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"Back home, I guess. She had to go to Lourdes for stitches, but she and the greaseball aren't filing charges. They don't seem to like participating in the legal process, for some reason. Do you have any idea what triggered Bubba's toggle switch?"
"I went out to his fish business by Avery Island yesterday."
"So?"
"I poured some iodine on a couple of severed nerve endings."
"Ah."
"Let's get it all out here, Minos. I think Claudette Rocque was behind my wife's death. B
ubba's a sonofabitch, but I'm convinced he would have come after me head-on. He's prideful, and he's wanted to put out my light since we were kids. He'd never admit to himself that he had to hire somebody to do it. I think Claudette sent Romero and the Haitian to kill me, and when they murdered Annie instead and then Romero missed me again, she came around the house with a poontang act and a hundred-thou-a-year job. When that didn't work, she got Bubba jealous and turned him loose on me. Anyway, I'm sure she was in Romero's apartment. She left stains on the table from that thermos of gin rickeys she always carries around."
"So that's what the lime-juice business was about?"
"Yes."
"And of course it's worthless as evidence."
"Yes."
"So you decided to stick a fork in Bubba's nuts about his old lady?"
"That's about it."
"You want absolution now?"
"All right on that stuff, Minos."
"Quit worrying about it. They're both human toilets. My advice to you now is to stay away from them."
"Why?"
"Let things run their course."
I was silent.
"He's psychotic. She collects cojones," he said. "You spit in the soup. Now let them drink it. It might prove interesting. Just stay the fuck away from it, though."
"No one will ever accuse you of euphemism."
"You know what your problem is? You're two people in the same envelope. You want to be a moral man in an amoral business. At the same time you want to blow up their shit just like the rest of us. Each time I talk to you, I never know who's coming out of the jack-in-the-box."
"I'll see you. Stay in touch."
"Yeah. Don't bother thanking me for the call. We do this for all rural flatfeet."
He hung up. I tried to call him back, but his line was busy. I drove home and ate lunch with Batist out on the dock under the canvas awning. It was hot and still and the sun was white in the sky.
I couldn't sleep that night. The air was breathless and dry, and the window and ceiling fans seemed unable to remove the heat that had built up in the wood of the house all day long. The stars looked hot in the sky, and out in the moonlight I could see my neighbour's horses lying down in a muddy slough. I went into the kitchen in my underwear and ate a bowl of ice cream and strawberries, and a moment later Robin stood in the doorway in her lingerie top and panties, her eyes adjusting sleepily to the light.
"It's just the heat. Go back to sleep, kiddo," I said.
She smiled and felt her way back down the hall without answering.
But it wasn't just the heat. I turned off the light and sat outside on the steps in the dark. I wanted to put Claudette and Bubba Rocque away more than anything else in the world; no, I wanted worse for them. They epitomised greed and selfishness; they injected misery and death into the lives of others so they could live in wealth and comfort. And while they had dined on blackened redfish in New Orleans or slept in a restored antebellum home that overlooked carriage house and flower garden and river and trees, their emissaries had torn my front door open and watched my wife wake terrified and alone in front of their shotgun barrels.
But I couldn't take them down by provoking a sociopath into assaulting his wife. This may sound noble; it's not. The alcoholic recovery program I practiced did not allow me to lie, manipulate, or impose design control over other people, particularly when its intention was obviously a destructive one. If I did, I would regress, I would start to screw up my own life and the lives of those closest to me, and eventually I would become the same drunk I had been years ago.
