space on this one,” he said.
“You were the shooter? Not your brother?”
“I agreed to do it. I wish I hadn’t.”
“You agreed? Can you translate that?”
“They were gonna send Ronnie Earl back inside. They weren’t gonna give me any more gigs. I got to make a living.”
“We ran you through the NCIC computer. You don’t have a sheet.”
“I was a transporter, girls and sometimes a little skag. I drove the girls up from Mexico. I wasn’t full-time on any of this. One night on the border, I did something. Some people were crowded too tight into the back of the truck. When it went into the ditch, I ran away. The back was locked. It was over a hundred degrees, even at night. Maybe you read about it.”
“No, I didn’t. Why did you call me?”
“I need to get out of the country.”
“And you want me to help you?”
“I got a few hundred dollars, but it’s not enough. I need at least five t’ousand.”
“You’re asking this of the man you tried to kill?”
“The person running all this is named Angel or maybe Angelle. In French, ange means ‘angel.’”
“I know what it means.”
“You’re not listening. This is bigger than all of us. They ship women from all over the world. Bosnia, Romania, Russia, Africa, Thailand, Honduras, any shithole where things are coming apart. A guy makes a call and gets any kind of woman or combination of women he wants. That’s just part of it.”
“What else are they into?”
“Everything. They own part of everything there is.”
“Who hired you to kill me?”
“You’re not listening. We’re nothing down here, just ants running around on a wet log. I’ve heard about an island they got.” His voice started to break, as though he were afraid to look at the images his mind was creating. “They do stuff to people there you don’t want to know about. They got this big iron mold. I saw a photo of what they did to a guy.”
“Take this to the FBI.”
“I’ll go inside on attempted murder. I’ll be dead in a week. You saw what they did to Ronnie Earl. The guy who showed me the photo played a tape for me. I heard somebody being put into this iron thing they got. The guy going inside was talking in a language I didn’t understand. I didn’t have to understand it. He was begging and crying, then I heard them closing the door on him. It took a long time for them to close the door. He was screaming all the while. I got to hide someplace, man. Five t’ousand dollars, that’s all it’ll take. I’ll give you all the information I got.”
“It doesn’t work that way, partner. Why’d you guys use a freezer truck?”
“Ronnie Earl said nobody would pay attention to it. Why you axing about the truck we drove? I’m telling you about people who aren’t like anybody you ever knew, and you’re worried about a truck? There’s a girl involved, a singer, a Creole girl who was on that island. That’s what Ronnie Earl said. She was big stuff in the zydeco clubs. I don’t remember her name.”
“Tee Jolie Melton,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s it. Her sister got grabbed, too. You gonna help me or not?”
“Where can we meet?”
“You’ll get me the money?”
“We have funds to help out confidential informants or friends of the court,” I said, wondering at my own willingness to make promises that perhaps I couldn’t keep. “One way or another, we’ll get you out of this.”
“What’s that iron thing? What do they call it? It’s like from the Middle Ages. I could see part of it in the photo. I could see pieces of the guy on it. It’s got big spikes inside the door. What do they call that, man?”
“The iron maiden.”
I heard wind in the receiver, as though he had taken the phone from his ear and mouth.
“Are you there, Chad?” I said.
“Oh, man,” he said, the register in his voice suddenly dropping.
“What’s happening?” I said.
“They’re here. Those motherfuckers are here.”
“Stay with me, podna. Who’s there?”
“It’s them,” he said. “Them.”
I heard him drop the phone and sounds of scuffling and furniture being knocked over, and then I heard Chad Patin squealing like a pig on its way to slaughter.
Alafair entered Clete’s New Iberia office on Main at nine A.M. on Friday, expecting to see Clete’s regular receptionist, Hulga Volkmann, behind the desk in the waiting room. Instead, she saw a thick-bodied woman in her mid- or late twenties, with reddish-blond hair cut Dutch-boy-style, sitting behind the desk in jeans, with one foot propped on an open drawer and cotton balls wedged between the toes while she painted lavender polish on each nail. The floor was unswept and littered from the previous day, newspapers and auto-mechanic magazines spilling off the metal chairs. “Mr. Purcel is across the street at Victor’s Cafeteria,” the woman said without looking up. “You need something?”
“Yeah, who are you, and where is Miss Hulga?”
“She’s on vacation, and I’m her replacement. Who are you?”
“Alafair Robicheaux.”
“Great.” The woman at the desk straightened up in her chair and capped the nail polish and pulled the cotton balls from between her toes and dropped them one at a time into the wastebasket. “That saves me from calling up your father.” She glanced at the top page on a yellow legal pad. “Tell Detective Robicheaux a stolen-vehicle report on the freezer truck was phoned in two hours before Ronnie Earl Patin tried to kill him. Or maybe not tell him that, since he was probably already aware, considering he was the guy who was almost killed. But if it will make your father happy, you can tell him the company that owns the truck doesn’t have any apparent connection to the Patin brothers. Also tell your father that his department should do its own work. End of message.” She looked up at Alafair. Her eyes were the color of violets and didn’t seem to go with the rest of her face. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, who the fuck are you?”
The young woman’s eyelashes fluttered. “How do I put this? Let’s see, I guess I’m the fuck Gretchen Horowitz. I understand you graduated from Stanford Law. I’ve always wondered what Stanford was like. I went to Miami Dade College. In case you never heard of it, it’s in Miami.”
“This place is a mess.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Why don’t you clean it up?”
“Should I start with the puke on the restroom floor or the apple core floating in the toilet bowl?”
“You might start with getting your feet off the furniture,” Alafair said.
Gretchen folded back the pages on the legal pad until she reached a clean one, then set the pad and a felt pen on the forward edge of the desk. “Write down whatever you want to tell Mr. Purcel, and I’ll give it to him. Or you can go across the street and help him with his hangover. I don’t think he’d have one if it wasn’t for your father.”
“My father doesn’t drink.”
“I know that. He only takes Mr. Purcel to the bar and gets high watching him drink.”
“Excuse me, miss, but I think you’re probably an idiot. I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean it in the clinical sense. If that’s true, I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you. I’m sure you have many qualities. I love the vampiric shade of polish on your toenails.”
Gretchen put two Chiclets in her mouth and slowly chewed them, her mouth open, her eyes indolent. “Can you tell me why people with degrees from Stanford live in a mosquito factory? There must be a reason.”
Alafair picked up the trash can. “Are you through with this?” she asked.
“Morning sickness?”