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“Can you call me Dave, please?”
“I’ll call you crazy if I hear any more of this.”
I looked through the glass in my door. A patrolman had hooked up a man with thick salt-and-pepper hair and was walking him down the hall. LeBlanc followed my eyes. “What?”
“That’s Marcel LaForchette.”
“Yeah, he pulled a knife on a guy in Clementine’s.”
“What’s Marcel doing at Clementine’s?” I said.
“Upgrading his lifestyle. How would I know? Stay out of it.”
“Nobody was hurt?”
“Ask the chamber of commerce guy he threatened. He dumped in his pants—literally, on his shoes.” LeBlanc’s eyes lingered on my face. “Why the look?”
“I don’t buy it.”
“What’s with you and LaForchette?”
“I could have been him.”
“I know where this is going,” LeBlanc said.
“Then you know more than I do.”
“You’re a laugh a minute, Robo. I mean Dave.”
* * *
I FOUND MARCEL LAFORCHETTE and the patrolman and a detective in an interview room at the end of the hallway. I talked with the detective outside, then asked if I could have a few minutes with Marcel. After the patrolman and detective were gone, I sat down across from Marcel at a steel table that was bolted to the floor. He was wearing a navy blue sport coat and pressed gray slacks and a red silk shirt and polished needle-nosed Tony Lama boots. His wrists were cuffed behind him, the ratchets hooked too tight, biting into the veins.
“You could be charged with aggravated battery, Marcel,” I said.
“Yeah, I deserve it. I don’t know what made me do that.”
“Neither does anyone else. The detective said you asked for segregation.”
“Yeah, I don’t like being around amateurs. I need to relax a bit, too, get some shut-eye, watch a little TV.”
“I got good news for you,” I said.
“Yeah?” He shifted in his chair, a flicker of pain in his face.
“The guy you threatened is a good guy. He figures you were just drunk, which you and I know was not the case.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“The guy says no harm, no foul.”
Marcel’s eyes searched in space, then came back to mine. “You getting off on this?”
“We don’t like people wasting our time. You want wit pro, talk to the feds.”
“Wit pro is for snitches.”
“It beats the boneyard.”
