“I’d like to speak with the detective you hired. Where can I find him?”
Dolores sucked down the rest of her drink. “Oh, he’s long gone. Left town right after he gave me the info. Who knows where the hell he went. He didn’t even bother to collect his last check—not that he needed to, after the minor fortune I paid him. Hell, he probably retired on it.”
No P.I. that I knew of would ever voluntarily miss a payment, no matter how much money he had already made on a case.
“But you’re sure it was Valerie that Hillard was giving your jewelry to? There couldn’t have been anyone else?”
“Listen, sugar, I’m not stupid. I know he’s fucked around on me plenty. But Hillard has his own code of honor. No more than one whore at a time. He’s loyal that way. Besides, when I finally confronted the bitch, she was wearing a locket that I used to keep Fifi’s picture in. Can you believe it? I go to threaten the tramp, and she answers the door wearing my own goddamn necklace! Used to call herself a coonass. Cheap piece of ass is what she was. I never did get the necklace back. She called me crazy and slammed the door in my face. But Hillard finally admitted it. He admitted everything, after what happened to poor little Fifi.”
Vinnie came out with our drinks, and Dolores become conspicuously quiet. Grabbing the fresh glass with one hand, her arm stayed tightly wound around Fifi, whose compact body was beginning to fry in the sun like a well-done pork sausage. Drops of saliva fell from the dog’s tongue onto Dolores’s capri pants, in a pattern that resembled a Rorschach test. Squinting into the sun, Dolores let go of Fifi just long enough to grab on to the front of Vinnie’s shirt.
“Where the hell are my sunglasses, Vincent? Where did you goddamn put them?”
Vinnie towered above her, almost blocking out the sun, his right hand bunching up in a fist. But Fifi wasn’t dead from the heat yet, and she let loose a warning growl. Slowly bringing her arm back around Fifi’s neck, Dolores put her glass of bourbon to the dog’s snout and watched her gratefully lap up the liquid.
Satisfied that his point had been made, Vinnie smoothed out his shirt, tucking it in tightly around his thick waist. “They’re on top of your head like they always are.”
“Well, for Christsakes. Can’t you see my hands are full? Put them on for me. Make yourself useful around here.” I expected Little Italy to break her in two. Instead, he acted as though he were dealing with an overbearing child.
“Muzzle the pooch.”
Dolores obediently did as she was told, covering Fifi’s mouth with her hand as Vinnie struggled with the sunglasses.
“All right, all right. Enough already. They’re on.”
“I’ll let youse know when lunch is ready.” Vinnie stood looking at us for a moment before lumbering away. I waited until he had disappeared inside.
“Is it safe to be talking with him around?”
Lifting her glass away from Fifi, Dolores took a sip of her drink. “Who? You mean Vincent? He’s a big dumb lug, but he’s harmless.”
“But doesn’t he work for your husband?”
Dolores choked on her drink, spraying the liquid onto Fifi’s head. “Who the hell doesn’t? You stay in New Orleans long enough, you probably will, too. So, where was I before?”
“Something happened to Fifi?” I volunteered.
“Oh, yeah. One night Hillard says he’s going for a walk. Get a little night air. I know damn well where he plans to go, so I tell him, oh no. You want to go for a walk? You take little Fifi with you. Well, the bastard up and takes Fifi to that whore’s. I know this not only because he was gone for three fucking hours, but Fifi came back without a leg. Like I wouldn’t notice.” Sticking a finger into her drink, Dolores fished out a piece of ice and rolled it along Fifi’s back. The stump of the lost leg twitched in an imaginary scratch. “That damn gator of hers took Fifi’s leg like it was some kind of hors d’oeuvre. Hillard almost died that night—I just about killed him. That’s when he stopped seeing the bitch. I made sure of that. I warned him if he ever saw her again, there wouldn’t be one voter in New Orleans who didn’t know about it. I told him it came down to a choice between that whore or winning the election. I don’t believe in that Tammy Wynette ‘stand by your man’ crap.”
Dolores held out a hand for me to inspect. Weighing down her ring finger was a large sapphire encircled with diamonds.
