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“What are you looking at?” Tony said to me.
“Nothing,” I replied.
He waited for me to go on, but I didn’t.
“You being cute?” he asked. “A play on words or something?”
“Not me,” I said.
Clete ordered a second vodka Collins.
“If this has something to do with Bobby, I want you two guys to lay off him,” Tony said.
I saw Earl’s face color, his pale blue eyes looking straight ahead.
“What are you guys here for?” Tony said. “Don’t you talk shit to me, either.”
Clete took a long drink from his glass. “We were passing by and happened to see you, and thought you could help us with something. See, there’s this ex-con named Kevin Penny, and there’s speculation that somebody might have sicced him on Dave for messing up a movie deal with Levon Broussard. You got some movie deals hanging, Tony? I hear your films are great.”
Tony’s eyes seem to cross as he tried to ingest Clete’s words. In the meantime, Bobby Earl seemed to be going through an internal meltdown while he picked through the way Tony had marginalized him. He sipped from his water glass and blotted his lips with his napkin. “I’m not the same person I was when I went to prison. I belong to an evangelical reading group now. I’m trying to make amends for my past life. I think, of all people, you would understand that, Dave. May I call you Dave? You treated me harshly once. But I forgave you. Can you do the same?”
Clete drained his Collins. The waiter began putting our food on the table. “Hit me again on this, will you?” Clete said, pointing to his glass. He looked at Earl. “You walk the walk, Bobby. Fucking A.”
People at other tables turned in their chairs.
“Are you mocking me?” Earl said.
“Are you kidding? I always thought Jimmy Nightingale was a fraud and a four-flusher. Look how he treated Tony. He takes the Civil War sword Tony bought to give to Levon Broussard and gives it to Broussard himself. Now he’s got a rape beef coming down on his head, and he’ll probably give up anybody he can to save his own sorry ass.”
“What rape beef?” Tony said.
“A well-known lady has brought charges. You can check out the particulars yourself. This guy Penny says Nightingale has got a cut of the action in Jeff Davis Parish. Maybe elsewhere as well. Now that he’s in trouble, maybe he’ll give up some names. The guy’s NCAA, no class at all.”
Tony made a wet sucking sound in his throat. “You think you’re smart?”
“I was keeping you up-to-date on your boy Nightingale, Tony,” Clete said. “I got to hit the head. Don’t choke on that oyster.”
“Take this thought with you, smart guy. I bought a bunch of your markers, twenty cents on the dollar. Now you owe me, not the shylock.”
Clete stared at him in disbelief.
“Yeah, you heard right,” Tony said. “Now go piss.”
My cell phone rang. It was Helen, but the connection was bad. I went outside on the sidewalk. The air was cool and dank in the shade, and had a winey smell like old Europe. A garbage truck clattered past. “Helen?” I said.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“In the Quarter, eating lunch with Fat Tony and Bobby Earl.”
“What’s Earl doing there?”
“Cadging favors.”
“You need to get back here.”
“What happened?” I said. My head was still pounding with the revelation that a man like Tony the Nose had bought part of Clete’s debt.
“Rowena Broussard cut her wrists. She’s at Iberia General. She says nobody believes her account of the assault. She’s putting it on you and me. Levon is yelling his head off.”
