Voodoo River

CHAPTER 31

L ucy was driving car pool the next morning when her office called, telling her phone machine that Jo-el Boudreaux had phoned, looking for me. I picked up the phone midmessage and Darlene said, "Well, well. Fancy meeting you there."

"You'll probably be a riot in the unemployment line, too."

"Oh, we're testy in the morning." These assistants are something, aren't they? "May I speak widi Ms. Chenier?"

"She's unavailable. What did Boudreaux want?"

"There were two messages on the machine and he sounded anxious. He left a number." She gave it to me and then she hung up.

I called the number, got the Evangeline Parish Sheriff's office, Eunice Substation, and then I got Boudreaux. He said, "I can't just murder somebody. Jesus Christ. I can't do anything like that."

"All right. But doing nothing is no longer an option. So what are you going to do?"

You could hear background noise and the squeaks a chair makes when someone large shifts position.

I said, "Talk to me, Jo-el."

"Edie says you're right. She says it's time to stop hidin' from yesterday. She said that from the beginning, but I guess I was too scared to listen." He was working his way through the guilt, and not just the guilt about his wife. He'd probably seen the old man and the little girl a thousand times last night. He said, "I'm gonna arrest the sonofabitch. I should've arrested him six months ago. I should've arrested him when he came to my house with this stuff and started his blackmail."

I said, "It's the right thing, Jo-el."

"It's not just that old man. It's the whole operation. Prima. The poor bastards they been sneaking in through my parish. I can't get that little girl out of my head."

I said, "You want it to stop."

"Yes. Hell, yes. I don't want any more little girls like that. Oh, hell, yes." His voice sounded thick when he said it. "Jesus Christ, I'm just a hick cop. I don't know how to do this stuff."

"Jo-el, have you spoken with the parish prosecutor about this?"

"Unh-unh. Edie and I want to talk to the kids. We want to let'm know about us and their grandfather before they hear it in the news. I pop Rossier and he'll be screaming."

"Maybe there's a way to put this together, Jo-el."

"You mean get 'em all?"

"Maybe. Let me talk to Lucy about it. We'll need to know the legal end because we'll want to avoid entrapment, but maybe there's a way."

I hung up, then showered and dressed and was standing on the patio with the black-and-white dog when Lucy returned from car pool. She was carrying a wax-paper bag and two large containers of coffee. She offered one of the coffees. "Good morning again."

"Darlene called with a message from Jo-el Boudreaux. I'm afraid I've compromised our liaison."

"Oh, don't worry. She's used to it." These dames.

I told her about the call to Jo-el and asked her opinion. Lucy took a single plain donut from the bag and held it for me to take a bite. I did. Tender and light and still warm from the frying. Not too sugary. She took a bite after me and shook her head. "I have no experience in criminal law, Studly, but there are several ex-prosecutors at the firm."

"Think we could round one up for a quick trip to Eunice?"

She had more of the coffee and fed a small piece of the donut to the dog. "It's possible. After this donut, I'll make some calls."

"Great."

She sipped the coffee and ate a bit of the donut and stared at the camelia bushes that separated her backyard from her neighbor's. The bright morning sun painted their leaves with an emerald glow. She said, "You should tell Jodi. If it's going to come out, you should give her as much warning as possible."

"Of course."

She held out the donut again for me, but I shook my head no. She gave the remainder to the dog. "It won't be easy for you, will it?"

"You helped last night, Lucy. Thank you."

She smiled and patted my arm. "Let me make those calls."

It took about twenty minutes. A senior partner named Merhlie Comeaux agreed to drive to Eunice with Lucy and give an opinion based on his experiences both as a criminal defense attorney and the sixteen years he'd spent as an East Baton Rouge Parish prosecutor. Lucy would pick him up, and the two of them would meet Pike and me at Jo-el Boudreaux's office. I called Jo-el to see if this was agreeable, and he said that it was. He sounded nervous, but he also sounded relieved that someone who knew what they were doing was willing to advise him. When I hung up, I called Jodi Taylor at the hotel. She answered on the sixth ring, her voice puffy with sleep.

I said, "I spoke with Jo-el this morning, and I'm going to drive over there. He's going to arrest Milt Rossier."

