Thrown-away Child

pudgy hand to his heart. “What’s your poison, Detective Hockaday?”
    “Make it seltzer.”
    “Don’t tell me about no soda. Shoo, what about a real drink? We into the P.M. after all.”
    “I drink with a small d these days.”
    “You’re saying you don’t stand at the rail no more?”
    “It spooks me, Hippo. Like broken glass spooks you.”
    “Oh, well, you in New Orleans now. Everybody here, they in a thrall about good luck and bad, voodoo and hoodoo and all. Mumbo-jumbo’s bred in the bone down here. Everybody believe in it to some degree or other. Anybody says different’s lying.”
    Hippo looked up at the bullet hole again. Then he took another long swallow of whisky.
    “Anyhow, it’s a capital- D damn shame you don’t drink.” Hippo reached below the bar and pulled out a small, square bottle half full of something that was a musty gold color and highly tempting. “Shame is I got this real fine old sipping whisky I’d be willing to share. Whisky so good it tastes like little angels pissing on your tongue.”
    “Thanks, no.”
    “Say now, what’s your roots anyways?” Hippo’s eyes slitted. “Irish ’less I’m blind and deaf.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Always thought Mick blood came half whisky by birth.”
    “Easy enough mistake when you consider what the Irish call the wonderful stuff.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Uisce beatha. That’s Irish for whisky. It means  water of life.”
    “How about that.“
    “How about let’s talk on the subject of the murders.”
    “I told you, I’m a lowly alderman.”
    “Who used to be police commissioner.”
    “That’s just a little tubby boy’s dream come true. Nothing like riding through the city on a Saturday night with the siren blazing. I done that once in a while when I was commissioner. Just a career diversion.”
    “From the law?”
    “Law and public service.”
    “Something else, too. A long time ago, you did some public service in real estate.”
    “Well, my interest in that sort of thing’s all private speculation now.”
    “Property investments?”
    “Craps shoot’s more like it.”
    “One man tosses dice. Sometimes another man dies.”
    Hippo’s eyes narrowed again. He said nothing and tried to act as if he was thinking about nothing beyond how good his whisky tasted. But I could tell he was as rattled by my speculations as he was by the broken windows.
    “I never met my father-in-law,” I said. “The late Willis Flagg.”
    “That’s too bad. He was a good man.”
    “He owned some real estate once.”
    “Come to think, I guess he did. Awful shame he couldn’t hang on to that little cottage he had.”
    “The way I hear, my father-in-law was in over his head. Not to mention he was in the wrong skin at the wrong time. He was just a craps shooter, you could say.” Since Hippo was starting to go slurry from alcohol, I decided to press an advantage and let my murky suspicions take a roller-coaster ride. “You play craps, you always lose more than you win. Unless you play by the formula. But Willis Flagg wasn’t the type to be playing the formula.”
    “What you talking about formula?”
    “Real estate, cops, politics. The usual triple threat. A man who learns all three positions has clout.“
    “Your mother-in-law Violet tell you that?”
    “What makes you think so?”
    “Bless her, Violet always exaggerates my power and popularity—’specially if she’s having her tea pepped up with something.” Hippo laughed. “She don’t know it, but I hear her exaggerating like that sometimes in the kitchen—talking to my own wife, I’m telling you.“
    “The kitchen?”
    “Over to my place.” Hippo switched from the angel piss, pouring himself another generous Jack Daniel’s. His hands shook a little this time. “Ain’t it one of my maids been telling tales about me? I naturally figure Violet over Ophelia.”
    “You got me.” I said this quickly, to cover the surprise of my learning that Mama still worked at the Giradoux house. A holdover from the old days, I supposed, when she worked for Hippo’s doctor father.
    Not wanting to give Hippo time to imagine other sources—especially Officer Claude Bougart, whose position I saw now more than ever as highly vulnerable—I said as quickly, “You know, Violet speaks very highly of you when she’s at home in her own kitchen.“
    “That pleases me. Violet Flagg’s a damn fine woman, fine as any white lady.”
    “I’m sure that’s real high praise,