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“Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it,” somebody said.
“Get a shovel or a broom or something. I ain’t picking that up with my hands.”
“What the fuck you guys talking about?” the man in the white sports coat said, pushing his way, along with Gouza, to get a better view of the trunk. Then he pressed his hand over his mouth and nose.
“Put in a call for the ME,” one of the plainclothes cops said.
A uniformed sergeant, his hands inside a vinyl evidence bag, reached into the trunk of the car, took out Jewel Fluck’s head, and laid it on the grass. Joey Gouza’s face was stunned; his mouth dropped open; he stared speechless at the man in the white sports coat. He gestured emptily with both hands at the air.
“I don’t know what it’s doing there, Dom,” he said. “It’s a setup. These fuckheads are working with some pisspot cops over in Iberia Parish. I swear it, Dom. They been trying to put an iron hook through my stomach and tear my insides out.”
“Shut up, Joey. You’re under arrest,” one of the plainclothes cops said. “Put your hands on the car and spread your legs. You know the drill. The rest of you people go back to your lasagne.”
The uniformed sergeant shoved Joey face-forward against the side of the Cadillac and hit him under both arms. Joey’s face went livid with rage, and he whirled and drove his elbow into the sergeant’s nose.
Then NOPD went to work with the subtlety of method for which they’re famous. While the sergeant tried to cup his hands over the blood that fountained from his nose, two other uniformed cops rained their batons down on Joey’s back.
“We got a perp on dust,” somebody yelled.
Then as though that one declaration justified any means of restraint, another cop ran from the far side of the street with a Taser gun. The cops flailing with their batons jumped back just as he fired.
But Joey had seen what was coming, too, and he dove sideways and the dart embedded itself in the thick, fat neck of the man in the white sports coat. He went down as though he had been bludgeoned with an ax, his body convulsing, his arms writhing in the damp grass with the electric shock.
Then a cop garroted Joey across the throat with his baton and lifted him, strangling, to his feet while two other cops cuffed his wrists behind him. The last frames in the film showed Joey being stuffed behind the wire screen of a patrol car, one foot kicking wildly at the window glass.
The sheriff put the VCR on rewind.
“The anonymous call was traced to the Acme Oyster Bar on Iberville,” he said. “When the arresting plainclothes got there, they ran into none other than Cletus Purcel, bombed on boilermakers with seven dozen empty oyster shells piled on his table. The plainclothes don’t think it’s coincidence that Purcel was sitting in the Acme.”
“But they didn’t take him in, did they?”
“No.”
“They won’t, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t care, sheriff. Gouza won’t go down on a murder beef, but they’ll put him away for resisting arrest and assault and battery on a police officer. The court considers him a habitual. That means this time he goes into lockdown with the big stripes at Angola and they weld the door shut on him. Why should they worry about Clete?”
“You misunderstand me, Dave. I don’t care about Purcel. I’m bothered by the possibility that one of my men shaved the dice. You know that was Jewel Fluck’s head, don’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“You want to tell me what really happened with you and Jack Gates?”
I rubbed my palms together between my legs. The sunlight outside was white and hot through the cracks in the blinds.
“The evidence was found on the right person, sheriff. There’s no way around that conclusion. You have my word on it.”
He picked at his thumbnail, then raised his eyes to mine.
“That’s about all I’m going to get from you, huh?” he said.
“Yeah, I guess that’s about it.”
“Well, maybe it’s time I talk to Garrett’s family again over in Houston.”
I studied his face and waited.
