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"What's going on?" I said.
"I suspect that's why he'd like to talk with you, Mr. Robicheaux. To explain everything to you. I'm sure by this time you're rather used to that," she said.
I walked downtown and got the number off a public telephone and called it back to Alice Werenhaus. "I'll be at this number at one P.M.," I said.
I expected another rejoinder at my expense. But she surprised me. "Mr. Robicheaux, be careful. Watch after Mr. Purcel, too. Under all his bluster he's a vulnerable man," she said.
At 1:04 P.M. the payphone across from Victor's Cafeteria on Main Street rang. I picked it up and didn't wait for Clete to speak. "Have you lost your mind?" I said.
"About what?" he said.
"You stole a tow truck out of a filling station. You almost burned Bobby Joe Fontenot to death in his trailer. The drawbridge in Jean-erette is still closed with the melted wreckage you left on top of it. Boat traffic is backed up ten miles."
"Oh, yeah, that,"" he replied. "Things got a little out of hand. Look, big mon "
"No, you look, Clete. Helen wants to feed you into an airplane propeller."
"She's emotional sometimes. I talked with Clotile Arceneaux. She says your phone is tapped."
"I already got that. Listen to me "
"You think the Feds are tapping a cop's phone because they're worried about an Irish button man whacking out a couple of grease balls These guys still haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. It's Merchie Flannigan and his wife they're worried about."
"You're making no sense."
"That broad's been giving you a hand job. I did some checking on Merchie's company. He's in line for some big drilling contracts in Iraq after Shrub turns it into an American colony. That means his father-in-law, what's-his-face, Castille Lejeune, is probably mixed up in it, too. The Feds are after Coll because he's about to pop somebody with a lot of juice, not because they're worried about Coll trying to kill a Catholic priest or smoking the Dellacroce brothers."
It was pointless to argue with Clete. He was the best investigative cop I ever knew, his blue-collar instincts for deception and hypocrisy and flimflam always on target. But his antipathy toward Federal law enforcement agencies, particularly the FBI, was unrelenting, and at best he considered them bumbling and inept and at worst lazy and arrogant.
"Why'd you say Theodosha Flannigan was giving me a hand job?" I asked.
"She and her husband are business partners. She set you up to either get drunk or clipped, she didn't care which. Rich broads look after their money first and think about the size of your Johnson second. You think she's going to let a guy like you screw up her family's finances?"
"You really know how to say it, Cletus."
"You want to be a dildo for this broad, that's your choice. She's dirty, Streak, just like her husband and her old man."
"What are you up to?"
"I told you before, I'm going to make cripples out of the shitheads who hurt you. Get this. I saw a guy in Franklin who looks just like your description of Max Coll."
"Stay away from him, Clete."
"Lose a resource like that? By the way, what's the name of that electrician who burned down your house?"
I started to give him the name, then refused.
"That's all right. I already had a talk with him. He might be contacting your department, but don't believe anything he says."
Later, I went into Helen's office. She was on the phone, nodding, while someone on the other end talked, her eyes on mine. "All right, we'll take care of it.... I agree with you. Absolutely.... This isn't the Wild West. You got it," she said, and hung up. Her face looked scorched.
"Who was that?" I asked.
"The Lafayette sheriff. An electrical contractor by the name of Herbert Vidrine was pulled out of his house at around six-thirty this morning and worked over in his backyard," she said.
She looked down at the yellow legal pad on her desk, widening her eyes, as though she could not quite assimilate what she had just heard and written down. "By 'pulled out," I mean just that. His attacker was wearing work gloves of some kind and grabbed Vidrine by the mouth like he was picking up a bowling ball," she said. "He swung him around in a circle and threw him into the side of a garbage truck. Vidrine is in Our Lady of Lourdes now. A neighbor got the tag number of the attacker's car. A lavender Cadillac convertible. Guess who it belongs to?"
"I just talked to Clete on the phone. He's not coming in," I said.
