He swung his feet off the desk. “The night clerk at the guesthouse said the black broad was probably a hooker he’d seen around. She’d been in the room of a guest. He left the guesthouse at midnight; he was carrying a beat-up suitcase with a belt around it. The homicide cop found a piece of paper in the trash can with an address on it. Guess what? It’s on East Main in New Iberia.”
LeBlanc read the address aloud. It was mine.
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. I got up to leave.
“That’s it?”
“What’s the name of the homicide cop at NOPD?”
“Magelli.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got more.”
“I think I’ve got the big picture. One of these days we’ll have a talk after hours, Carroll.”
“Feeling a little irritated, are we? If so, maybe you should go back to New Orleans and get your old job back. Oh, I forgot. You got fired twice there.”
* * *
I HAD KNOWN DANA MAGELLI at NOPD since Clete and I came back from Vietnam and walked a beat on Canal and in the Quarter. The three of us had made detective grade at the same time and were close friends, although Dana was a family man and didn’t succumb to the occupational legacy of violence and wasted days and nights the way Clete and I did. Dana was also the bane of the Balangie family, whom he despised for the damage they did to the Italians who were decent and hardworking and paid the price for scum like Adonis.
I called Dana Magelli from my office.
“Hey, Dave, how you doin’?” he said. “Carroll LeBlanc gave you all the information on the taxi driver homicide?”
“More or less,” I said. “You found my address in the wastebasket at the guesthouse?”
“Yeah, but the guy at the guesthouse paid with cash and registered as G. Smith, and we got no idea who the black woman was or why somebody would break the cabbie’s neck, unless he tried to run a Murphy scam on the wrong guy.”
“Murphy artists in the Quarter?”
“No, Adonis Balangie runs New Orleans vice like his old man did. No jackrollers or Murphy scammers are allowed between Esplanade and Canal, Decatur and Rampart.”
“Can you give me a detailed description of the man who tore up the drunks?”
“The victims say he was big and had a head like a snake’s. That’s about all they’ll say. I think they’re afraid they’ll have to identify him.”
“No mention of a harelip or a tiny nose?”
“Negative. You know something about this guy?”
“Clete had some trouble in the Keys.”
“With a guy who looks like this?”
“Clete got abducted. He woke up suspended from a wrecker hook. A guy with a harelip and a bump for a nose was going to light him up.”
There was a long silence. “What are we dealing with here?”
“I don’t like to think about it.”
“I want to talk to Clete.”
“Good luck,” I said.
“Look, I’m working on another lead. We’ve pulled a bunch of surveillance cameras that show our guy leaving the guesthouse in a hooded raincoat and walking with his suitcase up Pirate’s Alley and trying to get in the back door of the cathedral. Then he walks out of the Quarter and shows up on three cameras on St. Claude Avenue and disappears in the Ninth Ward. Get this. Somebody broke into a colored church down there and slept under the altar.”