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"Who was the dude he went out back with?"
"He looked like he had a pink bicycle patch on his face."
"What?"
"I don't know what he looked like. He was big. I was kind of indisposed, you know what I mean?"
"Say it again about his face."
"His nose and part of his eyebrow were messed up. Like with a scar."
"What did he say?"
Her eyes seemed to reach out into space. Her mouth was slightly parted, her facial muscles collapsed with thought.
"He said, 'They want you to find some new geography. Work on your golf game.' Then what's-his-name said, 'Money talks and bullshit walks, biscuit-eater. I got to feed my pigs.'"
She chewed on a hangnail and her eyes went flat again.
"Look, I got a problem," she said. "He didn't pay me. I got to give the guy I work for twenty bucks when I get back to the bar. Will you get his wallet for me?"
"Sorry. I think the hogs got it, anyway."
"You want some action?"
"I'll drop you where you want to go, kiddo. Then I'm going to call the sheriff's office about Starkweather. But I'll deal you out of it. If you want to tell them something later, that's up to you."
"You are heat, aren't you?"
"Why not?"
"Why you cutting me loose? You got something in mind for later?"
"They might lock you up as a material witness. That guy out there in the hog lot has killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people. But he was a novice and a bumbler compared to the people he worked for."
She sat against the far door of my car, her face thick with a drug hangover, and didn't speak during the long ride through the marsh to the parish road. Her yellowed fingers were wrapped tightly in her lap.
Like many others, I learned a great lesson in Vietnam: Never trust authority. But because I had come to feel that authority should always be treated as suspect and self-serving, I had also learned that it was predictable and vulnerable. So that afternoon I sat under my beach umbrella on my houseboat deck, dressed only in swimming trunks and an open tropical shirt, with a shot of Jim Beam and a beer chaser on the table in front of me, and called Sam Fitzpatrick's supervisor at the Federal Building.
"I ran down Abshire," I said. "I don't know why you held out on me at the hospital. He's not exactly well concealed."
There was a moment's silence on the line.
"Have you got wax in your ears or something?" he said. "How do I get through to you? You stay off federal turf."
"I'm going to kick a board up his ass."
"You're not going to do a goddamn thing, except get a warrant filed on you for obstruction."
"You want in on it or not?" I asked.
"I have a strong feeling you're drunk."
"So what? I'm going to cool him out. You want to be there for the party, or do you want us local boys to write the story for you in the Picayune? It's going to be socko stuff, partner."
"What the hell is the matter with you? You don't seem to have any bottom. One of my best men is burned to death in your car. Your own people dump you like a sack of dog turds. You're evidently working on becoming a full-time drunk again, and now you're talking about taking out a retired two-star general. You think it's possible you're losing your mind?"
"You're a good man, but don't take up poker."
