“Why not?”
“Oh, Mr. Purcel, what can I say? You’re such a good man. You use profane language and have rough ways sometimes, but in your heart you’re always a gentleman. I’m proud to work for you.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m a gentleman. But thank you.”
“You were going to dictate a letter to the state attorney’s office yesterday. Can I come in there now and get that out of the way?”
“It can wait.”
“Let me come in there or call someone for you. Can I call Mr. Robicheaux?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Mr. Purcel, I know the signs. My husband died by his own hand. I apologize, but I’m going to call Mr. Robicheaux. It’s just something I have to do. Be mad at me all you want. Did you hear me, Mr. Purcel?”
He didn’t remember what he said next or even if he said anything. He remembered replacing the receiver in the phone cradle and easing the hammer down on the.38 and removing his finger from inside the trigger guard. Then the.38 was back in its holster, hanging below his left nipple and the top of his rib cage. He opened the door to the main office and made sure Hulga could see him. He smiled at her and put on his sport coat and his porkpie hat. He put on his aviator shades and tucked his shirt into his belt with his thumbs, his grin still in place, like a man on his way to the track or to buy a lady a bouquet. Then he went outside and started his Caddy and drove it down a brick alleyway onto Main Street, with no clue as to his destination, with a dead space like an ice cube in the center of his mind, with no solutions in sight, no mojo, no booze, no weed, to deal with the centipedes, his body dead to the touch except for an enormous weight that seemed to crush down on his shoulders like a cross that could have been fashioned from railroad ties.
Main Street was still partially in shadow, the steel colonnades beaded with moisture, the air smelling of flowers and coffee and hot rolls and the odor of fish spawning in the Teche. He saw a white Mustang convertible pull to the curb in front of the Gouguenheim bed-and-breakfast. The driver got out and stepped up on the sidewalk and dropped his cigarette on the concrete, exhaling his last puff into the breeze. He mashed the cigarette with his foot and fixed the collar on his pleated white shirt, one that was unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He wore black trousers and a gold watch with a black face. With his neatly clipped dark hair and clear skin, he reminded Clete of a Spanish matador who had started to go soft around the edges. Clete turned the Caddy out of the traffic and parked a short distance from the Mustang just as Robert Weingart, combing his hair as he walked, went inside the Gouguenheim.
Clete lounged against the front fender of his Caddy and watched the customers going in and out of Victor’s cafeteria, then a tug passing on the bayou, his gaze shifting sideways through the front door of the bed-and- breakfast, where Weingart was speaking with a woman at the registration desk. It was cool and breezy in the shadows, but Clete’s skin was hot, as though he had experienced a severe sunburn and the heat was radiating through his clothes. He could also feel a pressure band threading itself across the side of his head. When he adjusted his hat, hoping that somehow the pressure would go away, he felt the veins in his scalp tighten like pieces of kite twine.
The Gouguenheim was a restored nineteenth-century building with iron-scrolled balconies, tall windows, ventilated storm shutters, high ceilings, wood-bladed fans, glowing hardwood floors, and plaster walls painted with pastel colors that, along with the potted palms inside the entranceway, gave the visitor the sensation that he was stepping inside a historical artwork. The view in the morning from the balconies was not unlike looking out over the rooftops and canopy of trees in a Caribbean city at the end of the colonial era. Clete bit on a thumbnail and studied Robert Weingart’s back. Why did the Robert Weingarts of the world always manage to find and appropriate the last good places? Sometimes it took a while, but sooner or later they emerged from the weeds and slithered their way up the trunk of a tree heavy with fruit or, at the least, more prosaically, left fecal prints on everything they touched. Clete folded his arms across his chest, opening and closing his hands, breathing through his mouth, a sodden crescent of perspiration forming inside his porkpie hat. He straightened his back and lowered his hands to his sides when Weingart walked out from the building. “How’s your swizzle stick hanging, Bob?” he said.
“Patrolling the sidewalks today, are we?” Weingart said.
