AllFreeNovel
Share Us
'You want to go fishing? If the wind drops, I'm going after some specs in a couple of hours.'
'Fishing?'
'Yeah.'
I propped my forehead on my fingers and stared into space.
'You need any money?' I said.
'Not right now.'
'Why'd you do it, Clete? Baxter says the insurance company wants to hang you out to dry.'
'Who cares? They shouldn't do business with a bucket of shit like Max Calucci. You've had your shield too long, Streak. You're starting to think like an administrator.'
'What's that mean?'
'You think you or Motley or Lucinda Bergeron were ever going to get a search warrant on Max and Bobo? With Nate Baxter on their pad?'
'You were tossing the place with an earthmover?'
'So it was a little heavy-handed. But dig this. Just before I gutted Max's den, I emptied everything out of his desk into a garbage bag. I also took his Rolodex and all the videocassettes off the shelves. One of these videos is a documentary about this primitive Indian tribe down in South America. Before the missionaries got to them, these guys were known as the worst human beings on earth. They shrank heads and sawed people into parts; sometimes they'd boil them alive. They'd even kill their own children.'
'Go on.'
'They'd also cut the hearts out of their victims. What's Max doing with a tape like that? The mob's into anthropology?'
'You've queered it as evidence.'
'Nobody else cares, Dave. Except for you and Motley and Lucinda, everybody in New Orleans is happy these black pukes could find new roles as organ donors. History lesson, big mon. When they talk law and order, they mean Wyatt Earp leaving hair on the walls.'
Across the street, a black kid was flying a blood red kite high against a shimmering blue sky.
* * *
chapter twenty-six
The information requests that I had made about a possible suspect named Schwert were answered, at first, in a trickle, in increments, unspecifically, as though we were pursuing a shadow that had cast itself over other cases and files without ever becoming a solid presence.
Then the computer printouts, the faxes, and the phone calls began to increase in volume, from the FBI, the NCIC, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and finally Interpol.
The sheriff looked down at the clutter of paper on my desk.
'Where'd you get your filing system? It looks like Fibber McGee's closet,' he said. He glanced up at my face. 'Sorry, that's one of those generational jokes, I guess.'
'The first time the name William Schwert shows up is in some phone taps the FBI and ATF had on some neo-Nazis in Idaho during the mideighties,' I said. 'Then ATF found it in the pocket of a guy who blew his face off while he was building a bomb in his basement in Portland.'
'Yeah, I think I remember that. He and some other guys were going to dynamite a synagogue?'
'That's right.'
'Schwert was involved?'
'No one's sure.'
The sheriff tilted his head quizzically.
'In a half dozen cases it's like he's standing just on the edge of the picture but he doesn't leave footprints,' I said.
