She sat cross-legged and weeping against the wall, her face buried in her hands as he started his red convertible in the drive, tuned his radio, and backed out into the dirt road, the dappled sunlight spangling on the waxed finish of his car.

chapter seven

There was no record of a Will Buchalter with the New Iberia city police or the sheriffs department or with the state police in Baton Rouge. No parish or city agency in New Orleans had a record of him, either, nor did the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C. Nor could Bootsie identify him from any of the mug shots at the Iberia Parish sheriff's office.

Our fingerprint man lifted almost perfect sets of prints from the water glass used by the man who called himself Will Buchalter, from the record jackets he'd touched, and from the box of candy he'd left behind. But without a suspect in custody or corresponding prints on file, they were virtually worthless.

There was another problem, too, one that many victims of a sexual assault discover. Sexual crimes, as they are defined by our legal system, often fall into arbitrary categories that have nothing to do with the actual degree of physical pain, humiliation, and emotional injury perpetrated on the victim. At best we would probably only be able to charge the man who called himself Will Buchalter with misdemeanor battery, committed under circumstances that would probably make a venal defense lawyer lick his teeth.

I called Hippo Bimstine early the next morning, then drove to New Orleans and met him at his house in the Carrollton district by the levee. He sat in a stuffed red velvet chair by the front window, which reached from the floor to the ceiling, and kept fooling with a cellophane-wrapped cigar that was the diameter of a twenty-five-cent piece. His hair was wet and freshly combed, parted as neatly as a ruled line down the center of his head. His lower stomach bulged like a pillow under his slacks. Hanging on the wall above the mantel was a gilt-framed photograph of Hippo and his wife and their nine children, all of whom resembled him.

'How about sitting down, Dave?' he said. 'I don't feel too comfortable with a guy who acts like he was shot out of a cannon five minutes ago.'

'He knew you.'

'So do a lot of people. That doesn't mean I know them.'

'Who is he, Hippo?'

'A guy who obviously doesn't like Jews. What else can I tell you?'

'You'd better stop jerking me around.'

'How about a Dr Pepper or something to eat? Look, you think I rat-fuck my friends? That's what you're telling me, I set you up for some lowlife to come in your house and molest your wife?'

'He said you were raising money for Israel.'

'Then he's full of shit. I'm an American businessman. The big word there is American. I care about this city, I care about this nation. You bring me that Nazi fuck and I'll clip him for you.'

'How do you know he's a Nazi?'

'I took a wild guess.'

'What's in that sub?'

'Seawater and dead krauts. Jesus Christ, how do I know what's in there? Like I've been down in German submarines?' He looked at me a long moment, started to unwrap his cigar, then dropped it on the coffee table and stared out the window at a solitary moss-strung oak in his front yard. 'I'm sorry what this guy did to your wife. I don't know who he is, though. But maybe there're more of these kinds of guys around than you want to believe, Dave. Come on in back.'

I followed him deep into his house, which had been built in the 1870s, with oak floors, spiral staircases, high ceilings, and enormous windows that were domed at the top with stained glass. Then we crossed his tree-shaded, brick-walled backyard, past a swimming pool in which islands of dead oak leaves floated on the chemical green surface, to a small white stucco office with a blue tile roof that was almost completely encased by banana trees. He used a key on a ring to unlock the door.

The furniture inside was stacked with boxes of documents and files, the corkboards on the walls layered with thumbtacked sheets of paper, newspaper clippings, yellowed photographs with curled edges, computer printouts of people's names, telephone numbers, home and business addresses. The room was almost frigid from the air-conditioning unit in the window.

I stared at an eight-by-ten photograph in the middle of a cork-board. In it a group of children, perhaps between the ages of five and eight, had rolled up their coat sleeves from their right forearms to show the serial numbers that had been tattooed across their skin.

'Those kids look like they're part of a hoax, Dave?' he said.

'What's going on, partner?'

He didn't answer. He sat down at his desk, his massive buttocks splaying across the chair, his huge head sinking into his shoulders like a pumpkin, and clicked on his computer and viewing screen. I watched him type the name 'Buchalter' on the keyboard, then enter it into the computer. A second later a file leaped into the blue viewing screen. Hippo tapped on a key that rolled the screen like film being pulled through a projector while his eyes narrowed and studied each entry.

'Take a look,' he said. 'I've got a half dozen Buchalters here, but none of them seem to be your man. These guys are too old or they're in jail or dead.'

'What is all this?'

'I belong to a group of people who have a network. We keep tabs on the guys who'd like to see more ovens and searchlights and guard towers in the world-the Klan, the American Nazi party, the Aryan Nation, skinheads out on the coast, a bunch of buttwipes called Christian Identity at Hayden Lake, Idaho. They don't just spit Red Man anymore, Dave. They're organized, they all know each other, they've got one agenda-they'd like to make bars of soap out of people they disagree with. Not just Jews. People like you'd qualify, too.'

'Try another spelling,' I said.

'No, I think we've got the right spelling, just the wrong generation. I'll give you a history lesson. Look at this.' He tapped the key again that rolled the screen, then stopped at the name Buchalter, Jon Matthew. 'You ever hear of the American-German Bund?'

'Yeah, it was a fascist movement back in the nineteen thirties. They held rallies in Madison Square Garden.'

'That's right. And an offshoot of the Bund was a group called the Silver Shirts. One of their founders was this guy Jon Matthew Buchalter. He went to federal prison for treason and got out in nineteen fifty-six, just in time to die of liver cancer.'

'Okay?'

'He was from Grand Isle.'

'So maybe the guy who came to my house is related to him?'

He clicked off his computer and turned to face me in his chair. His head sank into his neck, and his jowls swelled out like the bottom of a deflated basketball. 'I've got no answers for you,' he said. 'Sometimes I wonder if I haven't gone around the bend. How many people keep a rat's nest of evil like this in their backyard?'

I looked into his eyes.

'I don't want to offend you, Hippo, but I don't think you've squared with me. Is there something about this submarine you haven't told me?'

'Hey, time for a flash, Dave. You told me about the sub, remember? You bargained with me about the finder's fee. You think I got secrets, I live in a private world? You bet your oysters I do. The bars on my house windows, the electronic security system, the rent-a-cops I pay to watch my kids, you think I got all that because I'm worried a bunch of coloreds from Magazine are gonna walk off with my lawn furniture? You're living in the New Jerusalem, Dave. It's the year zero; it's us against them. We either make it or we don't.'

'I'm not sure I get what you're saying, Hippo. I'm not sure I want to, either. It sounds a little messianic'