The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux 16)

“The pair of you walk in here like your shit don’t stink and threaten me in my own store, and it’s me who’s got the problem? I know what loss is, Dave. You say you’re gonna punch my ticket? I got news for you. I paid my dues a long time ago.”

Our visit was pointless. Sidney was now using the accidental death of his son as a shield against his own criminality. I cannot say if this was because of his narcissism or a genuine belief that the gods had wronged him and had thereby made him unaccountable for the damage he did to others. But either way, Sidney knew how to wrap himself inside the role of victim.

I hit Clete on the shoulder. “Let’s go, podna,” I said.

“This isn’t over, Sidney. I kicked your ass all over Magazine when we were kids. I can do it again,” Clete said.

I opened the door for Clete, the bell ringing over my head. But he remained stationary in front of the counter, the blood in the back of his neck climbing into his hairline, his fists balled, the accusation of drunk and womanizer and disgraced cop embedded in him like a rusty fishhook. Sidney began pulling dead flowers from a vase, shaking the water off the stems before he dropped them in a wastebasket. He glanced up at Clete. “You still here?” he said.

I waited for Clete in the truck. When he came out of the flower shop, his expression was somber, hi

s tropical shirt damp on his skin, his porkpie hat tilted at an angle on his forehead. He made me think of a haystack. Even in the Marine Corps his fellow jarheads had called him “the Heap,” out of sync, consumed by his own appetites, instantly recognized as a troublemaker by authority figures. But his greatest vulnerability always lay in the power he gave away to others, in this case to Sidney Kovick.

He got into the truck and eased the door shut, restraining his energies so as not to show his anger and sense of defeat.

“Blow it off, Clete. You’ve cut Kovick slack when he deserved a bullet in the mouth,” I said.

“I let him wipe his feet on me.”

“No, you didn’t. Sidney Kovick is a pimp. Anyone who has a conversation with him wants to take a shower afterward.”

But Clete wasn’t buying it. I started up the truck and drove to the end of the block, then turned up the street that led past the alley behind Sidney’s shop. I glanced down the alley as we passed. Amid the trash cans and the clusters of banana trees between the garages, I could see a floral delivery van parked at the back door of Sidney’s shop. Sidney’s wife was helping a Hispanic man load flowers in the side of the van. I stepped on the brake and shoved the transmission into reverse.

“What’s going on?” Clete said.

“The guy in the alley with the Gothic-letter tats. He looks just like Chula Ramos,” I said.

“Who?”

“The MS-13 dude, Natalia Ramos’s brother. He was released from the Iberia stockade by mistake.”

“The brother of the hooker who was shacked up with the priest?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“You really want to mess with this, Dave?”

“Yeah, I do.”

I bounced into the alley and headed toward the van. An elderly woman backed a gas-guzzler out of a garage, wedging her vehicle at an angle between the garage and a cast-iron Dumpster. When I blew my horn at her, she responded by staring at me aghast, then taking off her glasses and wiping them with a Kleenex so she could see me more clearly. I hung my badge out the window and waved for her to pull her car out of the way. She stepped on the accelerator and smashed her taillight into the Dumpster.

I got out of my truck and started walking toward the delivery van. “Hold on there, bubba,” I called, not sure if I was actually looking at Ramos.

The Hispanic man slammed the driver’s door behind him and drove away.

“What’s the trouble, Dave?” Eunice said.

“Who’s your delivery man?”

“It’s Chula something-or-other. Did he do something?”

I heard Clete walk up behind me. “How’d you come to know this guy, Eunice?” I asked.

“Sidney gave him a job. Chula’s sister used to clean Sidney’s office in the Quarter.”

“Natalia was Sidney’s maid?” I said.

“Yes, they’re Central American refugees, I think. Sidney wanted to help them. Why?”