“That’s not the point.”
“You know anything about this guy Robert Weingart?” I asked.
“He’s a writer. What about him?”
“He and Kermit Abelard are involved with the St. Jude Project. Herman Stanga claims he is, too.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“The fact that Weingart breathes our air is a crime.”
“I like the way you leave your personal feelings at the front door when you come to work in the morning.”
“I interviewed a convict in Mississippi who said Stanga is mixed up with the homicides in Jeff Davis Parish.”
“When did you go to Mississippi?”
“When I took those two days’ vacation time.”
She lifted a strand of hair out of her eyes. “What are we going to do with you, bwana?”
“Weingart is a piece of shit. I think he has Kermit Abelard under his control. I think we’re going to hear a lot more from him.”
She was shaking her head, holding back something she didn’t want to say.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Go ahead, what?”
“Say what’s on your mind.”
“Isn’t Alafair seeing Kermit Abelard?”
“I don’t know what the word ‘seeing’ means. It’s like a lot of words people use today. I can’t relate to their meaning. Does ‘see’ mean look at someone? Or sleep with someone? Alafair thinks both Abelard and Weingart are great writers. I heard Weingart’s female lawyer rewrote most of his manuscript and got it published for him and that Weing
art couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag. I think Kermit is probably bisexual and in this guy’s thrall.”
“When you figure out how that translates into the commission of a crime, let me know.”
“Why be everybody’s punch?” I said.
“Want to rephrase that?”
“Bloodsuckers of every stripe come here and wipe their feet on us. We’ve turned victimhood into an art form. Weingart is a parasite if not a predator.”
“Go back to that part about Abelard’s bisexuality. I’d like to know how that figures into all this.”
“I wasn’t making a judgment about it.”
Her eyes roamed over my face. “Tell Clete he’s on a short tether. I always love chatting with you, Dave,” she said. She winked at me and went out the door, closing it carefully behind her, like someone who does not want to be in the emotional debt of another.
TWO DAYS PASSED and I began to think less and less about the deaths of the women in Jefferson Davis Parish. The absence of news coverage about their deaths and the general lack of fear or outrage that their deaths should have provoked may seem bizarre or symptomatic of inhumanity among our citizenry. But serial killers abound in this country, and they often kill scores of people for a span of several decades before they are caught, if they ever are. Most of their victims come from the great uprooted, faceless population that drifts via Greyhound or gas-guzzler or motorcycle or thumb through trailer slums, battered women’s shelters, Salvation Army missions, migrant worker camps, and inner-city areas that have the impersonality of war zones. The vagueness of the term “homeless” is unintentionally appropriate for many of the people inside this group. We have no idea who they are, how many of them are mentally ill or just poor, or how many of them are fugitives. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of them were dumped on the streets or refused admission by federal hospitals. The mendicant culture they established is still with us, although our problem of conscience regarding their welfare seems to have faded.
A local bluesman by the name of Lazy Lester once said, “Don’t ever write your name on the jailhouse wall.” Today it might not be a bad idea.
On Wednesday, just before quitting time, Helen came into my office with a back section of the Baton Rouge Advocate folded in her hand. “What was the name of the convict you interviewed in Mississippi?”
“Elmore Latiolais.”