'You sure?' Clete said.
'No doubt about it. I don't forget a face. Particularly not no nutcase.'
'Where did you see him, No Duh?' Clete asked, his exasperation growing.
'He used to sell vacuum cleaners to the coloreds for Fat Sammy Figorelli. It was a scam to get them to sign loans at twenty percent. What, you thought he was somebody else?' No Duh said.
He tilted his head curiously at Clete, his mustache like the extended wings of a tiny bird.
What did Marvin Oates mean by 'There ain't no detours in heaven'?' Clete asked the next day as he walked with me from the office to Victor's Cafeteria.
'Who knows? I think it's a line from a bluegrass song,' I replied.
'Zerelda Calucci says I'm butt crust.'
'How you doing with Barbara?' I said, trying to change the subject.
'Marvin dimed me with her, too. You think the Peeping Tom was Legion Guidry?'
'Yeah, I do,' I said.
Clete chewed on a hangnail and spit it off his tongue. We were walking past the crumbling, whitewashed crypts of St. Peter's Cemetery now.
'I put flowers on my old man's grave when I was in New Orleans. It was a funny feeling, out there in the cemetery, just me and him,' he said.
'Yeah?' I said.
'That's all. He had a crummy life. It wasn't a big deal,' he said. He took off his porkpie hat and refitted it on his head, turning his face away so I could not see the expression in his eyes.
That afternoon Perry LaSalle asked me to stop by his office. When I got there, he was just locking the doors. The gallery and lawn and flower beds were deep in shadow, and his face had a melancholy cast in the failing light.
'Oh, hello, Dave,' he said. He sat down on the top step of the gallery and waited for me to join him. Through the window behind him I could see the glass-framed Confederate battle flag of the 8th Louisiana Vols that one of his ancestors had carried in northern Virginia, and I wondered if indeed Perry was one of those souls who belonged in another time, or if he was a deluded creature of his own manufacture, playing the role of a tragic scion who had to expiate the sins of his ancestors, when in fact he was simply the beneficiary of wealth that had been made on the backs of others.
'Fine evening,' I said, looking across the street at the Shadows plantation house and the bamboo moving in the wind and the magnificent, lichen-encrusted, moss-hung canopy of the live oaks.
'I've got to cut you loose,' Perry said.
'You're resigning as my lawyer?'
'Legion Guidry is my client, too. You've got him up on assault charges. I can't represent both of you.'
I nodded and put a stick of gum in my mouth and didn't respond.
'No hard feelings?' he said.
'Nope.'
'I'm glad you see it that way.'
'What's this guy have on you?' I asked.
He rose from the steps and buttoned his coat, removed his sunglasses from their case, and blew dust off the lenses. He started to speak, then simply walked to his car and drove away into the sunlight that still filled the streets of the business district.
I parked my truck in the backyard and went into the kitchen, where Bootsie was fixing supper. I sat down at the table with a glass of iced tea.
'You're disappointed in Perry?' she said.
'He helped organize migrant farm workers in the Southwest. He was a volunteer worker at a Dorothy Day mission in the Bowery. Now he's the apologist for a man like Legion Guidry. His behavior is hard to respect.'
She turned from the stove and set a bowl of etouffee on the table with a hot pad and blotted her face on her sleeve. I thought she was going to argue.
'You're better off without him,' she said.
'How?'
'Perry might have taken a vacation from the realities of his life in his youth, but he's a LaSalle first, last, and always.'
'Pretty hard-nosed, Boots.'
'You just learning that?'
She stood behind me and mussed my hair and pressed her stomach against my back. Then I felt her hands slip down my chest and her breasts against my head.
'We can put dinner in the oven,' I said.
I felt her straighten up, her hands relax on my shoulders, then I realized she was looking through the hallway, out into the front yard.
'You have a visitor,' she said.
CHAPTER 21
Tee Bobby Hulin had parked his gas-guzzler by the cement boat ramp and had walked up into the gloom of the trees. His autistic sister, Rosebud, sat in the passenger's seat, a safety belt locked across her chest, staring at an empty pirogue floating aimlessly on the bayou. The evening was warm, the string of lightbulbs above my dock glowing with humidity, but Tee Bobby wore a long-sleeved black shirt buttoned at the wrists. His armpits were damp with sweat, his lips dry and caked at the edges.
'I just cut a CD. It's got 'Jolie Blon's Bounce' on it. Nobody else seem to like it too much. Anyway, see what you think,' he said.
'I appreciate it, Tee Bobby. You kind of warm in that shirt?' I said.
'You know how it is,' he replied.
'I can get you into a treatment program.'
He shook his head and kicked gingerly at a tree root.
'Your sister okay?' I asked.
'Ain't nothing okay.'
'We're getting ready to eat dinner right now. Maybe we can talk later,' I said.
'I just dropped by, that's all.'
It was dark where we stood under the trees, the molded pecan husks and blackened leaves soft under our feet, the air tannic, like water that has stood for a long time in a wooden cistern. The dying light was gold on the tops of the cypresses in the swamp, and snow egrets were rising into the light, their wings feathering in the wind.
'Why are you here?' I asked.
'You busted up Jimmy Dean Styles real bad. You shamed him in front of other people. Jimmy Sty always square the score.'
'Forget about Jimmy Sty. Tell the truth about what happened to Amanda Boudreau.'
'The lie detector say I didn't do it. That's all that counts. I ain't raped or shot nobody. Got the proof.'
'You were there.'
He tried to stare me down, then his eyes watered and broke.
'I wish I ain't come here. The lie detector say I'm innocent. But ain't nobody listening,' he said.
'That girl is going to live in your dreams. She'll stand by your deathbed. You'll never have any peace until you get honest on this, Tee Bobby.'
'Oh, God, why you do this to me?' he said, and walked hurriedly down the incline, slightly off balance.
