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The man in the speedboat cut his gas feed and drifted toward us, his boat rising on its own wake. “One of you guys named Dave Robicheaux?” he asked. His face was lit with an idiot’s grin.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I want to know if I found the right man, the man I’ve been sent to find.”
“You found me.”
“My name is Vidor Perkins.” His tan looked like it had been induced with chemicals or acquired in a salon. His shoulders were narrow and his dark hair oiled and conked on top and mowed into the scalp above his ears, exposing a strawberry birthmark that bled down the back of his neck. But it was his eyes that caught your attention. They were pale blue and did not go with the rest of his face. They seemed to have no pupils and contained the kind of lidless inner concentration that anybody who is con-wise immediately recognizes. In every stockade, prison, or work camp, there is at least one inmate no one deliberately goes near. When you see him on the yard, he might be squatting on his haunches, smoking a cigarette, staring into his own smoke with the concentration of a scientist, his hands draped over his knees like banana peels. At first glance, he appears to be an innocuous creature taking a break in his day, but then you notice that the other inmates divide around him the way water flows around a sharp rock. If you’re wise, you do not make eye contact with this man or think you can be his friend. Nor, under any circumstances, do you ever challenge his pride.
The man who called himself Vidor Perkins fixed his mindless stare on Clete. “I bet you’re Mr. Purcel,” he said.
“We’d like to catch a fish before dark, provided this spot isn’t already ruined. You want to spit it out?” Clete said.
“Man up at the bait shop sent me out here. Your daughter called, Mr. Robicheaux. She said there was an emergency at your house.”
“Say that again,” I replied.
“That’s all I know. Sounded like a fire or something. I cain’t be sure. He said something about an ambulance.”
“Who said?” I asked.
“The man up at the bait shop. I just tole you.” He killed a mosquito on his neck, lifted it from his palm with two fingers, and dropped it into the water.
“Why didn’t you come straight out here? Why were you anchored?” Clete said.
“’Cause I didn’t know it was y’all.”
I pulled out my cell phone and opened it. There was no service. “Were you in the bait shop when the call came in?”
“As a matter of fact, I was. This fellow took the call at the counter. He said something about paramedics. Or the voice over the phone said something about paramedics. I didn’t get it all. If it was me, I’d haul freight on up there and see what the deal is.”
“Let’s see your ID,” Clete said. “In the meantime, wipe that grin off your face.”
The man in the speedboat gazed at the elevated highway and at the headlights streaming across it. He had a wide mouth that looked made of rubber, like the mouth of a frog or an inflatable doll, and his lips had taken on a purplish cast in the fading light. “I’d worry about my family and not about a fellow who’s just trying to do a good deed,” he said. “But I’m not you, am I?”
I got out my badge holder and opened it. “I want you to follow us in,” I said.
He began picking at his nails. The wind came up and lifted the leaves on the willow trees and wrinkled the water’s surface. Vidor Perkins pushed the button on his electric starter. “Bet I beat you there,” he said. “I hope your family is all right.”
Then he opened up his speedboat and rocketed across the bay, troweling a wide arc by the pilings under the highway, sliding across his own wake, his profile as pointed and cool as a hood ornament.
A minute later, he had disappeared down the channel, the darkness swallowing the yellow surge of mud rising in his wake.
The owner of the bait shop knew nothing of an emergency call; he also said the man in the speedboat had not been in his shop and had not used his concrete ramp to put his boat in the water.
I used the bait shop phone to call home. Alafair answered. “I
s everything okay there?” I said.
“We’re fine. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Clete and I are running a little late. I was just checking in.”
“Something happen?” she said.
“You ever hear of a guy named Vidor Perkins?”
“No, who is he?”
