James Burke - Crusader's Cross

He fished his keys out of his slacks, but walked to the rear of the Caddy rather than to the driver's door. He propped one of his two-tone shoes on the bumper and brushed dust off it with his handkerchief. "You going to behave now?" he said to the car trunk.

Inside, I could hear muffled cries and feet kicking against a hard surface. "Who's in there?" I said, incredulous.

"Jigger Babineau. I forgot it was Sunday. Jigger always visits his wife's tomb on Sunday. The little bastard tried to stab me with the file on his nail clippers."

Clete slipped the key in the lock and popped the hatch. The smell of body odor and urine mushroomed out of the trunk. Jigger Babineau sat up, blinking at the light, then tumbled onto the grass, gasping for cool air.

Jigger had facial features like a stick figure. He had sprayed hair remover on his eyebrows, for reasons he had never explained, and now daily re-created his eyebrows with black eye pencil so that he looked perpetually surprised or frightened. He was short, pear-shaped, and wore double-soled shoes and suits with padded shoulders and some said a roll of socks stuffed inside his fly. His hands were white and round and as small as a ten-year-old child's. He was plainly disgusted with his circumstances and the indignity that had been visited upon him. "I figured if elephant-ass was back in town, you weren't far away," he said.

"Comment la vie, Jigger?" I said.

"He's good. Throw him a beer," Clete said.

"How'd you hear about a cop wanting to pop me?" I asked.

"Why should I tell you anyt'ing?" he said.

"Because we don't mind riding you around in my car trunk some more," Clete said.

"Do it, you fat fuck. I couldn't care less. I already pissed myself,"' he said.

"Not a good choice of words. Jigger," Clete said.

"Try these – bite my pole. Also, teach your sister to be a little more tidy. She left her diaphragm under my bed again," Jigger said.

I cracked a beer and handed it to him. "You could have taken the bounce on that armored car job, Jigger, but we got you into Witness Protection and let the Giacanos go down for the robbery. They're dead, you're on the street, and you never did time. Tell me, you really think you got a raw deal?"

But Jigger was still noncommittal. I tried again, this time using his birth name. "You're a family guy, Apollo. Clete and I knew that. That's why you got slack and the Giacanos got back-to-back nickels in Angola," I said.

He lifted his shirt off his chest and smelled himself. "You got any salt?" he asked.

"Hang on," I said.

I went back to the trash barrel by our picnic table and dug a tiny pack of salt from our take-out box. Clete could hardly hide his impatience. Jigger sprinkled his beer can and drank from it, then cut a grateful belch. "The word was out somebody had a kite up on an Iberia Parish detective. But no pro in New Orleans is gonna hit a cop. So they didn't get no takers."

"Who's 'they'?" I said.

"Like they hand out business cards wit' their names on them?" he said.

"How'd you like the side of your head kicked in?" Clete said.

"That's it, Purcel. Tell your sister she's glommed my magic twanger for the last time," Jigger said.

I thought Clete was going to hit him, but this time he couldn't help but laugh. Jigger drank again from the can and looked at me. "I heard the juice was coming down from some people who used to own some cathouses. That's how come the work went to this cop. He was tight with the people running these cathouses."

"Why did these guys want me out of the way, Jigger?"

"I didn't try to find out. It's amateurs who's messed up this city. I stay away from them," he said. "You got another brew in there?"

I squatted down, eye-level with him. "You're not giving us a lot of help here, partner," I said.

"Jericho Johnny put you on to me?" he said.

"Your name came up in the conversation," I replied.

"What's that tell you?"

"Excuse me?"

"The number-one button man in New Orleans giving up a made guy to a cop? The old days are gone, Robicheaux. Live wit' it," he said.

When I got home Sunday evening, I called Molly Boyle, but she was not home. I went to bed early, then was awakened by the phone ringing inside the sound of rain. It was Dana Magelli, an old friend at NOPD. "Did you and Clete Purcel question a kid by the name of Holly Blankenship, a runaway from Iowa?" he asked.

"Yesterday?"

"Right. Her pimp says y'all talked to her at a McDonald's."

"She didn't use that last name," I said.

"She's not using any name now," Dana said.

"What?"

"Her body was dumped in a trash pit out by Chalmette in the early a.m. The guy who strangled her used a coat hanger. You working on the Baton Rouge serial killer case?"

"Yeah, but that's not why we were in town," I said, trying to shake the image of a hapless, overweight girl murdered and thrown away like yesterday's coffee grinds.

"You there?" Dana said.

"I was trying to get a lead on a guy I had to shoot. His name was Bob Cobb."

"Yeah, I know all about that. Funny the girl ends up dead right after she talks to you. Must be just coincidence, huh? Why would anyone kill a girl because she talked to a cop? Her pimp gave you permission, didn't he?" he said.

Early Monday morning I was in Helen's office. "There was semen in the girl?" she said.

"That's what Dana said," I replied.

"So let's see what their lab says. In the meantime, there's no connection between her homicide and you being in New Orleans, none at least that we can see. You reading me on this?"

"No," I said.

"We're buried in open cases. Our backlog looks like the national debt. Don't stir up things with NOPD. If they want your help, they'll call. That translates into mind your own business."

She stared at me steadily, biting at a hangnail, waiting to see if her words had taken effect.

"The girl got it on with Bad Texas Bob, a guy who contracted to kill me. The girl talks to me, then she's dead. What's the point in saying there's no connection?"

Helen removed a tiny piece of skin from her tongue and dropped it in the wastebasket.

I went home for lunch. My next-door neighbor was Miss Ellen Deschamps. She was eighty-two years old, a graduate of a girls' finishing school in Mississippi, and she lived in the two-story, oak-shaded frame house she had been born in. Miss Ellen had never married, and every afternoon at three served tea on her upstairs veranda for herself and her older sister or friends who were invited by written invitation.

Miss Ellen was devoted to gardening and feeding stray cats. Each spring her flower beds and window boxes were bursting with color; her oaks were surrounded by caladiums that looked individually hand-painted. Cats sat or slept on every stone and wood surface in her yard. But Miss Ellen had another obsession as well. She monitored every aspect of life on East Main and wrote polite notes on expensive stationery to her neighbors when they didn't cut their lawns, take in their empty trash cans in timely fashion, trim their hedges, or paint their houses with colors she considered tasteful.

With Miss Ellen on the job, which was twenty-four hours a day, we didn't have to worry about a Neighborhood Crime Watch program.

When I pulled into the drive, she was weeding a flower bed in the lee of her house. She got to her feet and called out to me: "Mr. Robicheaux, so glad I saw you. Did you find out who that man was?"

"Pardon?" I said.

She walked through the bamboo that separated our property. She wore cotton gloves, a denim dress with huge pockets for garden tools, and rubber boots patinaed with mud. A half dozen cats, including Snuggs, trailed along behind her. "The man looking in your windows Friday night. I called the police about him. They didn't tell you?" she said.