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The evening sky was streaked with
purple, the color of torn
plums, and a light rain had started to fall when I came to the end of
the blacktop road that cut through twenty miles of thick, almost
impenetrable scrub oak and pine and stopped at the front gate of Angola
penitentiary. The anti-capital-punishment crowd—priests, nuns in lay
clothes, kids from LSU with burning candles cupped in their hands—were
praying outside the fence. But another group was there too—a strange
combination of frat boys and rednecks—drinking beer from Styrofoam
coolers filled with cracked ice; they were singing “Glow, Little Glow
Worm,” and holding signs that read this
bud is for you, massina
and
johnny, start your own sizzler
franchise today.
“I’m Lieutenant Dave Robicheaux, New Orleans police
department,” I said to one of the guards on the gate. I opened my badge
for him.
“Oh yeah, Lieutenant. I got your name on my clipboard. I’ll
ride with you up to the Block,” he said, and got in my car. His khaki
sleeves were rolled over his sunburned arms, and he had the flat green
eyes and heavy facial bones of north Louisiana hill people. He smelled
faintly of dried sweat, Red Man, and talcum powder. “I don’t know which
bunch bothers me worse. Those religious people act like we’re frying
somebody for a traffic citation, and those boys with the signs must not
be getting much pussy over at the university. You staying for the whole
thing?”
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