He filled his shot glass with anisette, then sipped from it, as though testing its coldness, before draining the entire glass. He wiped his lips with the tips of his fingers, his eyes focused on the columns of sunlight in his yard, the motes of dust and desiccated leaves swimming inside them.
“There’s a nightclub here, where friends of a kindred spirit tend to gather,” he said. “It features its own kind of entertainment. Are you with me, sir?”
“I think so.”
“Most people who frequent this club have no problem with who they are. But others find excuses to be there.”
“We need to get to it, Dr. Edwards.”
“Slim and his friends would make themselves available at the bar. Of course, the men who picked them up would be robbed. They would also have their teeth kicked in. Not only teeth but ribs, scrotums, or any other place Slim could get his foot.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Do you think I’d make up something like this? Do you know the risk I’m taking by telling you this?”
“With Bruxal?”
He looked away in annoyance, and frankly I couldn’t blame him for it.
“Was Tony Lujan gay?” I asked.
“Maybe he hadn’t decided on what he was.”
“You think he came on to Slim?”
“Tony had a dependent personality. He was frightened. His girlfriend had committed suicide. I suspect he had undefined longings that…”
“Go on.”
“For what purpose? Tony’s dead. I’m going to ask one favor of you, Detective Robicheaux.”
“Yes, sir?”
“If the content of this conversation is passed on to Slim Bruxal or his attorney, I want to be notified immediately.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“It’s so good to have met you,” he replied, opening his book again, focusing his eyes disjointedly on the page.
THE TRAFFIC WAS HEAVY on the four-lane, and I took the old highway past Spanish Lake into New Iberia. The sun had gone behind the clouds in the west, and the air was dry and hot and dust was rising from the cane fields. I’m not qualified to speak on the question or causes of global warming, but anyone who believes Louisiana’s climate is similar to the one in which I grew up has a serious thinking disorder. When I was a child, summer thunderstorms would sweep across the wetlands at almost exactly three o’clock every afternoon. Today, weeks will pass with no rain at all. The wind will turn into a blowtorch, the ground into flint, the sky into a huge cloud of cinnamon-colored dust. As I drove past Spanish Lake, I could see electricity forking inside a bank of distant thunderclouds and smell an odor on the wind like fish spawning, like first raindrops lighting on a scorching sidewalk.
I got back to the department just in time to return the cruiser and punch out for the day. Just as I was leaving the office, my phone rang. It was Joe Dupree, my friend at the Lafayette P.D. “You wanted a handle on this bozo Lefty Raguza. I didn’t come up with a whole lot, but here it is. He does security work at a couple of casinos and the new track in Opelousas. He’s got no arrests in Louisiana, not even traffic citations, but I suspect he’s cruising on the edge of it.”
“How do you mean?”
“He smokes a lot of China white because he doesn’t like to use needles anymore. He also likes to bust up women with his fists, usually someone who’s down to seeds and stems. He hangs in a dump in North Lafayette.”
“A rough-trade joint?”
“No, it’s a zebra hangout. From what I hear, the broads he picks up never see it coming. Then they’re on the floor, spitting out their teeth. Dave?”
“Yeah?”
“If you have a tête-à-tête with this guy, not a lot of people around here are gonna be wringing their hands or calling up the ACLU.”
He gave me the address of a club north of the Four Corners district in Lafayette.
I headed home in my truck and by the time I reached my driveway I could feel the barometer dropping and see birds descending out of the sky into the trees. Then, like a blessing from heaven, the clouds broke loose and hailstones as big as mothballs clattered down on our tin roof.