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"No. 'Cause I don't know you. I don't know what kind of problem you got."
"Then why'd you call me Blimpo?"
"So maybe I didn't mean anything by it."
"I think you did."
But Boxleiter turned his back on us, his attention fixed on the deep end of the pool, his right hand opening and closing on the blue rubber ball. The wind blew lines in his peroxided hair, and his scalp had the dead gray color of putty. His lips moved silently.
"What'd you say?" Clete asked. When Boxleiter didn't reply, Clete fitted his hand under Boxleiter's arm and turned him away from the fence. "You said, 'Blow me, Fatso'?"
Boxleiter slipped the ball in his pocket and looked out into the trees, his hands on his hips.
"It's a nice day. I'm gonna buy me a sno'ball. I love the spearmint sno'balls they sell in this park. You guys want one?" he said.
We watched him walk away through the trees, the leaves crunching under his feet like pecan shells, toward a cold drink stand and ice machine a black man had set up under a candy-striped umbrella.
"Like the boy says, he doesn't come with handles," Clete said.
THAT AFTERNOON THE SHERIFF called me into his office. He was watering his window plants with a hand-painted teakettle, smoking his pipe at the same time. His body was slatted with light through the blinds, and beyond the blinds I could see the whitewashed crypts in the old Catholic cemetery.
"I got a call from Alex Guidry. You reported him to the Humane Society?" he said.
"He keeps his dogs penned on a filthy concrete slab without shade."
"He claims you're harassing him."
"What did the Humane Society say?"
"They gave him a warning and told him they'd be back. Watch your back with this character, Dave."
"That's it?"
"No. The other problem is your calls to the FBI in New Orleans. They're off our backs for a while. Why stir them up?"
"Cool Breeze should be in our custody. We're letting the Feds twist him to avoid a civil suit over the abuse of prisoners in our jail."
"He's a four-time loser, Dave. He's not a victim. He fed a guy into
an electric saw."
"I don't think it's right."
"Tell that to people when we have to pass a parish sales tax to pay off a class action suit, particularly one that will make a bunch of convicts rich. I take that back. Tell it to that female FBI agent. She was here while you were out to lunch. I really enjoyed the half hour I spent listening to her."
"Adrien Glazier was here?"
IT WAS FRIDAY, AND when I drove home that evening I should have been beginning a fine weekend. Instead, she was waiting for me on the dock, a cardboard satchel balanced on the railing under her hand. I parked the car in the drive and walked down to meet her. She looked hot in her pink suit, her ice-blue eyes filmed from the heat or the dust on the road.
"You've got Breeze in lockdown and everybody around here scared. What else do you want, Ms. Glazier?"
"It's Special Agent Gla—"
"Yeah, I know."
"You and Megan Flynn are taking this to the media, aren't you?"
"No. At least I'm not."
