“Sorry, I’m not tracking the message here.”
“I think Mr. Purcel is having a nervous breakdown. Mr. Layton Blanchet just called and accused Mr. Purcel of violating his confidence and hurting his family. He also said some very unpleasant things of a personal nature to me. He told me to write all this down and to read it back to him and then give it to Mr. Purcel, as though voice mail had not been invented.”
“How does this relate to your concerns about Clete this morning?”
“I just told you, Mr. Robicheaux. Mr. Purcel left the office in his automobile and then parked down the street from where this convict author had parked his little white convertible.”
“No, you did not tell me about Robert Weingart. You were talking about Layton Blanchet.”
“I already dealt with Mr. Blanchet. If I quote what I said to him, I would be taking license with you and acting disrespectfully. My concern is Mr. Purcel.”
“What did you tell Blanchet, Miss Hulga?”
“I told him I would not be writing down any of his ugly remarks or allow them to be recorded on Mr. Purcel’s phone. I also told him we do not welcome his kind of clientele in our office. I told him he was ill-mannered and ill-bred and unappreciative of Mr. Purcel, who works hard on behalf of his clients.” She paused, as if energizing herself to cross the finish line. “I told him he was a self-important idiot and he could kiss my bottom.”
“I see. And where is Clete now?”
“That’s what I have been trying to tell you. He followed that criminal author down the street to Lagniappe Too and went inside. He doesn’t like this man and considers him a degenerate who preys on uneducated young women. I don’t think this is a matter of oil and water. It’s more like one of gasoline and matches. Mr. Robicheaux, will you please stop this good-hearted man from doing more injury to himself?”
You could do worse than have a person like Hulga Volkmann on your side, I told myself.
CLETE SAT DOWN at one of the checker-cloth-covered tables in the corner of the restaurant, with a view of the intersection and the dark structural mass of The Shadows looming inside acres of live oaks bordered by a piked fence and walls of bamboo. Thirty feet away, Robert Weingart was buttering a roll and sipping his coffee. When Weingart’s phone rang, he examined the caller ID, then closed the phone without taking the call. He turned in his chair and glanced at Clete and seemed to laugh under his breath before sipping from his coffee again. He gazed lazily out the window at the flow of traffic on Main Street.
Clete gave his order to the waitress. “Coffee, orange juice, a breakfast steak, two fried eggs on top, grits, no butter, please, hash browns, and biscuits, with a bowl of milk gravy on the side.”
“No butter,” she said, making a special note.
“Yeah, I got hypertension and have to watch it.”
“Anything else, Mr. Clete?”
He nodded toward Weingart’s table. “Put Mr. Weingart’s breakfast on my bill. He might get called away and not have time to go to the cash register. Same with me, Miss Linda. Let me pay you in advance. If I have to leave, just box up my food and put it in the refrigerator.”
“If that’s what you like,” she said, clearly trying not to show any expression.
Clete handed her two twenty-dollar bills.
“That’s too much,” she said.
“Not really,” he said. “Fine day, isn’t it? I love coming here.”
He sat erect in his chair and watched the back of Weingart’s head and neck. Clete picked up his fork and flipped it over and over between his thumb and forefinger on his napkin. He drank his water glass empty and finished his coffee and orange juice and tapped the soles of his loafers up and down on the floor. He fitted his hands inside his coat sleeves and ran his palms up and down his forearms. He fished a piece of ice out of the bottom of his water glass with a spoon and put it in his mouth and sucked loudly on it. Weingart yawned and drew doodles on the cloth napkin with his ballpoint. Then he got up from his table and went down a narrow hallway to the men’s room in back.
As Clete followed, he tried to convince himself that he had no plan in mind for the next few minutes. In reality, he probably did not, in the same way that an electric storm blowing out of the Gulf does not have a plan when it makes landfall. But as he walked down the old brick passageway toward the restroom, he was already reaching for the polyethylene gloves that he carried as a matter of course in his coat pocket.