She didn't say anything.

"I thought you should know. You want to talk about any of this?"

She said, "I wouldn't know what to say." Her voice sounded hollow, and I didn't know what to say either. She hung up. Another satisfied customer.

I called Joe Pike, told him the plan, then picked him up at the hotel and we went to Eunice.

The drive across the Atchafalaya Basin went quickly, the waterways and sugarcane fields and great industrial spiderworks now familiar. Men and women worked the fields and fished the waterways and sold burlap sacks of live crawfish for fifteen cents per pound. Some of their faces seemed familiar, but maybe that was my imagination. I tuned in to the radio evangelist to learn the topic of the day, and this morning it was the liberal plot to destroy America by breaking down the nuclear family. She said that the liberals had already accomplished this in the Negro community, but that the Negroes were getting wise, which explained the rise in popularity of the black "Musluns." She concluded, inevitably, with warnings of the coming race war, which was not part of the liberal plot but which was clear proof that the liberals were not as smart as they thought they were, since the liberals thought they could use the "blacks" to distract Christian America from their "true plan." Pike said, "Turn it off."

"Aren't you interested in learning about the 'true plan'?"

"No."

I turned it off, wondering how many of the people in the fields and on the water and in the houses were listening to this. Maybe none. Maybe Pike and I had been the only ones because everyone else had long since turned her off. Maybe, now that we had turned her off, too, she was broadcasting into dead air, just another noodle-brain with an eight-thousand-watt transmitter and nothing much to do all day except smoke cigarettes and rail into the microphone about how crummy things were, a voice alone in the dark, her signal spreading like silent ripples in a pond, unheard on the earth but traveling ever outward into space, past the moon and Mars, past the asteroids and Pluto, on into eternity. I hoped the people on Alpha Centauri were smart enough to turn her off, too.

Twenty minutes later we parked next to Lucy's Lexus outside the Eunice substation. The same woman was at the same desk, and the same pristine magnolia was in its little jar. She smiled when she saw me and said, "They're in with the sheriff. They're expecting you."

Lucy and Jo-el were sitting with a great, broad African-American man with white hair and a gut the size of a fifty-five-gallon oil drum. Merhlie Comeaux. Lucy made the introductions, then looked back at Joel. "Sheriff, before we begin this we need to establish the ground rules. Merhlie is a former EBR prosecutor, but he is now a partner in the firm of Sonnier, Melancon amp; Burke, for private hire. As such, anything said by you in this room is subject to the attorney-client privilege. Is that understood?"

Jo-el looked confused. "But I didn't hire you."

"We are under agreement with Jodi Taylor to work in your best interests. If you are so informed and agree to that arrangement, then we are, de facto, your attorneys."

Jo-el looked at me. "Do I need lawyers?"

I said, "Just listen to her, Jo-el."

He frowned and nodded and looked back at her. Lucy said, "We are about to discuss your awareness of and involvement in activities that may, in the future, result in criminal charges being filed against you. We don't want anything said by you today to prejudice your case at that time."

Jo-el looked embarrassed. "I'm not going to try to get out of anything."

Lucy spread her hands. "That is your choice, of course. You may feel differently at some later date. Also, we may discuss issues of a personal and potentially criminal nature as regards other members of your family. By accepting the attorney-client privilege with us, you also serve to protect them. Do you understand that?"

Jo-el nodded. "Protect them."

"Do you accept this arrangement?"

Jo-el said, "Yes."

Lucy nodded, then glanced at Merhlie Comeaux. "We have prior consent from Jodi Taylor to discuss her affairs openly with the Elvis Cole Detective Agency." She looked back at Jo-el. "As we discussed, Mr. Comeaux is here in an advisory capacity in the criminal apprehension of Milt Rossier. He can't speak for the state, but he can provide his opinion and guidance in the building of such a case. Do you understand that, too, Sheriff?"

"Yes. I need all the help I can get."

Merhlie Comeaux said, "Why don't you gentlemen give me what you have?"

