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“There’s no question about it. I figure Bello broke the chain from the guy’s neck and it fell down inside his shirt. It didn’t fall onto the ground until he was almost to the fence.”
“That doesn’t put the guy at the murder scene. Whitey Bruxal was Bello’s business partner. It’s not improbable his hired help hung around Bello’s stable. But if we can put the neck chain and whatever with the scrapings from under Bello’s nails, we might have something. Find out where the gumball is and bring him in.”
I called Betsy Mossbacher on her cell phone. She picked up on the second ring.
“I need to find the guy from the Islands who works for Whitey Bruxal. His hair looks like a braided mop somebody dipped in a grease bucket. Know who I’m talking about?” I said.
“He’s an illegal by the name of Juan Bolachi. He’s got the smarts of a used Q-tip. What do you want him for?”
“He may have been involved in the murder of Bello Lujan.”
“Our surveillance indicates he already blew town. Good luck finding him. He mucks out stables anywhere between Hialeah and Belmont Park and a couple of quarter-horse tracks in the Southwest. You’re sure this is the guy?”
I called Helen again at her house, even though it was Saturday and I knew my obsessiveness was beginning to test her patience. “The guy from the Islands already split. I’ve got an address for him in Lafayette. Maybe we can match DNA from some items in his residence with the scrapings from—”
“Ease up, bwana. It’s starting to get away from you.”
“I’ll work on it this weekend. On my own time.”
“The evidence you’ve found is one nail in the coffin. But we’re going to need six more like it. Now cool your jets, Streak.”
In terms of the evidentiary aspects of the case, she was right and it was pointless to argue with her. But Helen believed in the viability of the legal process much more than I did. If the building that you wish to see demolished already has a crack in it, why wait on time and decay to finish the job? I tried another tack before she could hang up.
“I think I know how Crustacean Man died,” I said. “Monday morning I want to get a search warrant on the Lujan and Bruxal homes and Slim Bruxal’s fraternity house.”
I heard her sigh. “What do you have?”
“Monarch Little says Slim and Tony and their friends used baseball bats in a beef with some soldiers behind a nightclub. I think they used one on Crustacean Man as well. Koko will back us up on the warrant.”
“Why would college kids deliberately murder a derelict?”
“Why did they gangbang Yvonne Darbonne when she was stoned and drunk and already traumatized by rape? Because they’re sociopaths. Because their parents should have used better rubbers,” I replied.
“Get the warrants,” she said. Chapter 24
W E HAD THE WARRANTS by 11 a.m. Monday. We coordinated with both the Lafayette P.D. and the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Department and arranged to serve all three search warrants simultaneously to ensure that no one at any of the three locations notified the other targets we were on our way.
At exactly 2:45 p.m. Helen and two plainclothes descended on the Lujan home, Lafayette Parish detectives searched the Bruxal home, and Joe Dupree at the Lafayette P.D. accompanied me and Top, our retired NCO, to Slim Bruxal’s fraternity house.
Summer school was out of session and the white three-story Victorian home that had been the second-to-last stop in the short life of Yvonne Darbonne was almost empty. The air-conditioning units in the windows were turned off, either to save electricity or perhaps because they were broken, and the entire building seemed to radiate heat and the smell of moldy clothes and spoiled food someone had forgotten to empty from a garbage container. In fact, without the forced humor and irreverent shouting that passed for camaraderie among the usual residents, the house was a dismal and depressing environment, as though the floors and water-stained wallpaper and dark corridors contained no memories worth remembering and had served no purpose higher than a utilitarian one.
A thick-bodied, crew-cut kid with green and red tattoos on both arms was reading a magazine on the back porch. He told us he couldn’t remember seeing any baseball bats on the premises.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Sonny Williamson.”
“You have a speed bag in the backyard, Sonny. You must have other sporting equipment here. Where would it be?” I said.
He lowered his magazine and studied the back hedge. “I got no idea,” he said.
“Get up,” Joe said.
“What?” the kid said. His close-cropped hair was oily and bright on the tips, his upper arms sunburned.
“You deaf as well as impolite?” Joe said.
“No,” the kid said, slowly rising to his feet.
