drunk.”
She dropped her pencil in the wastebasket and fitted on her shoe. “I have to wash my hands,” she said.
I was having a hard time assimilating Special Agent Betsy Mossbacher. She seemed to combine ineptitude with abrasiveness and a way of speaking that required a cryptologist to understand what she was saying. Maybe Homeland Security had drained the FBI of its first team, I told myself. Or perhaps a case coordinator was sending her into the hinterland as a training exercise. Or maybe the investigation into two dye-marked bills was not only a waste of time but a way of getting Betsy Mossbacher out of somebody’s hair. When she returned from the restroom, she blew out her breath, as though she had just completed a herculean task. “Quite a coincidence this gal ends up in your backyard, huh?” she said.
“The rim of the Gulf Coast is all one culture.”
She seemed to chew the inside of her cheek. “Did you know Trish Klein roams around half of this country as well as Latin America?”
“No.”
“She inherited a boxcar load of money from her grandmother. She owns beautiful horses. She’s educated and has taste. But she says she got the hot bills at a low-rent hotel-and-casino in Mississippi, the kind of dump a roofers’ union uses for its conventions. Does that make sense to you?”
“Check out her friends. They’re like people who met at a bus depot and decided to live together,” I said.
“You knew the savings and loan was a laundry for the Mob?”
I could feel my irritability growing. “So what?” I said.
“Maybe somebody squeezed Trish Klein’s father and made him give up the armored car schedule.”
“Dallas owed a lot of money to some bad dudes. I told this to the Feds many years ago.”
“Was one of them a bookie by the name of Whitey Bruxal?”
“Since you came in here you’ve been asking me questions you already know the answer to. You saying maybe I don’t tell the truth?”
She walked to the window again and gazed down on the cruiser she had struck. “You ever mess with cows?” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“In calving season you spend about six weeks learning about natural and unnatural law.”
“You lost me,” I said.
“The cows have got sunburned bags and you’ve got shit, piss, and blood up to your right armpit. You hardly sleep, you’re cold most of the time, and you hear animals bawling day and night. When the mommies reject their calves, you graft the orphans to another mommy. You throw everybody a lot of cottonseed cake and pull it off and feel you’ve done a real good deed. Then one day you ship the whole bunch to the slaughterhouse. Some irony, huh?”
“I’ve always been poor at allegory,” I said.
“The point is our best efforts are seldom good enough. You told Miami-Dade P.D. your buddy Dallas Klein was probably working with the men who boosted his armored car. Consciously or unconsciously, I think you blamed yourself for his death. Are you still carrying guilt, Detective Robicheaux? Is that why you seem to have a remarkable lack of curiosity about his daughter’s behavior?”
She put a bright piece of red candy in her mouth and sucked on it. I looked her evenly in the eyes but did not answer her question, a bubble of anger rising in my chest like an old friend.
“Well,” she said finally, then turned to go, somehow saddened, even aged, by our exchange.
“Where are you from?” I said.
“Chugwater, Wyoming.”
“They must be frank as hell in Chugwater, Wyoming.”
“That’s what happens when you mess with cows,” she replied.
I didn’t need this.
Chapter
4
T HAT EVENING I TOOK Yvonne Darbonne’s diary home with me, and after supper walked down to the bayou with a folding chair and began to reread the thirty pages of entries that offered a small glimpse into the soul of an eighteen-year-old Cajun girl who had fallen in love with the world.
The last four pages contained the following entries:
We ate ice cream on the square
She dropped her pencil in the wastebasket and fitted on her shoe. “I have to wash my hands,” she said.
I was having a hard time assimilating Special Agent Betsy Mossbacher. She seemed to combine ineptitude with abrasiveness and a way of speaking that required a cryptologist to understand what she was saying. Maybe Homeland Security had drained the FBI of its first team, I told myself. Or perhaps a case coordinator was sending her into the hinterland as a training exercise. Or maybe the investigation into two dye-marked bills was not only a waste of time but a way of getting Betsy Mossbacher out of somebody’s hair. When she returned from the restroom, she blew out her breath, as though she had just completed a herculean task. “Quite a coincidence this gal ends up in your backyard, huh?” she said.
“The rim of the Gulf Coast is all one culture.”
She seemed to chew the inside of her cheek. “Did you know Trish Klein roams around half of this country as well as Latin America?”
“No.”
“She inherited a boxcar load of money from her grandmother. She owns beautiful horses. She’s educated and has taste. But she says she got the hot bills at a low-rent hotel-and-casino in Mississippi, the kind of dump a roofers’ union uses for its conventions. Does that make sense to you?”
“Check out her friends. They’re like people who met at a bus depot and decided to live together,” I said.
“You knew the savings and loan was a laundry for the Mob?”
I could feel my irritability growing. “So what?” I said.
“Maybe somebody squeezed Trish Klein’s father and made him give up the armored car schedule.”
“Dallas owed a lot of money to some bad dudes. I told this to the Feds many years ago.”
“Was one of them a bookie by the name of Whitey Bruxal?”
“Since you came in here you’ve been asking me questions you already know the answer to. You saying maybe I don’t tell the truth?”
She walked to the window again and gazed down on the cruiser she had struck. “You ever mess with cows?” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“In calving season you spend about six weeks learning about natural and unnatural law.”
“You lost me,” I said.
“The cows have got sunburned bags and you’ve got shit, piss, and blood up to your right armpit. You hardly sleep, you’re cold most of the time, and you hear animals bawling day and night. When the mommies reject their calves, you graft the orphans to another mommy. You throw everybody a lot of cottonseed cake and pull it off and feel you’ve done a real good deed. Then one day you ship the whole bunch to the slaughterhouse. Some irony, huh?”
“I’ve always been poor at allegory,” I said.
“The point is our best efforts are seldom good enough. You told Miami-Dade P.D. your buddy Dallas Klein was probably working with the men who boosted his armored car. Consciously or unconsciously, I think you blamed yourself for his death. Are you still carrying guilt, Detective Robicheaux? Is that why you seem to have a remarkable lack of curiosity about his daughter’s behavior?”
She put a bright piece of red candy in her mouth and sucked on it. I looked her evenly in the eyes but did not answer her question, a bubble of anger rising in my chest like an old friend.
“Well,” she said finally, then turned to go, somehow saddened, even aged, by our exchange.
“Where are you from?” I said.
“Chugwater, Wyoming.”
“They must be frank as hell in Chugwater, Wyoming.”
“That’s what happens when you mess with cows,” she replied.
I didn’t need this.
Chapter
4
T HAT EVENING I TOOK Yvonne Darbonne’s diary home with me, and after supper walked down to the bayou with a folding chair and began to reread the thirty pages of entries that offered a small glimpse into the soul of an eighteen-year-old Cajun girl who had fallen in love with the world.
The last four pages contained the following entries:
We ate ice cream on the square
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