Jo-el raised his eyebrows at me, and I told Comeaux everything that I knew. I started at the head of it with Jimmie Ray Rebenack and what happened at Rossier's crawfish farm, and I brought it up through the meeting between Rossier and Donaldo Prima at the Bayou Lounge and what I had seen at the pumping station. When I told him about the old man's murder and the bodies we recovered from the grave, Comeaux asked for the police report. Jo-el showed him the file and Comeaux stared at the pictures. He said, "Did you get an ID?"

"Not yet. We're running it through New Orleans."

Comeaux shook his head and sighed. "You got any coffee around here?"

Jo-el asked the receptionist to bring in coffee. After she had, I went through the rest of it, describing my meeting with del Reyo and what I had learned about Donaldo Prima and Frank Escobar and how Prima was using Rossier to move illegals up through the Gulf Coast waterways. When I was finished with it, Merhlie Comeaux nodded like he was thinking, then looked at the sheriff. "Do you have anything to add to that?"

Jo-el said, "Unh-unh. No, sir."

Merhlie looked back at me and laced his fingers across his ample belly. He had clear, hard eyes, and the eyes made me think he had been an aggressive prosecutor. "Let's go back to what happened at the pumping station. You saw this Prima pull the trigger?"

"Yes."

He looked at Joe Pike. "You saw it, too?"

Pike nodded.

"Where was Rossier?"

"He wasn't there."

"How about those two boys who work for him?"

"Bennett and LaBorde were inside with Prima."

"You get IDs on any of the illegals who came in?"

"Can you produce any of these people?"

"No."

Merhlie Comeaux pursed his lips and sipped at the coffee. When he lifted the cup his little finger stuck out at an angle.

Lucy said, "What do you think, Merhlie?"

Comeaux made a shrug, like he would do the best he could with what he had to work with. "It's not a lot, Lucille. You have Mr. Prima all right, but you don't have a thing on this Rossier."

Boudreaux said, "Well, hell."

Comeaux spread his hands. "He holds a lease on the land, maybe the state could file on an accessory, but it's junk. You want him, you gotta get him at the scene."

I said, "What about on the illegals?"

"What illegals? If you can't produce them, you cannot, in fact, prove that these people are aliens."

Lucy said, "Oh, come on, Merhlie."

He spread his hands again. "That's my opinion. If you think you can get more, go to the state and see what they say."

Jo-el said, "If we go in now that sonofabitch will know we're onto him." He chewed at his lip, then went to the window before turning back and staring at the largemouth on his wall. He stared at it, but I'm not sure he was seeing it. "Goddammit, me and my family are gonna do something pretty goddamn hard here. Maybe we shoulda done it a year ago, but if we're gonna do it now I want that sonofabitch to pay for his pleasure. I want him in jail. I don't want any more little girls like that." He jerked an angry gesture toward the case file. The one with the pictures.

I said, "So you'll have to bust him in the act."

They looked at me.

I said, "That wasn't the first time Prima brought up a load of people. We just have to be there the next time. And we have to make sure that Rossier is there to take delivery."

Comeaux was shaking his head. "Go easy with that, son. If he's entrapped, you've got nothing."

I was thinking about Ramon del Reyo. "All we have to do is give him a strong enough reason to be there. It won't be easy, but it might be possible."

Comeaux said, "Tell me what you have in mind."

I did. It didn't take very long, and then he got up and Lucy got up with him. The last thing he said was, "It's your neck, podnuh. Go with God."

A frown line had appeared between Lucy's eyebrows. "Can you pull something like that off?"

I looked at Pike. "Can we pull this off, she asks."

Pike was frowning, too. I guess he had his doubts.

I used Jo-el's phone to make some calls, and when I was finished Lucy and Merhlie were gone. Jo-el stood in his office window, passing his palm across his hair and staring down along the street of his town. Maybe at the rows of buildings, maybe at the cars and the people walking on the sidewalks. He said, "I should've done this six months ago. When that bastard came to my house and started all this, I should've dropped the hammer on him then and goddamned there."

"You were caught off guard, and you were scared. People get scared, they don't think straight."

"Yeah." He didn't look convinced. He glanced at the floor, and then he looked up at me. "I appreciate this. So will Edie."

Pike said, "Buy us a beer if we live through it."

That Joe. He's a riot, isn't he?

We went out to our car and drove to New Orleans.