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“Well, she doesn’t listen to us sometimes and we have to take charge of her,” I said.
Bootsie rapped me across the back of the hand with her spoon, and Alafair’s eyes squinted with delight. I grinned back at her, then when Bootsie was putting dishes in the sink I came up behind her and hugged her hard around the middle and kissed her neck.
“Later, later,” she whispered, and patted me quietly on the thigh.
It was going to be a fine day. I kissed Alafair good-bye, then flipped my seersucker coat over my shoulder and was almost out the door when the phone on the counter rang and Bootsie picked it up.
“It’s the sheriff,” she said, and handed it to me.
I put my hand over the receiver and touched her shoulder as she walked away. “The picnic is at noon. I’ll be there, I promise, unless he sends me out of town. Okay?” I said.
She smiled without replying and began washing dishes in the sink.
“I just talked to the city chief,” the sheriff said. “They had to take Joey Gouza to Iberia General at seven last night. He went apeshit in his cell, crashing against the bars, rolling around on the floor, and kicking his feet like he was having a seizure, slurping water out of the toilet.”
“You mean he had a psychotic episode?”
“That’s what they thought it was. They got him in a van to take him to the hospital and he puked all over it. The doc at emergency receiving said he acted like he’d been poisoned, so they pumped his stomach out. Except by the time they got the tube down his throat there was hardly anything left inside him except blood from his stomach lining. Evidently the guy’s got ulcers on top of his other problems.”
“What do you think happened?”
“A guard found an empty box of ant poison in the food area. Maybe somebody dumped it into his mashed potatoes. But to tell you the truth, Dave, I don’t believe the city people are in a hurry to admit they can’t provide security for a celebrity prisoner. They’re having more fun with Joey Gouza than pigs rolling in slop.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“If he’s connected with Garrett’s murder, let’s nail his butt before they take him out in a body bag. Not that half of New Orleans wouldn’t get drunk in the streets.”
I drove over to Iberia General and walked down the hall to Joey Gouza’s room. A uniformed cop was reading a magazine outside the door.
“How you doin’, Dave?” he said.
“Pretty good. How’s our man?”
“I have a fantasy. I see him running down the hall in his nightshirt. I see me parking a big one in his brisket. Does that answer your question?”
“Is he that bad?”
“It probably depends on whether or not you have to clean up his piss.”
“What?”
“He took a piss off the side of the bed, right in the middle of the floor. He said he doesn’t use bedpans.”
I went inside the room and closed the door behind me. Gouza’s right wrist was cuffed to the bed rail and one ankle was locked to a leg chain. His elongated face was white on the pillow, his lips caked at the corners with dried mucus. In the middle of the floor was a freshly mopped damp area. The room smelled bad, and I tried to open the window but it was sealed with locks that could only be turned with an Allen wrench.
He rubbed his nose with his finger. His eyes were black and cavernous in his drawn face.
“You don’t like the smell?” he asked. His voice sounded like air wheezing out of sand.
“It’s kind of close in here, partner.”
“They told you I took a leak on the floor?”
“Somebody mentioned it.”
“They told you they keep me chained to the bed, they don’t even let me walk to the toilet?”
“I’ll see what I can do about it.”
