I was halfway along my third cup of sludge when Jimmie Ray Rebenack's Mustang rumbled down the street and pulled into a metered spot outside the clothing store. Jimmie Ray fed some money into the meter, then trotted up the stairs. He was wearing blue jeans and a red western shirt and gray snakeskin boots. His pompadour looked a foot high and must've taken most of the morning to sh.e.l.lac into place.

I gave it a few minutes, then paid at the counter, left a hefty tip, and crossed the street to Jimmie Ray Rebenack's office.

The building was dingy and low cla.s.s, with crummy linoleum floors and water-stained paint. The smell offish was strong, and seemed a part of the fiber of the building. Three offices overlooked the front street, and three overlooked the alley behind the fish market. Rebenack had the middle office over the alley. I listened for a second, didn't hear anything, then let myself in.

Jimmie Ray Rebenack was sitting behind a plain wooden desk, feet up, staring at some papers when he heard the door. He saw me, then came out of the chair as if somebody had poured hot oatmeal into his lap.

"Hey."

"Nice boots, Jimmie Ray. You going for that Joey b.u.t.tafucco look?"

"Who?" Out of the cultural loop, down here in Ville Platte. "What do you want?" He slid the papers into his desk drawer. Surrept.i.tious.

Jimmie Ray Rebenack had sharp features and pock-marks on his neck and the pink skin of a natural redhead. Maybe an inch shorter than me, but muscular in a rawboned kind of way. Grease from his part-time mechanic's job was embedded in the thick skin of his knuckles and fingers. He'd tried to wash it off, but the grease was in deep and probably a pan of him. A lowboy gray metal file cabinet sat in one corner of the little room, and a couple of padded dinette chairs sat against the wall opposite his desk. Both of the chairs looked like they had been out in the rain, and the padding on one had been patched with duct tape. Cla.s.sy. Everything in the place looked like it had been picked up at a yard sale, or maybe bought secondhand from the Louisiana public school system. There was a framed picture of Tom Selleck as Magnum sitting on top of the file cabinet.

I said, "I want to know why you're following me, Jimmie Ray."

"Man, what d' h.e.l.l you talkin' 'bout? I ain't followin' you." The accent was somewhere between Cajun and French Quarter New Orleans.

I crossed his office and looked out the window. He had a view of the Dumpster behind the fish market and, beyond that, a backyard with a little tomato garden. A mayonnaise jar with a two-headed turtle floating in alcohol was on his windowsill. Keepsake, no doubt. I said, "You're Jimmie Ray Rebenack. You drive this year's Mustang, license number 213X455, and you possess Louisiana State investigator's license number KAO154509."

You could see him relax. I hadn't shot him or thrown a punch, so the surprise of my entry was wearing off and he was getting himself together. He put together a pretty good smile, sort of a Jack Nicholson number, part sneer and part smirk. He sat again, leaning back and trying to look expansive. "You made me, huh? You must be pretty good."

"Jimmie, a twelve-year-old could've made you. Why are you following me?"

"I heard you was in town and I wanted to find out why, you know? Like there might be some money in it, thas all."

"Why were you talking to Martha Guidry and Claire Fontenot and Evelyn Maggio last year?"

He frowned and dug at the inside of his teeth with his tongue. Nervous. "I don't know whatchu talkin' 'bout, man."

"C'mon, Jeffrey."

He stared at me like he was trying to think of something to say, but couldn't. I grinned at him. "Gotcha."

He frowned, not happy about it. "They got me confused with somebody else."

"With hair like that?"

He leaned forward. "Hey, podnuh, this is my town. I ain't gotta tell you d.i.c.k. I know your name is Elvis Cole, and you're from Los Angeles. I know you're stayin' at the motel over here." He pointed his thumb at me and smirked. "You see? I ain't no G.o.dd.a.m.ned slouch in the detectin' department, either."

"Wow. You think we could have a detect-off? You think we could duke it out for the world middleweight detective championships?" I looked at the picture of Tom Selleck. Jesus Christ.

He said, "Maybe my business is knowing your business. Maybe I figured that since you was workin' in my town, I could cut myself in." He leaned back again, grinning at me like I was supposed to believe it. "These c.o.o.nies won't open up to a stranger, and I know my way around. Figured that might be worth some cash. Whatchu think?"

"I think you're full of s.h.i.t."

Jimmie Ray shrugged like what I thought didn't matter, and then I heard steps coming up the linoleum stairs. The steps came closer and then the door opened and a guy in his mid-forties stepped in. Something large filled the hall behind him.

