Anyway, they just took him out on loan.“
”Where's it say that? This handwriting looks like a drunk chicken walked across the page.“
”You want anything else?“ he asked, taking a wax paper-wrapped sandwich out of his desk drawer.
”Yeah, the prisoner back in our custody.“