before Katrina. You guys were supposed to pick them up.”
“Two informants, independently of each other, say Chula is working as an electrician and plumber in New Orleans. I’ve talked to five different people in Iberia Parish, including your jailer. No one seems to know where Ramos is or what happened to him or if he ever existed. Can you explain that?”
“How about his partner?”
“His partner is in the stockade. There’s no problem with his partner. Not unless you guys lose him before we can get down there.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
I called the parish prison and the district attorney. Then I went into Helen’s office. “The FBI thinks we’ve lost Felix Ramos, one of those guys who-”
“Yeah, the one who called me a queer in Spanish.”
“Yeah, that one,” I said, my eyes slipping off hers. “The ADA who caught the case says he was marked for transfer to federal custody, so she put everything on hold. In fact, she thought the FBI had already picked him up.”
“Maybe they did. Maybe they lost him in their own system.”
“Betsy Mossbacher isn’t one to screw up like that. She says Ramos may be drawing paychecks in New Orleans. A lot of MS-13 guys are in the trades.”
“Give me a few minutes,” she said.
I went back to my office. It was almost quitting time. I felt like I was in a bad dream, unable to extract myself from New Orleans and the Melancon-Rochon shooting and the probable homicide of Jude LeBlanc. I wanted to go home and eat a hot supper with my family and perhaps walk down Main Street with them in the twilight and have a dessert on the terrace behind Clementine’s restaurant. I wanted to have a normal life again.
My extension buzzed. “Ramos’s name got misspelled on the arrest report,” Helen said. “The misspelling went into the computer. We have three other inmates in custody who have similar names. One of them finished his sentence during Rita. The day he was supposed to get out he was at Iberia General for treatment of a venereal infection. Felix Ramos walked out in his stead. To top it off, the ADA says the bust probably won’t hold anyway. Ramos was a hundred feet from the lab when it was raided and there’s no evidence or witness statements to put him inside it. Nothing like drinkin’ rum and Coca-Cola on the bayou, huh, boss?”
IN THE MORNING I decided the only way to deal with the Melancon-Rochon file was to hit it head-on and to stop giving a free pass to people who had lied to me. There was no conventional telephone service in New Orleans and I doubted there would be any for a long time. I called Otis Baylor and asked if he had a cell number for his next-door neighbor, Tom Claggart. “There might be one in my Rolodex,” he said.
“Do you mind looking it up?”
After a pause, he said, “Just a minute.”
He came back to the phone and gave me the number, but he did not hide his impatience well. “Does your call to Tom Claggart concern us?”
“I’m not sure. But it’s a police matter, Mr. Baylor. We’re not obligated to inform the public about the content of an investigation or the procedures we follow. I think it’s important we all understand that.”
He eased the telephone back into the cradle, breaking the connection.
I punched in Claggart’s cell number. He answered on the third ring. “Tom Claggart,” he said.
“This is Dave Robicheaux again. I need to check a discrepancy between-”
“How’d you get this number?”
“That’s not the issue, Mr. Claggart.”
“It is to me. My cell number is private.”
“Would you like to conduct this interview in handcuffs?”
“I’m sorry. We’re under a lot of pressure here. I should have gone with Otis Baylor. He can be a pain in the ass, but at least he’s honest.”
“Say again?”
“I should have bought my insurance policy from Otis. My carrier is sticking it to me. I hear Otis has been approving his clients’ water-damage claims on the spot. I bet his company is shitting their pants.”
I tried to get the conversation back on track. “There’s a discrepancy between your statement to me and the account you gave a private investigator regarding the shooting of the looters. You told me you were asleep and you heard and saw nothing. Do you stand by that statement?”
“I had a few drinks that night. Things got kind of mixed up.”
“Did you tell the private investigator one of the looters was in the Baylor driveway, that maybe he left stolen goods there?”
“I don’t remember saying that. I mean, I don’t remember saying that last part.”
“The investigator’s name is Ronald Bledsoe. Do you remember that name?”
“I think so.”
“Can you come into my office?”
“No, I can’t do that. I’m all tied up here. I don’t know what all this is about.”
Why had he lied? Was it because he had done nothing to stop the looters? Was he simply trying to hide the fact he was a blowhard? People lie over less.
“You told Bledsoe the truth?”
“Maybe I saw one of those black guys in the shadows. But I didn’t see the shooting. Look, I just want out of this.”
“Out of what?”
“Everything. I didn’t hurt anyone. Leave me alone.”
I could almost smell his fear on the other side of the connection. “Mr. Claggart?”
He clicked off his cell.
In my mind’s eye I saw a man whose eyes were tightly shut, his hand clenched around his cell phone as he tried to rethink every misstep he had just made. I saw a man who despised himself for his own weakness and who now carried the extra burden of knowing that through his own volition he had revealed himself to others as a liar and a fraud if not a coward. Also he had blurted out that he had not “hurt anyone,” when in fact no one had accused him of doing so. There was a very good chance Tom Claggart was speaking of another incident, perhaps another crime, of which I had no knowledge. For whatever reason, he had done all these things to himself, without external provocation. I believe that Tom Claggart had just discovered that stacking time on the hard road is a matter of definition and not geography.
AFTER I HUNG UP, I assembled three photo lineups. A photo lineup is composed of six mug shots inserted in a cardboard holder. Among the six photos only one is of the suspect. Ideally the other photos should be of people in the same age range and of the same race as the suspect. The photo lineup has several advantages. The viewer, who is often a victim of a violent crime, is spared public embarrassment and is less fearful of retaliation from the suspect’s friends and relatives and hence less apt to be influenced by the presence of either prosecutors or defense attorneys in a police station environment. Secondly, jailhouse photography indicates by its nature that the suspect has been put away previously and hence can be put away again.
I inserted mug shots of Andre Rochon, Eddy Melancon, and Bertrand Melancon among their peers, dropped all three lineups in a brown envelope, and drove up Old Jeanerette Road to Otis Baylor’s house while a sun shower chained the bayou with rain rings.
I cannot say what I thought I would accomplish. I was tired of people lying to me, that was obvious, but I wanted to confront Otis Baylor for another reason. As Americans we are a peculiar breed. We believe in law and order, but we also believe that real crimes are committed by a separate class of people, one that has nothing to do with our own lives or the world of reasonable behavior and mutual respect to which we belong. As a consequence, many people, particularly in higher income brackets, think of police officers as suburban maintenance personnel who should be treated politely but whose social importance is one cut above that of their gardeners.
Ever watch reality cop shows? Check out the guys who are always streaking through wash lines and across darkened yards, their tennis shoes flopping on their feet, their crime of the day possession of a dime bag. What
