Her assistant paused a moment in his monologue, then cracked a mint between his molars and began again.
'Why don't the people of Grand Bois move to a place where there's no oil industry? Get jobs as whalers in Japan. Could it be they've done scut work all their lives in the oil industry and couldn't fix ice water without a diagram?' he said.
He took the silence in the cruiser as indication his point was not understood.
'The Houma Indians have a problem with oil waste. But they want to build casinos and addict their own people to gambling. I think the whole bunch is ripe for a hydrogen bomb,' he said.
'I don't want to add to your irritability, Malcolm, but would you please shut up?' Connie said.
'Y'all want something cool to drink?' Helen asked.
'Yes, please,' Connie said.
They pulled into Passion's nightclub just as a storm cloud covered the sun and the landscape dropped into shadow. Inside, electric fans vibrated on the four corners of the dance floor, and an ancient air-conditioning unit inserted in a sawed-out hole in the back wall blew a stream of refrigerated coolness across the bar.
Connie sat on a barstool and closed her eyes in the wind stream.
Helen whistled through the door that gave onto the cafe side of the building.
'Hey, Passion, you've got some customers in here,' she called.
Connie's eyes opened and she turned her blank face on Helen.
'Letty Labiche's sister owns this place. You know her?' Helen said.
'No.'
'From the way you looked, I thought you recognized the name or something.'
'Yes, I did recognize the name. That doesn't mean I know her,' Connie said.
'Yes, ma'am,' Helen said.
'I'd like to leave now,' Connie said.
'I thought you wanted a cold drink.'
'I just wanted to get out of the heat a few minutes. I'm fine now. We should make at least one other stop today,' Connie said.
'Too late,' her assistant, Malcolm, said, grinning from behind the bar. He opened two ice-cold bottles of Coca-Cola and set them in front of Helen and Connie just as Passion walked in from the cafe and tilted her head at the presence of the man behind her bar.
'Could I hep y'all?' she asked.
'Sorry, miss. I'm so dry I'm a fire hazard. I left the money on the register,' Malcolm said. He opened a long- neck bottle of beer for himself and stepped back from the foam as it slid over the neck.
Passion rang up the purchase, her back to them. 'Sorry I couldn't get over here to wait on y'all,' she said.
Connie's face looked stricken. She stared helplessly at the back of Passion's head, as though an element from a nightmare had just forced its way inexorably into her waking day.
Passion turned and placed a quarter and two dimes in front of the male assistant. Then her eyes fell on Connie's.
'You all right, ma'am?' she asked.
'Yes. Why do you ask?' Connie said.
'On days like this the tar on the road melts. You look like you got dehydrated. I got some aspirin.'
'Thank you. I don't need any.'
Passion started to turn away, then a look of vague recognition swam into her face.
'I seen you somewhere before, ma'am?' she asked.
'Perhaps. I'm the attorney general.'
'No, I seen you in an old photograph. Or somebody sure do look like you. You got nice features. They don't change with time,' Passion said.
'I'm sure that's a compliment, but I don't know what you're talking about.'
'It's gonna come. Y'all visiting New Iberia?' Passion asked.
Connie rose from her chair and extended her hand across the bar.
'It was very nice meeting you,' she said, even though they had not exchanged names or been introduced by a third party.
She walked out to the cruiser, her chin tilted upward, her face bloodless. The wind raked the branches of a live-oak tree against the side of the club and another rain shower burst from the heavens, clattering like marbles on the tin roof.
'I'm going to finish my beer. Who plays that piano?' Malcolm said.
Button man OR not, Johnny Remeta obviously didn't fall easily into a predictable category.
The off-duty New Orleans cop who worked security at the historical museum on Jackson Square watched a lithe young man in shades and knife-creased khakis and half-topped boots and a form-fitting ribbed T-shirt with the sleeves rolled over the shoulders cross from the Cafe du Monde and walk through the park, past a string band playing in front of Pirates Alley, wrap his chewing gum in a piece of foil and drop it in a waste can, comb his hair and enter the museum's doorway.
Where had the off-duty cop seen that face?
A mug shot passed around at roll call?
No, he was imagining things. The mug shot was of a guy who was wanted in a shooting off Magazine. Yeah, the hit on Zipper Clum. A white shooter, which meant it was probably a contract job, somebody the Giacanos hired to wipe out an obnoxious black pimp. Contract shooters didn't wander around in museums under a cop's nose. Besides, this kid looked like he just got out of high school.
'You visiting from out of town?' the cop asked.
The young man still wore his shades and was looking at a battle-rent Confederate flag that was pressed under glass.
'No, I live here. I'm an artist,' he replied. He did not turn his head when he spoke.
'You come here often?'
'About every three days.' He removed his shades and looked the cop full in the face, grinning now. 'Something wrong?'
'Yeah, my feet hurt,' the cop said.
But later the cop was still bothered. He followed the young man across Jackson Square to Decatur, took down the license number of his pickup truck, and called it in.
One block away, a police cruiser fell in behind the pickup truck. Just as the uniformed cop behind the wheel was about to hit his flasher, the pickup truck turned back into the Quarter on Bienville and drove the short two- block distance to the police station at Royal and Conti.
The young man in shades parked his truck and went inside.
The cop in the cruiser kept going, shaking his head disgustedly at the cavalier misuse of his time.
Inside the police station, the young man gazed idly at Wanted posters on a corkboard, then asked the desk sergeant for directions to the battlefield at Chalmette.
The desk sergeant watched the young man walk out of the door of the station and get in his truck and drive down Conti toward the river. Then the sergeant was out the door himself, his arms waving in the air at two motorcycle cops who were coming up the walk.
'The guy in the black pickup! You can still get him!' he yelled.
Wrong.
Johnny Remeta cut across the Mississippi bridge onto the West Bank, caught Highway 90, wove five miles through residential neighborhoods and strip malls, and dumped the pickup in St. Charles Parish and boosted an Oldsmobile out of a used-car lot.
He took back roads through Chacahoula and Amelia, crossed the wide sweep of the Atchafalaya at Morgan City, and hot-wired an ancient Volkswagen bus at the casino on the Chettimanchi Indian Reservation.
He created a one-man grand-auto crime wave across southwestern Louisiana, driving off idling automobiles from a Jiffy Lube and a daiquiri take-out window, blowing out tires and engines, lighting up emergency dispatcher
