“Layton is having a nervous breakdown. I was taking him to Our Lady of Lourdes in Lafayette,” she said.
“He’s having a breakdown but you let him drive the car?” I said.
“It was the only way I could get him out of the house,” she replied.
“So why were you downtown and not on the highway to Lafayette?” I asked. Inside the shade at the back of the brick building, I could see the umbrella on Clete’s office patio ruffling in the breeze. Carolyn’s eyes followed mine, and I knew that whatever information she was about to give me would come a teaspoon at a time and would reveal only enough to ensure that her account was credible.
“He wanted to talk to your friend Clete Purcel. About a business matter of some kind,” she said.
Carolyn had shown no acknowledgment of Helen’s presence.
“Have you met Sheriff Soileau?” I asked.
“Hi,” Carolyn said, and returned her attention to me. “I’ve got to get him to this psychiatrist who’s waiting for us at Lourdes. The black woman ran the stop sign. No one is injured. I don’t want to see her ticketed or hurt financially. We’ll fix our own car. Maybe Layton will even fix hers. But we didn’t cause this, and we don’t have time for a lot of paperwork and stupid questions. Now, are we done here?”
“No, madam, you’re not,” Helen said.
“Then tell me what I can do to make this right so I can take my husband to the hospital.”
“Normally when people try to leave the scene of an accident, it’s not for humanitarian reasons,” Helen said. “Your husband is going to take a Breathalyzer test, and you’re going to file a report at the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department. You’re going to do that now, not later. That means you get in the back of that cruiser by the bridge, of your own volition, and you do it without further discussion. If you say anything more, you’re going to jail in handcuffs.”
“This is ridiculous,” Carolyn said.
“Not to us, it isn’t. Would you like to say something else?” Helen said.
Carolyn Blanchet’s platinum hair looked as bright as a helmet in the sunshine, her contacts as blue as the sky. Her skin made me think of brown tallow. She held her gaze on Helen, never blinking, her expression impossible to read. “I apologize if I seemed abrupt. May I call my attorney?” she said.
“Please do. The reception in the backseat of the cruiser is excellent,” Helen said.
“This is such a lovely little city. The word ‘quaint’ comes to mind. It’s like a place out of a fable. Is it the fable about a big fish in a small pond? Or is that about something else? I’m probably confused,” Carolyn said.
But Helen was already walking away from her, her arms pumped, her attention focused on the black woman and the ruined Mazda and Layton Blanchet sitting slack-jawed behind the wheel of his Lexus. I followed her up onto the sidewalk at the edge of the drawbridge, out of earshot of Carolyn Blanchet.
“She’s been married to Layton too long,” I said.
“Forget about it. I think her problem isn’t with us or the accident,” Helen said. “I think she doesn’t want us talking to her husband.”
“I think you’re right,” I replied.
“What’s going on between Clete and Layton Blanchet?”
“Layton thinks somebody is pumping his wife. He hired Clete to find out who.”
“And?”
“Clete came up with zero.”
“But that’s not why she wants to keep us away from her husband. I want you to get Layton alone and find out what’s going on.”
“You’ve never met Carolyn?”
“Why?”
“You seem a little charged up.”
“I was taking graduate courses at LSU when that snooty bitch was a cheerleader. She got a friend of mine kicked out of her sorority because my friend was a lesbian.”
“I see,” I said, my gaze shifting off Helen’s face to the oaks on the lawn of the old convent across the bayou.
“You see what?”
“Nothing.”
“Dave, do you think you’re the only person in the world who resents rich people treating us like we’re their personal servants?”
“I’ll see what I can get out of Layton,” I replied.
“Do that,” she said. She put on her sunglasses and placed her hands on her hips, her gaze riveted on Carolyn Blanchet. “They’re not going to wipe their feet on us. Not this time.”
“When did they do it before?”
“Everybody does.”
“You sound like me.”
“I know. It’s depressing,” she replied. Then she hit me on the arm.
