"You'll need to at some point."
He looked small inside his white delivery uniform. The sleeves almost covered his folded hands.
"Hipolyte was selling dope for Jimmie Lee Boggs. That ain't all they was doing, either. They send some of them girls to Florida, to Arizona, anywhere Hipolyte take the bus. Them girls never come back. They families ain't ever find out where they at. All I ever done was taken Mr. Dore car, taken an old junk fan out his yard, but people be wanting to kill me. I tired of it, Mr. Dave. I tired of feeling bad about myself all th
e time, too."
I took a piece of paper from my wallet and wrote on it.
"Here's my address and phone number, Tee Beau," I said. "Here's the address and number of a bar where you can leave messages, too. Call me if I can help you with anything. Do you have enough money?"
"Yes suh."
"Don't look for Boggs anymore. You've done enough. Okay?"
"Yes suh. You want to know where I'm staying at?"
"I don't want to know. Give me your word you won't borrow any more cars."
He didn't bother to reply. He looked down between his knees and tapped the soles of his shoes on the pavement. Then he said, "You think I ever gonna get out of this?"
"I don't know."
"Gros Mama tell Dorothea that Jimmie Lee Boggs gonna die in a black box full of sparks. She say you go in there with him, you gonna die, too."
"Gros Mama's a juju con woman."
"She put the gris-gris on Hipolyte. When he in the coffin, his mouth snap open and a black worm thick as my thumb crawl out on his chin. It ain't not lie, Mr. Dave."
I had breakfast at the Café du Monde, then walked back to the apartment to call Minos at the DEA office. Before I could, the phone rang. It was Ray Fontenot.
"Your offer's accepted," he said.
"Ten thou a key, no cut?"
"What I just said, Mr. Robicheaux." Then he told me to meet him that afternoon in the parking lot of a bar just the other side of the Huey Long Bridge.
"You want me to make the buy in the parking lot of a bar?" I asked.
"We start it from there. Quit sweating it. You're gonna be rich," he said, and hung up.
I called Minos.
"It's on at five today," I said.
"Where?"
I told him about the bar.
"We'll have somebody inside, somebody outside taking pictures with a telephoto lens," he said. "But you won't know who they are, so you won't need to look at them. This is what's going to happen, Dave. They'll take you somewhere in their car, or you'll follow them in your truck. At some point they'll probably check you for a wire. We'll have a loose tail on you, but we're not going to get too close and blow it. So when you make the buy, you're pretty much on your own. Are you nervous?"
"A little."
"Carry your piece. They'll expect that. Look, you've handled it fine so far. The deal's not going to sour. They want you in."
"This morning I heard that Jimmie Lee Boggs is in town."
"Where?"