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“So I’ll find you an
other time,” he said.
“Bad attitude, Joe,” I said, but he was gone.
It was too fine a day to worry about Joe Zeroski. The air was sweet and balmy from a morning sun-shower. Leaves floated on the bayou and the floral bloom in the yards along East Main was absolutely beautiful. But Joe Zeroski bothered me and I knew why. Clete Purcel had wound up his clock and broken off the key, and even Clete now regretted it.
That evening I was counting receipts out of the cash register at the bait shop when I heard someone behind me. I turned and looked into Joe Zeroski’s flat-plated face. He was dressed in dark blue jeans, a checkered sports shirt, a yellow cap, and new tennis shoes. He held a cheap rod and reel in his hand, the price tag still dangling from one of the eyelets.
“Your sign says guided fishing trips,” he said.
Twenty minutes later I cut the gas feed on the outboard and we coasted out of a channel into an alcove of moss-strung cypress trees that were lacy with new leaf. The sun was a red cinder through the canopy, the wind down, the water so still inside the shelter of the trees you could hear the bream and goggle-eyed perch popping along the edges of the hyacinths. Joe cast his lure across the clearing, right into a tree trunk, hanging the treble hook deep in the bark.
“I’ll row us over,” I said.
“Forget it,” he said, and broke off his line. “How many guys you heard I popped?”
“Nine?”
“It’s closer to three or four. I never done it on a contract, either. They all come after me or a friend or the man I worked for first. Can you relate to that?”
I cast a Rapala deep between the trees, reeled the slack out of the line, and handed Joe the rod.
“Retrieve it in spurts, so the lure swims like a wounded minnow,” I said.
“You were easier to talk with when you were a drunk. Are you hearing anything I say? Listen, I went out and talked to Mr. Boudreau.”
“Amanda Boudreau’s father?”
“That’s right. He’s a nice gentleman. He don’t need to be told what it feels like to have your daughter killed by a degenerate. He says you belong to the same club.”
“What?”
“He said some fuckheads killed your mother and your wife. I didn’t know that.”
“So now you do.”
“Then you understand.”
“It doesn’t change anything, Joe.”
“Yeah, it does. I don’t know what’s going on. I get a lead on some old guy by the name of Legion Guidry, a guy maybe you’re looking at for Linda’s murder. Now two of my best guys are in Iberia General. You looking at this guy or not? What’s going on?”
“You got to dial it down, Joe.”
“Don’t tell me that.”
“I apologize for what’s happened to you in New Iberia. I think you deserve better.”
Just then a largemouth bass struck Joe’s lure, roiling the surface, taking the treble hook down with it, its firm body straining against the monofilament, then rising, bursting through the water’s surface, like green and gold glassware breaking inside a shaft of sunlight, the lure rattling at the corner of its mouth, sprinkling the air with crystal.
Joe jerked his rod and tried to retrieve the slack in the line, but his fingers were like wood. The reel clanked once against the aluminum gunnel and the rod tipped downward toward the water, the cork handle flipping upward and out of Joe’s fingers.
He watched the rod sink into the darkness, then stared uncomprehendingly at his lure floating uselessly in the middle of the pool.
“What happened? I had it under control. Right here between my hands. How’d it get away? I can’t figure nothing out,” he said.
His eyes searched mine, waiting for me to reply.
