PI On A Hot Tin Roof

trouble?”
    “I don’t know if he was ever arrested, but I can tell you this—he’s an ex-Orleans Parish sheriff’s deputy—with emphasis on the ‘ex.’ What’s that tell ya?”
    “You mean, with that sheriff’s car parked near yours? Tells me he knows where to find the dirty deputies.”
    Izaguirre nodded, sniffing at the cracker and making a face. He picked up the Tabasco and sprinkled it liberally before he spoke. “That’s what I think. The sheriff’s department runs the jails, and Buddy was a judge. You know what the paper said. He set high bonds for Nicasio’s clients. Lot of room there for cooperation with the deputies. And Leitner’s tight with the Champagnes, always has been.”
    “Wonder if he quit the sheriff’s department to run that marina?”
    “Now that I don’t know. All I know is, he turned up there a few months ago.”
    Talba had a thought. “Royce go to your kid’s school, too?”
    “Oh, yeah. De La Salle. Another little punk.” His nose wrinkled again. Another rank whiff. He chewed a sauce-sopped saltine. “Ya ever try this? Poor man’s ersters. Been doin’ it since I was a kid.”
    Talba couldn’t help but smile. “Sure.” Every kid in Louisiana did it, but very few grown-ups did.
    She wondered if Angie knew about Izaguirre’s long-running relationship with the Champagnes—if it could be called a relationship. Maybe there was something personal in his opposition to the marina. But she still couldn’t find a motive for murder in it.
    “But the drug thing,” she said. “Do you have any reason to think Leitner was involved with drugs?”
    “Hell, anybody can get drugs. Anyhow, there were always shady characters hanging around that marina. Tried like hell to find out if anything funny was going on over there. Never could, but there was enough wrong without that. How would you like that place in your neighborhood?”
    “I’d really hate that,” Talba said truthfully, which for some reason Izaguirre found hilarious.
    When he’d quit laughing and wiping his eyes, he said, “There ya are, then.”
    “Well, I thank you for your time. I’d like to go see the Dorands, but I’m not sure where they live. Can you help me out with that?”
    Izaguirre looked at his watch. “Sure. They live just up the road. You’ll probably find ’em home. Billy doesn’t work—he’s got some kind of disability or other—and Fay runs some kind of half-assed beauty shop out of the house. Say, ya want to take some shrimp home with ya?”
    “Thanks, but I’m going to be out for a while. Last thing I need’s my car smelling like your neighborhood.”
    That got another belly laugh, the term being particularly applicable in Izaguirre’s case.
    “By the way, it’s not shrimp season, is it? But I can see they’ve been working that place. Was Buddy buying from poachers?”
    “Damn right he was.” He shrugged. “Whatcha gonna do?”
    When she had the address, Talba left, hoping Fay wouldn’t be washing someone’s hair when she got to the Dorands. The cat, still napping, stirred when she got in the car—in fact, had a near freak-out and ended up hiding under the seat. Good place for it, Talba decided.
    The house was on the little two-lane highway, Old Spanish Trail, that led to the Rigolets Bridge. It looked like a converted fishing shack, rising on short stilts, about two and a half feet high, and the house proper was dwarfed by an old-fashioned screened-in porch—or would have been, if not for the vast satellite dish perched somewhere at the back of the little building. The house had white siding and a great deal of peeling green woodwork, but no amount of dressing up could erase the gloomy effect of all that dark screen. Timidly, she tried the screen door, unsure whether it constituted the beginning of the residents’ private space, and it opened on a man, evidently Billy, sitting in an old wooden porch chair, staring into space and looking sad. Every inch the broken man. What had happened to him—the death of a child—was the worst thing that could happen to anybody, people said. She didn’t doubt it.
    “Mr. Dorand? Sorry, I didn’t know if I should knock or not.”
    “We leave it open. Wife operates a bi’ness outta here. Whatcha need?”
    “I’m a friend of Ben Izaguirre’s. Wonder if you could talk to me a few minutes.”
    He grunted. “Whatcha need?” he repeated. He didn’t sound like he cared much.
    “I’m doing some work for Angela Valentino.