Clete turned the handle on the men’s room door, but the door was bolted. “Bob, got a minute?” he said.
He heard water running, then the faucet squeaking as someone turned it off. “Bob, is that you?” Clete said.
“What do you want?” Weingart said.
“Just a word or two.”
Weingart slipped the bolt. When Clete opened the door, Weingart had gone back to examining his face in the mirror, tilting his nose up, pulling a hair from a nostril, touching the flesh along his jaw. “Say whatever it is and close the door when you leave, please.”
“I talked with the Vietnamese girl who I think you’re planning to seduce with roofies. I didn’t make much headway, though. Know why that is? She thinks you’re a decent person and you deserve a chance to defend yourself. That creates a quandary for us, Bobster. Both you and I know you’re not a decent person, that you’re mean to the bone and you get off on using people, particularly when it comes to unlimbering your big boy.”
Weingart took out his pocket comb and began slicking back the hair on the sides of his head, his gaze never leaving his reflection. “Heard of LexisNexis?” he said.
“What about it?” Clete asked.
“I did a little research on you.” Weingart wet his comb and tapped the excess water off on the rim of the sink, his eyes shifting in the mirror to Clete’s reflection. The skin at the corner of his mouth wrinkled with his smile. “When you were a cop in New Orleans, you were on a pad for the Giacano family. You popped a federal witness, a guy by the name of Starkweather. You were either taking juice from pimps or freebies from their whores. You had to hide out in Central America. You did scut work in Vegas and Reno for Sally Dio. You’re lecturing me about morality?”
Weingart drew his comb through the top of his hair, stooping slightly to examine a thinning spot. Then he scraped a piece of mucus loose from inside one nostril, put away his comb, and wiped his hands clean on a paper towel. “Something you want to say, Mr. Purcel?”
“Not really, Bob.”
“Because you don’t look too well. A bit blotchy, in fact. Have a bad night? You smell like you might have stayed late at the grog shop. Funny how the booze gets in your system and poisons your blood and eats your organs and shrivels up your equipment and leaves you flaming in the morning, usually when your boy or your milk cow of the moment isn’t handy—”
Clete wasn’t sure anymore what Weingart was saying. He knew that Weingart was speaking because his mouth kept opening and closing; he knew that Weingart was fully engaged in a rehearsed analytical dissection of Clete’s life, each noun and adjective wrapped with razor wire. He knew that Weingart’s face was filled with a self-satisfied confidence and an imperious glow, like a flesh-colored helium balloon floating above all the rules of mortality. Weingart’s sense of invulnerability was characteristic of most psychopaths. Clete had helped convict a killer who had to be wakened from a sound sleep on the afternoon of his execution. Clete became convinced that the condemned man’s lack of fear was not an indicator of courage but instead his belief that the universe could not continue without his being at the center of it. The only difference between Weingart and other sociopaths was his level of intelligence and his ability to wound with words and talk without pause, dipping into a dark well of invective that seemed inexhaustible.
Except, try as he might, Clete could not hear what the man was saying. If he heard any sound at all, it was that of the polyethylene gloves he was snapping tight on his hands and that Weingart did not seem to take notice of.
A
bucket of cleaning materials sat under the lavatory. It contained scrub brushes, a container of Ajax, a spray can of Lysol, a roll of paper towels, grimed rags, a plumber’s helper, and Brillo pads that were congealed with rust and a bluish detergent that had dried into glue. Clete leaned over and dipped his hand into the bucket, clanking various objects around inside until he found the things he was looking for. When he raised up, Weingart was still talking.
“You’ve got a serious case of logorrhea, Bobster. We need to do something about that,” Clete said. “Easy now, hold still. No point in struggling. Come on, you were in Huntsville, Bob. I bet you pulled a train your first night down in the bridal suite. Hey, thatta boy.”
