Clair smiled at whatever it was.

Chapter 41

We drove past Carleton, sitting in his massive chunk of German engineering with a phone to his ear, the darkened windows tight.

“Stop,” I said to Harry.

He pulled beside Carleton’s driver’s window. I made the roll-down-your-window motion. It slid down as if tracking on wet butter.

“What?” he demanded.

“How old are you, Mr Carleton?”

“Fifty-four,” he said. “Why?”

“Just taking a survey. I’m thirty-six, Harry’s forty-something.” I decided to drop a bomb, see what it took down. “How old do you think Arnold Meltzer is?”

His eyes reacted, but not his face. A good lawyer can do that.

“We know you know him,” I said, expecting another blank-faced Who? or What are you talking about?

“So the fuck what?” he said.

I nodded toward the house.

“First Scaler, now Tutweiler. What’s Meltzer’s connection?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Reverend Scaler, the poor sick man, died of a heart attack. It appears that Dean Tutweiler killed himself. The pretty lady in there said as much.”

“No,” I said. “The pretty lady in there is my girlfriend. And the pretty lady is a professional. She’d never leap to such a conclusion. I think that’s what you’re planning on – suicide. Where did you get your forensic training, Mr Carleton?”

“I’ll thank you to remove yourself from my presence before I talk to your Chief.”

“How do you know Arnold Meltzer?”

“Anything I might say about Arnold Meltzer is under privilege. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” The window started to roll up.

“Privilege?” I said. “So Meltzer’s your client.”

“Everyone is entitled to representation under the law,” he said, his voice like oil over an eel. “You might try reading the Constitution, Detective. It actually affects parts of law enforcement.”

The window closed. I heard Harry’s door open. The blue Mercedes moved ahead a yard, stopped dead.

Harry was standing in front of its grille. The window dropped.

“Get out of my way,” Carleton barked. “This is harassment.”

Harry put his foot on the bumper. Leaned toward the window. “Not harassment,” he said, his voice as cold as wind from hell. “A warning. If anything happens to that little girl, I’ll cut everyone involved down like a scythe.”

“I h-have absolutely no idea what you’re t-talking about,” Carleton sputtered, putting the car in reverse and backing away.

We drove off feeling that somehow we were shaking things loose. We didn’t know what, but experience had taught us that when high-priced mouthpieces look scared, we were doing something right.

“What next, Sherlock?” Harry said. He hadn’t called me that in weeks.

“Aim for the Hoople Hotel,” I said. “I got a hunch and that starts with H.”

The room clerk, Jaime Critizia, shot a frightened look when we entered the Hoople.

“Stay seated, Jaime,” Harry said. “It’s like before, just a conversation. No La Migre if you level with us.”

Critizia relaxed, nodded his understanding.

“Chinese Red, your dead boarder?” I made a syringe-plunge motion with my fingers above my forearm. “I need to know if he ever had friends over here.”

“He had some friends that were…not friends. They came because Mr Red was handsome.”

“They came for sex?”

Critizia wrinkled his nose as if smelling something even worse than the lobby of his workplace. “Ees a bad job here, but I have a sick back and cannot work the chickens or fields or gardens. I must have money for my family in Ecuador, and I can sit in this job. The pay ees no so good as the chickens factory or fields, but I can work long hours to make up.”

Critizia was telling us he only worked at the Hoople because he had no other choice. I figured he’d been a good, upstanding Catholic back in rural wherever, had seen more vice in his first day at the desk of the Hoople than he’d seen in his life. And he wasn’t part of those goings-on.

“Si. For the sex.”

“One of the people who might have come for the sex,” I said. “Did he look at all like this…?”

I held out a photo of Tutweiler pulled from the net. Critizia took a long look before he nodded.

“He dressed to look different. A light hair thing.” Critizia wiggled his fingers over his head, meaning a wig. “And always sunglasses, even when it rains.”

“He was here how many times?”

“One time every week, usually Wednesday in the night. Sometimes he would be here on Sunday.”

“A new meaning for Sunday services,” I said.

Heading outside, we saw Shanelle emerging from a minimart across the street, eating a sloppy po’boy from wax paper. Her green dress had required less cloth than my handkerchief. The gold clogs had turned to sparkly red pumps like she was ready to tap dance over the rainbow.

She saw us and ran over.

“Harry, you look sweet as honey today. How ’bout you and me get tickets for Rio and fly away some night and –”

Harry held up his hand.

“Gotta talk serious here, Shanelle. How well did you know Chinese Red?”

“We was friends, Harry. We’d go to the docks and talk. It’s so unfair he’s gone.”

“Tell me about his last days.”

“Red got clean, Harry. He kicked. He was getting better.”

“But still selling himself, right?”

“When he had to, and only to a couple of high-price clients. He was putting the money away and not in his veins. He was gonna start his own detail shop next year.”

“You’re sure, Shanelle?”

“I ain’t ever been sure of much, Harry. But that’s one of the few things I know for fact.”

Score one for Ryan’s optimism, I thought as we drove away.

“Tut was a regular customer of Chinese Red,” Harry said, rolling up the window. “If someone who knew of the unholy alliance between Dean Tutweiler and Red suddenly needed a way to destroy Scaler’s reputation, putting Scaler with a gay black man with a history of prostitution…”

“Was the kind of inspired move I’d expect of a guy like Arnold Meltzer,” I finished. “But Meltzer lacks the balls to slice pepperoni. He delegates. Which probably means we need to know more about Deputy Baker,” I said, pulling my phone.

I made my call to Ben Belker as Harry drove. Ben was out having lunch and I told Wanda Tenahoe we needed everything Ben had on Boots Baker. She knew who I was talking about, judging by the Ugh when I mentioned Baker’s name. Ben would call back soon, she promised.

With nothing else to do, Harry and I picked up po’boys and headed for the causeway. He didn’t want to eat, but I shoved the sandwich into his hands, let instinct take over.

We leaned against the car and ate without a word, watching the boats and herons and pelicans.

“Has it ever gotten to you, Harry?” I said. “I mean, before today?”

My cell interrupted. It was Ben Belker. He said, “Can rattlesnakes catch hydrophobia, Carson?”

“Why?”

“That’s how I describe Delbert aka ‘Boots’ Baker. He got the nickname from kicking people’s faces to a pulp. While others held them, of course. He’s a rattlesnake with rabies.”

“You know he’s a county sheriff’s deputy?”

“I’ll add that to his file. He must have gotten fired from his last job, guarding at a Mississippi prison. Maybe they found out about his previous prison work.”

“You lost me, Ben.”

“Baker was a guard at Abu Ghraib. One of the worst of a bad lot, a sadist. You heard about water-boarding? Baker invented watersheeting.”

“Watersheeting?”

“Not a bad idea, as first conceived. Soak a sheet or blanket in water, wrap it around someone you want to move – a mummy wrap. Ever try and wriggle from wet fabric, Carson?”