Jimmie Ray kept grinning at me and said, "This my podnuh, LeRoy." He nodded at the shape in the hall. "That there's Ren+!, behind him."

LeRoy's eyes narrowed and he looked at Jimmie Ray as if Jimmie was the world's largest t.u.r.d. LeRoy was maybe five-eight, with dark weathered skin just beginning to loosen and eyes like a couple of hard black marbles. He was in a thin short-sleeved plaid shirt and worn denim pants, and there was a tattoo on his forearm so obscured by wiry hair that I couldn't make it out. Anchor, maybe. Or a bulldog. He looked surprised to see me, and not particularly happy about it. "Who d'f.u.c.k dis?" He said it with a heavy Cajun accent.

Jimmie Ray's smile lost some of its confidence. "Just some guy. He's leaving. Let'm pa.s.s, Ren+!."

Ren+! moved into the room behind LeRoy, and when he did I stepped back the way you might when something large pa.s.ses very close to you, say a mobile home, or some great African beast. Rene" was only six-three or six-four, but his body possessed size in the way a dirigible possesses size, as if there were a quality to its bulk that could block out the sun. He had a tiny round head and diin, sandy hair and fingers as thick as my wrists. He wore humongously thick gla.s.ses that made his eyes seem tiny and far away, and the lenses were speckled with white flecks of matter. There were liver-colored blotches on his forearms and ears that looked like birthmarks, and a large misshapen lump riding the top of his right shoulder like a second head. His skin looked like tree bark. I said, "Jesus Christ."

Jimmie Ray said, "That Ren+! is somethin', idin' he? Had him a job in a carnival down 'round Bossier City. Useta bill him d' Swamp Monster." Jimmie Ray liked Ren+! the same way he liked the two-headed turtle. Something in a jar.

LeRoy still had the narrow eyes on Jimmie Ray. "Jus' some guy? You callin' names wi' jus' some guy? How G.o.dd.a.m.n stupid you are?"

Jimmie Ray raised his hands like what's the big deal? "It's nothin', man. Eve'body cool here." The sharp smile fell away and you could see that Jimmie was scared.

LeRoy said something in French.

Jimmie Ray nodded. "Hey, Cole, there's nothin' I can tell ya, all right? Now, I got business. Go on."

LeRoy had put the narrow eyes on me. "Whatchu lookin' at, podnuh?"

Rebenack came around the desk and took my arm. "C'mon, Cole. Out. I gotta go." Now he was trying to get me out of there and d.a.m.ned anxious to do it.

I said, "Are you okay with this?"

Jimmie Ray Rebenack looked at me with wide, surprised eyes. "Hey, yeah, no problem."

LeRoy squinted at me, then at Rebenack. "Who dis guy?" Then back at me. "You his boyfrien', what?"

I said, "If you're in trouble with these guys, Rebenack, don't go with them."

Rebenack waved me toward the door, making a big deal out of showing me that everything was fine. "Hey, these are just a couple of pals. It's not your business, man. Now, c'mon, I gotta lock up."

I let myself get shown out, and then I went down the stairs and back across to the little coffee shop. In a couple of minutes, LeRoy and Ren+! and Jimmie Ray came down and climbed into a rusty, gold Polara double-parked at the curb. When Ren+! got in, the Polara groaned and settled on its springs. They eased away down the street, did a slow K-turn, then headed back to Main Street and swung left.

I ran hard around the corner to my car, jumped in, pushed it hard through the little alley behind the fish market to Main, then jumped out of the car, climbed onto the hood, and looked both ways to find them. The gold Polara was moving south, just winding a bend in the street maybe three blocks and a dozen cars away. I followed them.

Jimmie Ray might be a t.u.r.d, but he was my t.u.r.d.

Chapter 7.

T hey were easy to follow. I trailed them south of Ville Platte, staying four to six cars back. LeRoy drove slowly, and a train of cars piled up behind them, unable to pa.s.s because of the narrow road. Six miles south of Ville Platte we crossed a little bayou, and the line of traffic slowed as LeRoy turned west. I didn't turn after him because no one else had, and the land was wide and fiat and empty of trees. Sweet potato fields, maybe. I pulled onto the shoulder and waited until the Polara was out of sight, and only then did I turn. If Jimmie Ray was doing the following, he'd be tooling along a couple of car lengths behind, thinking he was invisible because he was playing the radio. Hmm. If I was the world's greatest detective and Jimmie Ray was the world's worst, maybe this was some kind of karmic coming together.

