Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou (12 page)

Everyone had gathered around us, joking, shaking hands,
offering drinks. Since I was with the brothers, the rough fishermen took me as one of their own.

After a few minutes at the bar sipping cold Abita Bock beer and eyeing the crowd, Valsin moved to my side. “Your man, he
be at the end of the bar. The one with the red shirt. The peeshwank, the runt.”

Wearing overalls over a grimy T-shirt, Lester leaned against
the bar with another fisherman. Most Cajuns who topped five
feet ten or so were considered tall, but Valsin was right in his
assessment of Lester Percher. He was a peeshwank, a runt at
about five-six. He had the typical curly black hair of the true
Cajun, and his swarthy complexion reflected years of sunlight
and weather.

I had decided to be honest with him, or as honest as I could
be. Lester, I figured, would jump at the chance for a reward, unless he had a stash of diamonds put away. Before I pushed away
from the bar, August, who stood on my other side, whispered,
“Don’t look now, mon ami, but there be a jeune dame that be
sweet-eyeing you.” He glanced across the smoke-filled room.

I have yet to see a dusky-complexioned young woman from
the backwaters of the Louisiana swamps who doesn’t project a
haunting beauty that lingers in the mind like fresh dewdrops on
the dark green leaves of lemon trees.

When she saw me, she smiled, her brilliant white teeth a sharp
contrast to her tawny skin. I started to smile back, but when I saw
the two men with her glare, I looked away hastily.

Grabbing my bottle of beer, I moved down the bar to Lester.

The two men looked around when I stopped by their side.

I offered my hand. I almost had to shout to be heard above the
riotous clamor in the bar. “Name’s Boudreaux. I came over here
with the Naquin brothers.”

Both men shot suspicious glances over my shoulder, but when
they spotted the brothers, they relaxed. Lester took my hand and
introduced himself. “And this ugly aucun compte, he be Juju
Broussard.”

I knew the expression aucun compte to mean “no-account,”
an affable tag that friends placed on each other. I took Juju’s
hand. “Happy to meet you. Buy you a beer?”

Lester chugged the rest of his brew. “Me, I never turn down
free beer.”

Juju patted his belly. “Me neither.”

After paying for the drinks, I turned back to Lester. “I came
here to talk business.”

The short Cajun frowned at me and then looked around at
Juju, who simply shrugged. “Shrimping? Me, I got plenty business doing that,” Lester replied.

Juju agreed. “Us, we don’t need no more right now. We just
come back from three weeks out in the Gulf.”

I cursed under my breath. Juju had just blown my theory of
Lester prowling around Jack’s house. I shook my head. “No-no
shrimping, Lester. I want to talk to you about Al Theriot.”

His eyes grew wide in shock, then narrowed warily.

Continuing, I assured him, “I’m no cop. Not the law.” I looked
around the raucous honky-tonk and joked, “No cop in his right
mind would come over here.”

“That be true,” Juju said with a leer.

I almost shouted, “I’m just an average Cajun boy who wants
to make some money, and I’m offering you a cut.”

Lester studied me, trying to decide if I were lying or not. Finally, he turned to Juju and rattled off Cajun French so softly, I
couldn’t make out his words. The only one I picked up on was
seul, which meant “alone.” He pointed the beer bottle at an
empty table. “Over there.”

His eyes remained wary as we slid in at the table. He leaned
back in his chair. “All right, Boudreaux, what you got in mind?”

“You were close friends with Theriot.” I made it a statement,
not a question.

He shrugged.

“I mean, you spent time with him, worked for him at the car
lot, stayed at his house sometimes. That sort of thing, right?”

Another shrug. “Some,” he replied indifferently.

Resting my elbows on the table, I leaned forward so he could
hear me better. “All right. Now here’s the deal. Theriot heisted
a jewel store in New Orleans. He hid the loot before the cops
got him. He and his partners, the Judice brothers, were wasted
in prison.”

“Yeah. Me, I know that.”

