“You’ve got that right.”
“Then why you come in here making t’ings hard for people who ain’t done you nothing?”
In reality, her question was not an unreasonable one. But wars are not reasonable, and neither is most law enforcement. In Vietnam, we killed an estimated five civilians for every enemy KIA. Law enforcement is not much different. The people who occupy the underside of society are dog food. Slumlords, zoning board members on a pad, porn vendors, and industrial polluters usually skate. Rich men don’t go to the injection table, and nobody worries when worker ants get stepped on.
I picked up a loose chair from a table and carried it and my drink to the booth where the man named Ron was sitting with a young white woman and one black woman and one Hispanic girl who probably wasn’t over seventeen. “What’s the haps, Ronnie Earl?” I said, setting down the chair hard.
“You’ve mistaken me for somebody else. My name is Ron Prudhomme,” the man said. He was smiling, his cheekbones and chin forming a V in his lower face, his eyes warm with alcohol.
“No, I think you and I go back, Ron. Remember when you bashed that old man with a hammer for his veteran’s check? You put a hole in his skull. I don’t think he was ever right again.”
“I don’t know who you are,” he said.
“I’m Dave Robicheaux,” I said to the two women and the girl. “I think Ronnie put a load of buckshot through my windshield.”
The man who called himself Ron Prudhomme picked up a shot glass and drank it slowly to the bottom, savoring each swallow, his expression sleepy. He took a sip from his beer mug, a sliver of ice sliding across his thumb. “If I’d done something like that, would I be hanging around town?” he asked.
“Yeah, I have to admit that one doesn’t fit,” I replied.
“It doesn’t fit because I’m not your guy.”
“Oh, you’re my huckleberry, all right. I just haven’t figured out if you’re doing contract hits now or if you’re a minor player in a group that includes Jesse Leboeuf, a retired homicide roach. You know Jesse Leboeuf? He used to put the fear of God in guys like you.”
He eased one of his full shot glasses toward me. “You want a beer back on that? If I remember, you got the same kind of taste buds I do. I think we got eighty-sixed from the same joints. The only reason you were allowed in some of the clubs was because you carried a shield.”
“I think I figured out why you’re hanging around, Ronnie. You didn’t blow town because you weren’t the hitter in the freezer truck. But you boosted the truck at the motel where you were staying. Which means you boosted it for somebody else. It seems to me you had a brother, but y’all didn’t look alike. You looked like a helium balloon with stubs for arms and legs, but your brother was trim. The way you look now. Have I got my hand on it?”
“This is all Greek to me. Unless you’re that cop who lied on the stand and sent me
up the road for a ten-bit I didn’t deserve.”
“No, I’m the cop who made sure there was a short-eyes notation in your jacket,” I said. “Ladies, y’all should be especially careful about this man. His weight loss is huge, and it occurred in a very short amount of time. I suggest you make him use industrial-strength condoms, or you stay completely away from him and spread the word to your sisters. He was both a predator and a cell-house bitch in Angola and stayed in lockdown for years because he was involved in at least two gang rapes. Do y’all get tested regularly for AIDS?”
The white woman and the black woman looked at each other, then at the Hispanic girl. The three of them rose from the booth and, without speaking a word, went out the front door of the club.
“I guess this means we’re not gonna be drinking buddies,” Ronnie Earl said.
“I can hook you up now and take you to the Lafayette PD. Or I can call them and have them pick you up. Or you can give up the hitter in the freezer truck. I think the hitter was your brother.”
“I haven’t seen my brother since I went inside. I heard he was dead or living in western Kansas. I cain’t remember which it was.”
“Stand up and put your hands behind you.”
“No problem. I’ll be out in two hours. I read about that shooting. I was playing bridge in Lake Charles the day it happened. I’ve got twenty witnesses you can call.”
“I’ve got a flash for you, Ronnie Earl. It’s not me who wants to hang you out to dry. It’s Lafayette PD. They’ve got a special hard-on for child molesters around here. They don’t care how they put you away. What you’re doing is five-star dumb,” I said.
“So is everything in my life. Do what you’re gonna do, but one thing I want to clear up: I never harmed a child. The other stuff I did. The short-eyes charge was a bum beef. Y’all sent me up wit’ a bad jacket. I paid a big price for that, man.”
“That’s the breaks, Ronnie.”
“How’d you know I got AIDS?”
“I didn’t.”
“I got a cut on my wrist. When a cut doesn’t heal, does that mean something?”
My hands froze.