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"The pencil sharpener doesn't work very well, but there's a pen knife in my drawer that you can use," I said.
"I wasn't bucking for plainclothes. The old man gave it to me," he said.
"I'm glad to see you're moving on up, Rufe."
"Look, Dave, I'm not the one who went out and got fucked up at that movie set."
"I hear you were out there, though. Looking into things. Probably trying to clear me of any suspicion that I got loaded."
"I got a GED in the corps. You're a college graduate. You were a homicide lieutenant in New Orleans. You want to blame me for your troubles?"
"Where's Rosie?"
"Down in Vermilion Parish."
"What
for?"
"How would I know?"
"Did she say anything about Balboni having legal troubles with Mikey Goldman?"
"What legal—" His eyes clouded, like silt being disturbed in dark water.
"When you see her, would you ask her to call me?"
"Leave a message in her box," he said, positioned his forearms on my desk blotter, straightened his back, and looked out the window as though I were not there.
When I walked into the sheriff's office he was pouring a chalky liquid from a brown prescription bottle into a water glass. A dozen sheets of paper were spread around on his desk. The "hold" light was flashing on his telephone. He didn't speak. He drank from the glass, then refilled it from the water cooler and drank again, his throat working as though he were washing out an unwanted presence from his metabolism.
"How you doin', podna?" he said.
"Pretty good now. I had a talk with Lou Girard this morning."
"So did I. Sit down," he said, then picked up the phone and spoke to whoever was on hold. "I'm not sure what happened. When I am, I'll call you. In the meantime, Rufus is going to be suspended. Just hope we don't have to pass a sales tax to pay the bills on this one."
He hung up the phone and pressed the flat of his hand against his stomach. He made a face like a small flame was rising up his windpipe.
"Did you ever have ulcers?" he asked.
"Nope."
"I've got one. If this medicine I'm drinking doesn't get rid of it, they may have to cut it out."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"That was the prosecutor's office I was talking to. We're being sued."
"Over what?"
"A seventy-six-year-old black woman shot her old man to death last night, then killed both her dogs and shot herself through the stomach. Rufus in there handcuffed her to the gurney, then came back to the office. He didn't bother to give the paramedics a key to the cuffs either. She died outside the emergency room."
I didn't say anything.
"You think we got what we deserved, huh?" he said.
"Maybe he would have done it even if he hadn't been kicked up to plainclothes, sheriff."