“That piece of fooling around cost Hill big time. I made him go out and buy me a whole new batch of jewelry. But I still want the rest of my jewelry back, and I want it back now!” Dolores’s voice rose in volume and Fifi jumped up nervously, scanning the area for any sign of danger.
“Would you be willing to make a statement about this to the police?”
Dolores gave me a boozy stare of astonishment. “Of course not. That was part of the deal I made with Hillard. He’s protected up the wazoo. In fact, you’re probably the only one not on his payroll yet. That’s the only reason why I’m even telling you this. You see, there’s not a damn thing you can do with this information. But you can be sure Hill will find out that I told you, and I just love yanking that man’s chain. As long as he behaves, I stay quiet. One false move, and his family-man cover is blown to high hell, along with his run for mayor. I just like to give him a reminder every now and then.”
She was shrewd, but I had my doubts that Hillard was living up to his end of the bargain, no matter how sure Dolores seemed to be.
“Do you think Mr. Williams had anything to do with the death of that girl?”
Dolores burst into a raspy barking laugh. “You gotta be kidding me. That man barely has the strength to get it up, let alone kill anyone. That’s a good one.”
As though on cue, Vinnie lumbered outside and clapped his hands.
“Chow time, ladies.”
Vinnie started back toward the house, but Dolores’s shriek brought him to a halt.
“Vincent, where the hell do you think you’re going? Help me up out of this thing.”
Vinnie handed me her drink as Dolores covered Fifi’s muzzle. The dog was as good as her own private bodyguard. Kind of like a gun with its safety latch removed. Vinnie rousted Dolores out of the chair in one swift move that sent her tottering toward the house. I followed, staying a few paces behind in case she fell.
We entered the dining room, where two places were set in front of the seat Dolores plunked herself down at: one for herself and the other for Fifi. Vinnie lumbered in from the kitchen with a steaming bowl of pasta. Its aroma brought back the memory of Little Italy on a warm summer night— of cafés serving up steaming espresso and homemade cannolis from dawn to dusk, while local groceries burst at the seams with 101 different kinds of olive oils and exotic vinegars. The pungent aroma of salamis and hams beckoned to passersby, while big wooden barrels filled with olives stood tantalizingly close to rows of freshly baked bread.
But Dolores apparently wasn’t hungry. “What the hell is this?”
“Linguine with clam sauce. What’s it look like?” Vinnie set down the bowl with a thud.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t eat this crap? I’m on a diet!”
“And how many times I gotta tell ya this stuff ain’t fattening? And where’d ya get a mouth like that on ya anyhow? All youse women down here are supposed ta be ladies.”
Dolores grabbed her drink. “All I have to do is take one look at you to see how low-cal this crap is. Get this stuff out of my face and get me another drink. I’m going upstairs.”
Dolores pushed herself away from the table, knocking her chair backwards. Spinning around, she swooped Fifi up in one deft motion and reeled toward the stairs.
“What that broad wants ya could transfuse her with. She don’t need no food ta get fat.” Vinnie shook his head in disgust as he lifted the bowl from the table.
My stomach growled loudly at the thought of another candy bar in place of real food for lunch. “Too bad. It smells great.”
The bowl froze in midair. “Ya like Italian?”
<
br /> I remembered Vinnie’s words from the other day. “I love it. The trouble is, you can’t find any good Italian food around this town.”
Vinnie put the bowl back down and began to heap pasta onto my plate. “This ya could die for. It’s my mama’s own recipe. Takes me three hours just ta make the sauce. I shuck my own clams. That’s the secret. I also got garlic bread in the oven. Hold on a minute.”
The meal was the best Italian I’d had since coming south. Even better, Vinnie sat down and joined me.
“This is a good Chianti. Ya gonna like it.”
Vinnie wound a huge ball of linguine onto his fork and popped it into his mouth. “You a cop?”
I suspected it was a question that Vinnie would be particularly interested in. “No. I’m an agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service. I was called in on the Vaughn case because of the dead gator found in her apartment.”
Vinnie grunted as he kept on eating.
“By the way, I thought nobody was allowed to call you Vincent except your mother.”
Vinnie stuffed a piece of garlic bread in his mouth. “The old broad reminds me of her. She was a pain in the butt, too.” Vinnie pushed the garlic bread toward me. “You ain’t on no diet. Here, have a hunk ta wipe up the sauce with. So, all that really concerns ya is dead animals. I got that right?”
