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“Inside. When I was eighteen. The Nightingales gave me a break, like they have a lot of people. Here’s the gig. Two thousand a month retainer, probably for a year.”
“Retainer to do what?”
“To swat flies. This place is Bum Fuck on acid. You know the kind of dirt that people are trying to dig up on Mr. Nightingale?”
“Tell Ms. Nightingale to call me.”
“She’s waiting for you now.”
“Where?”
“You got a problem with food from Popeyes?”
“No.”
“She’s in the park.”
Don’t do it, a voice said.
“I’ll follow you,” Clete said.
* * *
HE DROVE HIS Caddy onto the grass by a concrete boat ramp and a row of camellia bushes on the water’s edge. Emmeline was sitting under the roof of a picnic shelter, wearing a sundress and a wide-brimmed straw hat with silk flowers sewn on it, like one from the plantation era. She and Swede had spread a checked cloth on the table and placed there a bucket of fried chicken and one of fried crawfish and a box of buttermilk biscuits with a container of milk gravy. Clete removed his porkpie hat and sat down. “How do you do, ma’am?” he said.
“You’re as big as they say,” she said.
“My stomach?”
“A big guy is a big guy,” she said.
“Swede says you want some help.”
“I don’t want Jimmy stabbed in the back.”
“Who wants to do that?”
“Levon Broussard, the savior of humanity,” she said. She pushed the bucket of fried crawfish toward him.
“Got a soft drink?” he asked.
“You don’t want a long-neck?” Swede asked.
Emmeline’s eyes drilled a hole in Swede.
“Coca-Cola coming up,” he said.
“So you want Levon Broussard off your case?” Clete asked Emmeline.
“Or tied to an anchor and thrown in the Gulf,” she said. “That’s a joke.”
“I don’t think the guy’s got a lot of arrows in his quiver.”
“What do you call an abomination like Tony Nemo?” she asked.
“I don’t like to say this, but Fat Tony poured most of your brother’s concrete.”
“Nemo poured half the concrete in New Orleans,” she replied.