Clete had fastened his left hand under Weingart’s chin, sinking his fingers deep into the man’s throat, pinning him against the wall. Weingart’s jaw dropped, and his words gurgled and died on the back of his tongue. Then Clete shoved two Brillo pads into Weingart’s mouth, packing them tight with the heel of his hand. “Okay, Bobster, time to freshen up,” he said. “When you collect your thoughts, we’ll talk a little more.”
Clete plunged Weingart’s head into the toilet bowl, pushing the flusher at the same time, plugging the hole at the bottom with the crown of his head. Weingart was on his knees, trying to find purchase on the bowl’s rim with his hands, the water swelling up past his neck. The more he fought, the harder Clete pressed him down into the bowl, until the water was sloshing on the floor.
Then Clete pulled him up, the Brillo pads still packed in Weingart’s mouth, his face and hair streaming. “You don’t get near the Vietnamese girl again, right, Bob?” Clete said. “You lock a stainless-steel codpiece on your flopper, and you leave young girls in this parish alone. Nod if you understand. No? Okay, let’s tidy up a little more.”
Clete drove Weingart’s head into the bowl again, this time pressing it down with both arms, the water heaving over the sides onto the floor, Weingart’s legs thrashing. Ten seconds passed, then twenty, then thirty. The water kept curtaining over the toilet rim, an inch backing up against the walls, Clete’s loafers squishing in it.
Clete ripped Weingart’s head into the air just as I came through the door. “Hey, Streak, what’s the haps?” Clete said. “I was just talking to Bob about the advantages of personal restraint. I think he was just coming around to our perspective on that. Can you hand me a couple of paper towels?”
CHAPTER
10
I PUT DOWN THE lid on the toilet and picked up Robert Weingart and set him on top of it. One of the Brillo pads had already fallen from his mouth; I lifted the second one gently from behind his teeth and dropped it in the wastebasket, then wiped his face with a handful of crumpled paper towels and placed a couple of dry towels in his hand. “Tilt your head back,” I said.
He raised his eyes to mine, then cleared his throat and spat into one of the towels. “You saw what he did,” he said.
“No, I’m not sure what happened here,” I replied. “It looks like a personal dispute that got out of control, maybe.”
Weingart propped his hands on his knees, his gaze still fastened on me, his pupils dilated. He resembled a man who had looked into a great darkness and could not readjust to light. “He almost drowned me.”
“If you like, you can file charges, Mr. Weingart,” I said. “I’ll contact the police reporter at The Daily Iberian and give him the details about what happened here. I’ll also pass on what appears to be the issue between you and Mr. Purcel. If I understand correctly, Mr. Purcel believes you’ve been preying on some teenage waitresses in New Iberia. I’ll call The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette and the Associated Press in New Orleans to get maximum coverage for your situation. Normally, media would blow off a minor beef like this, but a story about a writer with your reputation would probably earn their immediate attention.”
“What do you say, Bobster? Don’t just sit there picking steel wool off your tongue. Show a little respect,” Clete said, slapping him on the side of the head.
“Mr. Purcel, I want you to wait outside on the curb,” I said.
Clete gave me a look.
“Out,” I said.
Clete pulled the polyethylene gloves off his hands and threw them in the waste can. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and blew the smoke in Weingart’s face. “The Abelard family isn’t going to be able to help you. In my opinion, every guy like you I take off the board is a star in my crown. Know that expression about the shit hitting the fan? Your journey through the fan just started. You mentioned Sally Dio. Use your LexisNexis to find out what happened to Sal and his fellow gumballs and the plane they were flying on in western Montana. You ever see pulled pork raked out of a ponderosa tree?”
I wanted to punch Clete in the side of the head.
Ten minutes later we were outside on the sidewalk, Clete with his boxed-up breakfast tucked under his arm, a fresh unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. I pulled it out and threw it in the street. “How much trouble can you get into in one day?” I asked.
“Who told you I was here?”
“Who cares? It doesn’t matter where you go. Five minutes after you arrive, plaster is falling out of the ceiling. You’re like a train trying to drive down a dirt road.”
