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“Does she know?”
“She was going to visit her mother in Lake Charles today. I left a couple of messages. What am I going to do? I feel awful.”
“Jennings PD might throw a scare into them.”
“The same guys who couldn’t come up with one suspect in eight homicides?”
“Weed and booze aren’t going to help.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“Don’t use that language in my house, Cletus.”
“I’m sorry.”
I went into the kitchen and came back with a pair of Dr Peppers. “I think Tony wants to make movies. I think that’s what started all this.”
“So what?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“You’re going to talk reason to that pile of whale shit?”
“He bought a sword that he thought would get him in the good graces of Levon Broussard, and instead he lost the sword and had the door slammed in his face. So being the infantile narcissist he is, he’s throwing his scat all over the room.”
Clete stared at me. “You think it’s that simple?”
“How much time does he have left? Have you been in a closed room with him? He’s got the smell of death on him, and he knows it. It’s like wallpaper and dead flowers. He wants to see his name in lights before he goes out.”
“A guy like that doesn’t have a soul.”
“That’s why he wants his name in lights.”
He studied my face. “Where’s Alafair?”
“At the grocery.”
“She’s doing okay? Every time I look at her, I see her as a little girl. That’s funny, isn’t it?”
I didn’t reply.
“What if I treat y’all to dinner at Café Des Amis tonight?” he said.
“I was just about to suggest that.”
He grinned, but his heart wasn’t in it.
SUNDAY MORNING, I asked Alafair for the names of the ten worst, most mean-spirited, corrupt movie producers or directors in the industry.
“What are you doing, Dave?”
“Stirring up things. Know a few guys out there who are off the wall?”
“Enough to fill the Hollywood Bowl.”
“Could you type them up, please?”
After she went on her jog, I called Tony Nemo’s office. The office was closed because it was Sunday, but I knew he monitored his voicemail day and night. Sundays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas might be days of rest or gratitude or celebration for some, but Tony’s deity had a dollar sign for a face and gave no days off to his adherents. “Tony, this is Dave Robicheaux,” I said. “I think I might have a breakthrough in your movie situation. I need your fax number.” I poured a cup of coffee and hot milk, sat at the kitchen table, and outlined the general story of Levon Broussard’s Civil War novel. The phone rang seventeen minutes later.
