I ran my hand along the side of my head. I could feel a tightening in my veins, as though I had a hat on. I took a breath before I spoke.
“With Remeta?” I said.
“Yes.”
“He’s wanted in another shooting. An execution at point-blank range in a car wash.”
“I told him I couldn’t see him again. I’m going to sleep now, Dave. I don’t want to talk about Johnny anymore,” she said.
She sat on the edge of her bed and waited for me to go out of the room. On the shelf above her bedstead I could see the painted ceramic vase Remeta had given to her, the Confederate soldier and his antebellum girlfriend glowing in the moonlight.
The call came at four in the morning.
“You told your daughter not to see me again?” the voice asked.
“Not in so many words,” I replied.
“That was a chickenshit thing to do.”
“You’re too old for her, Johnny.”
“People can’t be friends because they’re apart in years? Run your lies on somebody else.”
“Your problems began long before we met. Don’t take them out on us.”
“What do you know about my problems?”
“I talked with the prison psychologist.”
“I’m starting to construct a new image of you, Mr. Robicheaux. It’s not a good one.”
I didn’t reply. The skin of my face felt flaccid and full of needles. Then, to change the subject, I said, “You should have lost the .25 you used on Zipper Clum. NOPD has made you for the Ritter hit.”
“Ritter gave up your mother’s killers, Mr. Robicheaux. I was gonna give you their names. Maybe even cap them for you. But you act like I’m the stink on shit. Now I say fuck you,” he said, and hung up.
At 9 A.M. I sat in the sheriff’s office and watched the sheriff core out the inside of his pipe with a penknife.
“So you got to see the other side of Johnny Remeta?” he said, and dropped the black buildup of ash off his knife blade into the wastebasket.
“He pumped Ritter for information, then blew out his light,” I said.
“This guy is making us look like a collection of web-toed hicks, Dave. He comes and goes when he feels like it. He takes your daughter for rides. He murders a police officer and calls you up in the middle of the night and tells you about it. Forgive me for what I’m about to say next.”
“Sir?”
“Do you want this guy out on the ground? It seems you and he and Purcel have the same enemies.”
“I don’t think that’s a cool speculation to make, Sheriff.”
“Let me put it this way. The next time I hear this guy’s name, it had better be in conjunction with either his arrest or death. I don’t want one of my detectives telling me about his phone conversations with a psychopath or his family’s involvement with same. Are we clear?”
“There’re pipe ashes on your boot,” I said, and left the room.
Ten minutes later I received a phone call from a woman who did not identify herself but just started talking as though I already knew who she was. She had a heavy Cajun accent and her voice was knotted with anger and dismay and a need to injure.
“I t’ought you’d like to know what you done. Not that it makes no difference to somebody who t’inks he got the right to twist a sick man up wit’ his words,” she said.
“Who is this?” I asked.