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His name was Waylon Rhodes, from Mount Olive, Alabama; he had skin the color of putty, hands dotted with jailhouse art, a narrow, misshapen head, and a wide slit of a mouth, whose lips on one side looked like they had been pressed flat by a hot iron. His premature gray hair was grizzled and brushed back into faint ducktails; his eyes jittered like a speed addict's. Inside his left arm was a long, blue tattoo of a bayonet or perhaps a sword.
Lucinda and I sat across the wood table from him in the interrogation room. He smoked one cigarette after another, crumpling up an empty pack, ripping the cellophane off a fresh one. The backs of his fingers were yellow with nicotine; his breath was like an ashtray.
'There's no reason to be nervous, partner,' I said.
'Y'all want me to do the Caluccis. That ain't reason to be nervous?' he said.
'You don't have to do anybody. Not for us, anyway. Your beef's with the locals,' I said.
'Don't tell me that, man. Y'all got a two-by-four up my ass.'
'Watch your language, please,' I said.
He smoked with his elbow propped on the table, taking one puff after another, like he was hitting on a reefer, sometimes pressing a yellow thumb anxiously against his bottom lip and teeth.
'They're dangerous people, man,' he said. 'They tied a guy down on a table once and cut thirty pounds of meat out of him while he was still alive.'
'Here's the only deal you're getting today,' Lucinda said. 'We can pull the plug on this interview any time you want. You say the word and we're gone. Then you can have visitors from two to four every Sunday afternoon.'
'What she means, Waylon, is we made a special effort to see you. If this is all a waste of time, tell us now.'
He mashed out his cigarette and began clenching one hand on top of the other. Make him talk about something else, I thought.
'Where'd you get the tattoo of the sword?' I said.
'It's a bayonet. I was in the Airborne. Hunnerd and first.'
'Your jacket says you were in the Navy and did time at Portsmouth brig.'
'Then it's wrong.'
'What can you give us on Max and Bobo?' Lucinda said.
'They're dealing.'
'They're going to be at the drop?' I said.
'Are you kidding?' he said.
'Then how are you going to do them, Waylon?' I said.
He began to chew on the flattened corner of his mouth. His eyes jittered as if they were being fed by an electrical current.
'A whack's going down. A big one,' he said.
'Yeah?' I said.
'Yeah.'
'Who's getting clipped, Waylon?'
'A couple of guineas were talking in Mobile when I picked up the dope.'
'You're not being helpful, Waylon,' Lucinda said.
'There's nig… There's black people mixed up in it. New Orleans is a weird fucking town. What do I know?'
'You'd better know something, partner, or your next jolt's going to be in the decades,' I said.
