right,' she said.
'Where's your automobile?'
'Down by the dock.'
'Is anyone with you?'
'No.' She flexed her loins against me.
'I'll tell the wrecker service not to scratch it up,' I said, turning her in a half circle.
'What?'
'The guy we contract to haul cars into the pound is careless sometimes.' I pulled her forearms behind her. Her wrists were narrow and pale, and the undersides were lined with thin green veins. I snipped the handcuffs on each wrist, then stuffed her bra in the back pocket of her jeans.
'The offer's still open. With handcuffs. Think about it, Dave. Ouu,' she said, and made a pout with her mouth. 'You might even like it better than climbing on top of a drunk sow.'
'Try it on our jailer, Marie,' I said. 'He's a three-hundred-pound black homosexual. Maybe you can turn him around.'
The next morning at the department I picked up a cup of coffee and a doughnut by the dispatcher's cage and called Clete at his office in the Quarter. The sun was shining, and there was dew on the grass and trees outside my window. I had called him twice the day before and hadn't gotten an answer.
'The tape on my machine's screwed up. What's happening?' he said.
I told him about my conversation in the restaurant with Tommy Lonighan.
'You sound mad,' he said.
'I am.'
'What's the big deal?'
'I warned you about provoking these guys.'
'Look, Dave, what's 'open hit' actually mean? Nothing. It's something these greasebags like to mouth off about while they're stuffing linguine in their faces. A real whack is when they bring in a mechanic, a mainline button man, a full-time sociopath, from Miami or Houston, and this guy
'Clete-'
'Drop it, mon. Max and Bobo are always blowing gas. It's time they both get their snouts stuck in the commode.'
'I just don't believe you. Why don't you go stand in the middle of the streetcar tracks?'
'Okay, big mon, you've warned me. Listen, has Motley called you yet?'
'No.'
'Dig this. Ole Mots stopped thinking about food and cooze and being black long enough to do some real detective work.'
'I think Motley's turned out to be a good guy.'
'That's what I was saying. Is there static on the line or something? Yesterday afternoon he got some chest waders from the fire department, and he and I splashed out into that swamp in Lafourche Parish. It took a while, but we found it.'
'Found what?'
'The armored vest. The guy who cut open the two lowlifes with the chain saw, we found where he got out of the water on a levee not far from Larose. There were depressions in the mud that Sasquatch could have left. Anyway, about two hundred yards back into the swamp he'd dumped the vest by a sandbar. There were a half- dozen pieces of buckshot in the plates.'
'Why would he be wearing a vest?'
He laughed, then took the receiver away from his mouth and laughed again.
'You want to let me in on it?' I asked.
'You're beautiful, Streak. There's a secret that everybody seems to know except my old podjo from the First. You're one of the most violent people I've ever known. Why do you think Buchalter would wear a vest? You've probably got him spotting his Jockeys.'
'Thanks for going out there, Clete.'
'Hold on a minute. There's something else. Maybe it's important, maybe not. There was some stenciling on the cloth. The vest was Toronto PD issue.'
'It's Canadian?'
'Maybe he got it at a surplus store. But it's a thread, right? Anyway, talk with Motley.'
'You remember the nun we saw at the hospital?'
'Yes, she need somebody to pound erasers for her?'
'Not unless you want to visit her in the parish jail.'
Then I told him about all the events involving the woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux.
'Definitely a weird scam, mon,' he said.
'I'll bet she and Buchalter have their umbilical cords tied together.'
'What are you holding her on?'
'Not much.'
'Don't let them kick her. Give me the address that's on her driver's license.'
I read it to him off the arrest report.
'Salt the shaft if you have to. You know why everybody loves straight shooters? Because they usually lose,' he said.
'See you later, Cletus,' I said, and hung up the phone just as the sheriff tapped on my glass and motioned me toward his office at the other end of the hallway.
He drank from his bottle of ulcer medicine, then leaned back in his swivel chair, bouncing the heels of his hands on the padded arms, and gazed at the potted plants and hand-painted flowered tea-pot on his windowsill. His stomach wedged over his hand-tooled gunbelt like a partly deflated football. He poked at it with his stiffened fingers.
'You never had ulcers, did you?' he said.
'No.'
'I think I'm getting another one. I eat grits and baby food and get up in the morning with barbed wire in my stomach. Why's that?'
'You got me.'
'What are we supposed to do with that gal you locked up last night?'
'We try to keep her there till we find out who she is.'
'She's got no arrest record. Also the charge you've got against her is a joke.'
'Not to me it isn't.'
'At arraignment, what do we tell the judge?'
'The truth.'
'How's this sound? 'Your Honor, this lady represented herself as a Catholic nun in order to get the wife of Detective Robicheaux drunk. Because everybody knows that's what nuns do in their spare time.''
I opened and closed my right hand on my thigh. I fixed my gaze on a place about three inches to the side of his face.
'I apologize, I shouldn't have said that,' he said. 'But at best all we've got is a misdemeanor.'
'I think she murdered Charles Sitwell in the hospital.'
'Put her there, in the hospital, in the room, in her nun's veil, around the time of death and we have something. Look, the driver's license and Social Security card are real. She says she never told you or your wife or anybody else she was a nun.'
'You talked to her?'
'I went to the jail early this morning. The jailer's got her in isolation. A couple of the dykes were getting stoked up.'
'They like her?'
'Are you kidding? They were scared shitless. One of them claims your gal threatened to put out a cigarette in
