Lila Terrebonne normally listened and did not speak at meetings. Tonight was different. She sat stiffly on a chair by the window, a tree silhouetted by a fiery sunset behind her head. The skin of her face had the polished, ceramic quality of someone who has just come out of a windstorm. Her hands were hooked together like those of an opera singer.
'I think I've had a breakthrough with my therapist,' she said. 'I've always had this peculiar sensation, this sense of guilt, I mean, a fixation I guess with crucifixes.' She laughed self-deprecatingly, her eyes lowered, her eyelashes as stiff as wire. 'It's because of something I saw as a child. But it didn't have anything to do with me, right? I mean, it's not part of the program to take somebody else's inventory. All I have to do is worry about what I've done. As people say, clean up my side of the street. Who am I to judge, particularly if I'm not in the historical context of others?'
No one had any idea of what she was talking about. She rambled on, alluding to her therapist, using terms most blue-collar people in the room had no understanding of.
'It's called psychoneurotic anxiety. It made me drink. Now I think most of that is behind me,' she said. 'Anyway, I didn't leave my panties anywhere today. That's all I have.'
After the meeting I caught her by Clete's car. The oak tree overhead was filled with fireflies, and there was a heavy, wet smell in the air like sewer gas.
'Lila, I've never spoken like this to another AA member before, but what you said in there was total bullshit,' I said.
She fixed her eyes on mine and blinked her eyelashes coyly and said nothing.
'I think you're stoned, too,' I said.
'I have a prescription. It makes me a little funny sometimes. Now stop beating up on me,' she said, and fixed my collar with one hand.
'You know who murdered Jack Flynn. You know who executed the two brothers in the swamp. You can't conceal knowledge like that from the law and expect to have any serenity.'
'Marry me in our next incarnation,' she said, and pinched my stomach. Then she made a sensual sound and said, 'Not bad, big stuff.'
She got in the passenger seat and looked at herself in her compact mirror and waited for Geraldine Holtzner to get behind the wheel. Then the two of them cruised down a brick-paved side street, laughing, the wind blowing their hair, like teenage girls who had escaped into a more innocent, uncomplicated time.
TWO DAYS PASSED, THEN I received another phone call from Alex Guidry, this time at the dock. His voice was dry, the receiver held close to his mouth.
'What kind of deal can I get?' he said.
'That depends on how far you can roll over.'
'I'm not doing time.'
'Don't bet on it.'
'You're not worried about a dead black woman or a couple of shit bags who got themselves killed out in the Basin. You want the people who nailed up Jack Flynn.'
'Give me a number. I'll call you back,' I said.
'Call me back?'
'Yeah, I'm busy right now. I've already reached my quotient for jerk-off behavior today.'
'I can give you Harpo Scruggs tied hand and foot on a barbecue spit,' he said.
I could hear him breathing through his nose, like a cat's whisker scraping across the perforations. Then I realized the source of his fear.
'You've talked to Scruggs, haven't you?' I said. 'You called him about his receiving immunity. Which means he knows you're in communication with us. You dropped the dime on yourself… Hello?'
'He's back. I saw him this morning,' he said.
'You're imagining things.'
'He's got an inoperable brain tumor. The guy's walking death. That's his edge.'
'Better come in, Mr. Guidry.'
'I don't give a deposition until he's in custody. I want the sheriffs guarantee on that.'
'You won't get it.'
'One day I'm going to make you suffer. I promise it.' He eased the phone down into the cradle.
ON MONDAY, ADRIEN GLAZIER knocked on my office door. She was dressed in blue jeans and hiking shoes and a denim shirt, and she carried a brown cloth shoulder bag scrolled with Mexican embroidery. The ends of her ash-blond hair looked like they had been brushed until they crawled with static electricity, then had been sprayed into place.
'We can't find Willie Broussard,' she said.
'Did you try his father's fish camp?'
'Why do you think I'm dressed like this?'
'Cool Breeze doesn't report in to me, Ms. Glazier.'
'Can I sit down?'
Her eyes met mine and lingered for a moment, and I realized her tone and manner had changed, like heat surrendering at the end of a burning day.
'An informant tells us some people in Hong Kong have sent two guys to Louisiana to clip off a troublesome hangnail or two,' she said. 'I don't know if the target is Willie Broussard or Ricky Scarlotti or a couple of movie producers. Maybe it's all of the above.'
'My first choice would be Scarlotti. He's the only person who has reason to give up some of their heroin connections.'
'If they kill Willie Broussard, they take the squeeze off Scarlotti. Anyway, I'm telling you what we know.'
I started to bring up the subject of Harpo Scruggs again and the possibility of his having worked for the government, but I let it go.
She dropped a folder on my desk. Clipped to two xeroxed Mexico City police memorandums was a grainy eight-by-ten photograph that had been taken in an open-air fruit market. The man in the photo stood at a stall, sucking a raw oyster out of its shell.
'His name is Ruben Esteban. He's one of the men we think Hong Kong has sent here.'
'He looks like a dwarf.'
'He is. He worked for the Argentine Junta. Supposedly he interrogated prisoners by chewing off their genitals.'
'What?'
'The Triads always ruled through terror. The people they hire create living studies in torture and mutilation. Call Amnesty International in Chicago and see what they have to say about Esteban.'
I picked up the photo and looked at it again. 'Where's the material on the other guy?' I asked.
'We don't know who he is. Mr. Robicheaux, I'm sorry for having given you a bad time in some of our earlier conversations.'
'I'll survive,' I said, and tried to smile.
'My father was killed in Korea while people like Jack Flynn were working for the Communist Party.'
'Flynn wasn't a Red. He was a Wobbly.'
'You could fool me. He was lucky a House committee didn't have him shipped to Russia.'
Then she realized she had said too much, that she had admitted looking at his file, that she was probably committed forever to being the advocate for people whose deeds were indefensible.
'You ever sit down and talk with Megan? Maybe y'all are on the same side,' I said.
'You're too personal, sir.'
I raised my hands by way of apology.
She smiled slightly, then hung her bag from her shoulder and walked out of the office, her eyes already assuming new purpose, as though she were burning away all the antithetical thoughts that were like a thumbtack in her brow.
