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"He's crazy. Give him something to work with."
"How about waiting here, Clete?"
"The guy's got syphilis of the brain. I wouldn't go in his house unless I put Kleenex boxes over my shoes first."
"It's Tourette's syndrome."
"Sure, that's why half of his broads are registered at the VD clinic."
I climbed through the barbed wire fence next to the cattleguard. Dock Green was motionless, the bale of the bucket hooked across his palm as if it had been hung from stone. His thin brown hair was cut short and was wet and freshly combed. I saw the recognition come into his eyes, a tic jump in his face.
But the problem in dealing with Dock Green was not his tormented and neurotic personality. It was his intuitive and uncannily accurate sense about other people's underlying motivations, perhaps even their thoughts.
"Who told you I was here?" he said.
"You've got a lot of respect around here, Dock. The St. Landry sheriff's office likes to know when you're in town."
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"Who's in the shit machine?"
"Clete Purcel."
He put down the bucket, cupped one hand to his mouth, the other to his genitalia, and shouted, "Hey, Purcel, I got your corndog hanging!"
"Dock, I'm looking for a black hooker by the name of Brandy Grissum."
"An addict, the one saw the screenwriter get capped?"
"That's right."
"I don't know anything about her. Why's he parked out there?"
"You just said—"
"NOPD already talked to me. That's how I know." The skin under his eye puckered, like paint wrinkling in a bucket. "Short Boy Jerry put you here?"
"Why would he do that?" I smiled and tried to keep my eyes flat.
"Y'all went to school together. Now he's moving back to New Iberia. Now you're standing on my property. It don't take a big brain to figure it out."
"Give me the girl, Dock. I'll owe you one."
"You looking for a black whore or a black hit man, you should be talking to Jimmy Ray Dixon."
"I'm firing in the well, huh?" I said. The wind puffed the willow trees that grew on the far side of the levee. "You've got a nice place here."
"Don't give me that laid-back act, Robicheaux. I'll tell you what this is about. Short Boy Jerry thought he could throw up some pickets on my jobs and run me under. It didn't work. So now he's using you to put some boards in my head. I think he dimed me with NOPD, too."
"You're pretty fast, Dock."
His eyes focused on the front gate.
"I can't believe it. Purcel's taking a leak in my cattleguard. I got neighbors here," Dock said.
"You and the Giacanos aren't backing Buford LaRose, are you?" I asked.
For the first time he smiled, thin-lipped, his eyes slitted inside the hard cast of his face.
