went back through the smell of wet shrimp to the little diner across the street. The same cook with the cratered nose was leaning on the counter. The same crinkled old man with the snap-brimmed hat was smoking at the little window table. Dignified. I said, "Use your pay phone?" They have a pay phone on the wall by the restroom.
The cook nodded help yourself. Watching me gave him something to do.
I fed a quarter into the phone and dialed Martha Guidry, who answered on the second ring. I said, "Martha, it's Elvis Cole."
"What?" The Raid.
I had to yell. "It's Elvis Cole. Remember?" The old man and the cook were both looking at me. I cupped the receiver. "Her ears." The cook nodded, saying it's hard when they get like that.
Martha Guidry yelled, "Goddamn bugs!" You could hear the flyswatter whistle through the air and snap against the wall, Martha cackling and saying, "Gotcha, you sonofabitch!"
"Martha?" Trying to get her back to the phone.
Something crashed, and she came back on the line, breathing harder from her exertion. "You have a bowel movement yet? I know how it is when I travel. I cross the street, I don't go potty for a week." A living doll, that Martha.
I said, "The people you were trying to remember, were their names Johnson?"
"Johnson."
"Pamela and Monroe Johnson."
There was a sharp slap. "You should see the size of this goddamned roach."
"The Johnsons, Martha. Was the family named Johnson?"
She said, "That sounds like them. White trash lived right over here. Oh, hell, Pam Johnson died years ago."
I thanked Martha Guidry for her help, then hung up and stared at the address I had copied. 1146 Tecumseh Lane. I fed another quarter into the phone and dialed Information. A pleasant female voice said, "And how are you today?" She sounded young.
"Do you have a listing for a Pamela or Monroe Johnson on Tecumseh Lane?"
She didn't say anything for a moment, and then she said, "No, sir. We've got a bunch of other Johnsons, though."
"Any of them on Tecumseh Lane?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I don't show Pamela or Monroe Johnson, and I don't show a Tecumseh Lane, either."
I hung up.
The cook said, "No luck?"
I shook my head.
The old guy at the window table said something in French.
"What'd he say?"
The cook said, "He wants to know what you want."
"I'm trying to find Monroe and Pamela Johnson, I think they live on Tecumseh Lane, but I'm not sure where that is."
The cook said it in French, and the old man said something back at him and they talked back and forth like that for a while. Then the cook said, "He doesn't know these Johnson people, but he says there's a Tecumseh Lane in Eunice."
"Eunice?"
"Twenty miles south of here." Ah.
I smiled at the old man. "Thank him for me."
The cook said, "He understands you okay, he just don't speak English so good."
I nodded at the old man. "Merci."
The old man tipped his hat. Dignified. "Il y a pas de quoi." You take your good fortune where you find it.
I went out to my car, looked up Eunice on the Triple-A map, and went there. Like Ville Platte, the landscape was flat and crosscut with bayous and ponds and industrial waterways, mostly sweet potato fields and marshlands striped with oil company pipelines and vent stations. The town itself was bigger than Ville Platte, but not by a lot, and seemed like a neat, self-contained little community with a lot of churches and schools and quaint older buildings.
Tecumseh Lane was a pleasant street in an older residential area with small frame houses and neatly trimmed azalea bushes. 1146 was in the center of the block, with a tiny front lawn and an ancient two-strip cement drive and a big wooden porch. Like every other house in the area, it was set atop high brick pillars and, even though the land was flat, you had to climb three or four steps to enter the house.
I left the car at the curb and went up to the house and rapped at the door. An older black woman in what looked like a white nurse's uniform answered. "May I help you?"
I gave her one of my nicer smiles. "Mrs. Johnson?"
"Oh, no."
"I'm looking for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. I was told they lived here." The air behind her smelled of medicine and pine-scented air freshener.
She was shaking her head before I finished. "You'll need to speak with Mrs. Boudreaux. I work for her."
"Who's Mrs. Boudreaux?"
"She owns this house."