DR08 - Burning Angel by James Lee Burke

Johnny Carp and Polly Gee.
    Friday morning I found him in his office out by a trash dump in Jefferson Parish. His eyes, nose, and guppy mouth were set unnaturally in the center of his face, compressed into an area the size of your palm. His high forehead was ridged and knurled even though he wasn't frowning. His hair was liquid black, waved on the top and sides, like plastic that had been melted, molded, and then cooled again.
    When I knew him in the First District, he had been a minor soldier in the organization, a fight fixer, and a Shylock with jockies out at Jefferson Downs and the Fairgrounds. Supposedly, as a kid, he had been the wheel man on a couple of hundred-dollar hits with the Calucci brothers; but for all his criminal history, he'd only been down once, a one-year bit for possession of stolen food stamps in the late sixties, and he did the time in a minimum security federal facility, where he had weekend furloughs and golf and tennis privileges.
    Johnny Carp was smart; he went with the flow and gave people what they wanted, didn't contend with the world or argue with the way things were. Celebrities had their picture taken with him. He lent money to cops with no vig and was never known to be rude. Those who saw his other side, his apologists maintained, had broken rules and earned their fate.
    “You look great,” he said, tilting back in his swivel chair. Through the window behind him, seagulls were wheeling and dipping over mountains of garbage that were being systematically spread and buried and packed down in the landfill by bulldozers.
    “When did you get into the trash business, Johnny?”
    “Oh, I'm just out here a couple of days a week to make sure the Johns flush,” he said. He wore a beige suit with thin brown stripes in it, a purple shirt and brown knit tie, and a small rose in his lapel. He winked. “Hey, I know you don't drink no more. Me, neither. I found a way around the problem. I ain't putting you on: Watch.”
    He opened a small icebox by the wall and took out an unopened quart bottle of milk. There were two inches of cream in the neck. Then he lifted a heavy black bottle of Scotch, with a red wax seal on it, from his bottom desk drawer. He poured four fingers into a thick water glass and added milk to it, smiling all the while. The Scotch ballooned and turned inside the milk and cream like soft licorice.
    “I don't get drunk, I don't get ulcers, I don't get hangovers, it's great, Dave. You want a hit?”
    “No thanks. You know why anybody would want to take down Sonny Boy Marsallus?”
    “Maybe it's mental health week. You know, help out your neighborhood, kill your local lunatic. The guy's head glows in the dark.”
    “How about Sweet Pea Chaisson?”
    “Clip Sonny? Sweet Pea's a marshmallow. Why you asking me this stuff, anyway?”
    “You're the man, Johnny.”
    “Uncle Didi was the man. That's the old days we're talking about.”
    “You have a lot of people's respect, Johnny.”
    “Yeah? The day I go broke I start being toe jam again. You want to know about Marsallus? He came out of the womb with a hard-on.”
    “What's that mean?”
    “He's read enough books to sound like he's somebody he ain't, but he's got sperm on the brain. He uses broads like Kleenex. Don't let that punk take you over the hurdles. He'd stand in line to fuck his mother … I say something wrong?”
    “No,” I said, my face blank.
    He folded his hands, his elbows splayed, and leaned forward. “Serious,”
    he said, “somebody's trying to whack out Sonny?”
    “Maybe.”
    He looked sideways out the window, thinking, his coat bunched up on his neck. “It ain't anybody in the city. Look, Sonny wasn't never a threat to anybody's action, you understand what I'm saying? His problem is he thinks his shit don't stink. He floats above the ground the rest of us got to walk on.”
    “Well, it was good seeing you, Johnny.”
    “Yeah, always a pleasure.”
    I pulled on my earlobe as I got up to go.
    “It's