Crusader's Cross by James Lee Burke

rhino-butt be?” I asked.
    “Duh,” he replied.
    “It’s been good talking with you, Billy Joe. Try gargling with some warm salt water. And the next time you come around my house with a weapon in your hand, be advised I’m going to blow your fucking head off,” I said.
    Then I made a call to my half brother, Jimmie, in New Orleans, where he owned one restaurant in the Quarter and another uptown, in the Carrollton district. Jimmie had never married, although any number of attractive and interesting women drifted in and out of his life. He was known in the life as “Jimmie the Gent” and over the years had acquired a kind of benign notoriety as a player in the city’s traditional vices — video poker machines, offtrack betting, card clubs, and trafficking in large amounts of illegal Mexican rum and gin. By their nature, all these enterprises took Jimmie into a working relationship with the Giacano family, who had run New Orleans since Governor Huey Long made a present of the state to Frank Costello.
    But the patriarch of the Giacanos, a Dumpster load of whaleshit by the name of Didi Gee, paid back Jimmie’s trust by putting a contract on me, except the button man mistakenly shot Jimmie and blinded him in one eye.
    “This guy Bordelon saw Ida die?” Jimmie said.
    “I didn’t say that,” I replied.
    “Then what did you say?”
    “He saw blood on a chair. He said they smashed her mandolin. He wasn’t sure what happened to her.”
    The line was quiet a long time. “And some redneck cops came after you because they thought you knew too much? Cops who might work for the Chalons family?”
    “That about sums it up.”
    “I’m coming over there.”
    “Not a good idea,” I said.
    “You want me to stay at a motel?” he said.

CHAPTER SIX
    After I had hung up I went downstairs and tapped on Helen’s door. Her desk was covered with photos of women who were thought to be victims of the Baton Rouge serial killer.
    “Val Chalons was covering the story on our DOA Thursday night,” I said. “I brought up the name of Billy Joe Pitts. He told me he never heard of him.”
    Helen was chewing on the corner of her lip, trying to concentrate on what I was saying, her fingers splayed on the photos of the dead women. “You lost me,” she said.
    “I just talked with Pitts. He says Chalons fishes at his father’s lake. Chalons was lying.”
    Helen closed her eyes and opened them. “Dave, we’ve got our hands full here. We’re going to get Pitts. We’re going to get that other jerk, what’s-his-name, Shockly. But right now —”
    “Guys like Pitts don’t operate without sanction, Helen. Why did Chalons lie?”
    “Maybe he isn’t interested in the subject.Maybe he couldn’t care less about you or Pitts. Maybe everything isn’t about you.”
    It was quiet in the room. Outside, rain swept across the window. “The assault against my person is an open investigation. I was bringing you up to date.”
    “Good,” she said, her face coloring with embarrassment at her own level of irritation.
    I nodded at her desktop. “I went over those this morning. Pretty grim.”
    She stood up from her desk and tightened the tuck of her shirt with her thumbs, her shoulders flexing, her expression recomposing itself. She picked up a glossy plastic folder and handed it to me. “Here’s the Baton Rouge coroner’s file. A couple of the women were dead when most of the damage was done to them. Some of them weren’t.”
    “I’ll read it and check with you later.”
    “Do that,” she said.
    I started out the door.
    “Hold on a minute, bwana,” she said. “I apologize if I’m a little on edge. This is the worst case I’ve ever seen. How does a guy this sick go undetected for years?”
    In my mind’s eye I saw an image from years ago of a nineteen-year-old door gunner blowing apart a South Vietnamese wedding party inside a free-fire zone.
    “Because he looks like a regular guy, cooking hot dogs on the grill next door,” I