“I’m gonna remember his name. I’m gonna remember his name a long time. It was him broke in my house, wasn’t it?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“I t’ink you do,” she replied.
I turned the cruiser around in the parking lot and headed back toward New Iberia. The broken frond from a palm tree spun crazily out of the sky and bounced off my windshield.
As we drove under the oaks at the city limits sign outside New Iberia, I glanced across the seat at the ex-soldier. His face looked reflective, philosophical, a pocket of air in one cheek. “You never told me what you wanted to talk about,” I said.
“Getting a job. I can do lots of different things. Run a forklift, clerk, fry-cook, swamp out your bait shop,” he said.
“I suspect we can work out something.”
“I sold the rest of the downers I been taking. I probably should have thrown them away, but I needed the money.”
“The V.A. has no record on you. How do you explain that?”
“Some of my records were burnt up in a fire. That’s what the V.A. says, anyway.”
“You’re a man of mystery, Doc.”
“No, I ain’t. If I live right, I get time off from the stuff that’s in my head. For some people that’s as good as it gets,” he said.
He cracked a piece of peppermint in his jaw and smiled for the first time since I had seen him in New Iberia.
He had no place to stay. I drove home and gave him the room in the back of the bait shop. It contained a bunk, a table with a lamp, a chest of drawers, and a shower inside a tin stall, and I put fresh linen on the bunk and soap and a towel in the shower. When I left the bait shop, he was sound asleep, with all his clothes on, a sheet drawn up to his chin.
I walked up the dock to the house, the wind almost ripping the umbrella from my hand.
Dear Folks Who Own This House, I rob homes in this neighborhood only because most people who live hereabouts try to keep up decent standards. But after breaking into your house I think you should consider moving to a lower rent neighborhood. You don’t have cable TV, no beer or snacks in the icebox, and most of your furniture is not worth stealing.
In other words, it really sucks when I spend a whole day casing a house only to discover the people who live in it take no pride in themselves. It is people like yo
u who make life hard on guys like me.
Sincerely,
A guy who doesn’t need these kinds of problems
CHAPTER 29
In the morning the rain had slackened when I arrived at work. I walked down to the sheriff’s office and knocked on the door. He looked up from some papers on his desk, his face darkening. He had on a pinstripe coat and a silver cowboy shirt unbuttoned at the collar. His Stetson hung on a rack, spotted with raindrops. “Real good of you to check in,” he said.
“Sir?” I said.
“You decked Perry LaSalle?”
“He swung on me.”
“Thanks for letting me know that. He’s called twice. I also just got off the phone with Joe Zeroski. I want this stuff cleaned up. I’m sick of my department being dragged into a soap opera.”
“What stuff?” I said.
“LaSalle says Legion Guidry intends to do serious harm to Barbara Shanahan and your friend Purcel. At least as far as I could make out. In the meantime, Joe Zeroski says Marvin Oates is bothering his niece again. What the hell is going on there?”
“Zerelda Calucci deep-sixed Marvin. I think he’s a dangerous man, skipper. Maybe more dangerous than Legion Guidry.”
“Marvin Oates?”