AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I told him about Raphael Chalons's offer to put me on his payroll.
"That's what rich guys do. I don't see the big deal there," he said.
"No, I think he wants to prove to himself that someone close to him didn't kill his daughter."
Clete sailed the Frisbee to a black kid, then sat on a bench in the shade and drank from a glass of iced tea. He wiped his hair and chest with a towel. There were strawberry bruises ringed around his brow and scabs in his scalp where his tormentors in Miami had wrapped a chain around his head. "So you told the old man to fuck himself?" he said.
"Not in those words."
"You should have. We need to take it to them."
"In what way?" I said.
"Same rules as when we were at NOPD — bust 'em or dust 'em."
"That's why we're not at NOPD any longer."
"It's not over between me and this Lou Kale dude, either. By the way, where's Jimmie?"
"I think he may have gone to find Ida Durbin."
"Think?"
"I don't have his umbilical cord stapled to the corner of my desk. You're the one who brought back the story about Ida saving your ass. Now, give it a rest."
"Married life must really be agreeing with you."
"Clete, you can absolutely drive people crazy. I mean it. You need your own Zip code and time zone. Every time I have a conversation with you, I feel like I have blood coming out of my ears."
"What'd I say?" he replied, genuinely perplexed.
The only sound was the creak of the trees and the kids playing by the ball diamond. "Molly wants you to come over for dinner this evening. We called earlier but you weren't home," I said.
"Why didn't you try my cell?"
"I don't remember."
"Better check with your wife again."
You didn't put the slide on Clete Purcel. But at 6:00 p.m. he was at the house anyway, resplendent in a new blue suit, his face glowing with aftershave. He clutched a dozen red roses in each meaty paw, a wedding gift wrapped in ribbon and satin paper clamped under one arm. It contained a sterling silver jewelry box that probably cost him several hundred dollars. "I'm really happy for Dave," I heard him say to Molly when I was in another room. "He's got polka dot giraffes running around in his head, but he's the best guy I've ever known."
On Monday morning I undertook a task that no drunk willingly embarks upon. I tried to find out what I had done during a blackout, where I had gone, and the identity of the people who had seen me commit acts that were so embarrassing, depraved, or even monstrous that my conscious mind would not allow me to remember them.
I checked out a cruiser and returned to the camp in the Atchafalaya Basin where I had awakened on a Sunday morning, hovering on the edges of psychosis, praying the sky might rain Jack Daniel's at any moment and let my drunkard's game go into extra innings.
I found the Creole woman who had watched over me that morning and who had told me I had been in the company of poachers and men who carried knives. Her name was Clarise Lantier, and she was picking up trash behind the lakefront bar her husband operated, stuffing it heavily into a gunnysack. She wore trousers and men's work shoes, and when she stooped over and stared at me sideways, her recessed, milky-blue eye and misshapen face were like those of a female Quasimodo.
"Who were these poachers and men with knives, Miss Clarise?" I asked.
"They live yonder, 'cross the lake. Don't ax me their names, either, 'cause they don't give them. Maybe they from up nort'."
"How do you know?"
"They talk different from us."
"You're not telling me a whole lot."
"They dangerous men, Mr. Dave. That's enough to know, ain't it?" she said.
