Too Much Murder for a Nickel
by Chick Lang

The morning was a collage of cottonmouths, crooked cypress roots, snow egrets among hot pink flamingoes, and murky waves lapping against the sides of our bateau. Above us, the sky was the faded blue of scrubbed dungarees, the cloud-muted yellow light so soft it might have been cream at the top of a churn. As I sipped the last of my latte and watched Popcorn Hebert draw back his rod and fling yet another writhing earthworm toward a partially submerged buttonbush, I relaxed and reveled in my luxury. It had been months since I'd had the chance to pursue my passion for fishing, and I wanted to absorb it all—aroma by aroma, vision by vision, taste by taste. Popcorn plopped his bait into the brushtops and glanced back at me.

“You don't be catchin' nuttin' wit' you pole in da boat, no,” he said over his shoulder.

“You'd be surprised.”

“T'es malade, cher?”

“Not sick...lazy, maybe. Go ahead and hook one...I'll catch up.”

“Pêches-tu aujourd'hui...t'es paresseux la semaine prochaine.”

“I won't have time to be lazy next week, Pop.” I thought about all the files I'd left lying on my desk. “Too much work to do.”

“You catch dem criminal lak you catch da fish, you gone lose you job, yeah.”

I laughed and picked up my spinning rod, tied on a crawfish jig, and flipped it just beyond a sunken log. I let it disappear, then began a slow retrieve. The old man snagged a small bass and winked at me as he pulled it in. I cast again, this time into a festoon of lily pads that edged the bayou. Just as I lifted the rod tip, making the jig dance, I felt something thud against the back of the boat.

“What the...?”

With our attention focused upon the shadowy east bank, we'd failed to notice a runaway pirogue that had evidently worked its way out of a cattailed slough and slammed into our bateau. There, laid out in the bottom of the dugout, with his head resting awkwardly on a pile of oyster shells—his arms crossed on his chest—was the ripening, stiffened body of a man who was beyond apology.

I stuck my hand into the water and retrieved the end of a soggy tie-off rope, and pulled the pirogue closer. The man's face was bloated, covered with angry insect welts, and the sun glinted metallically off something in his sunken eyes. I reached to pry one open.

“Don't be touchin' him, no!” Popcorn yelled, “he look lak he die from...you catch sometin' from him, maybe... ça c'est fou-pas-mal!”

I ignored his protests and peeled back one eyelid with the tip of my finger. The object was a nickel; the other eye held its twin, wedged inside the lid as if it were some gothic coin envelope. Popcorn leaned over and squinted into my hand.

“Somebody ‘tink dis one a vendin' machine, yeah?”

“They stuck more than money into him, Pop.”

I pointed to an unnatural crease in the dead man's shirt—part of a tear that bordered a blood-crusted stab wound below the heart. I cursed as I sat back and fumbled for the cellphone in my tacklebox. For the second time in less than two years, Popcorn Hebert had been around when a body turned up on the bayou. In both instances, my fishing trips were derailed, if not detoured straight to hell.

“So,” he said, his eyebrows arched, “we catch a few crappie...den you report it...la même chose?” He skewered a cricket on a small hook. “Dat one...he goin' nowhere, him,” he added, waving in the direction of the corpse.

I dialed the station, told Marquand what we had, then tied the pirogue to one of our gunwales, and kicked the trolling motor into gear. As I headed for shore, I could hear the old man mumbling Cajun epithets, as he dragged his cricket across the top of the wake behind us.

The crime scene boys showed up twenty minutes later, as Popcorn was revisiting the beer cooler for the fourth time since I'd put in the call. Deke Lavalais, head of the Special Crime Squad, was the first to scramble down the bank to where I was squatted, going through the dead man's personal effects.

“What kind of bait were you using when you caught this one?” he said, grinning.

“You been moonlighting again as a standup comic? Isn't that against regs?”

He knelt down next to me and looked over my shoulder. “You know this guy?”

