the ends of her fingers.
'This office won't be party to any form of procedural illegality,' she said.
'You want the truth about what happened to that girl or not?' I asked.
'You heard what I said.'
'Yeah, I did. It sounds a little self-serving, too.' I saw the anger sharpen in her face and I changed my tone. 'You need to be in the vicinity when Tee Bobby and Styles are interviewed.'
'All right,' she replied. She stared out the window. The wind was blowing hard, bending the trees along the railway tracks, bouncing garbage cans through the streets. 'You pissed off at me about Clete?'
'He went to jail for you and you eighty-sixed him,' I said.
'He was talking about 'clipping' Legion Guidry. You think I want to see him in Angola over me? Why don't you give me a little goddamn credit?' she said.
'Clete is hurt more easily and deeply than people think,' I said.
'Actually, I like you, Dave. You probably don't believe that, but I do. Why are you so cruel?'
Her eyes were moist, the whites a light pink, as though they had been touched by iodine.
Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought.
I went back to my office and called the number of the Boom Boom Room.
'Is Jimmy Sty there?' I said.
'He'll be here in a half hour. Who want to know?' a man's voice said.
'It's okay. Tell him I'll see him tonight,' I said.
'Who see him tonight?' the voice asked.
'He'll know,' I said, and hung up.
Then I called Ladice Hulin's number on Poinciana Island.
'It's Dave Robicheaux, Ladice. Is Tee Bobby home?' I said.
'He's still sleeping,' she replied.
'I'll talk with him later. Don't worry about it,' I said.
'Somet'ing going on?' she said.
'I'll get back to you,' I said, and eased the receiver down.
I went down the corridor to the office of Kevin Dartez, the department plainclothes who worked Narcotics exclusively and bore a legendary grudge against pimps and dope dealers for the death of his sister.
When I opened his office door, he was tilted back in his chair, talking on the phone while he squeezed a hand exerciser in his palm.
'Maybe if you pulled your head out of your cheeks and did your job, we wouldn't be having this conversation,' he said into the receiver, then quietly hung up. He had narrow bones in his face and jet-black hair that he oiled and combed straight back. His needle-nose cowboy boots and pencil-line mustache and wide red tie, a tiny pair of silver handcuffs pinned in the center, made me think of an early-twentieth-century lawman or perhaps a Los Vegas cardplayer of the kind you didn't cross.
'You doin' okay, Dave?' he asked.
'I want to flip Tee Bobby Hulin and I could use your help,' I said.
'I'm a little jammed up right now,' he replied.
'I skated on an assault beef against Jimmy Dean Styles in St. Martin Parish. I'd like you to bring him in and tell him you need some information for an Internal Affairs investigation. In other words, the department would still like to hang me out to dry.'
'Jimmy Sty again, huh? He's not one of my fans. Maybe you ought to use somebody he trusts,' Dartez said.
'You're straight up, Kev. Street people respect you.'
'You wouldn't try to twist my dials, would you?'
'Not a chance.' I opened a notebook to a page on which I had written down several tentative questions for Kevin Dartez to ask Styles and set the notebook on Dartez's desk. 'It really doesn't matter what you specifically say to Styles. Just get him to talk about me and make sure it's on tape. Also bring up Helen Soileau.'
'Why Helen?' Dartez asked.
'Styles called her a dyke to her face. I don't think he's quite forgotten the reaction he got,' I said.
Dartez squeezed the hand exerciser in his palm. 'When you want him in here?' he asked.
'How about as soon as possible?' I replied.
A few minutes later Helen Soileau and I got into a cruiser and drove toward Poinciana Island.
'A bad storm building,' she said, looking over the steering wheel at the blackness in the sky, the cane thrashing in the fields. When I didn't reply, she looked across the seat at me. 'You listening?'
'I took Tee Bobby's grandmother over the hurdles,' I said.
'She raised him. Maybe she should sit in her own shit for a change.'
'That's rough,' I said.
'No, Amanda Boudreau staring into the barrel of a shotgun is rough. There's a big difference between vies and perps, Streak. The victim is the victim. I wouldn't get the two confused.'
Helen always kept the lines simple.
We crossed the freshwater bay onto the island. Waves were capping in the bay and hitting hard against the pilings under the bridge, slapping the shoreline and sliding up into the elephant ears along the shore. We rolled down the windows in the cruiser, and the light was cool and green inside the tunnel of trees as we drove toward Ladice's house. A tree limb cracked like a rifle shot overhead and spun crazily into the road ahead of us. Helen swerved around it.
'I never liked this place,' she said.
'Why not?' I asked.
Helen looked out the window at a black man trying to catch a horse that was running through a field of pepper plants while lightning forked the sky above the treeline.
'If the LaSalles' ancestors had won the Civil War, I think the rest of us would be picking cotton for a living,' she said.
We parked in Ladice's yard and knocked on the door. Leaves were puffing out of the trees and blowing across the gallery and flattening against the screens. Inside, I could see Tee Bobby watching television in an overstuffed chair, his chest caved in, his mouth open, his chin peppered with stubble. His grandmother came out of the kitchen and stood in silhouette behind his chair.
'What you want?' she asked.
'Need to take Tee Bobby into town and clarify a few things,' I said.
'What t'ings?' she asked.
'We're looking at somebody else in the murder of Amanda Boudreau. Maybe it's time Tee Bobby did himself a good deed and starting cooperating with us,' I said.
Tee Bobby got up from his overstuffed chair and walked to the door, his long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned on his stomach, an unwashed odor wafting through the screen.
'You looking at who?' he said.
'This isn't a good place to talk. Call Mr. Perry and ask him what he wants you to do,' I said, my face blank.
'I ain't got to ax permission from Perry LaSalle to do nothing. I'll be back in a li'l while, Gran'mama. Right? Y'all gonna drive me back?' Tee Bobby said.
'Right as rain,' Helen said.
That's the way you do it sometimes. Then you try to forget your own capacity for deceit.
On the way back to the department Tee Bobby lazed against the backseat and watched the country go by, his eyes half shut. He woke with a start and looked around as though unsure of his whereabouts. Then he grinned for no reason and stared vacuously into space.
“You all right back there?' Helen said, looking into the rearview mirror.
