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“Some people say I might have a shot at vice president. It ain’t a time to be soft on criminals, particularly one who’s chopped up an ex-state trooper.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, trying to conceal the disappointment in my voice.
He beat at the air with both hands. “I’m gonna call the Mosquito Control down here and bomb this whole place,” he said. “Lord God Almighty, I thought liquor and women’s thi
ghs were an addiction. Son, they don’t hold a candle to ambition.”
The next morning a young black woman walked through the front door of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department and down the hall to my office and tapped on the glass with one ringed finger. She wore a lavender shirt and white blouse and lavender pumps, and carried a baby in diapers on her shoulder.
“Little Face?” I said when I opened the door.
“I’m moving back here. Out at my auntie’s place in the quarters at Loreauville. I got to tell you something,” she said, and walked past me and sat down before I could reply.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Zipper Clum is what’s up. He say he gonna do you and Fat Man both.”
“Clete Purcel is ‘Fat Man’?”
“Fat Man shamed him, slapped his face up on that roof, throwed his pimp friends crashing down through a tree. I ax Zipper why he want to hurt you. He say you tole some people Zipper was snitching them off.”
“Which people?”
She rolled her eyes. “Zipper’s gonna tell me that? He’s scared. Somebody done tole him he better clean up his own mess or Zipper ain’t gonna be working his street corners no more. Anybody who can scare Zipper Clum is people I wouldn’t want on my case.”
She shifted her baby to her other shoulder.
“You’re an intelligent lady, Little Face.”
“That’s why I’m on welfare and living with my auntie in the quarters.”
“The day Vachel Carmouche was killed a black girl of about twelve was turning an ice cream crank on his gallery. That was eight years ago. You’re twenty, aren’t you?”
“You been thinking too much. You ought to go jogging with Fat Man, hep him lose weight, find something useful for you to do so you don’t tire out your brain all the time.”
“What happened inside Vachel Carmouche’s house that night? Why won’t you tell me?”
“He wanted to live real bad, that’s what happened. But he didn’t find no mercy ’cause he didn’t deserve none. You ax me, a man like that don’t find no mercy in the next world, either.”
“You saw him killed, didn’t you?”
“Mine to know.”
“Did he molest you? Is that why Letty came to Carmouche’s back door that night?”
Her small face seemed to cloud with thought.
“I got to come up wit’ a name for you. Maybe an Indian one, something like ‘Man Who’s Always Axing Questions and Don’t Listen.’ That’s probably too long, though, huh? I’ll work on it.”
“That’s real wit,” I said.
“It ain’t your grief, Sad Man. Stay out of it before you do real damage to somebody. About Zipper? Some snakes rattle before they bite. Zipper don’t. He’s left-handed. So he’s gonna be doing something wit’ his right hand, waving it around in the air, taking things in and out of his pockets. You gonna be watching that hand while he’s grinning and talking. Then his left hand gonna come at you just like a snake’s head. Pow, pow, pow. I ain’t lyin’, Sad Man.”
“If Vachel Carmouche molested you, we’d have corroborating evidence that he molested Letty and Passion,” I said.
“I got to feed my baby now. Tell Fat Man what I said. It won’t be no fun if he ain’t around no more,” she said.
She rose from her chair and hefted her baby higher on her shoulder and walked back out the door, her face oblivious to the cops in the hall whose eyes cut sideways at her figure.
