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“Nothing. I was just grabbing a word out of nowhere.”
“Do you work with anyone who knows sign language?”
“I’ve never seen anyone on the set use it.”
“The guy who almost killed Clete knows sign language. He was using it to communicate with Jaime O’Banion at the motel.”
“Why are you coming down on Desmond?”
“Because he’s dirty. Because he lies. Just like all the people who prey on us.”
“You’ll never change,” she said.
I spread newspaper on the floor and opened a can of sardines and put it down for Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon.
“Answer my question, Dave. In what way is Desmond dirty?”
She was leaning against the doorframe, her black hair auraed with lights from the streetlamps on Main, her weight slouched on one foot, her jeans hanging low on her lips. It was hard to believe that this tall beautiful woman was the little Salvadoran girl I’d pulled from an air bubble trapped inside a sunken airplane off Southwest Pass.
“Take care of yourself, Baby Squanto,” I said. “Don’t let this collection of motherfuckers fool you.”
“You make me want to weep,” she replied.
• • •
THE NEXT DAY was Saturday. I woke at four and fed the animals on the back steps, then drove in the coldness of the dawn to Clete’s motor court. I tapped lightly on the door. The oak trees were ticking with water in the darkness, the bayou swirling through the cattails and canebrakes along the bank. Clete opened the door in a strap undershirt and boxer shorts that went almost to his knees.
“Most noble mon,” he said, his eyes full of sleep.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. He sat down in a stuffed chair, a blanket humped over his shoulders. A crack of light from the bathroom fell on his face. His cheeks were unshaved, his hair hanging on his forehead like a little boy’s. He tried to act attentive, then his head sank on his chest. I felt sorry for waking him and burdening him with my troubles; however, I knew no one else I could go to. I may have seemed the secular priest in his life, but the truth was otherwise. Yes, Clete was the trickster from medieval folklore, Sancho Panza with a badge, but these attributes were cosmetic and had little to do with the true nature of the man. Clete Purcel was the egalitarian knight, the real deal, his armor rusted, his sword unsheathed, his loyalties unfailing, with a heart as big as the world.
“They’re going to get away with it,” I said.
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Desmond Cormier and his entourage. They’re going back to Arizona and shutting down the circus while we lick our wounds.”
“I’m not copying, big mon. I need coffee and massive nutrients.”
“Stay where you are.”
I started a pot of chicory coffee and got out a skillet and loaded it with six eggs, eight strips of bacon, and a ring of buttered biscuits.
“Fix some for yourself, too,” he said.
“I did.”
“Oh.”
I broke two more eggs into the skillet, then set the table. I could feel his eyes on me.
“You’re thinking about doing it under a black flag?” he said.
“Call it what you want.”
“I can live with black flags,” he said. “You can’t.”
“The friends of Tillinger you met at the graveyard service told you he was mixed up in arms sales?”
