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“Thanks very much, Mr. Lemand,” I said.
“I’m afraid that’s not all. She said a man had been looking into Mr. Purcel’s window. She was disturbed at first, then she recognized the man as a Bible salesman she knew. He told her he was delivering a Bible to Mr. Purcel but hadn’t been able to find him. So she told him where Mr. Purcel was.”
“What you’ve told me is very helpful, Mr. Lemand,” I said.
“Unfortunately, there’s more. When she looked out her window, she saw a red pickup truck follow the Bible salesman out of the parking lot. Then she noticed the man driving the truck didn’t turn on his lights until he was out on the road. She had seen this man earlier. He had a pair of binoculars. She’s quite concerned she put either Mr. Purcel or the salesman in harm’s way.”
“She and you have done all the right things, Mr. Lemand. Tell her not to worry,” I said.
“I think that will be a great relief to her,” he said.
I hung up the receiver and tried to think. My own thoughts made my head hurt. Linda Zeroski had been murdered on Bayou Benoit. The nightclub where Baby Huey Lagneaux worked was on Bayou Benoit, as was Legion Guidry’s camp. Of all the places Clete could choose for a tryst, i
t would have to be there.
I went into the bedroom and removed my army-issue .45 automatic from the dresser drawer. I dropped an extra magazine, loaded with hollow-points, and a sap and a pair of handcuffs in the pockets of my raincoat and told Bootsie I did not know when I would be back home, then walked down the slope to my truck and started the engine.
I didn’t realize, until I was over a mile down the road, that I had a passenger with me.
CHAPTER 30
I looked into the rearview mirror and saw the face of the ex-soldier staring at me through the back window. I swerved to the side of the road and got out. He climbed out of the camper shell, bare-chested, a crucifix and a G.I. can opener hung around his neck. “What are you doing in there?” I asked.
“The motor on your refrigerator kept me awake. I got in your camper to sleep,” he said.
“Bad night for it, Doc,” I said.
“I’ll walk back. No big deal,” he replied.
He reached inside the shell and retrieved a pillow and his shirt. His face was beaded with raindrops.
“Hop in front. Let’s take a ride upcountry,” I said.
He thought about it a moment, his mouth screwed into a button, his eyes clear of both dope and madness, his expression almost childlike. “I don’t mind,” he said.
We drove up Bayou Teche, through Loreauville and waving fields of sugarcane that flickered with lightning. We turned off the state road and passed scattered farmhouses and clumps of trees inside cattle acreage and a bait shop and a filling station that were dark inside. Then I saw the nightclub where Baby Huey bartended, the neon beer signs glowing in the rain, the empty parking lot lit by floodlamps.
I left the ex-soldier in the truck and went inside. The front and back doors of the club were open to air it out. Baby Huey was at the end of the bar, on the phone, his back to me. His hair was wet, his pink shirt spotted with raindrops. When he hung up and saw me standing behind him, he looked back at the phone, as though reviewing the conversation he’d just had.
“You want to tell me something?” I asked.
“Not necessarily,” he replied.
“You wouldn’t have been talking to Joe Zeroski, would you?” I said.
“You never can tell.” He picked up a clean white cloth and began wiping the bar, although there was no water or drink residue on it.
“Lose the routine, Huey. I’m looking for Joe Zeroski’s niece and a friend of mine named Clete Purcel. I think you are, too. You lie to me, you’re going to be sharing accommodations with Tee Bobby Hulin.”
He bit his lip and bunched the bar cloth in his huge hand.
“Use your head, partner. We’re on the same side,” I said.
“Mr. Joe called earlier. He thought his niece and her boyfriend had probably rented a camp somewhere. He axed me if I knowed who rented camps herebouts. I called a friend of mine runs the bait shop back up the road. He said a guy wit’ a Cadillac convertible like the one Mr. Joe described was in there this afternoon. My friend said this guy and the woman wit’ him was staying in a camp just the other side of the levee. So I drove on down there.”
“So?” I said.
“You ain’t gonna want to hear this.”
