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“Oh,” she said, her face coloring slightly.
“I want to pick up both Tee Bobby Hulin and Jimmy Dean Styles,” I said.
“What for?”
“I think we can find out once and for all what happened to Amanda. But we have to keep Perry LaSalle away from Tee Bobby.”
She was standing behind her desk. She pushed a couple of pieces of paper around on her desk blotter with the ends of her fingers.
“This office won’t be party to any form of procedural illegality,” she said.
“You want the truth about what happened to that girl or not?” I asked.
“You heard what I said.”
“Yeah, I did. It sounds a little self-serving, too.” I saw the anger sharpen in her face and I changed my tone. “You need to be in the vicinity when Tee Bobby and Styles are interviewed.”
“All right,” she replied. She stared out the window. The wind was blowing hard, bending the trees along the railway tracks, bouncing garbage cans through the streets. “You pissed off at me about Clete?”
“He went to jail for you and you eighty-sixed him,” I said.
“He was talking about ‘clipping’ Legion Guidry. You think I want to see him in Angola over me? Why don’t you give me a little goddamn credit?” she said.
“Clete is hurt more easily and deeply than people think,” I said.
“Actually, I like you, Dave. You probably don’t believe that, but I do. Why are you so cruel?”
Her eyes were moist, the whites a light pink, as though they had been touched by iodine.
Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought.
I went back to my office and called the number of the Boom Boom Room. “Is Jimmy Sty there?” I said.
“He’ll be here in a half hour. Who want to know?” a man’s voice said.
“It’s okay. Tell him I’ll see him tonight,” I said.
“Who see him tonight?” the voice asked.
“He’ll know,” I said, and hung up.
Then I called Ladice Hulin’s number on Poinciana Island.
“It’s Dave Robicheaux, Ladice. Is Tee Bobby home?” I said.
“He’s still sleeping,” she replied.
“I’ll talk with him later. Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“Somet’ing going on?” she said.
“I’ll get back to you,” I said, and eased the receiver down.
I went down the corridor to the office of Kevin Dartez, the department plainclothes who worked Narcotics exclusively and bore a legendary grudge against pimps and dope dealers for the death of his sister.
When I opened his office door, he was tilted back in his chair, talking on the phone while he squeezed a hand exerciser in his palm.
“Maybe if you pulled your head out of your cheeks and did your job, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said into the receiver, then quietly hung up. He had narrow bones in his face and jet-black hair that he oiled and combed straight back. His needle-nose cowboy boots and pencil-line mustache and wide red tie, a tiny pair of silver handcuffs pinned in the center, made me think of an early-twentieth-century lawman or perhaps a Los Vegas cardplayer of the kind you didn’t cross.