“His i.d.'s all say he's Chappi Bouchard. Commercial license, special permits, and a faded sketch of family oyster leases. Other than that, somebody decided he was worth killing and opened him up like a can of pork beans. I know that he picked a hell of time to come cruising out of the cattails. We were just beginning to find the fish.”

“Bouchard? Didn't I see that name in the paper last week...something about a squabble with the Pleshettes? Dragline Pleshette...the old man, he got arrested for fighting at The Plantation ...with some of the Bouchards.”

“I was in court at Franklin all week. But, come to think about it, I do remember Tip Landry mentioning it. Said he'd stopped at the bar to wash the taste of a tough day out of his mouth. Saw a hell of a fight, he said. And he brought up Dragline's name.”

Deke motioned to one of his assistants to bring him his bag. “Well, you go on back to fishing,” he told me as he pointed at Popcorn, “or drinking or whatever you were doing. I'll let you know if the M.E. finds anything beyond the obvious.”

“Fishing's over for the day. Marquand wants me on the case...since I'm already at the scene. Guess I'll break the news to the old man and send him on his way before he gets too soused to drive. I'll have to bum a ride with you,” I said.

“No problem. Give me a chance to try out my new routine on somebody.”

“Huh?”

“Comedy...you called me a standup comic...remember?”

“Right. I can't wait.”

The change in mood included a sky that had become suddenly cluttered with sodden clusters of gray—like clumps of wet lint—and an unsympathetic wind gusted across the bayou, disturbing the water's surface, driving wavelets against the bank. Popcorn's response to my suggestion to leave was to bait his hook, open another beer, and clamber back into the bateau.

“I'll bring you da fish,” he said, “at least you can clean ‘em, cher.”

As we drove away, the first raindrops spattered aimlessly against the windshield.

*****

By the time the day was over, I felt like a Little League batter facing three flame-throwing Major League pitchers—all at the same time—all tossing near-invisible fastballs, elusive screwballs, and a steady diet of unfathomable curveballs. I was suffering from information overload, interruptive frustration, and a feeling of acute deprivation—too many clues that weren't; a memory of a fishing trip cut short; and a chemical need to feel the soothing influx of alcohol mixing in depleted veins. For the moment, I could do nothing about the first two, so I concentrated on the last. My partner, Tip Landry—never one to miss an opportunity for a cold beer—decided to join me.

“You sorted it all out yet?” he asked, as we entered Picou's Bar and Grill.

“The butler did it,” I said without smiling.

“Huh?”

“I told you before, Tip...you've got to start reading something besides Playboy and Mike Shayne.”

He pointed to an empty booth in the back, where the light was dim and the cigarette smoke was as thick as an early-morning fog. We sat and ordered drinks.

The conversation wasn't meant to be scintillating—nor even stimulating—just cathartic. It had been a grueling, strength-sapping day; it's only resident satisfaction being that it was about over.

“So, which is it, Jamie...a man actin' a fool...or a fool actin' like a man?”

I pretended not to understand; raised my Jack Daniels in a generic toast. Tip slurped the foam from his beer and continued. “Dragline should've known he'd be da prime suspect, yeah...him threatenin' Bouchard in public like dat. Accused Chappi of robbin' and pollutin' his oyster beds.”

I tagged along, listening only close enough to respond with a nod. What had seemed like a simple voyage at the beginning of the day, ended up being scuttled by the simplest of means—an alibi.

“We'll check that story tomorrow,” I mumbled, “but he sounded mighty sure of himself.”

“I don't buy it, Jamie. Remember what I told you dat he shouted when we pulled dem apart dat night?”

I had to confess that I didn't recall. Tip shook his head and repeated the story.

“He had his hand on his knife...and he was bellerin' so loud dat everybody in Logan City could hear. ‘For ten cents, I cut you open,' he said, ‘leave you guts lyin' fo' da scavengers.' He meant it, yeah.”

“Only, he has witnesses, Tip...that put him raking oyster beds the last two mornings.”

His frown was more of impatience than disapproval. “And dose witnesses all jus' happen to be his brothers or sons,” he said, shaking salt into his beer. “And da M.E. hasn't established a time of death yet. You tellin' me Dragline was rakin' oysters last night in da dark?”

