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“Maybe I can help you. I heard about your wife.”
“I appreciate your concern. I need to get back to New Iberia.”
“She got killed in an accident?”
I nodded.
“What, about three months ago?”
“Two years. She was T-boned by a guy in a pickup. I’d rather talk about something else.”
He handed me the sword. “I got this at a flea market in Memphis. I asked an expert what it’s worth. He said he’d take if off my hands for three thousand. The real value, what is it?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You know about history, what the names of these places on the hilt mean, whether those places make the sword more valuable. What’s this Cemetery Hill stuff? Who fights a war in a fucking cemetery?”
The brass on the handle was engraved with the name of Lieutenant Robert S. Broussard, Eighth Louisiana Infantry. The base of the blade
was stamped with the initials CSA and the name of the maker, James Conning, of Mobile, Alabama, and the year 1861.
“I did some Googling,” Tony said. “The guy who owned this was from New Iberia. It’s worth a lot more than two or three thousand dollars, right? Maybe the guy was famous for something.”
“You couldn’t find any of that on the Internet, with all the Civil War junk that’s on sale?”
“You can’t trust the Internet. It’s full of crazoids.”
I couldn’t begin to sort through the contradictions in what he had just said. This was a typical Fat Tony conversation. Trying to get inside his mind was akin to submerging your hand in an unflushed toilet. Outside, some black kids were breaking bottles with an air rifle in a vacant lot. There were concrete foundations in the lot without structures on them. A garbage truck was driving down a street, seagulls picking at its overflow.
“Is this about Clete?” I said.
“I got no problem with Purcel. Other people do. It’s true he took out that fat dick of his at the Southern Yacht Club and hosed down Bobby Earl’s car?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“Two weeks ago he did it again. At the casino.”
“Clete did?”
“No, the pope. Earl put his lady friend in the car, and suddenly, she’s sitting in a puddle of piss.”
“Why did you show me this sword, Tony?”
“Because the family of the guy who owned it lives in New Iberia. I thought maybe they’d want it.”
“What does any of this have to do with Clete and Bobby Earl?”
“Nothing.”
My head was throbbing. “It was good seeing you.”
“Sit down. I know what happened with your wife. No witnesses except the guy who killed her. He says she ran the Stop sign. They had to cut her out with the Jaws of Life?”
I could feel blood veins tightening on the side of my head.
“She died on the way to the hospital and got blamed for her own death?” he said.
“Who told you this?”
