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“Evidently, I called his house the night he was killed. I asked him to meet me out by Bayou Benoit.”
“That’s where he was killed?”
“Yes,” I said. I showed her my hands. They were scabbed over, the knuckles still swollen.
“Could you have punched a wall?”
“That’s what I’d like to believe.”
“Clete believes Fat Tony Nemo and Jimmy Nightingale and Levon Broussard may be mixed up in this,” she said.
“Clete and I are always trying to find excuses for each other.”
“He says you had dinner with Nightingale and Levon.”
“Nightingale got ahold of a sword carried by Levon’s great-grandfather in the Civil War and gave it to him. Nightingale wants to make a movie from one of Levon’s novels. Except Levon’s wife and Nightingale hit it off a little too well.”
“Nightingale thinks he’s going to produce a film with Levon? Where’s he been?”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone knows Levon hates Hollywood. He thinks they screwed up a couple of his adaptations. On CNN he said Hollywood is a potential gold mine for anthropologists because it’s the only culture in the world where educated and rich and powerful people have the mind-set and manners of Southern white trash.”
“That’s not a bad line.”
I fixed avocado-and-tomato sandwiches for both of us and we sat down at the breakfast table by the window. I glanced through the screen. “Look yonder.”
“What?”
“There’s a coon on top of Tripod’s hutch.”
She leaned forward and peered through the screen. “I don’t see him.”
“He’s right there,” I said, pointing. “His tail is hanging down the side of the hutch.”
“I guess I need glasses.”
Since when? I wondered.
* * *
IN THE MORNING, I finally caught Levon Broussard’s physician in his office. His name was Melvin LeBlanc. He had been a navy corpsman during the first Iraqi war, and when he came home, he became a Quaker and enrolled in medical school at Tulane. He had the face of an ascetic, thinning, sandy hair, and a stare that gave you the sense that he saw presences others did not. We were sitting in his office with the door closed.
“I’m not keen on this kind of stuff, Dave,” he said.
“It’s too personal?”
“I don’t like to be used. That’s what the defense does. That’s what you guys do.”
“Rowena and Levon gave you carte blanche to tell us everything, didn’t they?” I said.
“I can tell you what I found or didn’t find. But don’t try to put words in my mouth.”
“Was there evidence of forced penetration?” I said.
“Around the vagina, no. There was a bruise inside one thigh.”
“A recent one?”