“I'm saying that, because of the alibi, we can't move on Dragline Pleshette without more evidence.”

“Da boys was lyin'. We'll break dat story...or we'll find a way around it. I know da man killed Bouchard.”

I sat back and let the comments with their attendant questions waft around me like so much stale smoke—concentrated on the bittersweet taste of aged whiskey, as it scalded my throat and found its way quickly to the centers that control sense and senses. If the conversation was only partially working its catharsis, the Jack Daniels was acting as a buffer between a world that had been promising for over two thousand years to get better—to learn from its mistakes—and a civilization that was irrationally feeding upon itself—one victim at a time.

Soon, the words and the alcohol blended with the desired effect, and we agreed to put it all on hold until the next day. I paid the tab, traded mock punches to the shoulder with Tip, and walked out into chilled darkness where there was little more than neon vapor to guide me through the mist that was rising off the bayou.

The following morning was a series of unscratchable itches, predictable consequences, and surprising turnabouts. The unanswered questions still rat-tatted in my brain, harmonizing with each throb of a pounding headache, and, during the night, while the rest of us slept, someone had used Dragline Pleshette for target practice. Whoever he was, his aim had been deadly. Though the bullet to the head would have been enough, the killer had emptied a .38 into the body, and left it a crumpled and bloody mess on the shell road about a mile from the victim's home.

When we arrived at the scene, Sam and Bobby, the Pleshette boys, and Doreen, the wife, were waging an emotional war between vengeful intentions and disconsolate grief.

It was Sam, the older boy, waving his anger in the form of a clenched fist, who was holding court.

“The damn Bouchards will pay for this,” he shouted. “If it's the last thing I do, Lester Bouchard is going down for this.”

Curses mixed with tearful tirades, and it became quickly obvious that the family was in total agreement about who would be the next to die.

“I'm sorry ‘bout you loved one,” Tip offered, “but dey ain't gonna be no more killin', folks.”

The trio stared at us with a common, defiant contempt, and repeated their anguished threats. Unable to defuse the situation on the spot, we decided to haul them all in for the time being. Tip told them that it was protective custody. He didn't explain whose protection he was concerned about.

After giving the body the once over, we loaded up and turned back down the dusty shell road. We met the ambulance and the crime boys on the way out.

We released Doreen before the day was out. Separated from the boys, she'd collapsed into her sorrow and seemed incapable of doing anything irrational on her own. Her sister came and picked her up. They would have arrangements to make, she said, as soon as the coroner was through with the body.

When we interviewed the Bouchards, they seemed just as protective and defensive as had the Pleshettes, and equally inconsolable in the loss of their son. Did anyone in the family own a .38 revolver? The father, he said, but it had been lost overboard during a storm last year. Could they account for their whereabouts during the previous night?

They were at home, together. It was a consensus, and an alibi not easily shaken.

Tip and I spent the rest of the day questioning neighbors, family friends, and eyewitnesses of the bar fight that had taken place the week before. We turned up nothing of substance. I decided to talk to the family matriarchs, Carmel Bouchard and Doreen Pleshette.

The Bouchard place was little more than a rundown clapboard house stuck back in the swamp about a mile off the west bank of the Atchafalaya River . The crushed shell access road narrowed to a mere footpath fifty yards from the shack, and we had to cross a rickety bridge to get to the house. Mrs. Bouchard was outside, sweeping the dirt yard with a stick broom.

“I'm Jamie Vining, ma'am...and this is Tip Landry...we're with the Logan City Police. We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind.”

“Ask me? What kinda questions? I ain't done nuttin', me.”

“About your son, ma'am...Chappi? How long had there been bad blood between him and Dragline Pleshette?” I asked.

“Qu'il reste en feu! Un fouille-merde! That ol' tumble-turd, he burn in hell now!”

