PI On A Hot Tin Roof

little girl who’d cried at her first communion because everything was so beautiful, poured the story of getting thrown in the slammer for possession. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold her—and knew there was about as much chance of that as of petting a tiger. Instead, he caught her eyes. “Angie, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish I coulda stopped that from happening.” He thought he could do it without misting up, but his vision blurred, and his daughter averted her eyes. He went gruff on her. “Ya client screwed ya; ya know that, don’t ya?”
    “Dad, he didn’t. Hell, I wouldn’t mind that so much—I’d put it down to bad luck if that was it. Hazard of being a criminal lawyer. The thing is, I screwed him. That’s what I feel so bad about.”
    Eddie felt fury course through his body. He’d raised her better than that. “Ya tellin’ me ya had drugs in ya car? What the fuck were ya thinkin’?” He made it a point of forbearing to swear in front of women. “’Scuse my French.”
    “No, I’m not telling you that. Will you listen? I was set up.”
    Eddie made a sound like
pssp.
“Yeah, and I got a bridge to sell ya. How bout the Superdome? Get ya a good deal.”
    She ignored him, instead straightening up and leaning forward slightly. “You know Buddy Champagne?”
    “Yeah, I know Buddy. Good guy.”
    “Bad guy.”
    Eddie considered. That was possible. He knew Champagne mostly from running into him at the Bon Ton, Ruth’s Chris, Mandina’s, places like that; people he knew knew the judge. That didn’t really mean Eddie did, though they’d exchanged plenty of small talk over the years. “Go on,” he said.
    “Well, awhile back, Buddy bought the old Pelican Marina, out at Venetian Isles. You know it?”
    “Run-down old place.”
    “Yeah. Buddy got it for a song and he decided to turn it into a commercial enterprise, make it pay off for him.”
    Eddie nodded. “Nothin’ wrong with that.”
    “But the thing is, it’s right in town—right in the middle of the neighborhood, and it isn’t zoned for commercial use.”
    “I’m listenin’.”
    “Think that bothered Buddy? Oh, no. Buddy’s a judge, see? He’s above the law. Buddy can do what he damn well pleases—in Buddy’s opinion. But the neighborhood people didn’t see it that way. They tried to stop the development.”
    That jarred Eddie’s memory. “It’s comin’ back to me now. The
Times-Picayune
ran a little piece about it. Sounded like a technicality or somethin’—like some guy with a grudge against Buddy tryin’ to harass him.”
    “It was a pretty biased story. It isn’t just one guy. It’s a real grass roots movement. Champagne’s doing seafood processing out there. You know how that smells when the wind’s right?”
    “You gettin’ to the point any time soon?”
    “I’m the lawyer for the neighborhood group.”
    Eddie thought about it a minute before the penny dropped. “Let me get this straight. You sayin’ a judge planted drugs on ya—you and ya well-known druggie client—to scare you off the case?”
    “Actually, I don’t think scaring was exactly the point—I think he meant to permanently disable me.”
    “What makes ya think that, Angie? Ya had a run-in with him in court or somethin’?”
    “Several, as a matter of fact. But who hasn’t? It’s not that, Dad. He’s done it before—to Ben Izaguirre, the head of the group I represent. Only Ben saw Buddy’s thugs messing with his car, and got there before they could get his bought cops to bust him. Found the stuff and threw it in the lake. Not five minutes later, two cops showed up with some kind of bullshit violation and searched his car.”
    “Uh-huh. How did he know Champagne was behind it?”
    “The guy who planted the drugs works at the marina.”
    “Don’t mean nothin’.”
    “It might not. But Ben got a couple of warning phone calls first—telling him to back off or else.”
    Eddie chewed his lip. “Okay, okay, I see what ya gettin’ at. Did you get a warning call?”
    “Uh-uh. Ben called the judge afterward and got tough with him. Buddy denied it, of course, but I guess he figured out it didn’t take a genius to connect a back-off call with a little back-off action. So with me, he played hardball.” She stopped and sighed. “And Alabama’s paying for it.”
    Eddie was getting her drift; the more she talked, the more plausible it seemed. Now he thought about it, he’d heard rumblings about Champagne;