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'I need some help on these vigilante killings. I'm not going to get it from NOPD.'
'Lose this vigilante stuff, Dave. It's a shuck, believe me.'
'Have you heard about some guys having their hearts cut out?'
He laughed. 'That's a new one. Where'd you get that?' he said.
'Lucinda Bergeron.'
'You've been out of Homicide too long, Streak. When they cancel them out, it's for money, sex, or power. This vampire or ghoul bullshit is out of comic books. Hey, I got another revelation for you. I think that Bergeron broad has got a few frayed wires in her head. Did she tell you she went up to Angola to watch a guy fry?'
'No.'
'It probably just slipped her mind. Most of your normals like to watch a guy ride the bolt once in a while.'
'Why'd you call the house?'
'I'm hearing this weird story about you and a Nazi submarine.'
'From where?'
'Look, Martina's over here. I promised to take her to this blues joint up on Napoleon. Join us, then we'll get some étouffée at Monroe's. You've got to do it, mon, it's not up for discussion. Then I'll fill you in on how you've become a subject of conversation with Tommy Blue Eyes.'
'Tommy Lonighan?'
'You got it, Tommy Bobalouba himself, the only mick I ever met who says his own kind are niggers turned inside out.'
'The Tommy Lonighan I remember drowned a guy with a fire hose, Clete.'
'So who's perfect? Let me give you directions up on Napoleon. By the way, Bootsie seemed a little remote when I called. Did I spit in the soup or something?'
The nightclub up on Napoleon was crowded, the noise deafening, and I couldn't see Clete at any of the tables. Then I realized that an exceptional event had just taken place up on the bandstand. The Fat Man, the most famous rhythm and blues musician ever produced by New Orleans, had pulled up in front in his pink Cadillac limo, and like a messiah returning to his followers, his sequined white coat and coal black skin almost glowing with an electric purple sheen, had walked straight through the parting crowd to the piano, grinning and nodding, his walrus face beaming with goodwill and an innocent self-satisfaction, and had started hammering out 'When the Saints Go Marching In.'
The place went wild.
Then I realized that another event was taking place simultaneously on the dance floor, one that probably not even New Orleans was prepared for—Clete Purcel and his girlfriend doing the dirty boogie.
While the Fat Man's ringed, sausage fingers danced up and down on the piano keys and the saxophones and trumpets blared behind him, Clete was bopping in the middle of the hardwood floor, his porkpie hat slanted forward on his head, his face pointed between his girlfriend's breasts, his buttocks swinging like an elephant's; then a moment later his shoulders were erect while he bumped and ground his loins, his belly jiggling, his balled fists churning the air, his face turned sideways as though he were in the midst of orgasm.
His girlfriend was over six feet tall and wore a flowered sundress that fit her tanned body like sealskin. She waved bandannas in each hand as though she were on a runway, kicking her waxed calves at an angle behind her, lifting her chin into the air while her eyelids drifted shut and she rotated her tongue slowly around her lips. Then she let her mouth hang open in a feigned pout, pushed her reddish brown hair over the top of her head with both hands, flipped it back into place with an erotic challenge in her eyes, and rubbed a stretched bandanna back and forth across her rump while she oscillated her hips.
At first the other dancers pulled back in awe or shock or perhaps even in respect; then they began to leave the dance floor two at a time and finally in large numbers after Clete backed with his full weight into another dancer and sent him careening into a drink waiter.
The Fat Man finished, wiped his sweating face at the microphone with an immaculate white handkerchief, and thanked the crowd for their ongoing roar of applause. I followed Clete and his girl to their table, which was covered with newspaper, beer bottles, and dirty paper plates that had contained potatoes French-fried in chicken fat. Clete's face was bright and happy with alcohol, and the seams of his Hawaiian shirt were split at both shoulders.
'Martina, this is the guy I've been telling you about,' he said. 'My ole bust-'em or smoke-'em podjo.'
'How about giving that stuff a break, Clete?' I said.
'I'm very pleased to meet you,' she said.
Her face was pretty in a rough way, her skin coarse and grained under the makeup as though she had worked outdoors in sun and wind rather than on a burlesque stage.
'Clete's told me about how highly educated you are and so well read and all,' she said.
'He exaggerates sometimes.'
'No, he doesn't,' she said. 'He's very genuine and sincere and he feels very deeply for you.'