She leaned on the broom, as if steadying herself before speaking again, this time from her melancholy. “Chappi never hurt nobody. Dat Pleshette, he don't make much oyster dis year. He jus' jealous. An' he kill my boy.” She began sobbing into her clasped hands.

“We're not sure of that yet, Mrs. Bouchard. We're still looking for proof,” I said.

“Proof? Da damn proof is mah boy's dead...and old Pleshette, he threaten him at da bar.”

“Chappi told you that, ma'am? Did he ever tell you of any other threats by Mr. Pleshette?”

“Chappi told me...Hoppy Gaijon told me...he was there at da bar, too. And Dragline been moanin'...blamin' everybody else for his bad luck, yeah.”

I looked at Tip. “Hoppy Gaijon? We haven't talked to him yet. Where was he on the list?”

“I didn't see him there, me. Maybe we check back wit' da bartender...see he was there.”

Mrs. Bouchard was small, slight of build, with long wisps of prematurely gray hair tousled about her face. She pushed herself up to full height. “He was there...he told me...and Chappi, he said so.”

I asked her again about the duration of hard feelings between the Bouchards and Pleshettes. She repeated that it had only started during this year's first oyster season, and got worse as the Pleshettes' hauls diminished. Any question about her other son, her husband—the possibility that one or both of them had disappeared for a while the night before—brought angry denials. She kept twisting her hands atop the stick broom, and looking at us as if she were prepared to crack us over the head with it at any moment. We'd gone as far as we could for the time being.

“Thank you, Mrs. Bouchard. Sorry to have bothered you...and about your boy, ma'am.”

She stood and watched as we walked off. When we crossed the bridge, I looked back.

She was flailing away so hard at the dirt with her broom that I could barely make out her small figure in the dust devil she'd created.

The newspapers were having a field day at our expense, and Marquand was wilting under the pressure from City Hall. When he found that we were no closer to getting to the bottom of things than we'd been two days earlier, he passed on the message.

“Arrest somebody...and do it soon...before this thing blows into a full-fledged feud and more people end up dead.”

“We're on it, Lieutenant. We're doing the best we can under the circumstances...with the evidence we have,” I said.

“Circumstances don't make good headlines, Vining...arrests do. You know that, I know that. Let's bust somebody...the Bouchard boy, his father...one of them killed Pleshette...now prove it.”

I understood the frustration; it was mine, too, and it—not Marquand's veiled criticism—made me wince. Tip, his normal joviality in place, pushed back in his chair and grinned.

“You want us to pull da lapin from da chapeau , dat's fine...we catch you da rabbit, yeah.”

Marquand didn't seem amused. He dismissed himself with a wag of his finger in our direction, walked back into his office and closed the door.

I worked into the night, discarding this, checking that, calling this one, interviewing that one. I'd lost the coin flip; Tip got the privilege of finding Hoppy Gaijon. Just as I was about to call it a day, I got a call from Deke Lavalais at the crime lab.

“Jamie? Glad I caught you. Got an interesting piece of evidence here...the knife that was used on Chappi Bouchard,” he said.

“Yeah? Where'd you come up with that?”

“When we emptied the pirogue...it was under the pile of oyster shells. Almost didn't see it at all.”

“Could you fingerprint it?” I said, twisting in my chair.

“Oh, yeah. Two on the handle, one perfect one just below the blade tang...above the bloodline.”

“I knew you were good for something besides corny jokes. Have you run the prints yet?”

“Just got them back. The old man...Dragline Pleshette. I know everybody figured that it was him, but now you can prove it. Oh, and the Bouchard boy had been dead at least ten hours when you found him.”

I felt a palpable lightening of the load on my shoulders. One down, one to go, I thought. I thanked Deke, told him that I'd pick up the evidence and the paperwork the next day, and hung up. I got on the handheld and found Tip. He was at our favorite watering hole, The Plantation. Said he'd failed to find Gaijon so far, and had stopped off to question the bartender. I told him to order me a double J.D.; that I'd be there in five minutes.

When I arrived, Tip was salting his beer and waiting on the bartender to finish with another customer. He pointed to my Jack Daniels and took a swig from his glass.