Layton took the Breathalyzer test and came up negative. Helen rode back to the department with a deputy, and I put Layton in our cruiser and drove across the drawbridge, past the former convent, and into City Park.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“It’s time for a sno’ball. You’d rather sit in an interview room down the hall from a holding cell or have a sno’ball with me in the shade?”
For the first time since we had arrived at the accident, he tried to smile. Then the humor faded from his eyes and he stared at some children turning somersaults on the grass in the park. “I was a good cop, wasn’t I?” he said.
In my opinion, Layton had used police work solely as a threshold into more lucrative enterprises. “I didn’t know you real well back then, Layton. I suspect, like most of us, you did the best you could.”
“I mean, I never jammed anybody. I never knocked the blacks around.”
“That’s right.”
“When I sold pots and pans and burial insurance in black neighborhoods, I tried to give them a break, at least as far as my boss would allow.”
I parked on the grass under a spreading oak that shadowed a long concrete boat ramp that dipped down into the Teche. I bought two sno’balls from the concession truck and walked back to the cruiser with them, the spearmint-stained ice sliding over my fingers. “Try this, podna. It’s like a cool breeze blowing through your chest,” I said.
“What I’m saying is, I never set out to screw anybody,” he said. “I tried to be a decent man. I worked hard for what I got.”
“Who said otherwise?” I said, sitting down in the driver’s seat, leaving the door open and putting down all the windows with the power buttons.
“These federal investigators, they’re taking me apart. Look, I wasn’t running a Ponzi scheme. It’s like any kind of investment. The people who get in early make the big money. The ones who come along later don’t always do as well. All investment is speculative in nature.”
It was time to change the subject. “Why’d you want to see Purcel?”
“I think my wife is having an affair. I think Purcel knows who it is.”
“If that’s true, why wouldn’t Clete tell you?”
“Maybe somebody got to him.”
Layton kept staring straight ahead, the sno’ball melting in his hand. At one time or another, we have all met someone whose fate we secretly pray will never be our own. The person upon whom a premature death sentence has been imposed will use every medical procedure he can afford to repurchase his life; he will be brave and humble and for a while will even pretend that willpower and prayer and holistic medicine will give him back the sunlit mornings that he once took for granted. But eventually a shadowy figure will step in front of his eyesight and his face will forever be darkened by the experience. I believed that Layton Blanchet had become that man, and it was very hard to feel anger or indignation toward him.
“Clete didn’t stiff you. He’s an honest man,” I said. Then I shifted the direction of the inquiry again. “Did Clete lend you his gold pen?”
I could see Layton’s mouth moving, as though repeating my question. “Gold pen? Why would I want his pen? What are we talking about?”
I was convinced his confusion was not manufactured. “It’s not important,” I said. “I don’t believe the possibility of your wife’s infidelity is the is
sue, Layton. I think those dead girls are. Maybe it’s time to come clean and get it behind you. Your parents were honest working people. What would they tell you to do?”
“Don’t you try to use my family against me,” he replied. But he spoke without passion, the sno’ball melting and running down his wrist. I took it from his hand and threw it out the window.
“You denied a personal relationship with the Abelards,” I said. “But Kermit Abelard was with you when you gave a talk on biofuels in Jackson, Mississippi. You also have stained glasswork in your house that either he or his father gave you.”
“Maybe it’s him.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Kermit Abelard. Maybe it’s him my wife is sleeping with.”
“I’ve got news for you. Kermit has a boyfriend.”
Layton looked at me as though he were coming out of a trance. “This writer who was in Huntsville?”
You just stuck your foot in it, bud, I thought. “Yeah, that writer. So you know a lot more about the Abelards and their friends than you’ve been willing to admit. Right?”
“I don’t care about them one way or another.”
“I would. They’re about to take you down. You have resources, Layton. You’re an intelligent man. Don’t take the weight for these bums.”
