“You’re sure?” she asked.
“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
WE 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.
“You’re going to give us the tour. If I think you’re concealing evidence in a homicide investigation, I’m going to turn your life into a toilet,” Joe said.
“What’s your problem, man?” the kid said.
“You are. I don’t like your tats. If you ask me, they really suck. Where’d you get them?” Joe said.
“In Houston.”
“You should get your money back. These guys using you for queer-bait?” Joe said.
“Queer-bait? What’s going-”
“Shut your mouth. Where are the baseball bats?” Joe said.
“There’s some shit out in the garage. You want to look through it, be my fucking guest,” the kid said.
“Thanks for your help. Now, sit down and don’t move until I tell you,” Joe said.
Just then Joe’s cell phone vibrated on his hip. He glanced at the incoming number on the digital display and took the call while Top and I went into the garage. The heat was stifling, the tin roof ventilated by rust against a white sun, nests of mud daubers caked on the rafters.
“There it is,” Top said, pointing to a canvas duffel bag stuffed with baseball bats.
“Take them out to the car, will you, Top? I want to have a talk with the kid on the porch,” I said.
“You believe he’s really a college student?” he asked.
“Sure, why not?”
“I joined the Crotch because I didn’t think a university would accept a guy like me,” he said, hefting the duffel by its strap onto his shoulder. “I ended up at Khe Sanh. I think I screwed myself.”
“It could have been worse.”
“How?”
“You could be an alumnus of a fraternity like this one,” I said.
His eyes crinkled at the corners, the collection of aluminum and wood bats rattling against his back.
I walked back into the yard. The sun had gone behind a cloud and the wind was blowing in the trees. The kid reading the magazine glanced up at me. His eyes had the tint and complexity of clear blue water, devoid of thought or moral sentiment.
“Show me around the inside, will you, Sonny?” I said.
He tossed his magazine aside and walked ahead of me. But before I entered the house, Joe Dupree stopped me. He had just put away his cell phone and seemed to be puzzling through the conversation he’d just had. He gestured for me to follow him back into the yard, out of earshot of Sonny Williamson. “That was a friend of mine at the courthouse. Trish Klein just pleaded no contest on the shoplifting charge, paid a fine, and went back on the street,” he said.
“Have you gotten any reports of crimes committed against Bruxal or his interests?” I said.
