'It'll cool down. It always does.'
'Baxter's got no bottom. He'll take you out, Clete.'
'You shouldn't try to cut deals with the greasebags on behalf of your old podjo.'
'Do you have a death wish? Is that the problem?'
'You want to go fishing? If the wind drops, I'm going after some specs in a couple of hours.'
'Fishing?'
'Yeah.'
I propped my forehead on my fingers and stared into space.
'You need any money?' I said.
'Not right now.'
'Why'd you do it, Clete? Baxter says the insurance company wants to hang you out to dry.'
'Who cares? They shouldn't do business with a bucket of shit like Max Calucci. You've had your shield too long, Streak. You're starting to think like an administrator.'
'What's that mean?'
'You think you or Motley or Lucinda Bergeron were ever going to get a search warrant on Max and Bobo? With Nate Baxter on their pad?'
'You were tossing the place with an earthmover?'
'So it was a little heavy-handed. But dig this. Just before I gutted Max's den, I emptied everything out of his desk into a garbage bag. I also took his Rolodex and all the videocassettes off the shelves. One of these videos is a documentary about this primitive Indian tribe down in South America. Before the missionaries got to them, these guys were known as the worst human beings on earth. They shrank heads and sawed people into parts; sometimes they'd boil them alive. They'd even kill their own children.'
'Go on.'
'They'd also cut the hearts out of their victims. What's Max doing with a tape like that? The mob's into anthropology?'
'You've queered it as evidence.'
'Nobody else cares, Dave. Except for you and Motley and Lucinda, everybody in New Orleans is happy these black pukes could find new roles as organ donors. History lesson, big mon. When they talk law and order, they mean Wyatt Earp leaving hair on the walls.'
Across the street, a black kid was flying a blood red kite high against a shimmering blue sky.
chapter twenty-six
The information requests that I had made about a possible suspect named Schwert were answered, at first, in a trickle, in increments, unspecifically, as though we were pursuing a shadow that had cast itself over other cases and files without ever becoming a solid presence.
Then the computer printouts, the faxes, and the phone calls began to increase in volume, from the FBI, the NCIC, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and finally Interpol.
The sheriff looked down at the clutter of paper on my desk.
'Where'd you get your filing system? It looks like Fibber McGee's closet,' he said. He glanced up at my face. 'Sorry, that's one of those generational jokes, I guess.'
'The first time the name William Schwert shows up is in some phone taps the FBI and ATF had on some neo-Nazis in Idaho during the mideighties,' I said. 'Then ATF found it in the pocket of a guy who blew his face off while he was building a bomb in his basement in Portland.'
'Yeah, I think I remember that. He and some other guys were going to dynamite a synagogue?'
'That's right.'
'Schwert was involved?'
'No one's sure.'
The sheriff tilted his head quizzically.
'In a half dozen cases it's like he's standing just on the edge of the picture but he doesn't leave footprints,' I said.
The sheriff sniffed and blew his nose in a Kleenex.
'It doesn't sound like this is helping us a lot,' he said.
'It gets more interesting. The guy named Schwert seems to spend a lot of time overseas. Interpol has been tracking him for fifteen years. Berlin, London, Madrid, any place there're skinheads, Nazis, or Falangists.'
The light in the sheriff's eyes sharpened. He began poking in the papers on my desk.
'Where is it?' he said.
'What?'
'The Interpol jacket. The mug shots.'
'There aren't any. Nobody's nailed him.'
'This isn't taking us anywhere, Dave. It looks like what you've got here is more smoke. We don't even know if Schwert is Buchalter.'
'Interpol says a guy named Willie Schwert broke out of an asylum for the criminally insane in Melbourne, Australia, seventeen years ago. He tore the window bars out of a maximum security unit with his bare hands.'
'Then where's the sheet?'
'The records on the guy are gone. A fire in their computer system or something.'
'What is it, a computer virus wiping out all the information on this character?'
'You're not impressed?' I said.
'I wish I could say I was.'
'It's the same guy.'
'You're probably right. And it does diddle-squat for us. He's still out there, fucking up people in any way he can. I wish Purcel had dropped the hammer on this guy when he had him at close range… Pardon my sentiment. I'm becoming convinced I'm not emotionally suited for this job.'
'The people who are shouldn't be cops, Sheriff,' I said.
That evening, as Bootsie and I washed the dishes at the sink, the breeze through the screen was dry and warm and the clouds above my neighbor's tree line looked like torn plums in the sun's afterglow. Her hands were chaffed, her knuckles white in the dishwater. For a second time, she began to wash a saucer I had already dried. I took it from her hand and placed it back on the drain rack.
'You want to go to a meeting?' I asked.
'Not tonight.'
'You tired?'
'A little.'
'Do you want to lie down?' I said. I rested my hand on the top of her rump.
'Not really. Maybe I'll just read.' Her eyes focused on a solitary mockingbird that stood in the middle of the picnic table.
I nodded.
'I don't seem to have any energy,' she said. 'I don't know what it is.'
'Long day,' I said, and dried my hands and turned away from her.
'Yes,' she said. 'I guess that's it.'
Later, after she and Alafair had gone to bed, I sat in the living room by myself and stared at the television screen. A gelatinous fat man, with the toothy smile of a chipmunk, was denigrating liberals and making fun of feminists and the homeless. His round face was bright with an electric jeer when he broached the subject of environmentalists and animal rights activists. His live audience squealed with delight.
Eighteen million people listened to him daily.