Then he said something that convinced me I would never reach the engine that drove Layton Blanchet. “A year ago I took Carolyn to a state fair up in Montana,” he said. “I always loved fairs and carnivals and festivals and circuses and rodeos when I was a kid. It was a summer evening, and the sky was pink and green above the mountains, and this ride called the Kamikaze was lit up against the sunset. I couldn’t recall a more beautiful moment. We were eating candied apples on a bench and watching all these kids get on and off the Kamikaze, and we were surrounded by all these working-class families that were grinning up at the Kamikaze like it was a big piece of magic in the sky. But they looked like people of five hundred years ago. Their faces were just like the faces you see of peasants in paintings of fairs in the Middle Ages. And I said that to Carolyn.”
“Said what?” I asked.
“That nothing has changed. That we’re still the same people, doing the same things, not knowing any more than we knew back then. I told Carolyn, ‘We’re all dust. At a moment like this, you get to look through a glass rainbow and everything becomes magical, but when all is said and done, we’re just dust. Like the people in those paintings. We don’t even know where their graves are.’”
“Maybe life is ongoing. Maybe we all get to see one another again,” I said. “But no matter how it plays out, why not get on the square? You’ve come through hard times before. Maybe things aren’t as bad as you think.”
“She laughed,” he replied, as though he had heard nothing I’d said.
“Who?”
“Carolyn laughed and threw her candied apple in the trash. She said, ‘Honey, you’re telling this to the gal who’s seen you take an old widow for her last cent. Lose the role of the poet, will you?’”
I started the cruiser and drove us out of the park, over the drawbridge, and back onto Main Street. One of Layton’s eyes bulged from his head, like a prosthesis that didn’t fit the socket.
CHAPTER
13
IT WAS STILL raining when Clete Purcel went to sleep that night. He slept peacefully in his cottage at the motor court on the bayou, his air conditioner turned up full blast, a pillow on the side of his head, a big meaty arm on top of the pillow. Inside his sleep, he could hear the rain on the roof and in the trees and hear it tinking on the air conditioner inset in the window. At a little after five A.M. , he heard a key turn in the lock. Without removing the pillow from his head, he slipped his hand under the mattress and worked his fingers around the grips of his blue-black snub-nose .38.
In the glow from the night-light in the bathroom, he saw a figure enter the room and close the door softly and relock it. He removed his hand from the pistol and shut his eyes. He heard the sounds of someone undressing; then he felt a person’s weight next to him and a hand tugging the pillow loose from his face.
Emma Poche bent down over him and put her mouth on his and touched him under the sheet and then slid her tongue over his teeth. “How you doin’, honey-bunny?” she said.
He pulled back the covers and took her inside them and held her close against his body. He could feel the heat in her skin and the weight of her breasts against his chest. “I didn’t think you got off till oh-six-hundred,” he said.
“Somebody is covering in the log for me,” she said.
“That’s a good way to get in trouble.”
“No, oh-four-hundred to oh-seven-hundred is all dead time. The drunks are either under arrest or home, and normal people haven’t left for work yet.”
“You got it figured out,” he said.
“Always,” she said, and bit him on the ear. She placed her knee across his thigh and touched him again and blew on his cheek and neck and chest and ran her tongue down his stomach. Then she mounted him and lifted his phallus and placed it inside her, her eyes closing and her mouth opening. “Did you miss me?”
“Oh, boy,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“No, tell me. Did you miss me? Did you have dreams before I got here?”
“You bet,” he said, his voice as thick as rust in his throat.
“You like me, Clete? You like being with me?”
“Don’t talk.”
“No, tell me.”
“You’re great,” he said.
“You’re my big guy. Oh, Clete, keep doing this to me. Just do it and do it and do it.” Then she said “Oh” and “Oh” and “Oh” and “Oh,” like the rhythm of waves hitting on a beach.
When it was over, his heart was pounding and his loins felt drained and weak and empty and his skin was hot to his own touch. She curled against his side and put her fingers in his hair and placed the flat of her hand on his chest. He could hear her breath rising and falling. Outside, the rain was ticking in the leaves, and through a crack in the curtains, he could see that the sky was still dark with thunderclouds, a tree of lightning blooming without sound on the horizon.
