“I have no quarrel with the world and the way it operates.”
“That still begs the question, partner.”
His teeth were white, maybe capped. “Not for me. One thing intrigues me, though: the Maltese cross on her neck. You don’t see many of those around here.”
“Desmond has one tattooed on his ankle,” I said.
“He made a documentary on some bikers. Desmond doesn’t know the first thing about the subculture.”
“I think he can handle his own.”
“Des likes to be a man of the people. I could take him to places that would make him puke his guts. I suspect you could, too.”
“Not me,” I said.
“You didn’t get a whiff of the tiger cages or Charlie when he soiled himself after someone hooked him up to a telephone crank?”
“I never saw anything like that.”
“Lucky man.”
The ride was becoming an expensive one. I wondered how committed Alafair was in her relationship with Wexler. The images I had in my mind were the kind no father likes to look at.
“Hope I didn’t say anything offensive,” he said.
“Not a bit.”
We entered the tunnel of oak trees that led into the north end of New Iberia, and passed a home
that had been built by a man of color who owned slaves and operated a brick factory prior to emancipation. The wood was desiccated, eaten from within by Formosa termites, painted over, the building stained an ugly off-white by dust clouds and smoke from stubble fires. To change the subject, I mentioned the origins of the house to Wexler.
“That’s nothing,” he replied. “You should have seen what the wogs could do with a burning tire. They’re at their worst when they turn on their own kind.”
I had him drop me off at a filling station on the edge of town, and I called Alafair for a ride home.
• • •
AT FOUR-THIRTY P.M. the same day, Helen called Bailey and me into her office. She was walking up and down in front of the window, her hands on her hips, her face conflicted. A yellow legal pad scrawled with blue ink lay on her blotter. “The sheriff of Cameron Parish called. Early this morning a couple of guys driving an expensive car with a Florida tag went into a motel room and fired two rounds through a shower curtain. The water was running, but the motel guest must have gone out the window. The shooter probably used a silencer. The sheriff thought it looked like a professional hit, so he dusted the sill and sent the latents to AFIS. Guess whose name popped up.”
“Tillinger?” I said.
“It gets better. Somebody in another room saw a weird-looking guy leave Tillinger’s room several hours earlier.”
“Weird-looking in what way?” Bailey asked.
Helen read from her legal pad: “?‘A guy who looks like he was squeezed out of a toothpaste tube.’?”
“Smiley?” I said.
“I don’t get the guys with the Florida tag,” Helen said. “Why would Smiley be with Tillinger? Why do the Florida guys want to pop Tillinger?”
“I think it has something to do with money laundering,” I said.
“But what the hell does Tillinger have to do with it?” Helen said.
“Maybe he’s a thorn in their side,” I said. “He’s got an obsession with Lucinda Arceneaux’s death. He also wants to have a documentary made about his life.”
Helen looked at Bailey. “What do you think?”