“A friend of mine bought the house Theriot owned on Ghost Bayou. Prowlers have been searching for the diamonds. That’s
when I learned that there’s a reward for them. Maybe two million, more or less, and I’m willing to give you a sizable cut if
you can point me in their direction.”

His eyes grew wide, then narrowed furtively. “You think, me,
I know where the diamonds be?” There was a hint of amusement
in his eyes and a faint smile on his face, as if he were keeping a
secret from me.

“No. But I figured if we talked some, I might get a hint where
to start looking. Of course, somebody knows something, because
if you remember reading about it, some of the loot turned up a
few years ago. Story I heard was they were found in a pawnshop up in Alexandria.”

His smile grew wider. With exaggerated innocence, he replied,
“You know, I think me, I hear that too. You know?”

I had the feeling right then he was playing with me, jacking
me around. “Oh?”

“You see the big shrimp boat out in the bayou when you
come in?”

“Yeah. Valsin said it belongs to you”

“That be right.”

I remembered Valsin’s remark about people wondering among
themselves where Lester came up with the money. “Nice boat”

His eyes glittered with satisfaction. “You think me, I’d be here if I knew where old Theriot hid them other diamonds?” He
shook his head. “But you right about some of the haul turning
up in Alexandria. How you think I got that shrimp boat out
there?”

I surprised him when I replied, “I figured as much when I saw
the boat”

“What’s that?”

“When I heard about the time you spent with Theriot, I had a
hunch you might know something. What I can’t figure is why you
weren’t in on the heist with him instead of the Judice brothers.”

His brow knit in anger for a moment. “That be Theriot’s mistake. Me, the law would never find, not back out here in the swamps.
C. K., he knew what he was doing, but Donat, that one, he started
blubbering when the law hauled him in.” He turned up his beer
and drained it. “Old Donat, he never good up here,” he said, tapping the side of his head with the top of his empty beer bottle.

“Where’d you find the diamonds?”

“Somewhere”

I leaned back in the chair. “Keeping it a secret, huh? Can’t say
I blame you, except, with all the new technology out there today,
laundering them will be a whole lot harder than a few years ago.”

He grew serious. “Me, I know that. That be why I don’t look
for them. Oh, they be out there, but there be too many who
want to put their sticky fingers on them to suit me” He paused
and added, “I don’t figure I would live a week if I tried to move
them diamonds.” He shrugged. “That’s why I don’t worry none
about them, even if I knew where they be” He set the empty
bottle on the table. “Which I don’t.”

I studied him for a moment. For some reason, I believed him.
I held up two fingers to the waitress behind the bar. She nodded, and I looked back around, straight into the eyes of the little Cajun girl who had smiled at me earlier. She was leaning over,
her chest brushing my shoulder. “Buy me a beer, cher?”

The waitress plopped Abita Bock beers down in front of us
on the table. I shot a hasty glance at the two locals with whom
she had been drinking. “Maybe later,” I said, turning back to
Lester.

Eyes blazing, she jerked upright and then stormed back to her
table.

If I’d paid attention, I would have seen her jabbering to the
locals with whom she’d been drinking and jabbing her finger
at me. I would have known trouble was just around the corner,
ready to tap me on the shoulder with a beer bottle in its hand.

I took a sip of my beer and then cleared my throat. “Did you
find the diamonds yourself?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Hard to
remember,” he finally said.

In my line of work, I had become a master in recognizing
delay, or stalling, or hedging. That’s what crafty Lester Percher
was doing. “Tell you what. I’ll guarantee you 10 percent of what
I find. That could be as little as two hundred thousand, andwho knows?-as much as eight hundred big ones.” I was just
pulling figures out of the air.

His face remained impassive. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“Don’t worry. There ain’t no way, my friend, that I would try
to peddle the diamonds. They’re registered, and I don’t care
nothing about fifteen or twenty years at Angola or Winn, even
for eight million bucks. I’ll return the diamonds and settle for
two million or whatever.” I paused and then added, “You might
as well take the gamble. As it stands now, you got no chance at
them. Me, I got one. If it doesn’t pan out, then you’ve always
got your shrimp boat, right?”