“I have to ask you something,” he said.
“You heard stories about my time at NOPD?”
“Who cares about NOPD? They almost sent me up on a homicide beef.”
“Then what is it?”
“I had a gold pen. I’m pretty sure it was in my dresser. No, I’m not just pretty sure. I know it was in my dresser.”
“Yeah?” she said.
He turned on his side so that his eyes were only a few inches from hers. Her face was heart-shaped, her pug nose tilted upward, her eyes crinkling. She lowered her hand and squeezed him inside the thigh. But he removed her hand and held it in his. “Dave is bugging me about this pen. I mean, in a good way. He wants to clear me in the Herman Stanga shooting.”
“I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“A maintenance guy found my pen in Stanga’s swimming pool.”
“So the Iberia Department is trying to put his death on you?”
“Not exactly. But they can’t ignore the evidence, either. My name is inscribed on the pen.”
“You’re asking me about it?”
“Dave won’t get off my back about it. I had to give him the names of everybody who’d had access to my cottage and office. I mentioned your name, among others. I felt rotten about it. I felt rotten not telling you.”
“You think I stole from you?”
“No.”
“Or that I tried to set you up?”
“No, I don’t think that.”
“Then why’d you give Dave Robicheaux my name? Why’d you tell him about us?”
“You care whether people know we’re seeing each other?”
“It’s not their business.”
“I was just wondering if maybe you saw the pen. I’m always dropping things or lending or handing people stuff and fo
rgetting it.”
He could feel her draw away from him, her hands receding back into the bedcovers, her body somehow growing smaller. “You just said one of the shittiest things anyone has ever said to me.”
“I didn’t mean to. I was trying to tell you I felt guilty about mentioning your name to Dave. I felt I was disloyal not telling you about it.”
She sat up on the side of the bed, the sheet and blanket humped over her shoulders. “You don’t trust me, Clete. It’s that simple. Don’t make it worse by lying.”
“I think you’re swell. I’m crazy about you.”
“But maybe I’m a Jezebel, right? I’ll see you around. Look the other way while I dress.”
“Come on, Emma. You’re reading this all wrong.”
“Boy, can I pick them. Yuck,” she said.
After she went out to her car, he slipped on his trousers and followed her, barefoot and bareheaded and wearing a strap undershirt in the rain. “One last try: Come back inside,” he said.
“I let people hurt me only once, then I get even. With you, I don’t have to. You’ll never know the opportunity you just threw away. Bye-bye, big boy.”
She got in her car and started the engine, her face still pinched with anger through the beaded glass. He watched her taillights disappear in a vortex of rain on East Main Street. Then he went back inside and took off his wet clothes and sat naked on the side of his bed in the dark, staring at nothing, his hands like empty skillets at his sides.
THE CALL CAME in from the sheriff in St. Mary Parish at 10:17 the same morning. Helen was out of the office, and the call was rerouted to my extension. The sheriff’s name was Tony Judice. He was a firm-bodied, rotund, and congenial man, less political than most public servants here, and was known for his integrity as a sugar farmer and manager of the local sugar co-op.
“Did y’all have Layton Blanchet in custody yesterday?” he asked.
“Not exactly. He and his wife were in an accident. We took them in for an interview, primarily because they were giving the responding officers a lot of trouble and trying to leave the scene. How’d you know about it?”
“One of my deputies was over there. This is out of your jurisdiction, Dave, so I don’t know if y’all want to be bothered with it or not,” he said. “A guy running a trotline in the Basin called on his cell and said he found a dead man in a rowboat. The description of the dead man sounds like Blanchet. The rowboat is close by the fish camp he owns. I’m about to head out there in a few minutes. I’ll wait for you if you’re interested in Blanchet for reasons other than traffic accidents, or I can call you when I get out there.”