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"Do you speak English?" I said. Then to the woman, "Does your friend speak English?"
"You do it the same way in Mexican or English, honey," she said.
"It's time for you to take off, partner," I said.
But he didn't understand. I folded up my badge and slipped it in my back pocket.
"You can go now. We don't need you for anything. There's no problem. No problema. Your friend is waiting for you," I said.
I took him gently by the arm and opened the door for him.
"Adiós," I said.
This time he realized what he was being offered and he was gone into the darkness like a shot. I closed the door behind him.
"You're a very cool lady," I said.
She took a slow, easy hit on the reefer and let the smoke curl out of her mouth into her nose.
"I guess I just don't scare you too much," I said.
She flexed herself on the bed and drew one knee up before her. Her toenails were painted red.
"You gonna do what you gonna do, ain't you?" she said.
"Possession can be serious stuff in Louisiana."
"Honey, if you was interested in 'resting me, you wouldn't be tapping on no do'."
"You're pretty hip, too."
"Why don't you tell me what you want, sweetheart? Somebody tole you the black berry got the sweet juice?"
"Was Hipolyte Broussard your pimp?"
"That's a bad word. Like it mean I doing something I ain't suppose to."
I turned a straight-backed chair around backward and straddled it.
"Let's understand something," I said. "I don't care what y'all do here. I'm after a white man named Jimmie Lee Boggs. I'll do just about anything to find him. I feel that way about him because he shot me. Are we communicating here?"
She smiled lazily in the smoke.
"So you the one?" she said.
"That's right. And let's get rid of this distraction, too." I took the roach out of her fingers and mashed it out in the ashtray. "Did you know Boggs?"
"I seen him."
"Where?"
"He come see Hipolyte."
"Why?"
"Where you been, honey? You ever see black folks who ain't got to give part their money to white folks? You ain't dumb. You just pretend, you. I think you just here to see me." She smiled again and stretched both her arms over her head.
"Did Boggs come see Gros Mama Goula?"
