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"Talk? Clete's in the bag and you want to talk?" I said.
"I've done something terribly wrong. I'm just down the road. Will it bother you if I come by?"
"Yes, it will."
"Dave?"
"What?"
Then her voice broke.
* * *
THIRTEEN
MEGAN SAT AT A BACK table in the bait shop with a cup of coffee and waited for me while I rang up the bill on two fishermen who had just finished eating at the counter. Her hat rested by her elbow and her hair blew in the wind from the fan, but there was a twisted light in her eyes, as though she could not concentrate on anything outside her skin.
I sat down across from her.
"Y'all had a fight?" I asked.
"It was over the black man who started the fire," she said.
"That doesn't make any sense," I said.
"It's Cool Breeze Broussard. It has to be. He was going to set fire to the main house but something scared him off. So he poured gasoline under a trailer on the set."
"Why should you and Clete
fight over that?"
"I helped get Cool Breeze out of jail. I knew about all his trouble in St. Mary Parish and his wife's suicide and his problems with the Terrebonne family. I wanted the story. I pushed everything else out of my mind… Maybe I planted some ideas in him about revenge."
"You still haven't told me why y'all fought."
"Clete said people who set fires deserve to be human candles themselves. He started talking about some marines he saw trapped inside a burning tank."
"Breeze has always had his own mind about things. He's not easily influenced, Megan."
"Swede will kill him. He'll kill anybody he thinks is trying to hurt Cisco."
"That's it, huh? You think you're responsible for getting a black man into it with a psychopath?"
"Yes. And he's not a psychopath. You've got this guy all wrong."
"How about getting Clete into the middle of it? You think that might be a problem, too?"
"I feel very attached—"
"Cut it out, Megan."
"I have a deep—"
"He was available and you made him your point man. Except he doesn't have any idea of what's going on."
Her eyes drifted onto mine, then they began to film. I heard Batist come inside the shop, then go back out.
"Why'd you want to put him on that movie set?" I said.