“That’s why I’m called the mayor of Main Street. You checking in to the Gouguenheim?”
“Not me. The agent who’ll probably be representing Mr. Robicheaux’s daughter will be staying there. Of course, you’re familiar with the William Morris Agency, aren’t you?”
“They sell insurance?”
“Oh, that’s very good. Would you like to join us for dinner? I understand you’re a wonderful raconteur. I’m sure everyone would be fascinated with the tales you could relate. Industrial espionage, CIA intrigue, that sort of thing.”
Clete folded his arms again and grinned and pushed his aviator shades up on the bridge of his nose with one finger. “I dig your wheels, Bob. You don’t mind if I call you Bob, do you?”
“It’s Robert. But call me whatever you wish.”
“No, you’re right. Bob is too commonplace. What about Roberto or Ro-bear, the way the French say it? No, that’s too foreign. How about the Bobster? Kind of like a name a welterweight might have. You duck, you weave, you bob, you’re slick as grease, you pop out their lights before they know what hit them. You’re the Bobster.”
“To be honest, Mr. Purcel, I don’t think you have many arrows in your quiver.”
“Remember that nineteen-year-old waitress at Ruby Tuesday you knocked up? The one you told to get an abortion? Did that Mustang fire up her hormones? I wish I could have a car like that and get my ashes hauled by teenage girls with ninth-grade educations. You couldn’t bum the price of a box of rubbers off her?”
“Just stay on your Jenny Craig diet and keep saying your morning prayers, and you can drive a car like mine. But that might produce conflict for you. I suspect you’re a nice soft hump for Mr. Robicheaux. I imagine in a time of AIDS, a few extra pounds can give comfort on a couple of levels.”
Clete stuck a cigarette in his mouth but did not light it. He scratched at a mosquito bite high up on his arm, examining the flesh around the bite while he did it. “Good try, bub, but I checked you out. Over in Huntsville, you were lots of things, but straight wasn’t one of them. The warden said you chugged pug for every swinging dick on the yard. That brings up a question I’ve always had. Is it true the Midnight Special originally meant a late-night freight train up the ass, maybe with a three-hundred-pound black guy driving the locomotive?”
“Funny man,” Weingart said. “But answer me this, Mr. Purcel. Alafair’s breakthrough in New York will probably come about because of her friendship with me and Kermit. How does it feel to be stuck in a place like this? Why is it she’s with us and not you?”
Clete watched silently as Weingart started his car and drove away. Then Clete got into his Caddy and followed him around the block and all the way down to the old brick post office and the plantation house known as The Shadows and finally back onto Main Street, where Weingart parked his vehicle and went into Lagniappe Too and sat down behind the picture-glass window and ordered breakfast.
I GOT THE call from Hulga Volkmann two minutes after I had picked up my mail and sat down behind my desk. “He told me not to call you, Mr. Robicheaux, but I’m doing it anyway, whether you or he like it or not,” she said. “He’s under great stress, and I think he’s not entirely rational. He’s also drinking too much. Now this Mr. Blanchet is calling. He’s not a nice man and Mr. Purcel does not need to put up with that kind of abusive behavior at a time like this.”
“Sorry, I’m not tracking the message here.”
“I think Mr. Purcel is having a nervous breakdown. Mr. Layton Blanchet just called and accused Mr. Purcel of violating his confidence and hurting his family. He also said some very unpleasant things of a personal nature to me. He told me to write all this down and to read it back to him and then give it to Mr. Purcel, as though voice mail had not been invented.”
“How does this relate to your concerns about Clete this morning?”
“I just told you, Mr. Robicheaux. Mr. Purcel left the office in his automobile and then parked down the street from where this convict author had parked his little white convertible.”
“No, you did not tell me about Robert Weingart. You were talking about Layton Blanchet.”
“I already dealt with Mr. Blanchet. If I quote what I said to him, I would be taking license with you and acting disrespectfully. My concern is Mr. Purcel.”
“What did you tell Blanchet, Miss Hulga?”
