Bring Him Back Dead Read Online Free

in front of the Tarpon Bar and he and the red-haired girl were making some sort of pitch.
    Latour thumbed a cigarette into his mouth and leaned against the plate-glass window of the bar. The cane brake from which he’d been shot at wasn’t more than two hundred yards from the clearing where the carnival man’s house trailer was parked. Lacosta had been in the clearing when he’d driven by with Lant Turner. It was possible that Lacosta had seen the man who’d fired the three shots at him.
    He joined the group of men around the platform built onto the tailgate of the station wagon. The girl was young and pretty. To add to the flash of his act, the carnival man had dressed her in an old-fashioned off-the-shoulder, wasp-waisted, hoop-skirted outfit whose bodice showed plenty of cleavage. And the girl had plenty to show.
    She looked like a nice kid. Latour hoped she knew what she was doing. Lacosta had a golden throat. He also had a reputation for being rough on his women. One thing was certain: The minute he got a few dollars he didn’t need for gasoline or food, he invested it in whisky. Right now he was so drunk he could hardly stand.
    But drunk or not, he knew his business. While the girl played a banjo and sang, Lacosta talked up a crowd. Then, satisfied with the tip that had formed around the tailgate, he nodded to the girl and went into his talk.
    He was pitching medicine this time.
    Latour listened to his spiel and was amused. Lacosta was using a lot of big words. He knew how to use them to good effect. But boiled down to fundamentals, the old man was selling a combined cathartic and stimulant guaranteed to keep both ends of a young man active and rejuvenate older Romeos who had lost their pep.
    It was the perfect product for French Bayou.
    Eternal youth at a dollar a bottle.

Chapter Four
    L ATOUR WAITED for Lacosta to conclude his pitch so he could talk to him. But the showman had overestimated his capacity. In the middle of his spiel the old man, still clutching a bottle of the product he was pitching, crumpled slowly to the platform.
    The red-haired girl tried to lift him to his feet. A man in the crowd called for a doctor.
    “Doctor, hell,” another man said. “The old goat ain’t sick. He’s stinking.”
    Latour forced his way through the crowd and climbed up on the platform. The girl was still trying to lift Lacosta to his feet. “Here. Let me do that,” he said.
    “Who are you?” she asked.
    “Deputy Sheriff Andy Latour.”
    “You’re going to arrest him?”
    Latour shook his head. Arresting Jacques Lacosta for voluntary public intoxication in a town filled with drunks would be like putting falsies on Gina Lollobrigida.
    “No,” he told the girl. “All I want to do is get him off the street. I’ll carry him around to the seat and you can drive him back to the trailer.”
    “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” the girl said. “We can’t afford a pinch.”
    Latour attempted to lift Lacosta and the showman shook off his alcoholic stupor and became a belligerent drunk.
    “Take your goddamn hands off me.”
    “Shut up,” the girl said. “The officer is trying to help you.”
    Lacosta continued to struggle. “I know how he wants to help me. An’ you’re damn anxious for it to happen, aren’t you, baby?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “The hell you don’t.” Lacosta appealed to the watching men. “Well, don’t just stand there staring. Don’t let him arrest me, boys.” Lacosta stopped being belligerent and started feeling sorry for himself. “You know why he wants t’ throw me in the tank. So he can crawl in between the sheets with my wife.”
    “Please,” the girl pleaded with him.
    Lacosta waggled a finger at her. “Please, nothin'. You want the lousy cop t’ pinch me, don’t you?” He stared blearily at the watching men. “An’ that goes for the rest of you, too. Why don’t you all get in line an’ she can take you on, one at a time? Wha’ do you think I