The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“Just a bumbling, hapless guy.”

She shined her light on a green teardrop that still remained on the skin. “He was in the AB?”

“Until they sold him to the Black Guerilla Family.”

“I can’t believe we’ve got these guys here,” she said. “Wasn’t it the AB that dragged a black man in Texas about twenty years back?”

“They had white-supremacist tats. Maybe they were AB, maybe not. This isn’t racial.”

“Yeah, but it’s them.”

I walked with a flashlight down the trail of blood and skin. The moon had come from behind the clouds and lit the bayou and the cattails and canebrakes in the shallows. There was blood at the base of two oak trees that grew by the road. I hoped Lebeau had been knocked unconscious when he struck them. I clicked off my flashlight and walked back to where Helen was standing.

“You don’t look good,” she said.

“Not enough sleep.”

“Right.”

“Lebeau tried to sell me information so he could score or get out of town,” I said. “I blew him off.”

“You didn’t trust his information?”

“No.”

“So what were you supposed to do? Give him the money anyway? Put the cork in it, Pops.”

I clicked on my light again and shone it in Lebeau’s mouth. “I don’t think his teeth were broken on the road.”

She stared at me.

“The roots are gone,” I said. “I think his teeth were pulled before he was dragged.”

I ached for a drink. I think Helen did, too. Wonder why cops bring the job home or to a bar? It’s no mystery.

• • •

WE HAD NO leads. Travis Lebeau had been staying at a men’s shelter in Lafayette. No one there remembered seeing him the day of his death. He was a loner, had no family or friends, and took little interest in the other men at the shelter. We put his mug shots in local newspapers and on television and asked anyone with information about him to call the department.

On Friday I got a call from a bartender in North Lafayette named Skip Dubisson. At one time he had been a pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals farm system, but he’d lost an arm in Iraq and now worked at a low-bottom bar in Lafayette’s old unofficial red-light district north of Four Corners. “I’m pretty sure your guy was in here, Dave. The one whose picture you put on TV.”

“Travis Lebeau?” I said.

“He didn’t give his name. But yeah, same guy, a week ago. He wanted to set up a tab. I think he wanted to get laid, too.”

“Did he come in with anyone? Make any friends, female or otherwise?”

“I didn’t pay that much attention,” he said. “My regulars keep me busy, know what I mean?”

“You’ve had some bad dudes in?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?”

“The Aryan Brotherhood?”

“Who knows? Everybody’s got sleeves these days, all blue, wrist to the pits, lots of swastikas. Race-baiting is back in style.”

“This isn’t about race.”