“Nate says Hoppy was here. He'd gone to da restroom when da fight start. He left when things got hairy. Nate says he was standin' at da end of da bar when old Pleshette made da threat.”

“So, you checked for Gaijon at his work, his house...? Where is he?” I asked.

Tip pointed to the back. “I don't know, me. But, he'll show up. Let's get a booth.”

I told him about the damning evidence of the knife, and that Deke was still going over the findings at the Pleshette murder scene. In return, Tip filled me in on what he'd found out about Hoppy Gaijon.

“He don't have a steady job. He work seasonal and whatever else he can find. Used to be oilfield...till he got to layin' out, chasin' da women...married women, Nate said. Guess some driller caught him takin' his place at home, yeah.”

As I nursed my drink, I thought about the stupid mistakes that amateur murderers often make. Even in the heat of anger, a man ought to have better sense than to leave his knife around for somebody to find. Dragline Pleshette wouldn't have to worry about that one...retribution had caught up to him first. Now we had to find the mistake that one of the Bouchards had made. It was there somewhere; we just hadn't seen it yet.

“Want to take a ride with me, buddy?” I asked.

“At nine o'clock? Where we goin'?”

“Thought I'd go talk to Mrs. Pleshette. I've been meaning to all day...couldn't find the time.”

Tip downed the half-full glass of beer. “Dat one, she don't wave a stick broom in our face, no. She's like da old man...she got a real temper. In da dark? She may poke a shotgun out da door.”

“Where do you know her from?” I said.

“Seen her in a couple of bars before. She came in here once, lookin' for her old man. Caught him talkin' to a waitress and laid his head open with a bottle. Cher , I've arrested everybody but Bobby in dat family...one time or another.”

We took Tip's car. He knew the way, and he wanted to drive. I was tired, and I didn't argue the point. The sky was a blanket of tarpaper; the only rip in it a semi-circled phosphorus cut that was the moon.

“So, what you think she gone tell us, Jamie? She know which Bouchard it was—Lester or Aldo—she'd say by now.”

“Maybe. Or maybe she's got revenge on her mind. It seems to be the ‘catch of the day'.”

Tip drove the car like he did everything else—full speed ahead; ‘get outa my way'. He clipped a couple of saplings as he negotiated the narrow, muddy road that meandered along the edge of cane fields to the east and Bayou Cabri to the west. By the time he slid to a stop in front of the house, I had both feet pressed solidly against the floorboard and I was wedged between the seat and the door. Tip looked at me with a knowing smile.

“Ain't no brakes on dat side, cher,” he said, laughing.

“Lucky for you,” I mumbled.

As he started to cut the engine, he stopped, appeared to be looking at the vehicle that was caught in the headlights—a pickup parked underneath a giant cypress. “Dat's Hoppy Gaijon's truck, yeah.” Tip switched off the ignition.

We climbed the zigzagged steps that led upward ten feet to the front door of the house on stilts. I could hear the sounds of at least two people arguing behind the loose-fitting door and shambled walls.

“What was that?” said the whiny male voice.

“I don't hear nothin'...'cept da sound of you beggin' for you mama,” shouted the female.

“Doreen, baby, you don't think I had anything to do with Dragline's murder? You know it was Lester Bouchard...I can prove it...”

“Save you breath, Hoppy. You come over here trying to take another man's wife...take up where you and me left off before I come to my senses...you better not be wearin' dat man's hundred dollar watch, when you do. Dat's da only thing he owned worth more than him...'cept maybe dis shotgun...and you took it off his dead body.”

Hoppy Gaijon was scared. His voice trembled when he spoke, and he emitted atonal squeals between his words, like the sounds of trapped air escaping in spurts from a balloon.

“Now...Doreen, honey...you got to believe me...I mean, I ain't sorry he's gone...'cause now we can be together. But, I didn't have nothin' to do with it. I swear.”

“An' you jus' happen to find his watch...”

“I won it from him at a card game, Doreen...at the Plantation ...a week ago. You can ask anybody...ask Nate the bartender...he saw it.”

