'There's been a development here, Tee Bobby. I think it's only fair you know everything that's going on. Walk around the corner with me,' I said, getting up from the chair.
'What's he doin', Miss Helen?' Tee Bobby asked.
'Time you knew your enemy, Tee Bobby,' she replied.
'My enemy?' he said.
I opened the door and slipped my hand under his arm. The muscles in his arm were flaccid, without tone, like soft rubber.
'Where we goin'?' he asked.
We walked to the glass window that gave onto the interior of Kevin Dartez's office. Tee Bobby's eyes bulged in his head when he saw Jimmy Dean Styles sitting in front of Dartez's desk, rolling his shoulders, rotating a crick out of his neck, the profile and down-hooked nose like a sheep's.
'Why's
'Jimmy Dean just made a statement. You know how he operates, Tee Bobby. Jimmy Dean's not about to take somebody else's bounce,' I said.
'Statement 'bout what?'
'The shit's in the fire, partner. You want to go down for this guy?'
'You saying he-' Tee Bobby stopped and squeezed his mouth with his hand as though he were about to be sick.
'Let's go back to the interview room,' I said, draping my arm over his shoulders. 'Listen to this tape I have, then tell us what you want to do. You can be in the driver's seat on this.'
Tee Bobby was breathing hard now, the pulse jumping in his neck.
'What he tole you, man?' he said, looking backward over his shoulder at Dartez's office. 'What that son of a bitch tole you?'
I closed the door to the interview room behind us and pulled out a chair for Tee Bobby. I placed my hand on his shoulder. His shirt was damp, his collarbone as hard as a broomstick.
'Calm down, kid. Eat another candy bar,' Helen said. 'It's not as bad as you think. You've got choices. Everybody knows Jimmy Sty is a liar and a pimp. Just don't take his weight.'
I pressed the Play button on the recorder. The voice of Jimmy Dean Styles seemed to leap from the speaker: 'Tee Bobby's a hype and a ragnose. He got a thing for white cooze, too.'
'You committed no form of assault or what could be interpreted as such?' the voice of Kevin Dartez said.
'Man, I tole you, he's a sick, violent motherfucker. He done it, just like some crazy person been wanting to hurt somebody a long time. Hey, you ax me if I'm bothered about that cunt? Anything happen to her, man, she deserve,' Styles's voice said.
I snapped off the recorder. The sound of Tee Bobby's breathing filled the silence. Sweat had popped on his forehead. His tongue looked like a gray biscuit in his mouth.
'Is what he says correct?' I asked.
'I cain't believe it. Jimmy Dean put it on me? Man, that lying- How I got in this? If they just hadn't been there. If they had been anyplace else. If we'd gone to drink beer at the drive-in instead of by the coulee. I cain't believe this is happening, man.' He squeezed his hands in his lap and rocked in the chair.
'You heard what Miss Helen said, Tee Bobby. Don't take Jimmy Dean's weight. Time to lay down your burden, partner,' I said.
'You got that right. I'm gonna cook his hash, man. You want to know how it went down? Push on your recorder. Get that videotape machine going. Jimmy Dean call it cooling out a white broad. That's the kind of dude he is, all 'cause they was making too much noise.'
'Yeah, too much noise. That can be a real problem,' Helen said, a look of unrelieved sadness in her eyes.
There are stories no one wants to hear. This was one of them.
CHAPTER 27
Tee Bobby had loaded Rosebud in the car and roared across the bridge that separated Poinciana Island from the rest of Iberia Parish, his anger burning in his chest, the words of Perry LaSalle like a dirty presence in his ears.
'Let's see if I understand this correctly, Tee Bobby. You want money to go to California? To make a record?' Perry had said. He had been stripped to the waist, combing his hair in a mirror by his wet bar, his gaze wandering through the sliding doors to the bass pond, where a woman in shorts and a halter was fly-casting on the water's surface.
'Yes, suh. I got a shot with a recording company in West Hollywood. But I got to have money to go out there, stay at a hotel for a week, maybe, buy meals, front a few dol'ars wit' this agent setting up the gig,' Tee Bobby said.
'You sure this agent isn't throwing you a slider?' Perry said, his eyes watching the woman in the mirror.
'No, suh. It's just the way they do things out there.'
'It sounds interesting, Tee Bobby, but if you're looking for a loan, my income is a little down right now. Maybe another time.'
'Suh?'
'I'm short of cash, podna,' Perry said, and grinned at him in the mirror.
'I ain't never made no claim on the estate,' Tee Bobby said.
'You haven't what?'
'Never claimed no kind of inheritance. Neither my mother or my gran'mama, either. We ain't never axed money from your family.'
'You think you're owed something by my family, do you?'
'Everybody know old man Julian was sleeping wit' my gran'mama.'
'Ah, I get your drift now. We both share the same grandfather? Is that correct?' Perry said.
Tee Bobby shrugged and looked at the woman by the pond. She was lovely to watch, her skin unblemished by the sun or physical work, her body firm and graceful as she whipped the popping-bug over her head.
“You shouldn't refer to my grandfather as 'old man Julian,' Tee Bobby. That said, the child your grandmother had out of wedlock was not his. Mr. Julian had been dead over a year when Miss Ladice's baby was born. There was an overseer here named Legion Guidry. He did things he shouldn't have. But that was the nature of the times.'
'The man people call 'Legion' is my grandfather?'
'Better talk to Miss Ladice,' Perry said, slipping his comb into his back pocket and drawing the sleeve of a silk shirt up his arm.
Then Perry, with a grin on his face, still tucking his shirt in his slacks, opened the sliding doors and walked down to the bass pond to join his companion.
In the neon-lit darkness of the Boom Boom Room, Tee Bobby and Jimmy Dean smoked some high-octane Afghan skunk and snorted up a half-dozen lines of Colombian pink from Jimmy's private stock, so pure and unstepped on it roared up Tee Bobby's nostril with the white brilliance of a train engine inside a tunnel.
'Tell me that ain't righteous, my man. It put the snap in yo' whip, don't it? Forget that cracker on Poinciana Island. I'll introduce you to a lady down the road make you fall in love,' Jimmy Dean said.
'I got Rosebud out front. Can you give me the money to go to California, Jimmy Dean?'
'If we talking about recording contracts, I got to have my lawyer draw up some papers, make sure you protected. Let's take a ride, drink some beer, make a house call on a couple of bidness associates later. It gonna be all right, man. The Sty got yo' ass covered, bro. Hey, go a li'l easy on my stuff. You slam a gram and you fry yo' Spam. You heard it first from Jimmy Style. Come on in back wit' me a minute.'
Tee Bobby followed Jimmy Dean into the back room of the bar, where Jimmy Dean knelt down in front of a