Maybe a mile off the main road another road branched away, this one going through a gate with a big sign that said ROSSIER'S CRAWFISH FARM, MILT ROSSIER, PROP. The farm was hidden from the road by a heavy windbreak of hardwood trees, and I couldn't see beyond the windbreak into the farm. I could see pretty far up the tarmac road, and the gold Polara wasn't visible. No dust trail, either. Hmm, again. I drove a hundred yards past the gate, pulled onto the shoulder, then trotted back into the trees.

The windbreak was maybe a hundred yards deep, with more fields beyond cut through by a regular crosswork of sh.e.l.l roads. The gold Polara was parked on the far side of a large rectangular pond about the size and shape of a football field. There was another pond of identical size and shape beyond it, and another one after that, and a couple of long, low cinder block buildings. The Polara was parked beside a white Cadillac Brougham and an Evangeline Parish Sheriffs department highway car. Jimmie Ray and LeRoy and Ren+! were standing at the edge of the pond with a guy in a tan sheriffs uniform. The sheriff was maybe in his fifties, and everybody seemed to be talking to a heavy guy with baggy trousers and a cheap white short-sleeved shirt and a straw field hat on his head. He looked about the same age as the sheriff, but he might have been older, and he carried himself with the unmistakable bearing of an overseer. He gestured out toward the pond, and everybody looked. He gestured in the opposite direction, and everybody looked there, too. Then he leaned against the Cadillac and crossed his arms. Milt Rossier, no doubt. Proprietor.

I watched for another few minutes, and then I made my way back through the trees, drove back to town, and let myself into Jimmie Ray Rebenack's office. It was as we had left it, quiet and smelling of raw shrimp, the sounds of the alley and backyards below drifting nicely through the open window. A lawn mower was growling a few houses away, and the rich smell of cut St. Augustine gra.s.s mixed nicely with the shrimp. The two-headed turtle was milky in its jar on the sill, and Tom Selleck looked bored in his frame atop the file cabinet. I could see Jimmie Ray Rebenack, watching Magnum reruns, watching Tom Selleck drive the fast car and mug with the beautiful women. Jimmie sitting in his little duplex in Ville Platte, thinking, yeah, I could do that, then taking some mail order course, How to Be a Private Eye!

I opened his desk to see what he had been reading, and suddenly the lawn mower sounds faded and the office was very quiet. Jodi Taylor smiled up at me from the cover of Music magazine. The cover and an accompanying article had been clipped from the magazine and stapled together. The People article was under it. I took a breath and let it out. Sonof.a.gun. I went through the rest of the desk, but the rest of the desk was empty. I moved to the file cabinet. Two cans of Dr Pepper were hiding in the bottom drawer, and a single roll of prank toilet paper, the kind with Jerry Falwell's face printed on each of the sheets. Office-warming gift. The second drawer was empty, and the third was nicely outfitted with hanging file folders in various colors, only the folders were as empty and as clean as the day Jimmie Ray had installed them. There were eight hanging files in the top drawer. One of them held a Polaroid snapshot of a nude woman with a Winn-Dixie shopping bag over her head. A lot of blond hair peeked out beneath the bag, and she was cheap-looking, wearing rings on her diird and fourth fingers. Girlfriend, no doubt. Another held a surveillance report that Jimmie Ray Rebenack had written for a Mrs. Philip R. Cantera, who was convinced that her husband was playing around. Jimmie Ray's report said that he had observed Mr. Cantera in intimate embrace on several different occasions with (a) a young woman who worked at Cal's Road House and (b) another young woman who sold beer at the Rebel Stock Car Oval. The next three files contained case notes from similar jobs, two of them involving suspected infidelity, and the remaining being a grocery store owner who suspected an employee of stealing houseware products. The fifth folder contained more pictures of Jodi Taylor clipped from magazines and newspapers and what looked like studio press release sources, only sandwiched in with the articles were the Xeroxed copies of the first two pages of a doc.u.ment relinquishing the care and trust of one Maria Sue Johnson, a baby girl, to the State of Louisiana from her natural parents, Pamela E. Johnson and Monroe Kyle Johnson, on 11 July, thirty-six years ago. The doc.u.ment was incomplete and bore no signatures. Jodi Taylor's birth certificate was paper-clipped to the doc.u.ment along with a second birdi certificate, this one stating that Maria Sue Johnson had been born to Pamela E. Johnson and Monroe Kyle Johnson on 9 July. Jodi Taylor's birthday.

Jesus Christ.

An address had been written in pencil on the back of the birth certificate: 1146 Tec.u.mseh Lane. I copied it.

I stared at the birth certificate and the relinquish-ment doc.u.ment for quite a while, and then I put Jim-mie Ray's office back as I had found it, let myself out, and went back through the smell of wet shrimp to the little diner across the street. The same cook with the cratered nose was leaning on the counter. The same crinkled old man with the snap-brimmed hat was smoking at the little window table. Dignified. I said, "Use your pay phone?" They have a pay phone on the wall by the restroom.

