“The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide are forever,” I said.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Snap out of it, Clete.”
This time he didn’t argue with me. But reticence in Clete Purcel was rarely a sign of acquiescence. Instead, it was the exact opposite. He put on his yellow-tinted shades and looked at the television screen, his face composed.
“You’re going to see Trish today?” I said.
“What about it?”
She’s too young for you. You’re going to get hurt real bad, perhaps irrevocably, I thought.
He stared into my eyes. “Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah, what?” I said, trying to smile innocuously.
“Yeah, keep your thoughts to yourself,” he replied.
It was one of the moments when the truth serves no purpose other than to keep our wounds green. Was Clete right? Were we at the end of our string, flailing at forces that had societal and governmental sanction, convincing ourselves, like fools popping champagne corks aboard a sinking liner, that our violence could extend our youth forever into the future and that the party would never come to an end?
He felt my eyes on the side of his face. “Why you giving me that weird look?”
“Because you’re the best, Clete. Because I love you.”
The trucker down the counter was cutting up a steak on his plate. He glanced sideways at us, then at our reflection in the mirror. Clete leaned over so he could see past me.
“What’s up, bud?” Clete asked.
“Not a whole lot,” the trucker said, returning to his steak. He had created a puddle of ketchup sprinkled with pepper on his plate, and he was dipping each piece of meat in it before he forked it into his mouth.
“That steak looks righteous. You want a beer?” Clete said.
“I got to drive. Another time,” the trucker said.
“I’m Clete Purcel. This is Dave Robicheaux.”
“I’m Joe Vernon Mack.”
“You’re looking at the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide, Joe Vernon,” Clete said.
“Pleased to meet y’all,” the trucker said, chewing contentedly.
Clete picked up both our checks and paid for them at the cash register, then the two of us walked outside into the wind.
I ARRIVED BACK at the department shortly before 3 p.m. A note from Helen on a pink memorandum slip was waiting for me in my mailbox. It said: “See me.” When I walked down to her office, her door was ajar and I could see her standing behind her desk, talking on the phone. She waved me inside.
“He’s here now,” she said into the receiver. “Look, Lonnie, you made some ugly remarks about both him and me. He was defending me and this department as much as himself. You want to make trouble over this, you’ll have me to deal with as well. My advice is that you be a man and accept the fact you shot off your mouth and that you got what you deserved.”
I could hear Lonnie Marceaux’s voice coming out of the receiver like a piece of wire being pulled through a metal hole.
“Stop shouting,” Helen said. “He’s a good cop and you know it. If you want, I’ll contact the Daily Iberian and the wire services in Baton Rouge and we can both make a statement about what happened. It’s your call.”
She held the receiver away from her head and looked at it.
“He hang up?” I said.
“Or shot himself. Except we don’t have that kind of luck around here. Somebody at Lafayette P.D. told him you busted up Lefty Raguza. He thinks you’re running your own program, one that probably conflicts with his. Lonnie wants it all, Dave.”
“All what?”
“He’s going to indict Monarch Little for the Lujan homicide and bring racketeering charges against Whitey Bruxal. He’s also got Colin Alridge in his bomb sights. Alridge is running for lieutenant governor. Lonnie says he’s going to drive a nail through one of his testicles.”
“Why don’t you use a more severe image?”
“Those are his words, not mine.” She placed her hand on the windowsill and gazed out at the cemetery, and I knew she was no longer interested in talking about Lonnie. “I got a call earlier from the sheriff of Orleans Parish. He says a warrant is being cut for Clete Purcel’s arrest.”
“For flooding the casino?”
But my question didn’t register. “The Orleans sheriff says there’re rumors Clete is mixed up with the people who did the savings and loan job in Mobile. This parish isn’t going to be a haven for people who think they don’t have to obey the law.”
“I’ll talk with Clete.”
“You tell him I said he gets this shit off our plate or he leaves town.”
“I understand you perfectly. Thanks for standing up for me with Lonnie,” I said.
She looked me dead-on, her expression caught again in that strange androgynous moment when she seemed to linger between two identities, her face both beautiful and intimidating, a Helen I didn’t really know. “Don’t try to jerk me around, Dave. Fun and games are over,” she said.
I WALKED BACK to my office, unsure of my next move. I was convinced I had gotten nowhere with Whitey Bruxal. Worse, all my investigative work into the deaths of Crustacean Man, Yvonne Darbonne, and Tony Lujan had produced only circumstantial evidence and theories. Most depressing of all was the fact that, regardless of what I did, Lonnie Marceaux was going to use the evidence selectively to advance his own career, even if he had to prosecute Monarch Little, an innocent man, for the murder of Tony Lujan.
I’d had a run at Bruxal earlier, hoping to sow seeds of suspicion about his business partner, Bello Lujan. But why quit now? I asked myself. Some activities are like prayer. After you’ve been shelled off the mound, what do you have to lose?
I waited until quitting time to drive to his horse farm outside Loreauville. From the state road I saw him in front of a long white stable, dressed in strap overalls, working on a faucet that fed a galvanized water tank. He looked up when he heard my truck thumping across the cattle-guard, his Stilson wrench suddenly motionless.
How do you deal with a man like Bellerophon Lujan? Do you hate him? He certainly deserved the odium attached to his name. He was ignorant, driven, corrupt, racist, superstitious, and violent, his wealth ill-gotten, his libidinous appetites legendary. I believed he had probably raped Yvonne Darbonne. And long before he had destroyed her and her faith in her fellow human beings, he had ruined his son’s life with control and verbal abuse that disguised itself as love.
But as much as I despised Bello ’s deeds, I could not hate the man. As my truck approached the horse tank, I saw him grin slightly at the edge of his mouth, and for just a moment I remembered the kid who had waited in the cold with a shine box at the Southern Pacific depot, hoping to catch a few customers before they checked in to the Frederic Hotel.
“You going to take a swing at me?” I said as I got out of my truck.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, twisting the wrench on a three-inch nut. “I’m putting in a frost-free faucet this year, me. All these storms and droughts and hurricanes we been having? That means we gonna have some bad winters, yeah.”
His accent, even his syntax, had changed, the rough edges of New Orleans gone, as though the voice of a simple Cajun boy of years ago were speaking. Except that early innocence was not one Bello would ever be allowed to reclaim, whether he knew it or not. I picked up a paint-skinned wood chair by the stable entrance and carried it back to the tank and sat down. The sun was low and buried inside rain clouds, the pasture dark with shade, the grass channeled by the wind. “You have a restful place here,” I said.
“The best,” he replied. His eyes took on the glimmerings of vindication and pride. But I believed another element was at work inside Bello during that moment. I suspected he was beginning to understand that the symbols of his triumph over the world would never pass on to his son, and that his victory over privation and
