“Who cares?”

“The victims of his crimes do.”

The intern seemed to think it over. “Yeah, Melancon, I worked on him. Third bed over. I don’t think you’ll find him too talkative.”

“Is he alive?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“Hey, Doc, I know y’all are having a rough go of it up here, but I’m not exactly having the best day of my life, either. How about getting the mashed potatoes out of your mouth?”

“His spinal cord is cut. If he lives, he’ll be a sack of mush the rest of his life. You want to talk to his brother?”

“He’s here?” Clete said, dumbfounded.

“Five minutes ago he was.” The intern shined his flashlight down the corridor at a man sitting in an open window. “See? Enjoy.”

Clete threaded his way between the gurneys and tapped Bertrand Melancon on the shoulder with his flashlight. “Hello, asshole. Remember me? The last time you saw me it was through the front windshield of your car,” he said.

“I know who you are. You work for them Jews at the bail bonds office,” Bertrand said.

“I also happen to be the guy you ran your car over.”

“I don’t own a car. Say, you’re blocking my breeze, you mind?”

Clete could feel his mouth drying out and tiny stitches beginning to pop loose inside his head. “How would you like to go the rest of the way out that window?”

“Do what you gonna do, man.”

For Clete, Bertrand Melancon seemed to personify what he hated most in the clientele he dealt with on a daily basis. They were raised by their grandmothers and didn’t have a clue who their fathers were. They got turned out in jail and thought of sexual roles in terms of prey or predator. They lied instinctively, even when there was no reason to. Trying to find a handle on them was impossible. They were inured to insult, indifferent to their own fate, and devoid of guilt or shame. What bothered Clete most about them was his belief that anyone from their background would probably turn out the same.

“Turn around. We going to meet a black cop named Tee Boy Pellerin,” Clete said, pulling his cuffs loose from the back of his belt. “You’ll dig this guy. He grew up in the Lower Nine himself. He’s got a soft spot for gangbangers who strong-arm rob their own people and sell meth to their children. Just don’t step on his shoeshine. He hates guys who step on his shoeshine.”

Clete crimped the cuffs tight on both of Bertrand’s wrists and spun him back around so he could look him squarely in the face. “Did I hear you laugh?”

“I ain’t laughed, man.”

“Yeah, you did. I heard you.”

“Troot is, I don’t care what you do, fat man. You ought to take a bat’. Get this over. I’m tired of listening to you.”

Clete wanted to hit him. No, he wanted to tear him apart, seam and joint. But what was the real source of his anger? The reality was he had no power over a man who had tried to do a hit-and-run on him. There was no place to take him. Clete had bummed a ride to the hospital on an airboat full of cops who had continued on down the avenue to the Carrollton District. Central Lockup was underwater, and he had no way to effectively transport Bertrand to the chain-link jail at the airport. With luck he could surrender custody of Bertrand to Tee Boy and collect a bail-skip fee from Nig and Willie, plus collect for finding Eddy Melancon among the living dead at the hospital, but chances were Bertrand would utilize the chaos of Katrina to slip through the system again.

Also, Andre Rochon was still out there, and Clete had a special beef to settle with him.

Clete worked Bertrand down a stairwell and shoved him outside.

“I ain’t fighting wit’ you, man. Quit pushing me around,” Bertrand said.

“Shut up,” Clete said, walking him toward Tee Boy, who was sitting on a low wall that separated the parking lot from the hospital. Tee Boy was eating a sandwich partially wrapped in aluminum foil.

“What you got here?” he asked.

“Bertrand Melancon, three bench warrants, strong-arm robbery, intimidating witnesses, and general shit-head behavior since he was first defecated into the world. I’m surrendering custody of Bertrand to you. I already warned him about what happens to people who step on your shoeshine.”

“This ain’t funny, Purcel.”

“You’re right, it isn’t. Bertrand and his brother Eddy ran me down with their car on Saturday evening. They did this while I was searching the panel truck of their fellow scum wad Andre Rochon. In the back of that panel truck I saw a stuffed animal and a coil of polyethylene rope. Just before shit-breath here ran me over, I remembered an article I saw in the newspaper about three black guys who abducted a fifteen-year-old girl. She was walking back from a street fair in the Lower Nine. She was carrying a stuffed bear. These guys dragged the girl into a panel truck and tied her up and raped her. You still live in the Lower Nine, don’t you, Tee Boy?”

“Yeah,” Tee Boy replied, brushing crumbs off his face, his eyes settling on Bertrand.

“You think this outstanding example of young manhood could be a possible suspect?” Clete asked.

“What about it, boy?” Tee Boy said.

“What about what?” Bertrand said.

“Are you planning to step on my shoeshine?”

“Are you crazy, man?”

Tee Boy hit him hard in the face with the flat of his hand, the kind of blow that rattles eyeballs in their sockets. “I ax you a question. You gonna answer it?”

“No, suh, I ain’t planning to step on your shoeshine.”

“You kidnap and rape a girl in the Lower Nine?”

“I brought my brother to the hospital ’cause somebody shot him t’rou the t’roat. A kid wit’ us was killed, too. I ain’t tried to run away. I come here for help. I missed my court appearance ’cause I was sick. That’s all you got on me. You quit hitting me.”

“Turn around. Look out there at that boat tied to the car bumper,” Clete said. “See those bodies in there? Those bodies belong to dead people. You’re going to be cuffed to them. It’s a long way to the chain-link jail at the airport. If you were Tee Boy and you got stuck with four corpses and a dog turd like yourself and you had a chance to deep-six the whole collection at a convenient underwater location, what would you do?”

But Clete realized he was firing blanks. Bertrand Melancon had seen a bullet turn his brother’s body into yesterday’s ice cream, and manufactured horror scenarios from a bail-skip chaser came in a poor second on the shock scale. Clete also realized that Tee Boy Pellerin was not listening to him, either, that his eyes were fastened on Bertrand and that his face was breaking into a grin as he connected dots and information Clete had no knowledge of.

“Want to let me in on it?” Clete said.

“We had a ‘shots fired’ and a fatality about two or three hours ago. Four looters were working out of a boat back toward Claiborne. A kid took a big one through the head. Guess whose place they’d just hit?”

“I don’t know,” Clete replied.

“Guy owns a flower store. Also a bunch of escort services. His wife looks like the Bride of Frankenstein.” Tee Boy was starting to laugh now.

“Sidney Kovick?” Clete said.

“These pukes ripped off the most dangerous gangster in New Orleans and tore his house apart on top of it. One of our guys went inside and said it looked like somebody had drove a fire truck through the walls.” Tee Boy was choking on his sandwich bread now, laughing so hard that tears were rolling down his cheeks. “Hey, kid, if you stole anything from Sidney Kovick, mail it to him COD from Alaska, then buy a gun and shoot yourself. With luck, he won’t find your grave.”

Tee Boy stood up and coughed into his palm until his knees were buckling.

“Who’s this Kovick guy?” Bertrand said to Clete. “Y’all just jerking my stick, right?”