James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'Hold on a minute. There's something else. Maybe it's important, maybe not. There was some stenciling on the cloth. The vest was Toronto PD issue.'

'It's Canadian?'

'Maybe he got it at a surplus store. But it's a thread, right? Anyway, talk with Motley.'

'You remember the nun we saw at the hospital?'

'Yes, she need somebody to pound erasers for her?'

'Not unless you want to visit her in the parish jail.'

Then I told him about all the events involving the woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux.

'Definitely a weird scam, mon,' he said.

'I'll bet she and Buchalter have their umbilical cords tied together.'

'What are you holding her on?'

'Not much.'

'Don't let them kick her. Give me the address that's on her driver's license.'

I read it to him off the arrest report.

'Salt the shaft if you have to. You know why everybody loves straight shooters? Because they usually lose,' he said.

'See you later, Cletus,' I said, and hung up the phone just as the sheriff tapped on my glass and motioned me toward his office at the other end of the hallway.

He drank from his bottle of ulcer medicine, then leaned back in his swivel chair, bouncing the heels of his hands on the padded arms, and gazed at the potted plants and hand-painted flowered tea-pot on his windowsill. His stomach wedged over his hand-tooled gunbelt like a partly deflated football. He poked at it with his stiffened fingers.

'You never had ulcers, did you?' he said.

'No.'

'I think I'm getting another one. I eat grits and baby food and get up in the morning with barbed wire in my stomach. Why's that?'

'You got me.'

'What are we supposed to do with that gal you locked up last night?'

'We try to keep her there till we find out who she is.'

'She's got no arrest record. Also the charge you've got against her is a joke.'

'Not to me it isn't.'

'At arraignment, what do we tell the judge?'

'The truth.'

'How's this sound? "Your Honor, this lady represented herself as a Catholic nun in order to get the wife of Detective Robicheaux drunk. Because everybody knows that's what nuns do in their spare time."'

I opened and closed my right hand on my thigh. I fixed my gaze on a place about three inches to the side of his face.

'I apologize, I shouldn't have said that,' he said. 'But at best all we've got is a misdemeanor.'

'I think she murdered Charles Sitwell in the hospital.'

'Put her there, in the hospital, in the room, in her nun's veil, around the time of death and we have something. Look, the driver's license and Social Security card are real. She says she never told you or your wife or anybody else she was a nun.'

'You talked to her?'

'I went to the jail early this morning. The jailer's got her in isolation. A couple of the dykes were getting stoked up.'

'They like her?'

'Are you kidding? They were scared shitless. One of them claims your gal threatened to put out a cigarette in her eye.'

'Look, Sheriff, there's no easier ID to get than a driver's license and Social Security. But she had no credit cards. That's because credit bureaus run a check on the applicants. She's dirty, I think she's mixed up with Buchalter, and if we let her walk, we lose the only thread we have.'

'I admit, she puts on quite a performance. If I didn't know better, I'd probably let her baby-sit my grandchildren.'

'What explanation did she give you for being in my house?'

'She says she used to be a part-time librarian and now she's trying to become a freelance magazine writer. According to her, she met Bootsie in a lounge and befriended her because she thought she was a sad lady. She's pretty eloquent, Dave.'

He looked at my face and glanced away.

'Librarian where?' I said.

'She got a little vague.'

'I bet.'

He propped his elbow on the desk blotter and scratched at the hollow of his cheek with a pink fingernail.

'She's got a lawyer from Lafayette. He's already raising hell down at the prosecutor's office,' he said.

'You want to talk to Clete Purcel? He saw her outside Sitwell's hospital room.'

'Great witness, Dave. Purcel's got a rap sheet that few mainline cons have. It looks like something a computer virus printed by mistake.'

'I think he was right.'

'About what?'

'He told me to salt the shaft. He knew how it was going to go down.'

The sheriff stuck his pipe in his leather tobacco pouch and began filling the bowl. He didn't look up.

'I didn't hear you say that,' he said.

'It's one man's point of view.'

He didn't answer. I got up to leave the room.

'The Americans won the Revolution because they learned to fight from the Indians,' he said. 'They shot from behind the trees. I guess it sure beat marching across a field in white bandoliers and silver breastplates.'

'I was never fond of allegory.'

'All I said was I didn't hear Purcel's remark. The woman's purse is in Possessions. Who knows what the lab might find?' He raised his eyebrows.

'We've got to hold her as a murder suspect, Sheriff.'

'It's not going to happen, Dave. You going to the arraignment?'

'You'd better believe it.'

He nodded silently, lit his pipe, and looked out the window.

Back inside my office, I looked again at all the paperwork concerning Will Buchalter. What were the common denominators? What had I missed?

Buchalter was perverse and sadistic and possibly an addict.

He was obviously a psychopath.

His followers were recidivists.

He appeared to be con-wise, talked about 'riding the beef,' but had no criminal record that we could find.

Was he a sodomist, was he depraved, were his followers all addicts? Were they men whom he had turned out (raped) and reduced to a form of psychological slavery? Why not? It went on in every prison in the country.

Except Buchalter had never been up the road.

Maybe Clete had come up with the answer. Maybe we had been looking for Buchalter on the wrong side of the equation. Maybe he was a fireman who set fires. Maybe he was one of us.

I talked with Ben Motley at NOPD. The prints lifted from the armored vest that he and Clete had found in the marsh matched those that Buchalter had left all over my house. But there was no serial number on the fabric.

'I wouldn't spend too much time on it,' he said. 'These paramilitary groups come up with shitloads of this stuff. You know what's still the best way to nail this guy? Find one of his lowlifes, then plug his pud into a light socket.'

Thanks, Mots , I thought.

Then I put in a call to the robbery division of the Toronto Police Department and talked with a lieutenant named Rankin. No, he knew nothing about a stolen armored vest. No, he had no knowledge whether or not the department might have sold off some of its vests; no, he had never heard of a Will Buchalter and, after leaving me on hold for five minutes, he said their computer had no record of a Will Buchalter.

'This man's a Nazi?' he said.

'Among other things.'

'What do you mean?'

'He likes to torture people.'

He cleared his throat.

'About eight or nine years ago I remember a case… no, it wasn't a case, really, it was a bad series of events that happened with a detective named Mervain. We had a recruit who bothered Mervain for some reason. He couldn't get this fellow out of his mind. It seems like the fellow was suspected of stealing some guns from us, who knows, maybe it was some vests, too.'

'What was the recruit's name?'

'I'm sorry, I don't remember everything that happened and I don't want to say the wrong thing and mislead you. Let me check with a couple of other people here and call you back.'

'I'd appreciate it very much, sir.'

Arraignment for the nun impersonator was at 11:00 A.M., and my best throw of the dice kept coming back boxcars, deuces, and treys. Clete called collect from a pay phone in Metairie.