The cook nodded help yourself. Watching me gave him something to do.

I fed a quarter into the phone and dialed Martha Guidry, who answered on the second ring. I said, "Martha, it's Elvis Cole."

"What?" The Raid.

I had to yell. "It's Elvis Cole. Remember?" The old man and the cook were both looking at me. I cupped the receiver. "Her ears." The cook nodded, saying it's hard when they get like that.

Martha Guidry yelled, "G.o.dd.a.m.n bugs!" You could hear the flyswatter whistle through the air and snap against the wall, Martha cackling and saying, "Gotcha, you sonofab.i.t.c.h!"

"Martha?" Trying to get her back to the phone.

Something crashed, and she came back on the line, breathing harder from her exertion. "You have a bowel movement yet? I know how it is when I travel. I cross the street, I don't go potty for a week." A living doll, that Martha.

I said, "The people you were trying to remember, were their names Johnson?"

"Johnson."

"Pamela and Monroe Johnson."

There was a sharp slap. "You should see the size of this G.o.dd.a.m.ned roach."

"The Johnsons, Martha. Was the family named Johnson?"

She said, "That sounds like them. White trash lived right over here. Oh, h.e.l.l, Pam Johnson died years ago."

I thanked Martha Guidry for her help, then hung up and stared at the address I had copied. 1146 Tec.u.mseh Lane. I fed another quarter into the phone and dialed Information. A pleasant female voice said, "And how are you today?" She sounded young.

"Do you have a listing for a Pamela or Monroe Johnson on Tec.u.mseh Lane?"

She didn't say anything for a moment, and then she said, "No, sir. We've got a bunch of other Johnsons, though."

"Any of them on Tec.u.mseh Lane?"

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't show Pamela or Monroe Johnson, and I don't show a Tec.u.mseh Lane, either."

I hung up.

The cook said, "No luck?"

I shook my head.

The old guy at the window table said something in French.

"What'd he say?"

The cook said, "He wants to know what you want."

"I'm trying to find Monroe and Pamela Johnson, I think they live on Tec.u.mseh Lane, but I'm not sure where that is."

The cook said it in French, and the old man said something back at him and they talked back and forth like that for a while. Then the cook said, "He doesn't know these Johnson people, but he says there's a Tec.u.mseh Lane in Eunice."

"Eunice?"

"Twenty miles south of here." Ah.

I smiled at the old man. "Thank him for me."

The cook said, "He understands you okay, he just don't speak English so good."

I nodded at the old man. "Merci."

The old man tipped his hat. Dignified. "Il y a pas de quoi." You take your good fortune where you find it.

I went out to my car, looked up Eunice on the Triple-A map, and went there. Like Ville Platte, the landscape was flat and crosscut with bayous and ponds and industrial waterways, mostly sweet potato fields and marshlands striped with oil company pipelines and vent stations. The town itself was bigger than Ville Platte, but not by a lot, and seemed like a neat, self-contained little community with a lot of churches and schools and quaint older buildings.

Tec.u.mseh Lane was a pleasant street in an older residential area with small frame houses and neatly trimmed azalea bushes. 1146 was in the center of the block, with a tiny front lawn and an ancient two-strip cement drive and a big wooden porch. Like every other house in the area, it was set atop high brick pillars and, even though the land was flat, you had to climb three or four steps to enter the house.

I left the car at the curb and went up to the house and rapped at the door. An older black woman in what looked like a white nurse's uniform answered. "May I help you?"

I gave her one of my nicer smiles. "Mrs. Johnson?"

"Oh, no."

"I'm looking for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. I was told they lived here." The air behind her smelled of medicine and pine-scented air freshener.

She was shaking her head before I finished. "You'll need to speak with Mrs. Boudreaux. I work for her."

"Who's Mrs. Boudreaux?"

"She owns this house." A wet, flapping sound came from deeper in the house, and a raspy old man's voice yelled something about his pears. The black woman took a half-step out onto the porch, pulling the door so I wouldn't hear. "She doesn't live here, though. She only comes by in the morning and the evening."

I let myself look confused. A relatively easy task. "Did the Johnsons move?"

"Oh, Mr. Johnson's her daddy. She used to rent this place out, but now she lets him live here." She pulled the door tighter and lowered her voice, letting me in on the know. "He can't live by himself, and they didn't want to put him in a home. Lord knows he couldn't live with them." She raised her eyebrows.

"He's very ill."