"No, he's not."
"Would you be knowing his whereabouts?"
"No, I don't. But I recommend you not call here again."
"Oh, do you now?"
"Air. Coll, I'm a lot less tolerant about you than Father Dolan. You drag your sickness into my life and I'm going to put a can of roach spray down your throat."
"I'm the sick one? Two nights ago you kicked the be jesus out of that poor fuck in front of the bar. I'd say you're a piece of work, Mr. Robicheaux."
Use the cell phone to call the office and get the line open, I told myself. But Max Coll was ahead of me. "I'm not on a ground line, sir. You needn't fiddle around with technologies that will serve no purpose. Tell Father Dolan he and I share a common destiny."
"Are you insane? You're talking about a Catholic priest."
"That's the point. It's the likes of me who keep him in business. Thanks for your time, Mr. Robicheaux. I hope to meet you formally. I think you might be my kind of fellow."
He hung up.
"So the guy's a nutcase," Clete said at lunch.
I pushed my food away. We were in a place called Bon Creole, a small family-owned cafe that specialized in po'boy sandwiches. It was two in the afternoon and the other tables were empty. "I've got another problem, Clete," I said.
"No kidding?"
&
nbsp; "It's not funny."
"Look, big mon, Frank Dellacroce's mother was probably knocked up by leakage from a colostomy bag. He got what he deserved. Stop thinking about it."
"I'm not talking about Dellacroce."
"Then maybe you should take whatever it is to Father Dolan. I don't know what else to say."
He waited for me to reply. When I didn't, he widened his eyes and opened his hands, as if to say, What?
I want a drink. Worse than I've ever wanted one in my life, I heard a voice say.
Clete's next remark did not help. "I'm a bad guy to ask for advice. I always handled my problems with a pint of Beam and a six-pack of Dixie, then I wake up the next morning with a Bourbon Street stripper whose idea of world news is the weather channel." He read the expression on my face and grimaced. "Sorry, Streak. Sometimes I don't know when to shut up," he said.
When I got back to the office, Wally, our three-hundred-pound, hypertensive dispatcher, gestured at me from the cage. Long ago every plainclothes in the department had become inured to Wally's sardonic sense of humor and his comments about our bumbling ways and collective lack of intelligence. But this afternoon he was different. His eyes were evasive, his smile like an incision in clay. "Been to lunch, huh?" he said.
"Yeah. What's up?"
"That fellow Flannigan was in here."
"Merchie Flannigan?"
"He was pacing up and down for an hour, like he was about to piss his pants. When he got ready to go I axed him if he wanted to leave a message." Wally shifted in his chair, arching his eyebrows.
"Would you just spit it out?" I said.
"He said tell Dave not to be running his pipeline under the wrong man's fence. The district attorney and some Chamber of Commerce people was in the waiting room. So was Helen."
A woman passed us and looked back at me briefly. "Okay, Wally, I appreciate it," I said, and started to walk away.
"Hey, Dave?" he said.