his coke a day and he don't need any more nightmares in his life, particularly a teenage moron who thinks she can go apeshit any time she feels like it.'
'Who killed her, Cholo?'
He tossed his unfinished po'-boy sandwich at a rusted trash barrel. He missed, and the bread, shrimp, and oysters broke apart on the ground.
'Come on, lieutenant. You know how it works. A guy like Julie don't do hits. He says something to somebody, then he forgets it. If it's a special kind of job, maybe somebody calls up a geek, a guy with real sick thoughts in his head.
'Look, you remember a street dip in New Orleans named Tommy Figorelli, people used to call him Tommy Fig, Tommy Fingers, Tommy Five? Used to be a part-time meat cutter in a butcher shop on Louisiana Avenue? He got into trouble for something besides picking pockets, he molested a couple of little girls, and one of them turned out to be related to the Giacano family. So the word went out that Tommy Fig was anybody's fuck, but it wasn't supposed to be no ordinary hit, not for what he done. Did I ever tell you I worked in the kitchen up at Angola? That's right. So when Tommy got taken out, three guys done it, and when that butcher shop opened on Monday morning, it was the day before Christmas, see, Tommy was hung in parts, freeze-dried and clean, all over the shop like tree ornaments.
'That sounds sick, don't it, but the people who ran the shop didn't have no use for a child molester, either, and to show how they felt, they called up some guys from the Giacano family and they had a party with eggnog and fruitcake and music and Tommy Fig twirling around in pieces on the blades of the ceiling fan.
'What I'm saying, lieutenant, is I ain't gonna get locked up as a material witness and I ain't going before no grand jury, I been that route before, eight months in the New Orleans city prison, with a half-dozen guys trying to whack me out, even though I was standup and was gonna take the fall for a couple of guys I wouldn't piss on if they was burning to death.'
'You're sure Julie didn't catch up with Cherry LeBlanc later that same night?'
'It ain't his style. But then-' He poked his tongue into the space where his incisor tooth was broken off-'who knows what goes on in Julie's head? He had the hots for the LeBlanc broad real bad, and she knew how to kick a Coke bottle up his ass. Go to the movies, lieutenant, make up your own mind. Hey, but remember something, okay? I didn't have nothing to do with this movie shit. You seen my rap sheet. When maybe I done something to somebody, I ain't saying I did, the guy had it coming. The big word there is the guy, lieutenant, you understand what I'm saying?'
I clicked my nails on the plastic cassette that rested on my thigh.
'A Lafayette detective named Lou Girard was killed last night. Did you hear anything about it?' I said.
'Who?' he said.
I said Lou's name again and watched Cholo's face.
'I never heard of him. Was he a friend of yours or something?'
'Yes, he was.'
He yawned and watched two black children sailing a Frisbee on the gallery of the grocery store. Then the light of recognition worked its way into his eyes and he looked back at my face.
'Hey, Loot, old-time lesson from your days at the First District,' he said. 'Nobody, and I mean nobody, from the New Orleans families does a cop. The guy who pulls something like that ends up a lot worse than Tommy Fig. His parts come off while he's still living.'
He nodded like a sage delivering a universal truth, then hawked, sucked the saliva out of his mouth, and spat a bloody clot out onto the shell.
A HALF HOUR LATER I CLOSED THE BLINDS IN THE SHERIFF'S empty office and used his VCR to watch the cassette that Cholo had given me. Then I clicked it off, went to the men's room, rinsed my face in the lavatory, and dried it with paper towels.
'Something wrong, Dave?' a uniformed deputy standing at the urinal said.
'No, not really,' I said. 'I look like something's wrong?'
'There's some kind of stomach flu going around. I thought you might have a touch of it, that's all.'
'No, I'm feeling fine, Harry.'
'That's good,' he said, and glanced away from my face.
I went back inside the sheriff's office, opened the blinds, and watched the traffic on the street, the wind bending the tops of some myrtle trees, a black kid riding his bike down the sidewalk with a fishing rod propped across his handlebars.
I thought of the liberals I knew who spoke in such a cavalier fashion about pornography, who dismissed it as inconsequential or who somehow associated its existence with the survival of the First Amendment. I wondered what they would have to say about the film I had just watched. I wondered how they would like a theater that showed it to be located in their neighborhoods; I wondered how they would like the patrons of that theater to be around their children.
Finally I called Rosie at her motel. I told her where I was.
'Cholo Manelli gave me a pornographic film that you need to know about,' I said. 'Evidently Julie has branched out into some dark stuff.'
'What is it, what do you mean?'
'It's pretty sadistic, Rosie. It looks like the real thing, too.'
'Can we connect it to Balboni?'
'I doubt if Cholo would ever testify, but maybe we can find some of the people who made the film.'
'I'll be over in a few minutes.'
'Rosie, I-'
'You don't think I'm up to looking at it?'
'I don't know that it'll serve any purpose.'
'If you don't want to hang around, Dave, just stick the tape in my mailbox.'
Twenty minutes later she came through the door in a pair of blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a short-sleeve denim shirt with purple and white flowers sewn on it. I closed the blinds again and started the film, except this time I used the fast-forward device to isolate the violent scenes and to get through it as quickly as possible.
When the screen went blank I pulled the blinds and filled the room with sunlight. Rosie sat very still and erect, her hands in her lap. Her nostrils were pinched when she breathed. Then she stood and looked out the window a moment.
'The beating of those girls… I've never seen anything like that,' she said.
I heard her take a breath and let it out, then she turned back toward me.
'They weren't acting, were they?' she said.
'I don't think so. It's too convincing for a low-rent bunch like this.'
'Dave, we've got to get these guys.'
'We will, one way or another.'
She took a Kleenex out of her purse and blew her nose. She blinked, and her eyes were shiny.
'Excuse me, I have hay fever today,' she said.
'It's that kind of weather.'
Then she had to turn and look out the window again. When she faced me again, her eyes had become impassive.
'What's the profit margin on a film like this?' she said.
'I've heard they make an ordinary porno movie for about five grand and get a six-figure return. I don't know about one like this.'
'I'd like to lock up Cholo Manelli as a material witness.'
'Even if we could do it, Rosie, it'd be a waste of time. Cholo's got the thinking powers of a cantaloupe but he doesn't roll over or cop pleas.'
'You seem to say that almost with admiration.'
'There're worse guys around.'
'I have difficulty sharing your sympathies sometimes, Dave.'
'Look, the film was made around New Orleans somewhere. Those were the docks in Algiers in the