“Weingart deserves a lot worse than he got.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
We were in the shadow of the building. People were passing us on the sidewalk, glancing away when they heard the tenor of our voices. “I got to go,” he said.
“Where?”
“To check on a lady I was with.”
“You mean last night?”
“Maybe.”
“Who was she?”
“Her name escapes me.”
“You were still drunk this morning. Weingart could have died of a coronary. How long was his head under water?”
“Her name is Emma Poche,” he said. “I got it on with her.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“What’s wrong with Emma?”
“Do I have to tell you? You’re not interested in any woman who doesn’t have biker tats or a history at the methadone clinic.”
“She has a butterfly on her butt. That’s the only one. I think it’s cute.”
“Cute?” I repeated.
“Lighten up, Streak. It’s only rock and roll.” His eyes were still lit with an alcoholic glaze, his throat nicked in two places by his razor, his cheeks bladed with color.
I gave it up, in the way you give up something with such an enormous sense of sadness rushing through you that it leaves no room for any other emotion. “What are we going to do, Cletus?”
“About what?”
“You.”
“We all end up in the same place. Some sooner than others. What the hell. We’re both standing on third base,” he said.
I wanted to say something else, but I couldn’t find the words. I left him there and walked down the street and got in my cruiser and returned to the office, an image in my mind I couldn’t shake: that of a flag being lifted from a coffin and folded into a military tuck by a white-gloved, full-dress marine, his scalped head and hollow eyes as stark as bone. Would Clete Purcel’s life focus into that one bright brassy point of light and then disappear with the firing of blank cartridges into the wind? Was this ultimately the choice we had made for both of us?
KERMIT ABELARD and Robert Weingart and Kermit’s agent, Oliver Fremont, picked up Alafair in a white stretch limo, and all of them headed up the St. Martinville highway toward Breaux Bridge and the Café des Amis. Alafair wore a simple black dress and black sandals and silver earrings, and sat on the rolled leather seat close to the door, while Kermit poured drinks out of a cocktail shaker. Oliver Fremont had a degree in publishing from Hofstra University yet spoke with an accent that was vaguely British. He was blond and tall and handsome, and he had perfect manners, but it was his accent, or rather his candor about it, that became for Alafair his most engaging quality.
“Did yo
u live in England?” she asked.
“I’ve traveled there some, but no, I never lived there,” he replied.
“I see,” she said.
“You’re wondering about my accent?”
“I thought you might have gone to school in the UK.”
“It’s an affectation, I’m afraid. When the upper echelons in publishing have a few drinks, they start sounding like George Plimpton or William and James Buckley. My father sold shoes in Great Neck. He’d be a little amused by me, I think.”
Alafair looked at his profile and the evening light marbling on his skin. He gazed out the tinted window at the oak trees and the sugarcane fields sweeping past. “This is a grand area, isn’t it? I can see why you write with such fondness of it. I love the chapters Kermit sent me. I can’t wait to read more,” he said.
“Her father is a sheriff’s detective,” Robert Weingart said. “I think he gives her a lot of material. It’s pretty feisty stuff, if you ask me.”
“No, my father’s experience doesn’t have much to do with what I write,” Alafair said.
Weingart was on his third mint julep. He wore gray slacks and tassel loafers and a blue-and-white-striped shirt with white French cuffs and a rolled white collar; his plum-colored tie had a gold pin in it. There were abrasions around his temples that disappeared like orange rust into his hairline. When he spoke, his mouth seemed to keep twisting into a bow, as though it were cut or bruised inside.
“I understand you’re writing a sequel to The Green Cage,” Oliver Fremont said to Weingart. “That must be a hard act to follow. I thought The Green Cage was a stupendous accomplishment, better than Soul on Ice, maybe better than On the Yard by Malcolm Braly. Did you ever read Malcolm? He was a great talent.”
“Why do you compare my work to prison writing only?”
“Pardon?”