“More or less.”
“Well, if ya looking for dead animals, it’s too bad there ain’t one around here. Maybe we could fix that for ya.” Vinnie burst into a high-pitched silly giggle that could have belonged to a young high-school girl. “I’m only kidding ya. I love animals. In fact, I like ’em better than most people. Here, look.”
Vinnie pulled out a medal dangling from a heavy gold chain inside his shirt. “See, this here’s my patron saint. St. Francis of Assisi. He helped all them little animals.” Vinnie poured me some more wine. “So where ya from?”
“New York. In fact, I used to live on Mott Street.”
Vinnie stopped eating. “No shit. What number?”
“Seventy-eight. Apartment 2B.”
“Hey, my cousin owns half that block. Ya probably seen him. Fat guy with a cigar always stuck in his mouth.”
Looking at Vinnie’s girth, I could only imagine. Still, it was possible to detect that at one time he had been a good-looking man. But that had long ago been buried beneath a mound of heavy pasta, thick steaks, and too many rich desserts.
“So, what are you doing down here, Vinnie?”
Vinnie didn’t look up as he demolished the mound of linguine in front of him.
“I wanted a change of pace, if ya know what I mean, and New Orleans is better these days than Miami. Too many spies down there. Here ya just got coonasses.” Vinnie broke into a giggle again. “I love that word. Coonasses.”
“So you’re sort of a ‘Man Friday’ around here for the Williamses?”
Vinnie giggled some more until tears formed in his eyes. “Man Friday. Yeah, that’s what I am. I gotta remember that. That’s a good one.”
“You wouldn’t know Frank Sabino by any chance, would you?”
The giggling stopped as Vinnie put down his fork and stared at me.
“Yeah, I know Frank. Why? Do you know Frank?”
“I used to hear his name around New York. It seemed a strange coincidence to come down here and find that he used to be in business with Hillard. I was just wondering if you might have worked with him also.”
Vinnie mopped up the sauce on his plate with the last piece of garlic bread, wolfing it down in one fell swoop.
“Ya know, youse should really stick ta dead animals. And since there ain’t none of ’em around here, if you’re finished eating, I’d say lunch is over.”
I decided to head back to the office to report my findings to Charlie, and see if I could begin to piece together any of the ragtag ends. He was ready for me the moment I walked in the door.
“Bronx, get in here!”
Charlie was busy scratching furiously away at his neck, which by now was the color of rare roast beef. “Goddamn these chiggers.”
Pushing his cap back on his head, his fingers strayed to his scalp, smoothing an unruly lock of hair that was no longer there. He stared at a photo of his former wife, mulling over what he was about to say.
“What are you doing tonight, Bronx?”
I froze, thinking the worst.
“Jesus Christ, you’re damn antsy. Calm down. You ain’t nothing like my type. I just thought we’d go do some fishing.”
“What kind of fishing do you do at night?” I didn’t think my company was something Charlie particularly hankered for all that much.
Hickok guffawed as though the joke were on me.
“Fishing for outlaws, of course. Something you ain’t been too successful at during your stay down here so far. You game, or you got your evening chock-full of other nocturnal activities?”
By eight o’clock that night we were on the road in Charlie’s old pickup, headed toward the west bank of the Mississippi, with a small trailer hauling his mud boat behind. Charlie’s driving consisted of a series of near misses as he continually came close to hitting anything in his path, be it cars or animals, as his truck straddled both sides of the road. Deciding it would be best if I closed my eyes, I’d just begun to doze off when he hit a rut in the road, making my head bounce off the roof with a resounding thud. I looked over to see Charlie grinning in delight.
“Who are we looking for anyway? Anyone in particular?”
“Not we, Bronx. Me. You’re just along for the ride. Maybe learn a thing or two on the way. See if I’m wasting my time, or if there’s any hope of making a real agent out of you.” Charlie pulled out a Baby Ruth and proceeded to have his dinner. He threw me a Nestlé’s Crunch, and I joined him in the evening meal.
