story. Clete flipped it open, exposing the headline. “That’s too bad, isn’t it?” he said to change the subject and end the conversation.
“What is?” Layton asked.
“Another young girl killed and dumped on a country road.”
“It’s going to continue till we get to the root of the problem.”
“Pardon?” Clete said.
“Welfare, illegitimacy, people with their hand out. That’s where it all starts. They’ve got their boy in the White House now. They’ll be lining up for every dollar they can stuff in their pockets. Most of them would strangle on their own spit if you didn’t swab out their throats for them.”
Clete kept his face empty. “I’ll give you a call when I have some information for you, Mr. Blanchet,” he said.
“It’s Layton.”
HELEN SOILEAU HAD told me to bring in Herman Stanga and put him in the box. But Herman was an elusive quarry. He was not at his house, nor down on Hopkins or Railroad Avenue in New Iberia’s old red-light district. I called the Gate Mouth club in St. Martinville, the place where Clete Purcel had broken open Herman Stanga’s head against an oak tree. The man who answered the phone said, “You got the Gate Mout’. What you need?”
“Is Herman there?” I said.
“Who wants to know?”
I hung up without replying and called my fellow A.A. member Emma Poche at the St. Martinville Sheriff’s Department and asked her to sit on the club till I got there.
“Maybe this is providential,” she said. “I was thinking of calling you today.”
“About what?”
“Some twelve-step stuff.”
“You ought to take that up with your sponsor.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Don’t let Stanga go anywhere. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“You got a warrant?”
“He’s not under arrest. We just need a little information from him.”
“Sounds believable to me. Herman Stanga, friend of the court. Glad to hear about that,” she replied.
I checked out an unmarked car and drove into St. Martinville’s black district and pulled in behind Emma’s cruiser, which was parked two doors down from the Gate Mouth club. She was sitting behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette, the driver’s window half down. She was wearing shades and looked thoughtful and pretty with her hat pushed back on her head. Her cheeks were pooled with color, the sunlight catching in her gold hair. I got in her vehicle and choked on the smoke. “Stanga is still inside?” I said.
“Unless he grew wings. You got a minute?” she said.
“Sheriff Soileau is waiting on me.”
“I’ve got a situation on my conscience. I don’t want to drink over it. It goes beyond even that. I’m desperate, Dave.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, either. “You should be talking to a female sponsor. The two operative words there are ‘female’ and ‘sponsor.’”
“My sponsor is in jail. Guess what for. Driving under the influence. Top that.” She threw her cigarette into the street and rolled down the windows and turned on the air conditioner full blast. The sidewalk was empty, the front door of the club within easy view.
“I’ll try to help if I can,” I said.
“I’ve been seeing somebody. We had a relationship a long time ago, then we bumped into each other during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We found out we were both going to the same party in the Quarter later, and we got pretty drunk and woke up at one in the afternoon the next day at the St. Charles Guest House. I’ve had bad hangovers, but never one that bad.”
“Have you been to a meeting since?”
“Yeah, I went to a couple.” She twisted her mouth into a button.
“Did you own up to a slip?”
“Not really.”
“You haven’t owned up to anyone?”
“That’s what I’m doing now, right?”
I was beginning to feel I had been played. “I don’t think you’re going to get any peace on this until you come clean at a meeting, Emma.”
“Last week my long-lost lover told me it was over. This was the same person who told me I smelled like the Caribbean and that my climaxes were like strings of wet firecrackers. I have to make some choices, Dave.”
“I don’t think we need all this clinical detail. Look, every guy who cheats on his wife tells his girlfriend his marriage is over, his girlfriend is the best human being he’s ever met, that she has nothing to do with the breakup of his marriage, that she’s beautiful and spiritual and loving and she has no reason to feel guilty about anything. He also indicates he’s not sleeping with his wife. He usually says these things right up to the time he dumps his new pump of the week.”
Emma removed her shades and stared into the glare on the street. A drunk black man had stumbled off the sidewalk and was trying to cross through the traffic while cars blew their horns at him. Emma brushed at her nose. “Get Stanga out of the club and I’ll take care of the bowling pin out there.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Sometimes we lose. It’s nobody’s fault, not yours, not the other person’s. You just have to let it slide and say the short version of the Serenity Prayer. Sometimes you just have to say ‘fuck it.’”
“You like being used, Dave? Did anyone ever screw you until your eyes crossed and you woke up in the morning aching for them to do it again? Then one day in a public place, the same person tells you that you deserve someone much better than them, and you know the person has told you this in public so you can’t cry or break things or throw a drink in their face? When that happened to you, did you just say ‘Fuck it, sports fans, I think I’ll just go hit some tennis balls and go to a meeting’?”
I opened the door of the cruiser and got out on the sidewalk. The drunk black man had made it safely to the other side of the street. “I’m going to try to talk Stanga out of the club. If he gives me trouble, I want you there as a witness,” I said. “If you can’t do that for me, I need to call for backup. Tell me what you want to do, Emma.”
She got out of the cruiser and slipped her baton through the ring on her belt. She removed her shades from her shirt pocket and put them back on. Her face looked hot and glazed. Her mouth was a tight line before she spoke. “I forgot you belong to that great fraternity of all-knowing A.A. swinging dicks. If I forget again, remind me,” she said.
We found Herman Stanga at the back of the bar, where he was sipping from a demitasse of coffee, a tiny spoon and a single sugar cube on his saucer, his thin mustache winking with each sip. A big dressing was taped over the split Clete had put in his forehead, but otherwise he looked surprisingly well. “Hey, what is it, Robo?” he said. “Give my man a seltzer and ice and a lime slice, and wash out the glass good so it don’t have no alcohol in it. You ain’t got the Elephant Man out there, have you?”
“My boss wants to talk to you,” I said.
“The champ of the Muff Diver ’69 Olympics? How she been doing?”
“I wouldn’t get on her wrong side.”
“Man, I ain’t getting on no side of that broad,” he said. He looked at the bartender and laughed.
“Want to take a ride with me or sit in the cooler in St. Martinville while we work out legalities?”
Then he surprised me again. “Anyt’ing to he’p. You hear about my suit against that fat cracker? I’m gonna take both of his bidnesses, the apartment he owns in New Orleans, his car, his life insurance policy, his savings account, his guns, his furniture, and the waterfront lot in Biloxi he’s making payments on in his ex-wife’s name. When I get finished wit’ him, he’s gonna have a toot’brush and, if he’s lucky, the tube of toot’paste that goes wit’ it.”
“You’re the man, Herman,” I said.