I motioned for Tip to try the door. He wrapped the knob in his big, meaty hand, turned it, and pushed on the door. It creaked on its hinges and the place erupted into a frenzy of shouts and gunfire and splintering wood.

“You brought da Bouchards here you...”

Blam!

“...you couldn't have me, so...”

Blam!

“Doreen! No...Doreen...”

Blam!

Hoppy Gaijon went down in a heap, knocking over and breaking the only lamp in the room. Tip had rolled through the door and was somewhere to my left. I was sprawled near Hoppy, as he kicked and screamed and slammed against the wall.

“Doreen? Mrs. Pleshette...this is the police,” I yelled. “Just give me a chance to show you my badge.”

Ka-chock! It was the pump shotgun as she jacked another shell into the magazine.

“Mrs. Pleshette? I'm Jamie Vining... Logan City ...?”

Blam!

The shot smashed through the boards above my head, as I felt something sting my shoulder. I found it with my left hand, my pistol cradled tightly in the other. It was a piece of plastic wadding.

“Doreen! Dis is Tip Landry...you remember? Put da gun down, now...we can talk. No harm done. Hoppy gone be all right, yeah.”

The way Gaijon was screaming, I doubted Doreen believed that, and I know that Hoppy didn't.

“You don't fool me, boys. You come to finish da job,” she shouted, “only dat ain't gone happen!”

Blam! Ka-chock! Blam!

The first shot blew out the window and showered Tip's side of the room with glass. The second one ripped the front door from its top hinge. I fired twice toward the memory of the muzzle flash. I heard more glass breaking, then nothing but the ear-splitting screams of Hoppy Gaijon.

I could see Tip's shadow crawling toward me. “Doreen?” he yelled.

There was no answer, no cocking, no sound from that area of the cabin. I dug through my pocket and found my keys, and the penlight that hung from the keychain. I flicked it on and off, just enough light to get my bearings. As I crawled toward a chair, I heard the sound of a truck cranking.

“Jamie! She's gone out the back...hurry!”

I scrambled out the door just in time to see the taillights of Hoppy's pickup, as it bounced into the darkness and made the first curve in the road. Then it disappeared.

“She made it,” I said, “for now.”

Tip shoved the broken door aside and stepped out onto the narrow porch. “Hoppy's quit hollerin', him. Better take a look.”

I could smell spilt kerosene and was amazed that the place hadn't blazed up when the lamp shattered. I shined the thin light against the wall and walked over to Hoppy Gaijon. He was unconscious, but alive. His left leg was shredded and splintered below the knee. He had already lost what looked like a mop bucket of blood. I held the penlight in my teeth and ripped off my shirt, making a hasty tourniquet around his thigh. Tip had gone to the car to phone for help and to try to head off Doreen Pleshette. I heard him cursing—first in Cajun, then in broken English—at the bottom of the steps.

“What is it, Tip?”

He shouted something, then I heard him climbing the steps again.

“I told you she was a mean one, cher,” he said, as he got to the porch. “She done slice ma tires and cut da receiver from ma phone.”

I looked at Hoppy's ashen face. He wasn't going to make it without help.

“I'll walk out to the highway...try to flag somebody down. Put your coat over him and make sure this tourniquet stays pretty tight while I'm gone,” I said.

“It's a good three mile back down dat road...a muddy road at dat, cher. And you can't see five feet in front of you wit dat damn toy light.”

“You got any other suggestions?” I asked.

He handed me his service light that he'd retrieved from the car, one of those ten battery jobs with a handle that doubled as a Billy club. “I'll swap wit you, yeah. And there's an emergency flasher in da trunk. I left it open for you.”

I shined the light on his face. I suspected that when he died, he'd have a grin just like the one that flashed back at me now—like a man with a secret.

“You figured that I'd be the one to go, huh?” I said.

“Who else? You ever see a fat man in da mud?”

