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On his way upstairs Clete saw a Bible on the top step, barely visible in the shadows, a rose stem inserted under the cover.
“Did you see him?” Barbara said when he came back through the door of her apartment.
“No,” he replied.
He put on his shirt and tucked it in his trousers, then stuffed his socks into his coat pocket and slipped on his shoes without tying them.
“What are you doing?” Barbara said.
“That kid with the mush-mouth accent, Marvin something or other? Where does he live?” he asked.
The next day, Saturday, Clete parked his car in my drive and walked across the road and down the boat ramp, where I had propped a ladder against one of the dock pilings and was painting termicide and tar on some of the wood that had started to rot. He sat down heavily in a moored outboard, in the dock’s shade, and told me of the previous evening. “You slapped Marvin Oates around?” I said.
“Yeah, I guess that’s fair to say,” he replied. He pulled on his nose and looked into space. “He told me he left the Bible earlier in the evening.”
“I think you got the wrong guy. Marvin doesn’t smoke.”
“There was a pack of cigarettes on the dashboard of his car,” Clete said.
“Unfiltered cigarettes?”
“No.”
“You got the wrong guy, Clete. In more ways than one.”
“Meaning?”
“Bad things seem to happen to people who hurt Marvin Oates.”
“Why did I have all those weird feelings when I saw that milk truck passing by the convent?” he asked.
“Maybe you’re like me. You wonder about where you’ve been and who you are now and what you’ll eventually become. It has something to do with mortality.”
“My old man could be a decent guy. He’d take me to ball games and out fishing for green trout. Then he’d get drunk and tell me the best part of me ran down my mother’s leg.”
“Time to cut loose from it, Cletus.”
“You think Barbara and I could have a serious go at it? I mean, marriage, kids, stuff like that?”
He lifted his head and looked up at me from his seat on the boat, the water chucking against the aluminum hull in the silence, one of his eyes watery from a shaft of sunlight that fell through the slats in the dock.
Later that afternoon Alafair, Bootsie, and I went to Mass. After I took them back home I drove to Iberia General and asked at the reception desk for the room number of Sonny Bilotti. I bought a magazine in the gift shop and walked down the corridor to a double-occupancy room. Bilotti was in the room by himself, propped up against pillows, his jaws wired shut, his eyes raccooned, his lips black with stitches. The windowsill was lined with bouquets of carnations, roses, and hollyhocks, but they obviously did little to cheer the man in the bed, who had probably taken one of the worst beatings I had ever seen. “Your friend already check out?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, his eyes following me across the room as I pulled a chair up to his bedside.
“Here’s an Esquire magazine in case you need something to read,” I said. “My name is Dave Robicheaux. I’m a detective in the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department.”
Before he could speak, I heard someone behind me. I turned and saw Zerelda Calucci standing in the doorway, wearing white jeans, cowboy boots, and a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt cut off at the armpits.
“Shit,” she said.
“This is official business, so please get out of here,” I said.
“I have a bone to pick with Clete Purcel. Where is he?” she said.
“I don’t think you’re hearing me. You need to move yourself out of this immediate environment,” I said.
She leaned against the doorjamb, her arms folded, chewing gum, her black hair hanging almost to her breasts. “Then hook me up, darlin’. I get wet just thinking about it,” she said.
