PI On A Hot Tin Roof

Budweiser.
    “What the hell are you doin’ here? Donnie, go on now.” The kid cast an evil look at Talba and disappeared. “Any friend of that asshole’s no friend of mine.”
    Talba laughed. “I’m no friend of LaGarde’s. I’m investigating him.” She showed her license.
    He studied it carefully; not many people did that. “Well. You better come in then. Want a beer?”
    “No thanks. Driving.”
    “Sit down. Sit down.” He himself sat down at a yellow fifties-style table. Or perhaps it was the real thing—the house could easily have been fifty years old; maybe it and all its furnishings had been in the Cheramie family that long.
    Talba made herself at home.
    “Whassup?” Cheramie said unceremoniously.
    “Someone’s hired me to look into some things regarding Mr. LaGarde—and I might have a piece of information for you. How much do you know about LaGarde?”
    “I know he’s a cheatin’ rat bastard. Ya got somethin’ else?”
    “I think so. Did you know his son-in-law’s a Mancuso?”
    It seemed to take him awhile to process it. “Mancuso. I shoulda known. It’s in the goddam blood.” Clearly, he was no geneticist, but Talba let it go. He sighed. “And Buddy Champagne was no saint, either. Goddam ’em both.”
    “Okay, let’s trade,” Talba said. “I want to know what kind of trouble he was giving you—might be something I can use.”
    “Against him, I hope.”
    Talba let an eyebrow go up a little. “Well, you never know.”
    “All right—don’t see the harm in it. I had a deal to sell my shrimp to Judge Champagne. Simple enough, right?”
    Talba nodded. No news there.
    “So Buddy dies. I don’t get paid. I go talk to Royce, and he says he’s sorry, but some big deal Buddy had didn’t come through. They dumped my shrimp right there in the canal, you believe that?”
    “Easily. The way that place smelled.”
    “Man, I was mad. I haul off and hit Royce, I was so goddam mad—you ain’ gon’ report me, are you?”
    Talba shook her head, thinking that at least the puzzle of Royce’s injury was cleared up. “I’m not an officer of the court,” she said. “Like a lawyer.” (Though she really had no idea whether a lawyer would have to report a crime she’d only heard about.)
    “Well, I hit him a few more times, tryin’ to knock some information out of him. Ya understand? And sure enough, I pry some loose. He says Buddy’s got a contract with LaGarde to buy shrimp for his restaurants, but LaGarde reneged on it. Flat out wouldn’t buy the shrimp. So I say, well, goddammit, sue him! Get the money any way ya have to—why have I got to suffer for this? Wasn’t only me, either. Come to find out, it was happening to the other boys as well.”
    He paused to guzzle beer. “Buddy Champagne, the shrimpers’ friend. Oh, yeah. Ya see that boat out there? Thanks to Judge Buddy it’s being repossessed. You don’t know what kinda problems we got, all those chinks dumpin’ cheap shrimp on the market. Fact: They got ninety percent of the U.S. market. I ain’t exaggeratin’—ninety percent! Aquaculture, baby, aquaculture—it’s wipin’ us out. Ten, fifteen years ago, shrimp was a luxury in this country. Fact: Wholesale prices for shrimp have dropped forty percent since the year 2000. Meanwhile, my operatin’ costs are gettin’ higher and higher—price of fuel, insurance—hah! Insurance, hell. Just about nobody can afford that no more. I’m behind on my credit cards, I’m behind on my electric bill, I owe everybody under the sun. Hell, I’d have already lost my house, my folks hadn’t paid it off, rest their souls.” He put the can down and got up in her face, his eyes like coals. “So I knock some more information outta the sumbitch—and he says he don’t have nothin’ on paper. Ya understand? Ya see where I’m goin’ with this?”
    Talba didn’t. “I’m not sure,” she said.
    “It was somethin’ illegal, see? LaGarde promised Buddy all his seafood business—and it’s got to be considerable—and Buddy stakes the whole goddam business on this one order, but it don’t come through. LaGarde’s buyin’ that cheap foreign shrimp just like all the other scumbags in this town. Nobody’ cares that shrimpin’s dyin’ out in Louisiana—for the simple reason that the big guys don’t give a shit about the little guys. Ya know what the goddam
New York Times
said? Now, don’t get me wrong, I ain’t one of those guys think any paper not published in