I took another look at Gaijon's bandage, then hurried down the steps. An hour later I was at a filling station, on a pay phone, and looking at the frightened face of the man whose car I'd commandeered. After I'd called the ambulance service and Marquand, I phoned the man's wife, told her to pick him up at the Shell station on Bartrand Road , then headed back to the Pleshette house. By the time I got there, Hoppy Gaijon was dead.

Tip was sitting on the porch, flashing Morse Code penlight messages at passing fireflies. “He'd lost too much blood, cher. Wasn't nothin' I could do,” he said, as I started up the stairs.

“Did he...?”

“And when we get in,” Tip interrupted, “we go out and arrest Lester Bouchard. He da one killed old Pleshette. It's too bad we didn't put everybody in protective custody, huh?”

“Gaijon regained consciousness?”

“Long enough to spin a story you won't believe, Jamie...ah'm tellin' you.”

I sat my aching body down on the steps in front of Tip and put my head back against the rail. I closed my eyes and listened for the wail of sirens, as Tip began his narrative. The ambulance arrived just ahead of a sleepy-looking, red-eyed Deke Lavalais. Tip and I left it with them, climbed into the commandeered Chevy and headed back toward Logan City . We stopped at the office, picked up another patrol car, lined up a backup, and drove out to the Bouchard place. At midnight, it wasn't that difficult to take them by surprise. Lester never had a chance to put up a fight. I heard over the radio on the way in that the Peterson Police had picked up Doreen Pleshette.

By the time we'd wrapped things up, it was 1:30 A.M., and I'd never been as sleepy and tired in my life. But Tip hadn't finished his story, and that was the only thing that could keep me awake. We went to my apartment, raided my ice box, put all the beer and cold cuts on the table, and slapped a couple of sandwiches together. I crashed in my recliner, and Tip wanted to pick up where he'd left off. After all the interruptions, I made him start at the beginning.

“As I told you before,” he said, “Gaijon had had dis t'ing wit Doreen, but she broke it off...said she was scared her old man was gone find out...and dat it wasn't ever gone amount to nothin' anyway...”

I washed a bite of ham and cheese down with a swig of Dixie , and pushed back in the recliner. Tip rambled on.

Seems that Hoppy Gaijon wasn't ready for the affair to end, and he devised a plan to get Dragline Pleshette out of the picture without implicating himself. He'd overheard Dragline threaten Chappi Bouchard at The Plantation. That's when he came up with the idea for the murder. He'd picked up Dragline's knife during the barroom brawl, and used it to kill Chappi Bouchard, figuring, rightfully so, that old Pleshette would be blamed, especially after the threat he'd made in front of witnesses. Gaijon made sure to leave the knife in the pirogue—removing all doubt as to who'd committed the murder. The coins were an extra touch he was proud of...said it was the ten cents dat old Pleshette had required in his threat. Hoppy did it during the night, when he knew that Chappi liked to run trotlines...so that Dragline wouldn't have a reasonable alibi. He didn't count on one of the Bouchards—Lester, the oldest son—taking revenge so quickly. But, he knew it was a possibility. In fact, he followed Dragline around from a distance, hoping to see him get arrested or victimized by the Bouchards. He witnessed Lester shooting the old man. When it all seemed to be going according to his little scheme, he went out to see Doreen, to try and win her back...now that old Pleshette was gone for good.

“...and dat's where da irony come in, boy. Dat watch, Dragline's pride and joy—he really did lose it to Gaijon in a card game. Only Doreen, she don't believe him and she gets her back up...I tol' you she might poke a shotgun at us, yeah...”

“You're a regular prophet, all right. Go on.”

“Well, you heard da rest. She was threatenin' to pay him back for killin' Dragline when we come up. Den she thought dat Hoppy was in league wit da Bouchards, and dat clinched it. She blow dat leg near off.”

“Three men dead, another on his way to the Death House—with a woman for company. All this because some damn fool couldn't take no for an answer,” I said, fighting off a yawn. “Too much murder for a nickel, if you ask me.”

I closed my eyes, exhausted. The last thing I heard was Tip popping the top on another Dixie .

End