“I’m out after the most notorious outlaw in the country. One Trenton B. Treddell. He’s a wild man, Bronx. That s.o.b. has been getting away with murder for years. But I’m gonna catch his ass. I can feel it.” Charlie was on a roll. “Trenton’s been killing the shit out of wildlife for years. The man’s a downright game hog. But when I get hold of him, and you’ll notice I say when, I’m gonna eat his lunch for him.”
I’d heard about this from others who had worked with Charlie. Trenton Treddell was his Moby Dick. He’d been after the man for years. In fact, he’d been out chasing Treddell the night his wife finally left. The running joke in the Service was that someday Trenton would end up catching him. More than a few in Fish and Wildlife felt that was the only way they’d ever get rid of Charlie. A few had even suggested paying Trenton to do the deed.
“How long have you been after this guy, Charlie?” It seemed a reasonable enough question. But then, I was dealing with Charlie Hickok. Reasonable wasn’t a word in his vocabulary.
“Listen, Bronx, when you learn to do your job and become a real agent, then you can think about criticizing me. But until that day comes—and it seems like one hell of a long way off, if ever—you just set your fanny back and watch a pro at work.”
I never knew how Charlie was going to react until it was too late. The most volatile man I’d ever met, he was also a walking encyclopedia on the bayou and Cajun life. It all depended on whether or not he felt like sharing his knowledge with you. So far, he’d rather have worked with a trained baboon than with me. I closed my eyes again as he continued to mutter away. But a few minutes later, he was back into a loud harangue.
“I’m feeling good tonight. I’m going to show that sucker how the cow ate the cabbage. One of my missiles is coming, and it’s gonna hit ol’ Trenton right between the eyes.”
I made the mistake of yawning.
“Listen up, Bronx. This is a war zone out here.” He slapped at a mosquito that had left me for greener pastures. “Hell. I gave up my goddamn life for this job, and this is how the Service pays me back. If I had a good team of agents, I could clean up this swamp in no time. But it ain’t never gonna happen with the amateur material they keep sending m
e.”
“Right, coach. Possibly with a SWAT team you could get rid of all the poachers around. But since I’m the only team you’ve got, maybe it’s time you started making better use of me.”
I hadn’t come along to be insulted. Besides, the worst he could do was to relegate me once again to full-time duck patrol, and that was already a foregone conclusion.
“And since we seem to be clearing the air, Charlie, there’s something that’s still bothering me about that gator the other night. I just don’t think those bullets penetrated deep enough to kill it.”
“Something keeps bothering me too, Bronx. And that’s having some smart-ass Yankee female as a rookie agent. But it seems like there’s nothing I can do about it. You just gotta learn to live with the cards you’ve been dealt. And in these here parts, I’m king of the hill as far as catching outlaws goes. And the cards you’ve been dealt is to deal with me. As far as that gator is concerned, I don’t need no goddamn fancy-pants forensics lab to tell me what I already know. The gator was shot to death. That’s that. Period. Comprende?”
I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the ride. We were headed into Jean Lafitte Reserve near Barataria, famous for its pirates of past and drug smugglers of present. It consisted of nine thousand soggy acres of marsh, swamp, bayous, and wetland. A fortune in drugs had been smuggled in through here. Also a refuge for otter, mink, and nutria, it was teeming with gators. Lafitte was a national park considered taboo territory by poachers. Most wouldn’t dare to go near the place. For Trenton, it was a favorite hunting location.
Finding Charlie’s “lucky spot,” we parked and unloaded the mud boat. Not a sound was to be heard except for the slapping of water against wood. A sheet of black velvet covered the sky and dozens of stars peeked out through tiny moth-eaten holes. Pushing off, we entered the swamp, and soon even the pinpricks of light disappeared.
Age-old cypress trees slid by as we made our way through a watery maze. A bullfrog croaked in angry protest at our presence. Sounds are always different at night. The tiniest noise in the swamp becomes magnified a hundred times, until every bit of space hums with its own peculiar song. But soon even the noise died down, making it all the more frightening. Charlie loved the swamp, which was something I’d never yet understood. Even during the day there was always an eeriness to it. At night it was terrifying. Every tree became sinister, every animal was threatening. It was here that bodies were dumped and left to rot. People swore that spirits wandered among the cypress trees at night, with curtains of Spanish moss their only camouflage.
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