Clete Purcel, was back in New Iberia.
He had dumped his cooler on a bait table at the end of the dock and was gutting a stringer of ice-flecked sac- a-lait and bream and big-mouth bass with a long,
I parked my pickup truck in the driveway to the house and walked across the road and down the dock, where Clete was now scaling his fish with a tablespoon and washing them under a faucet and placing them on a clean layer of ice in his cooler.
'It looks like you had a pretty good day,' I said. 'If I can use your shower, I'll take you and Bootsie and Alafair to Bon Creole.' He picked up a salted can of beer off the dock rail and watched me over the bottom of it while he drank. His hair was bleached by the sun, his green eyes happy, one eyebrow cut by a scar that ran across the bridge of his nose.
'You just here for a fishing trip?' I asked. 'I got a shitload of bail slaps to pick up for Nig and Willie. Plus Nig may have written a bond on a serial killer.'
I was tired and didn't want to hear about Clete's ongoing grief as a bounty hunter for Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine. I tried to look attentive, but my gaze started to wander toward the house, the baskets of impa- tiens swaying under the eaves of the gallery, my wife, Bootsie, weeding the hydrangea bed in the shade.
'You listening?'' Clete said.
'Sure,' I replied.
'So this is how we heard about the serial sex predator or killer or whatever the hell he is. No Duh Dolowitz got nailed trying to creep Fat Sammy Figorelli's skin parlor, but this time Nig says he's had it with No Duh and his half-baked capers, like putting dog shit in the sandwiches at a Teamsters convention or impersonating a chauffeur and driving away with the Calucci family's limo.
'So No Duh calls up from central lockup and says Nig and Wee Willie are hypocrites because they wrote the bond on some dude who killed a couple of hookers in Seattle and Portland.
'Nig asks No Duh how he knows this and No Duh goes, ' 'Cause one year ago I was sitting in a cell next to this perverted fuck while he was pissing and moaning about how he dumped these broads along riverbanks on the West Coast. This same pervert was also talking about two dumb New Orleans Jews who bought his alias and were writing his bond without running his sheet.'
'But Nig's got scruples and doesn't like the idea he might have put a predator back on the street. So he has me start going over every dirtbag he's written paper on for the last two years. So far I've checked out one hundred twenty or one hundred thirty names and I can't come up with anyone who fits the profile.'
'Why believe anything Dolowitz says? One of the Giacanos put dents in his head with a ball peen hammer years ago,' I said.
'That's the point. He's got something wrong with his brain. No Duh is a thief who never lies. That's why he's always doing time.'
'You're going to take us to Bon Creole?' I asked.
'I said I was, didn't I?'
'I'd really enjoy that,' I said.
But I would not be able to free myself that evening from the murder of Amanda Boudreau. I had just showered and changed clothes and was waiting on the gallery for Clete and Bootsie and Alafair to join me when Perry LaSalle's cream-yellow Gazelle, a replica of a 1929 Mercedes, turned off the road into our driveway.
Before he could get out of his automobile, I walked down through the trees to meet him. The top was down on his automobile, and his sun-browned skin looked dark in the shade, his brownish-black hair tousled by the wind, his eyes bright blue, his cheeks pooled with color. He had given up his studies at a Jesuit seminary when he was twenty-one, for no reason he was ever willing to provide. He had lived among street people in the Bowery and wandered the West, working lettuce and beet fields, riding on freight cars with derelicts and fruit tramps, then had returned like the prodigal son to his family and studied law at Tulane.
I liked Perry and the dignified manner and generosity of spirit with which he always conducted himself. He was a big man, at least six feet two, but he was never grandiose or assuming and was always kind to those less fortunate than he. But like many of us I felt Perry's story was infinitely more complex than his benign demeanor would indicate.
'Out for a drive?' I said, knowing better.
'I hear Battering Ram Shanahan thinks you're soft on the Amanda Boudreau investigation. I hear she wants to use a nail gun on your cojones,' he-said.
'News to me,' I replied.
'Her case sucks and she knows it.'
'Seen any good movies lately?' I asked.
'Tee Bobby's innocent. He wasn't even at the murder scene.'
'His beer can was.'
'Littering isn't a capital crime.'
'It was good seeing you, Perry.'
'Come out to the island and try my bass pond. Bring Bootsie and Alafair. We'll have dinner.'
'I will. After the trial,' I said.
He winked at me, then drove down the road, the sunlight through the trees flicking like gold coins across the waxed surfaces of his automobile.
I heard Clete walking through the leaves behind me. His hair was wet and freshly combed, the top buttons of his tropical shirt open on his chest.
'Isn't that the guy who wrote the book about the Death House in Louisiana? The one the movie was based on?' he said.
'That's the guy,' I replied.
Clete looked at my expression. 'You didn't like the book?' he asked.
'Two kids were murdered in a neckers' area up the Loreauville Road. Perry made the prosecutor's office look bad.'
'Why?'
'I guess some people need to feel good about themselves,' I answered.
The next morning there was fog in the trees when Alafair and I walked down the slope and opened up the bait shop and hosed down the dock and fired up the barbecue pit on which we prepared links and chicken and sometimes pork chops for our midday customers. I went into the storage room and began slicing open cartons of canned beer and soda to stock the coolers while Alafair made coffee and wiped down the counter. I heard the tiny bell on the screen door ring and someone come into the shop.
He was a young man and wore a white straw hat coned up on the sides, a pale blue sports coat, a wide, plum-colored tie, gray pants, and shined cordovan cowboy boots. His hair was ash-blond, cut short, shaved on the neck, his skin a deep olive. He carried a suitcase whose weight made his face sweat and his wrist cord with veins.
'Howdy do,' he said, and sat down on a counter stool, his back to me. 'Could I have a glass of water, please?'
Alafair was a senior in high school now, although she looked older than her years. She stood up on her tiptoes and took down a glass from a shelf, her thighs and rump flexing against her shorts. But the young man turned his head and gazed out the screen at the trees on the far side of the bayou.
'You want ice in it?' she asked.
'No, ma'am, I dint want to cause no trouble. Out of the tap is fine,' the young man replied.
She filled the glass and put it before him. Her eyes glanced at the suitcase on the floor and the leather belt that was cinched around the weight that bulged against its sides.
'Can I help you with something?' she asked.
