“Yeah, that’s our plan,” Clete said.
“Come on, I know him. I went fishing with him and Lamont Woolsey. Lamont had so much protective clothing on, he looked like he was wearing a hazmat suit.”
“Woolsey is the guy with the latex skin?” Clete said.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” the man said. He looked at me and extended his hand. It was as hard and rough as brick. “I’m Bobby Joe Guidry.”
“How you doing, Bobby Joe?” I said.
“I was a drunkard for fifteen years. Up until I met Amidee six months ago. Not one drink since.”
“That’s great. My friend has met the reverend, but I haven’t. Can you introduce me?” I said.
Clete and I both shook hands with Broussard, but I don’t think he saw or heard either of us. He never stopped chewing his salad and never quite took his eyes off the Vietnamese waitress. Clete and I and Bobby Joe Guidry pulled up folding chairs to his table and sat down among a group of people who seemed to share no commonalities except their faith in Amidee Broussard, a man who knew the will of God and also what was best for their country.
“You’ve got a collection of the biggest SUVs I’ve ever seen,” Clete said. He’d already snagged another whiskey on the rocks, at least four fingers of it, drinking it in sips while he talked. “What kind of vehicle do you drive?”
“It’s a dandy, a Chevrolet Suburban. I can fit nine people in it,” Broussard said.
The Vietnamese waitress set a ketchup bottle and a bottle of steak sauce by Broussard’s plate. He patted her kindly on the forearm, looking up brightly at her. “Would you take this steak back? It’s still red in the middle.”
“Yes, sir. I sorry. I bring it back to you all cooked, Reverend Amidee,” she replied.
“That’s a good girl. You give that cook a good fussing-out while you’re at it,” he said. He continued to look at her as she walked away, but this time he did not let his eyes drop below her waist. “A beautiful girl.”
“You think we kicked enough raghead butt over there to keep the oil flowing?” Clete said.
Please don’t blow it, Clete, I thought.
“What was that about ragheads?” Broussard said.
“I was talking about the price of gas. That Suburban must get the mileage of a motor home packed with concrete,” Clete said.
I tried to interject myself into the conversation and stop Clete from wrecking our situation. “I think I know you,” I said to Lamont Woolsey. “You’re a friend of Varina Leboeuf.”
His eyes made me think of dark blue marbles floating in milk, his mouth duck-billed, his nose shiny with moisture, even though the night air was cool and getting cooler. I had never seen anyone with such strange coloration or with such a combination of peculiar features, nor had I ever seen anyone whose eyes were so deeply blue and yet devoid of moral light.
“Yes, I’m familiar with Ms. Leboeuf. I don’t recall seeing you while I was in her company,” he said. The accent was Carolinian or Tidewater, the vowels rounded, the R’s slightly bruised. That he’d chosen the word “familiar” to describe his relationship with a woman didn’t seem to bother him.
“I think she was on your boat, the one that has a sawfish painted on the bow,” I said.
His eyes fixed on mine, hard and so blue they were almost purple. “I don’t remember that.”
Take a chance, I heard a voice say. “Don’t you live on an island somewhere?”
“I did. I grew up in the Georgia Sea Islands.”
“You ever hear of a guy named Chad Patin? He took a shot at me.”
“Why would I know someone like that?” Woolsey said.
“This guy Patin was a couple of quarts down. He told me this crazy story about a medieval instrument called the iron maiden. He said it was on an island someplace. It works like a grape press. Except people are put inside it and not grapes.”
Woolsey’s head swiveled on his shoulders, as though he were surveying the crowd. His hands rested on the tablecloth, as round and pale as dough balls, his chest as puffed as a peacock’s. “Who are you?”
“Dave Robicheaux is the name. I’m a homicide detective in Iberia Parish.”
He fingered a gold cross that hung from his neck. His eyes came back to mine. “I think you and your friend have had too much to drink.”
“I don’t drink,” I replied.
He stretched his legs out before him, popping his knees, and smiled at me. “Maybe you should start. A snootful gives a fellow a wonderful excuse to say whatever is on his mind. He can apologize later and have it both ways.”
“I never thought of it like that. You’re not up to speed on iron maidens, huh?”
He scratched the back of his neck, then put on a pair of sunglasses that were tinted almost black. “No, I’ve met no maidens recently, iron or otherwise.”
“How about a kid named Blue Melton?”
“Sorry.”
“She was abducted on your boat.”
“The boat you’re describing is not mine, and I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Robicheaux.”
“How about that amphibian you were on? I’ve always wanted to take a ride on one of those.”
“This conversation is over,” he replied.
The Vietnamese girl set Broussard’s steak by his elbow, the meat so hot it was sizzling in its gravy. “The cook say he sorry and hope you like it,” she said.
“Later, I want you to take me in the kitchen so I can meet him,” Broussard said. “We don’t want him to leave here with hurt feelings.”
“That’s white of you,” Clete said.
“Your mockery is not appreciated, sir,” Broussard said. “I was trying to indicate to this little girl that I was only teasing when I told her to fuss at the cook.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. We need to do a lot more good deeds like that, particularly for the Vietnamese,” Clete said, crunching his ice, lifting his index finger for emphasis. “I saw some stuff in Vietnam that takes the cake. Throwing prisoners out of the slick, going into a ville at night and cutting a guy’s throat and painting his face yellow, you know, the kind of heavy shit the home folks don’t want to hear about. I knew this one door gunner who couldn’t wait to get back to a free-fire zone. Someone asked him how he killed all those women and children, and he said, ‘It’s easy. You just don’t lead them as much.’ You ever think about that kind of stuff while you’re tanking up at the pump?”
The conversation at the table went into slow motion and then died. Amidee raised his hand and gestured at the security personnel as though cupping air with his fingers.
“Eighty-sixing us, are you?” Clete said. “Tell you what, Rev, I’m going to check up on that Vietnamese girl, and if I find your fingerprints on her, you’re going to get large amounts of publicity that you don’t need.”
“There’s some misunderstanding. I think we need to talk this out,” Bobby Joe Guidry said.
“Don’t interfere,” Woolsey said.
“I thought we were all members of the church here. What’s going on?” Bobby Joe said, trying to smile.
“Get these two men out of here,” Woolsey said to the three security men who had arrived at the table.
I stood up and heard Clete getting out of his chair beside me, knocking against the table, shaking the glasses on it. I did not have to look at him to know what he was thinking or planning. The three security men had concentrated their attention entirely on Clete and were not looking at me at all. “We’re leaving,” I said to Woolsey and Broussard. “But you guys are going to see a lot more of us. Both of you have shit on your noses. I saw Blue Melton’s body after it was defrosted and taken apart by the coroner. How do you do something like that to a seventeen-year-old girl and live with yourself?”
It was an odd moment, one that I didn’t expect. Neither man looked at me, and neither spoke. They seemed to have folded into themselves like accordion cutouts made of cardboard. Clete and I walked toward the Caddy, the wind rustling the tree limbs. I heard feet crunching on the leaves behind me and assumed the security men had decided to score some points with either Broussard or us by escorting us to our vehicle. When I turned around, I was looking into the face of Bobby Joe Guidry. “I don’t like what happened back there,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” Clete said.
“Y’all seem like good guys. They shouldn’t have treated y’all like that. I was a radio operator in Desert Storm.
