I stood in the middle of the room, trembling with anger, my ears ringing. I washed my hands, trying to scrub the feel of his whiskers off my skin.
• • •
AT FIVE P.M., I drove down Bayou Teche to Jeanerette, past Alice Plantation, built in 1803, with its palm trees and elevated wide gallery and twin chimneys, and past another plantation home surrounded by live oaks that were two centuries old. I crossed a drawbridge and turned in to a trailer park that looked transported from Bangladesh.
The manager of the park pointed to the trailer rented by Hilary Bienville. It was set on cinder blocks, the seams orange with rust, the floor sagging. I tapped on the door.
A young black woman answered, hooking the screen door as soon as she saw my badge holder. “What you want?”
“I’m Dave Robicheaux, a friend of Clete Purcel. I’d like to talk with you.”
“I’m fixing to eat.”
“You tried to help out a worthless man named Travis Lebeau. Not everybody would do that, Miss Hilary.”
“Who tole you where I live?”
“A lady who sings the blues.”
“Somebody is after me?”
“You know Axel Devereaux?”
“I ain’t said nothing about Mr. Axel.”
“But you know him?”
“Everybody knows Axel Devereaux.”
“I work homicide and felony assault, not vice,” I said. I took a photo out of my wallet. It showed Clete and me together at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Florida. “Give me five minutes.”
She looked at my truck and studied my face, then stared at the other trailers and the clothes flapping on wash lines. She unhooked the screen. “I got to get my dinner out of the micro.”
I stepped inside. The walls were covered with pages cut from movie magazines. Most of the actors in the photos were black. A large green bottle of bulk wine stood on her kitchen table. She removed the frozen dinner from the microwave and set it on a place mat.
“I got a baby to feed before my gran’mama come over,” she said. “Make it fast, okay?”
“How many nights do you work?”
“Six. Don’t work Sundays. Sunday ain’t never good in my bidness.”
“You’re a better person than you think,” I said.
“Try to pay your bills with that.”
“If you’re lucky, the pimp who owns you takes only thirty-five percent. He pieces off another twenty percent to Axel. Once in a while your pimp runs a Murphy scam on a guy and you make a little more. Does that sound like a reasonable way to make a living?”
“It’s better than scrubbing a flo’ for a white man that spits on it.” She peeled the plastic off her dinner, indifferent to the heat, her eyes starting to film.
“The nuns at Southern Mutual Help can get you a new start,” I said.
She didn’t reply. She bowed her head and began taking small bites. She wiped her nose with her wrist.
I got a roll of paper towels off the drainboard and set it beside her. “It sounds like your baby is up.”
She set down her fork. “She needs changing.”
“I’ll do it.”