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It was an intern at Iberia General. “An ambulance brought in a man named Clete Purcel. A gun fell out of his clothes,” he said.
“He’s a P.I. He has a license to carry it. What happened to him?”
“Maybe you’d better come down.”
Clete had many enemies. Outside of the Mob, which bore him a special grudge, the worst were his ex-colleagues inside the New Orleans Police Department.
He had gone down to Cocodrie for the weekend, on Terrebonne Bay, where he still kept a rented cabin and a small boat. On Saturday morning he went south into the Gulf until the coast was only a low, green line on the horizon, then he floated with the tide and fished in the swells for white trout, baking shirtless under the sun all day, consuming one can of beer after another, his whole body glistening like an oiled ham.
At sunset, when he headed for shore, the crushed ice in his cooler was layered with trout, his empty beer cans floated in the bilge, and the flying fish leaping out of the crests of waves and the raindrops that dented the swells were the perfect end to a fine day.
He winched his boat onto his trailer and put on his tropical shirt, but his skin was stiff with sunburn and dried salt, and he was sure the only remedy for his discomfort was a foot-long chili dog and a six-pack of Dixie to go.
The 911 Club was built out of cinder blocks and plywood on a sandy flat by the side of the road. It was owned by an ex-Jefferson Parish deputy sheriff who supposedly welcomed everyone at his bar, but most of his clientele, particularly on weekends, was made up of police officers, male and female, or those who wished to imitate them.
A gathering of sports trappers was taking place at the bar and in the parking lot when Clete came down the road. The trappers wore olive-green T-shirts, dog tags, camouflage pants they tucked inside combat boots, goatees that bristled on the chin. They automatically crushed their aluminum cans in their hands after draining them, lit their cigarettes with Bic lighters, sucking in on the flame with the satisfaction of dragons breathing smoke, touching their genitalia when they laughed.
But Clete didn’t care about the trappers. He saw at least four men and two women, white and black, he knew from the Second and Third districts in New Orleans. They crossed the parking lot and went inside the double screen doors. They were carrying open cans of beer and laughing, the way people would at a private party.
Just go on up the road, Clete thought.
He did. For a hundred yards. But if he didn’t buy beer and something to eat at the 911 Club, he would have to drive two miles farther up the road.
There was a difference between caution and driving two extra miles because you were afraid of the people you used to work with.
He made a U-turn and pulled his Cadillac and boat trailer onto the oyster shells of the 911 parking lot and went in the side door.
Don Ritter was at the bar, peeling a hard-boiled egg while he told a story to the men around him.
“The Kit Carsons were V.C. who’d gone over to our side,” he said. “This one little sawed-off dude, we called him ‘Bottles’ because of his glasses, he kept saying, ‘Boss, you leave me behind, V.C. gonna make it real hard.’
“So I told him, ‘I’d like to help you, little buddy, but you haven’t showed us a lot. Let’s face it. Your ville’s V.C. Those are your relatives, right? A lot of people might question your loyalties.’
“He goes, ‘Time running out, boss. Americans going home. Bottles gonna be in the shitter.’ I go, ‘Wish I could help. But you know how it is. You got to bring us something we can use.’ ”
Both of Ritter’s elbows were propped on the bar while he picked tiny pieces of eggshell off his egg, grinning at the backs of his fingers.
“So what’d he bring you?” another man said.
“Can you believe this? He and his brother-in-law stole a slick from the ARVN and loaded it with these fifty-gallon drums of gasoline. They taped frags to the tops of the drums and flew over their own ville and burned it to the ground. He comes to me and says, ‘Ville gone, boss. That good enough?’ ”
Ritter started laughing. He laughed so hard tears coursed down his cheeks and a violent cough hacked in his chest. He held a paper napkin to his mouth, then began laughing and coughing again.
The cops and trappers standing around Ritter waited.
“What happened to Bottles?” another man asked.
“You got me. I was on the Freedom Bird the next week … Oh, he probably did all right,” Ritter said, wiping his eyes, lifting his glass to his mouth.
Clete ordered a chili dog and a draft and went to the men’s room. Ritter’s eyes followed him, then the eyes of the other men turned and followed him, too.
When Clete came back out, the jukebox was playing and someone was racking pool balls. At first he wasn’t sure about the references he was now hearing in the story Ritter was telling his friends.
“His wife was a muff-diver. That’s not exaggeration. My wife knew her. She dumped him for another dyke and went off to a Buddhist monastery in Colorado. Can you dig it? The guy comes home and thinks he’s finally nailed her in the sack with the milkman and she’s getting it on with another broad?” Ritter said.
They’re shitheads. Walk away from it, Clete thought.
But the bartender had just set Clete’s foot-long chili dog, smothered with melted cheese and chopped onions, in front of him and was now drawing a schooner of beer for him. So Clete hunched over his plate and ate with a spoon, his porkpie hat tilted over his forehead, and tried to ignore Ritter and his friends, whose conversation had already moved on to another subject.
