CHAPTER 25
W e drove back to the Riverfront Ho-Jo, checked out, then called Lucy at her office and told her that we were on our way to Ville Platte. She said, 'Do you know what you're going to do when you get there?'
'Sit on the Bayou Lounge and establish a pattern for Rossier and his people. It could take a while.'
She didn't say anything for a moment. 'Yes. I guess it could.'
'I'm going to miss you.'
'Me, too, Studly. Try not to get shot.'
At a little bit before two o'clock that afternoon, Pike and I took the same room I had used before in Ville Platte and unloaded our things. I changed into waterproof Cabela boots and a black T-shirt. Pike stayed in the same clothes, but took a Colt.357 Python out of his duffel and put it under his sweatshirt. I put my Dan Wesson into a clip-on holster, put the clip-on on the inside of my waistband, and left the T-shirt out to cover it. My T-shirt didn't hide the Dan Wesson as well as Pike's sweatshirt hid the Python. People would probably think I was wearing a colostomy bag.
We went down to the Pig Stand for a couple of catfish poboys, then walked across to the little superette, bought a cheap Styrofoam ice chest, ice, and enough Diet Coke, Charrnin, and sandwich stuff to last a couple of days. Pike went for the cheese and peanut butter, I went for the pressed chicken and Spam. Pike shook his head when he saw the Spam. He was shaking his head about the Spam even before he was a vegetarian. The woman at the register thought we must be going fishing, and we said sure. She said the
'I think it's a kind of white perch. Like a crappie.'
Pike grunted.
I said, 'They eat gar balls down here, too.'
Pike gave me a look like, yeah, sure.
Lucy had provided us with a current address for LeRoy Bennett. We got the Bayou Lounge address from Information. Pike and I decided to split our time between LeRoy's and the crawfish farm during the day, then watch the lounge together at night. We went to LeRoy's first.
LeRoy Bennett lived on a narrow residential street on the west side of Ville Platte in a tiny clapboard house that was dusty and dirty and overgrown by weeds. All of the houses on the street were small, but most were well kept with neatly trimmed lawns and edged walkways. The St. Augustine at LeRoy's place had to be a good eight inches tall, the crabgrass and weed sprouts even taller. Twin tire ruts were cut into the yard, with great black dead spots between them where LeRoy had parked the Polara and the engine had dripped. There was a drive, but why use the drive when you can park on the grass? I was hoping that LeRoy and his car would be there so that Pike could see them, but they weren't. Of course, maybe they were hidden behind all the foliage. I said, 'That's LeRoy's place.'
Pike shook his head. 'No self-esteem.'
I stopped at the mouth of LeRoy's drive. 'He drives a gold Polara widi a lot of sun damage.' I looked up and down the street. Cars were parked along both sides of the street. 'Best place for a stake would be on the next block, under that oak.'
Pike looked and approved. Next door to LeRoy's, a man in his mid-sixties was working Bond-o into the side of a beige '64 Chevelle. His home and his lawn were immaculate, but the weeds from LeRoy's crappy yard hung over onto his property like shaggy hair curling over a collar. He looked at us, taking a break from the Bond-o, and we drove away.
We went to Milt Rossier's crawfish farm. I cruised the front gate to let Pike have a look, then parked the car on a little gravel road maybe a quarter mile away.
We worked our way through the trees to the edge of Milt's property and crouched by a fallen pine. We could see pretty much everything, from the ponds and the processing buildings on our left up to Milt's home on the little knoll to our right. When we were in position and looking, I said, 'Well, well. The gang's all here.'
LeRoy Bennett was talking to a heavyset woman by the processing buildings and Milt Rossier was driving a little golf cart between the ponds with one of his skinny foremen. LeRoy's Polara was parked up by the house, and Rene LaBorde was at the house, too, sitting in a white lawn chair, either sleeping or staring at his crotch. Pike squinted when he saw Rend 'This is some operation.'
'Uh-huh.'
We watched as people waded into ponds, scattering what was probably crawfish food and pulling weeds and keeping the bottoms stirred. In other ponds, people used trucks with winches to seine out slick gray catfish or dark red crawfish, emptying filled nets into little trailers with open tops. Some of the people working the ponds were African-American women, but most of them were short, blocky Hispanics. A couple of older, skinny white guys in wide-brimmed straw hats moved between the pools, telling everybody else what to do. Upper management. I said, 'Seen enough?'
Pike nodded.
We made our way back to the Thunderbird, then drove to the Bayou Lounge, just west of Ville Platte off the State 10 near Reddeli. It was a small, white building set back from the road in a little clearing carved into the woods. An abandoned bait shop sat nearby, its windows boarded over, painted ground to roof with ICE and WORMS in ten-foot letters. Both buildings were surrounded by crushed oyster shells and little patches of grass and weeds, and felt sort of like LeRoy Bennett's place. Crummy. A rusted steel pole jutted up from the side of the bar with a sign that said SCHLITZ. The Bayou Lounge didn't look like a hotbed of criminal activity, but you never know.
We eased off the road past the bait shop, stopped, and looked back. It was thirty-six minutes after three. A blue Ford Ranger was parked on the side of the lounge and a Lone Star truck was parked out front. If there was a bayou around, you couldn't see it from the road. A guy in a blue-and-white Lone Star uniform pushed a hand truck out the door, followed by a woman with a clipboard. The woman with the clipboard had a lot of bright red Clairol hair piled atop her head and red nails and red lipstick. Thin in the shoulders and wide in the butt, with white denim pants that were ten years and fifteen pounds too tight. She talked with the guy as he loaded the dolly onto his truck, then watched him drive away before she went back inside. Pike said, 'I make it for her Ford. You want to check it, or me?'
'Me.'
We pulled around to the front of the lounge and parked by the Schlitz sign, and I went in. Six cases of Lone Star were stacked at the end of the bar, and the woman was frowning at a thin Hispanic guy as he lugged them one at a time behind the counter. Eight or nine small square tables were scattered around the place, all with upended chairs on top of them, and a Rockola jukebox was against the back wall beside a door that said RESTROOMS. An industrial wash bucket was by the jukebox, and the back door was open for the breeze. The woman looked over at me and said, 'Sorry, sugah. We closed.'
'I'm supposed to meet a guy here. What time you open?'
'Bout five, give or take. Who you lookin' by?' She gave me a loose smile. She was maybe forty-five, but looked older, with rubbery skin pulled tight by all the smiling. The Hispanic guy stopped working to look at us.
'Oh, just a friend.' Mr. Mysterious.
'You keepin' it a big secret or what, sug? I'm here all the time.' When she said it she noticed the Hispanic guy and snapped at him. 'Don't just stand there, goddammit! Put that stuff away!
I said, 'A guy named LeRoy Bennett said I could find him here.'
She went back to the smiling and folded herself against the bar. It was probably a pose that played well with the older guys after a dozen or so beers. 'Oh, yeah. LeRoy's here all the time. I can take a message, you
