Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

Maybe Buford was right, I thought as I drove down the old highway through Broussard into New Iberia. I sometimes saw design where there was none, and I had maintained a long and profound distrust of all forms of authority, even the one I served, and the LaRose family had been vested with wealth and power since antebellum days.

But maybe it was also time to have another talk with Mingo Bloomberg, provided I could find him.

As irony would have it, I found a message from Mingo's lawyer in my mailbox when I got back to the department. Mingo would not be hard to find, after all. He was in New Orleans' City Prison and wanted to see me.

Late Tuesday morning I was at the barred entrance to a long corridor of individual cells where snitches and the violent and the incorrigible were kept in twenty-three-hour lockdown. The turnkey opened Mingo's cell, cuffed him to a waist chain, and led him down the corridor toward me. While a second turnkey worked the levers to slide back the door on the lockdown area, I could see handheld mirrors extended from bars all the way down the series of cells, each reflecting a set of disembodied eyes.

Both turnkeys escorted us into a bare-walled interview room that contained a scarred wood table and three folding chairs. They were powerful, heavyset men with the top-heavy torsos of weight lifters.

"Thanks," I said.

But they remained where they were.

"I want to be alone with him. I'd appreciate your unhooking him, too," I said.

The turnkeys looked at each other. Then the older one used his key on each of the cuffs and said, "Suit yourself. Bang on the door when you're finished. We won't be far."

After they went out, I could still see them through the elongated, reinforced viewing glass in the door.

"It looks like they're coming down pretty hard on you, Mingo. I thought you'd be sprung by now," I said.

"They say I'm a flight risk."

He was clean-shaved, his jailhouse denims pressed neatly, his copper hair combed back on his scalp like a 1930s leading man's. But his eyes looked wired, and a dry, unwashed odor like sweat baked on the skin by a radiator rose from his body.

"I don't get it. Your people don't protect cop killers," I said.

He propped one elbow on the table and bit his thumbnail.

"It's the other way around. At least that's what the prosecutor's office thinks. That's what those clowns you used to work with at First District think," he said.

"You've lost me."

"You remember the narc who got capped in the Quarter last year? I was in the cage at First District when the cops brought in the boon who did it. Somebody, and I said somebody, stomped the living shit out of him. They cracked his skull open on a cement floor and crushed his, what do you call it, his thorax. At least that's what people say. I don't know, because I didn't see it. But the dead boon's family is making a big stink and suing the city of New Orleans for fifty million dollars. Some cops might end up at Angola, too. You ever see a co

p do time? Think about the possibilities for his food before he puts a fork in it."

I kept my eyes flat, waited a moment, removed my sunglasses from their case and clicked them in my palm.

"What are you trying to trade?" I asked.

"I want out of here."

"I don't have that kind of juice."

"I want out of lockdown."

"Main pop may not be a good place for you, Mingo."

"You live on Mars? I'm safe in main pop. I got problems when I'm in lockdown and cops with blood on their shoes think I'm gonna rat 'em out."

"You're a material witness. There's no way you're going into the main population, Mingo."

The skin along his hairline was shiny with perspiration. He screwed a cigarette into his mouth but didn't light it. His blue eyes were filled with light when they stared into mine.

"You worked with those guys. You get word to them, I didn't see anything happen to the boon. I'll go down on a perjury beef if I have to," he said.

I let my eyes wander over his face. There were tiny black specks in the blueness of his eyes, like pieces of dead flies, like microscopic traces of events that never quite rinse out of the soul. "How many people have you pushed the button on?" I asked.