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“Now’s not the time to cover for this guy, podna.”
“Bobby’s mind is on the U.S. Senate and his putz. Use your head, Dave. Why would he want to get mixed up with dope and guns?”
“Money.”
“He gets all he wants from right-wing simpletons and north Louisiana rednecks. Besides, that’s not what he’s after. You liberals have never figured him out. Bobby doesn’t care about black people one way or another. He’s never known any. How could he be upset by them? It’s educated and intelligent white people he doesn’t like. In his mind you’re all just like his parents. I don’t think a day went by in his life that they didn’t let him know he was a piece of shit. He’s got two loves in this world, porking the ladies and provoking the press and people like yourself.”
“That might all be true, but he’s hooked up with Joey Gouza and that means he’s in this bullshit right up to his kneecaps.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m weary of you holding out on me, Weldon.”
“I’m not. I’ve told you everything. What else do you want out of me? A guy tried to take my head off with a piano wire. I can’t think about it without shuddering all over. It really got to me, man. I can even smell the guy.”
“What do you mean?”
He stopped, and his eyes looked into space.
“I didn’t think about it before,” he said. “The guy had a smell. It was like embalming fluid or something.”
“Say it again.”
“Embalming fluid. Or chemicals. Hell, I don’t know. It was there just a second, then my light switch clicked off.”
“It wasn’t one of Gouza’s people, Weldon.?
??
His brow furrowed, and he fingered the red line around his neck.
“I think your brother, Lyle, was right all along,” I said. “I think your father has made a spectacular reappearance in your life. Take this tape to the DEA or the U.S. Customs office, if you want. It doesn’t fall under my jurisdiction.”
“You’re not interested in it?”
“We already have a murder warrant out on Jack Gates. You haven’t shown or told me anything that will help put any of the other players in jail.”
“You mean I’ve been holding this evidence and taking all this heat for nothing? And all you can tell me is that my poor demented brother has been right all along, that my own father wants to put my head on a pike?”
“I’m afraid that’s about it.”
“No, that’s not it, Dave,” he said. “I think this time I finally read you. You’re not interested in Joey Gouza or Jack Gates or any of these Aryan Brotherhood clowns. You want to staple my brother-in-law’s butt to the furniture. In fact, if you had your way, you’d blow up his shit big time, wouldn’t you? Just like a Gatling gun locking down on Charlie in the middle of a rice field.”
We stared at each other in the silence like a pair of bookends.
I DROVE TO THE Salvation Army transient shelter in Lafayette to try and find Vic Benson. A portly, red-cheeked, kindly man with big sideburns who ran the shelter said that Benson had had a fistfight with another man two days ago and had been asked to leave. He had responded by packing his duffel bag quietly and walking out the door without a word; then he had stopped, snapped his fingers as though he had forgotten something, and returned to the dormitory long enough to stuff his bed sheets in the toilet bowl.
“Where do you think he went?” I asked.
“Anywhere there’s Southern Pacific tracks,” the Salvation Army officer said.
“Can I talk to the other men?”
“I doubt if they know anything. You can try, though. They were a little afraid of Vic. He wasn’t like the rest. Most of our men are harmless. Vic always made you feel he was working on a dark thought, like he was grinding sand between his back teeth. One time he was watching television . . .” He stopped, smiled, and shook the memory out of his face.
“Go on,” I said.
“He and some of the other men were watching this minister, then Vic said, ‘I’d pour lye down that one’s throat if his brother didn’t deserve it worse.’?”