“Oui, me, I always got the shrimp boat.” He took a long drink
of beer. He drew the back of his hand across his lips. “All right,
I tell you what you ask, Boudreaux. You see, Theriot sell the
house to a Texas school superintendent or something like that”

A shrimper entered the bar. An anomaly among Cajuns, he
stood well over six feet and topped two-fifty at a minimum. He wore a thick black Santa Claus type beard and even blacker
hair down to his shoulders. He glanced around. His eyes touched
on me and continued until he found the two crabbers seated at
the table with the angry Cajun woman.

I looked back at Percher. “You mean Ramsey. Jimmy Ramsey.”

“Oui, oui. I don’t know much about Ramsey, but he had a
cousin, K. D. Dople, what lived in Priouxville. Had for years.
K. D., he come to me. He’d learned where some of the diamonds was hid, but he got sent to prison. When he got out, he come over
here. Said it would take two of us to pull it off.” I - I I I ~ . . ~ TI . I I

My pulse quickened. Now I was on the track of the diamonds. “How did he find out about them?”

“He never say. When me, I ask, he just laugh and say it none
of my business. He say I wouldn’t believe it if he told me the
truth. But he say over and over we got no time to waste.”

“Why?”

Lester reached under the bib of his overalls and fished a
battered pack of Lucky Strikes from the pocket of his T-shirt.
He lit one, inhaled, and squinted as the smoke drifted slowly
to the ceiling. “Don’t know. Me, I not be sure. I got the feeling he heard something from the superintendent cousin of
his.”

“Ramsey?”

He paused. “Oui. But me, I ain’t sure. Maybe from that Guzik
what got himself killed last year, or maybe Theriot told him.”

“You mean Dople worked for all three?”

Lester chugged a couple of swallows of beer. “Oui.”

“This Dople guy, where can I find him? He still live in Priouxville?”

“Mais non. He be dead now.”

I grimaced. So much for being on the trail of the diamonds.

He continued. “Oui, he be shot dead in a ditch over to Vernon
Parish. The law say it be a gang killing. K. D., that one, he gamble like an homme four”

I grinned. “A crazy man, huh?”

Percher grunted. “Oui.”

“You don’t think it had anything to do with the diamonds?”

He pursed his lips, his bearded cheeks sunken in his angular face. “I think maybe at first that be the reason, but then talk
come in about the gambling.”

“Why did he come to you?”

Percher shrugged. “For years, I work for Theriot at his car
lot. Me, I know every inch of the place. Dople, he know I can
get him inside without nobody knowing nothing.” He gave me
a sly look. “And me, I did.”

“So, where were the diamonds?”

He chugged down three or four gulps of Abita, drew his hand
across his lips, and leaned forward. “When they robbed the jewelry store, Theriot and Mouton, they was building four more service bays at the dealership. Just after the bricklayers lay the first
few rows of cinder blocks, Theriot, he go out at night and place
the metal box with the diamonds in a corner block on the first
layer. He puts cement on top, and next morning, the bricklayers
keep right on laying them concrete blocks.’

I stared at him in disbelief, and then the wisdom of such a
hiding spot dawned on me. From the corner of my eye, I saw
Dolzin coming toward me. I turned back to Percher, but before
I could ask the next question, a rough hand grabbed my shoulder and jerked me around.

I almost fell out of my chair. When I looked up, I was staring
into the drunken faces of two enraged Cajun crabbers. Standing behind them was the leering face of the shrimper who had
just come in, and next to him was the sweet little Cajun flower
whose lovely little face had morphed into the grotesque countenance of the witch hags in Macbeth.

I wish I could say I thought fast, but I didn’t. In the next
second, one of the crabbers stuck his unshaven face in mine.
Despite the fact I’d had a couple beers, I could smell the stench
of a dozen on his breath.