”The agent says they're a hundred percent sure it's Sonny.“
”He worked for the Feds. He was an embarrassment to them. They want his file closed.“
”Do you know what denial is?“
”Yeah. With me it has to do with booze, not dead people.“
”You want to go to lunch?“
”No. Where's the body?“
”On its way to a mortuary in New Orleans. Leave it alone, Dave.“ She watched my face. ”Water and fish and crabs do bad things.“
I rose from my desk and looked silently out the window until she was gone. Outside, a trusty from the parish lopped a dead banana stalk in half with a machete, revealing a swarm of fire ants that fed off the rotten pulp inside.
”You sure you want to see it?“ the mortician, a middle-aged black man, said. It was late and he was tired. He wore a T-shirt and rumpled slacks without a belt, and there was stubble on his chin. ”Okay, if that's what you want. You say he was a friend?“
”Yes.“
He raised his eyebrows and opened the door to a back room where the temperature was twenty degrees lower than the front of the funeral home. It smelled of chemicals, stainless steel, the cool odor of scrubbed concrete.
Over his shoulder I could see an elevated flat-bottomed metal trough in the center of the room.
”It's going to be in a closed coffin. His relatives will never see inside it,“ he said.
He stepped aside, and I saw the bloodless, shrunken form stretched out inside the trough, glowing in a cone of electric light that shone from overhead.
”There's morticians won't work on these kinds,“ he said. ”I got a government contract, though, so I do everything they send me .. . Is that him?“
”That's not a human form anymore.“
”Your friend had red hair?“ I didn't reply. He waited. I heard him put on his glasses, fiddle with a fountain pen. ”I'll show you the bullet wounds. There're four,“ he said. He leaned over the trough, pointing with the pen. ”Two through the chest, one in the groin, one through the side. They look like dimples in oatmeal now.“
”There weren't any rounds,“ I said. ”Believe me, Mr. Robicheaux, those are exit wounds. I worked in the mortuary at Chu Lai, Republic of South Vietnam. I took guys out of body bags been in there a long time, get my drift? .. . Look, the government doesn't make the kind of mistake you're thinking about.“
”Then how'd we all end up in Vietnam?“ I asked. He walked to the door and put his hand on the wall switch. ”I'm turning off the lights now.
You coming?“ he said. I dreamed all night, then got up just before dawn and fixed coffee in the kitchen and drank it on the back steps.
The sun was still below the treeline in the swamp and the air was moist and cool and smelled of milkweed and the cattle in my neighbor's field.
I kept seeing Sonny's bloodless face and sightless eyes and red hair, like the head of John the Baptist on a metal tray. I flung my coffee into the flower bed and drove to Clete's apartment off East Main.
”You're starting the day like a thunderstorm, Streak,“ he said, yawning in his Jockey underwear, pulling a shirt over his wide shoulders.
”Alafair and Pogue both saw him. So did Ruthie Jean Fontenot.“
”People see Elvis Presley. How about James Dean or Adolf Hitler, for God's sakes?“
”This is different.“
”You want to go crazy? Keep living inside your head like that.“ He slid a carton of chocolate milk and a box of jelly doughnuts out of the icebox and started eating. ”You want some?“ he asked. ”I want to jump-start Patsy Dap.“
”How you going to feel if he takes down Johnny Carp?“
”I won't feel anything,“ I said. ”Yeah, I bet.“
”I won't ever believe Sonny's dead,“ I said. ”Don't talk to me about this stuff anymore.“