“I didn’t need to. They’re amateurs, and they fell in their own shit.”
“In what way?”
“They made fun of me because I’m a woman, even though they had no idea who I was. They have the judgment of people who abuse restaurant employees who cook and serve their food.”
“They’ll be coming after you.”
“Too bad for them.”
“I’ll bring in the roast and fix you a sandwich. Don’t ever run off with my car or mess with my stuff again.”
“Whatever,” she said. She was sitting in a straight-back chair. She rubbed the back of one wrist in her eye and gazed wanly out the window at the rain blowing off the rooftops. “Alafair told me about a 1940s musical revue that’s coming up here in December. I thought about doing a documentary on it. It’d be a start, wouldn’t it? Maybe something I could use to get into film school?”
He started to redirect the conversation back to the problem at hand but gave it up. “I don’t know much about universities.”
“I was just asking. I never went to many people for advice. My mother was always in and out of rehab. More out than in. I stopped calling her about a year ago. Do you think I have it? I mean the talent or the brains or whatever. You know stuff about history and business and the military that most college-educated people don’t. Do you think somebody like me could make it in Hollywood?”
“You like Burt Reynolds?”
“Do I? Did you see Deliverance?”
“I met him once. Another guy asked him how he got into the film business. Reynolds said, ‘Why grow up when you can make movies?’ I bet they’d name a boulevard after you.”
“Clete?”
He turned around, his hand on the doorknob, the mist drifting into the room.
“Lay off the hooch,” she said. “There’re certain kinds of behavior I can’t deal with, not even when the person is somebody I’m really fond of. I’m sorry if I talked harsh to you.”
14
I didn’t learn of the incident in the art deco restaurant from Clete. I heard about it Monday morning when I got a phone call from Dana Magelli at NOPD. A patrolwoman had responded to the 911 at the same time the paramedics did. The private dining area was a wreck; blood and at least two teeth were splattered on a tablecloth. But the victims of the attack had helped one another out the back door and driven away in an SUV without making a report.
“You’re sure one of them was Pierre Dupree?” I said.
“He’s a regular. The charges were on his AmEx,” Dana said. “Plus, the maitre d’ said Dupree had reserved the private room where the attack took place.”
“Why are you calling me about it?”
“Because a witness said the assailant drove away in a maroon Cadillac convertible. Because I think this involves Clete Purcel or somebody associated with him. Because we don’t have time for this crap.”
“A woman beat up these guys?”
“That’s what a busboy says.”
“Why don’t you talk to Pierre Dupree?” I asked.
“He left town. I suspect he’s back in St. Mary Parish. But I don’t think you’re hearing me, Dave. We have the highest homicide rate in the United States. The same people who spread crack cocaine all over South Los Angeles have had a field day here. You tell Clete Purcel he’s not going to wipe his ass on this city again.”
“The Giacanos got a free pass from NOPD for decades. The only guy who took a few of them down was Purcel. Save the bullshit for somebody else, Dana.”
“Why is it I thought you’d take that attitude?”
“Because you’re wrong? Because you’re particularly wrongheaded when it comes to Clete?”
He hung up. I called Clete’s office. He wasn’t in, but Gretchen Horowitz was. “He doesn’t always say where he goes. Want to leave a message?” she said.
“No, I want to talk to him, Ms. Horowitz.”
“Call his cell phone. You have the number?”
“Can you take the chewing gum out of your mouth?”
“Hang on,” she said. “Does that make it all better?”
I decided to take a chance. “If you’re going to bust up somebody in a New Orleans restaurant, why drive a vehicle that every cop in the city recognizes?”
“I need a fresh stick of gum. Hang on again,” she said. “If you’re talking about Pierre Dupree, here’s how it went down. He tried to break a woman’s hand at his table. He also called her a kike. He also had two mooks with him who attacked her. So all three of them underwent sensitivity training.”
“Pierre Dupree called you a kike?”
“I didn’t say he called me anything.”
“I haven’t met you formally yet, but I’m looking forward to it,” I said.
“Get yourself a better dialogue writer, Jack. And while you’re at it, go fuck yourself,” she said.
I eased the phone down into the cradle and signed out a cruiser and followed the back road down Bayou Teche into St. Mary Parish.
I’ve acquired little wisdom with age. For me, the answers to the great mysteries seem more remote than ever. Emotionally, I cannot accept that a handful of evil men, none of whom ever fought in a war, some of whom never served in the military, can send thousands of their fellow countrymen to their deaths or bring about the deaths or maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians and be lauded for their deeds. I don’t know why the innocent suffer. Nor can I comprehend the addiction that laid waste to my life but still burns like a hot coal buried under the ash, biding its time until an infusion of fresh oxygen blows it alight. I do not understand why my Higher Power saved me from the fate I designed for myself, while others of far greater virtue and character have been allowed to fall by the wayside. I suspect there are answers to all of these questions, but I have found none of them. I think Robert E. Lee was not only a good man but a heavily burdened one who debated long and hard over his decision to take Cemetery Ridge at a cost of eight thousand men. I think that’s why he wrote at the end of his life that he had but one goal, “to be a simple child of God,” because the contradictions of his life were so intense they were almost unbearable.
For me, the greatest riddle involves the nature of evil. Is there indeed a diabolic force at work in our midst, a satanic figure with leathery wings and the breath of a carrion eater? Any police officer would probably say he’d need to look no further than his fellow man in order to answer that question. We all know that the survivors of war rarely speak of their experience. We tell ourselves they do not want to relive the horror of the battlefield. I think the greater reason for their reticence lies in their charity, because they know that the average person cannot deal with the images of a straw village worked over by a Gatling gun or Zippo-tracks, or women and children begging for their lives in the bottom of an open ditch, or GIs hanged in trees and skinned alive. The same applies to cops who investigate homicides, sexual assaults, and child abuse. A follower of Saint Francis of Assisi, looking at the photographs of the victims taken at the time of the injury, would have to struggle with his emotions regarding abolition of the death penalty.
Regardless, none of this resolves the question. Perhaps there’s a bad seed at work in our loins. Were there two groups of simian creatures vying for control of the gene pool, one fairly decent, the other defined by their canine teeth? Did we descend out of a bad mix, some of us pernicious from the day of our conception? Maybe. Ask any clinician inside the system how a sociopath thinks. He’ll be the first to tell you he doesn’t have a clue. Sociopaths are narcissists, and as such, they believe that reality conforms to whatever they say it is. Consequently, they are convincing liars, often passing polygraph tests and creating armies of supporters. Watch a taped interview of James Earl Ray. His facial expressions are soft wax, the eyes devoid of content, the voice deferential and without
