The shorter version was Clete had empowered Ozone Eddy and his girlfriend to torture a man in Clete’s name. Now he was operating a jitney service for the man who had put a hit on him and his best friend. How bad could one guy screw up?
He looked at his passenger in the rearview mirror. “What do you get out of all this, Mr. Woolsey?”
“Enormous sums of money. Want some?”
“You connected to the oil spill?”
“Not me. I’m an export-import man. One of our biggest clients is Vietnam. Some people say it’s the next China. Want to get in on it?”
“I already did. Two tours.”
“Shooting gook and dreaming of nook? Boys will be boys and all that? I bet y’all had some fun.”
“Take a nap. I’ll tell you when you’re home,” Clete said.
“Touch a nerve?”
“Not a chance,” Clete said.
He turned off I-10 and drove up St. Charles Avenue into the Garden District and pulled into Lamont Woolsey’s driveway. Woolsey’s SUV still rested lopsidedly on one of the back rims. The light was burning on the elevated gallery. An Asian girl in a print sundress was standing under it.
“There’s our loyal Maelee,” Woolsey said.
“What’d you say?” Clete asked.
“My sweet young Vietnamese girl. They’re a loyal bunch. And Maelee is as lovely and fragrant as they come.”
“Her name is Maelee?”
“That’s what I said. Do you know her?”
Clete didn’t answer. For a moment he saw a young woman swimming next to a sampan on the edge of the China Sea, her face dipping into a wave.
But the person on the gallery was not a woman. She was a girl, her bare shoulders brown and warm-looking in the light, the flowers on her dress as vibrant as flowers in a tropical garden.
“Is that you, Mr. Lamont?” the girl said. “I was worried. You were gone so long without telling me.”
“See, they’re loyal,” Woolsey said. “The French taught them manners.”
“Why don’t you show some appreciation and answer her?”
“Unlock my handcuffs.”
“I’ve seen her before,” Clete said. “She was the one who waited on Amidee Broussard after his speech at the Cajundome in Lafayette. He sent his steak back.”
“Correct-o. You must have had your eye on her.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“Amidee knew I needed a maid and drove her over. I’ve given her the cottage in back. She seems quite happy with her new situation. Something wrong?”
Clete pulled back the seat in the Caddy and fitted the handcuff key into the lock on Woolsey’s wrist. He could smell onions on Woolsey’s breath and the dried talcum around his armpits. He stepped back while Woolsey got out of the car. Woolsey’s lips looked purple in the gloom, his eyes dancing with light.
“Yeah, there is something wrong,” Clete said. “Neither of you guys has any business around a young girl like that.”
“What’s really bothering you, Mr. Purcel? You still dream about the little flower girls? It’s no fun keeping one’s wick dry, is it? You said you knew a woman named Maelee. She was Vietnamese?”
“She was Eurasian.”
“A taste of two worlds in one package? Yum-yum.”
The crow’s-feet at the corners of Clete’s eyes had gone flat, but his eyes remained placid and bright green and showed no emotion. “I know a couple of Quaker ladies who work with refugees. They’ll be here tomorrow to talk with the girl and take her somewhere else if she wants to go.”
“What is it you’re really after, Mr. Purcel? Your history with women is well known. You can’t keep your eyes off Maelee, can you? Would you like to go in the cottage with her? She won’t mind. She was very accommodating with Amidee. Last night I tried her myself. I highly recommend her.”
“I think we’re square on the damage Ozone Eddy and his girlfriend did to your face,” Clete said. “That means we’re starting with a clean slate. Is that okay with you?”
“Whatever you say. I’m going to go inside now and have a shower and a hot dinner. Then I’m going to bed down Maelee. I’ve earned that, and she knows it. We’re a colonial empire, Mr. Purcel, although you don’t seem to know that. Everyone benefits. The dominant nation takes the things it needs. Our subjects are only too happy to receive what we give them. It’s win-win for everyone.”
“A fresh slate also means all bets are off. For you, that’s not good, Mr. Woolsey,” Clete said.
“Time for you to be gone. Unless I missed something. Are you thinking of sloppy seconds?”
Clete huffed an obstruction out of his nostrils and brushed at his nose with the back of his wrist. “I didn’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“I mean in front of the girl I didn’t want to do it. I feel bad about that. She probably feels sorry for you and doesn’t understand that you’re a piece of shit out of choice, not because your mother thought she’d given birth to a sack of Martha White’s self-rising flour. By the way, I want my shirt back.” He paused. “Look, my real problem is I can’t get anyone over here tonight to look in on the girl, so that means we have to work things out right now, here, in your driveway. Are you hearing me? I said take off my shirt. Don’t make me ask you again. I’m sorry I sicced Ozone Eddy and his broad on you. Nobody deserves that, not even you. We’re straight on that, right? I’m glad we have that out of the way. Now give me back my threads. That’s not up for debate. You’re starting to upset me, Mr. Woolsey.”
“You’re a ridiculous man.”
“I know,” Clete said. “What’s a fellow going to do?”
Clete put his entire shoulder into his punch and sent Woolsey crashing into the side of his SUV. He thought it was over and hesitated and eased up when he swung again. But his estimation of Woolsey was wrong. Woolsey righted himself and slipped the second blow and caught Clete squarely on the jaw, snapping his head sideways. Then he hooked his arm behind Clete’s neck and drove his fist into Clete’s rib cage and heart again and again, his phallus pressed against Clete’s thigh, his smell rising into Clete’s face. “How do you like it, laddie? How does it feel to have your ass kicked by a freak?” he said.
Clete brought his knee up into Woolsey’s groin and saw the man’s mouth open like that of a fish slammed on a hard surface. Clete hit him in the side of the head and managed to hook him once in the eye, but Woolsey wouldn’t go down. He lowered his head, turning his left shoulder forward as a classic open-style fighter would. He slammed his fist into Clete’s heart, then hit him in the same spot a second time, and glazed Clete’s head with a blow that almost tore his ear loose.
Clete stepped back and set himself, crouching slightly, raising his left hand to absorb Woolsey’s next punch, then drove his fist straight into Woolsey’s mouth. Woolsey’s head hit the SUV, and he went down as though his ankles had been kicked from under him.
But the engines that drove the rage and violence living inside Clete Purcel were not easily turned off. Like all of his addictions-weed and pills and booze and gambling and Cadillac convertibles and fried food and rock and roll and Dixieland music and women who moaned under his weight as though it only added to their pleasure-bloodlust and the wild release of confronting the monsters that waited for him nightly in his dreams were a drug that he could never have too much of.
He stomped Woolsey in the head, then grabbed the outside mirror and the roof of the SUV for support and brought the flat of his shoe down on Woolsey’s face, over and over, hammering Woolsey’s head into the door, reshaping his nose and mouth and eyes, whipping strings of blood across the side of the SUV. At that moment Clete genuinely believed that a helicopter was hovering immediately overhead, flattening all the flowers and banana fronds and elephant ears and caladiums and windmill palms that grew in Woolsey’s yard.
Then the flame that had consumed him shrank into a bright red dot in the center of his mind and died. For just a moment he saw nothing but darkness around him. The thropping sounds of the helicopter blades rose into the sky and disappeared. He felt a sharp pain in his chest, like a shard of glass working its way through the tissue
