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“You want to quit?” I said, incredulously.
“It’s been a great day. I don’t always have to catch fish.”
“Right,” I said.
Molly looked at me. “I could go for a red snapper dinner up at the restaurant,” she said.
We had at least an hour of good fishing left and I wanted to stay out, but Molly had obviously chosen to act charitably toward Clete’s mercurial behavior and I didn’t have it in me to go against her wishes. “You bet,” I said.
Molly cranked the engine, and we headed across a long bay toward the landing. The surface of the water was the color of tarnished bronze against the sunset, and the new bloom on the cypress trees lifted like green feathers in the wind. Cars with their lights on streamed across the elevated causeway behind us, and ahead I could see the boat ramp and the levee and a lighted restaurant on pilings, with a walkway that extended out over the water.
We winched the boat back up the trailer, then I saw Clete’s face soften as he glanced up at the railing on the restaurant walkway. “I better head on out. Thanks for the afternoon,” he said.
A solitary woman stood on the walkway, her face turned into the sunset, her hair moving in the wind.
“Who’s your lady friend?” I asked, afraid of the answer I would get.
“I love you, Streak, but at some point in your life, can you give me some space?” he said.
Then I saw the woman’s profile against the sky.
“Just keep it in your pants,” I said.
He lifted his tackle box out of the boat and said good-bye to Molly but not to me. He walked toward the restaurant, his big hand gripped tightly on the disconnected sections of his rod, the back of his neck thick and glowing with heat.
“I can’t believe you said that,” Molly said.
“He’s used to it,” I replied.
A few minutes
later, as Molly and I walked up to the restaurant for a meal, Clete and the woman drove past us on the rocks to the levee, the moon rising above his pink convertible. The woman’s face was young and radiant and lovely in the glow from the dashboard. She lifted a highball glass to her mouth, never looking in my direction. May the angels fly with you, Cletus, I said to myself.
“Who was that?” Molly said.
“A grifter by the name of Trish Klein. The kind of gal who knows how to break Clete’s heart.” Chapter 7
I HAD THOUGHT MONARCH might be stand-up, might let the FBI do its worse, even if that meant he had to go down on what recidivists used to call “the bitch,” short for “habitual offender,” which was the old-time term for the Clinton-era equivalent known as the three-strikes-and-you’re-out law.
But on Monday morning Monarch came to the prosecutor’s office with his attorney and filed felony assault charges against Slim Bruxal. It was obvious the previous night had not been an easy one for him. He was raccoon-eyed, morose, and stank of beer sweat and weed. When he tripped on a carpet and knocked his head against a door, two teenage girls snickered.
I suspected Monarch’s life was about to unravel. How badly was up for debate. But there are no secrets in our small city on the Teche. In a short time the word would be on the street that Monarch Little had become a hump for the Feds to avoid taking his own bounce. It wouldn’t be improbable for his peers to conclude that he was not to be trusted and that he might start dimeing the same gangbangers who now hovered around him like candle moths.
In the meantime, he had empowered the Iberia Parish district attorney to go forward with assault charges against Slim Bruxal, by extension giving the FBI enormous leverage they could use against Slim’s father, Whitey Bruxal, in what I guessed was a RICO investigation.
I saw Monarch in the parking lot, on the way to his Firebird.
“You hep set this up, Mr. Dee?” he asked.
“I never jammed you, Monarch. Show a little respect,” I replied.
“Before I come down to the courthouse, I tried to join the army.”
“Really?” I said, my face deliberately empty.
“Guy said I might have a weight problem.”
It was hot and bright in the parking lot, and the crypts in St. Peter’s Cemetery looked white and hard-edged in the light, the weeds wilted and stained yellow by herbicide. Several deputies in uniform walked past us, talking among themselves, their cigarette smoke hanging in the dead air. “I need to talk to you,” I said to Monarch.
