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"Why don't you drive over and find out?"
"You sound funny."
"I have stitches in my mouth."
"They bounced you around pretty good, huh?"
"What's this about you wanting my ass in your office?"
"I'm curious. Why are a bunch of farts who deal dope and whores so interested in you? I think maybe you're on to something we don't know about."
"I'm not."
"I think also you may have the delusion you're still a police officer."
"You've got things turned around a little bit. When a guy gets his cojones and his face kicked in, he becomes the victim. The guys who kick in his cojones and face are the criminals. These are the guys you get mad at. The object is to put them in jail."
"The sheriff said you can't identify Keats."
"I didn't see his face."
"And you never saw the Zulu before?"
"Keats, or whoever the white guy was, said he was one of Baby Doc's tontons macoute."
"What do you want us to do, then?"
"If I remember our earlier conversation right, y'all were going to handle it."
"It's after the fact now. And I don't have authority in this kind of assault case. You know that."
I looked out the window at the leaves floating on the brown current.
"Do you all ever salt the mine shaft?" I said.
"You mean plant dope on a suspect? Are you serious?"
"Save the Boy Scout stuff. I've got a wife and another person in my home who are in jeopardy. You said you were going to handle things. You're not handling anything. Instead I get this ongoing lecture that somehow I'm the problem in this situation."
"I never said that."
"You don't have to. A collection of moral retards runs millions in drugs through the bayous, and you probably don't nail one of them in fifty. It's frustrating. It looks bad on the monthly report. You wonder if you're going to be transferred to Fargo soon. So you make noise about civilians meddling in your business."
"I don't like the way you're talking to me, Robicheaux."
"Too bad. I'm the guy with the stitches. If you want to do something for me, figure out a way to pick up Keats."
"I'm sorry you got beat up. I'm sorry we can't do more. I understand your anger. But you were a cop and you know our limits. So how about easing off the Purple Heart routine?"
"You told me Keats's bars have hookers in them. Get the local heat to park patrol cars in front of his bars a few nights. You'll bring his own people down on him."
"We don't operate that way."
"I had a feeling you'd say that. See you around, partner. Don't hang on the rim too long. Everybody will forget you're in the game."
"You think that's clever?"
I hung up on him, finished my Dr. Pepper, and drove down the dirt road in the warm wind that thrashed the tree limbs overhead. The bayou was covered with leaves now, and back in the shadows on the far bank I could see cottonmouths sleeping on the lower branches of the willow trees, just above the water's languid surface. I rumbled across the drawbridge into town, withdrew three hundred dollars from the bank, then took the back road through the sugarcane fields to St. Martinville and caught the interstate to New Orleans.
