don’t get near the Vietnamese girl again, right, Bob?” Clete said. “You lock a stainless-steel codpiece on your flopper, and you leave young girls in this parish alone. Nod if you understand. No? Okay, let’s tidy up a little more.”
Clete drove Weingart’s head into the bowl again, this time pressing it down with both arms, the water heaving over the sides onto the floor, Weingart’s legs thrashing. Ten seconds passed, then twenty, then thirty. The water kept curtaining over the toilet rim, an inch backing up against the walls, Clete’s loafers squishing in it.
Clete ripped Weingart’s head into the air just as I came through the door. “Hey, Streak, what’s the haps?” Clete said. “I was just talking to Bob about the advantages of personal restraint. I think he was just coming around to our perspective on that. Can you hand me a couple of paper towels?”
CHAPTER 10
I PUT DOWN THE lid on the toilet and picked up Robert Weingart and set him on top of it. One of the Brillo pads had already fallen from his mouth; I lifted the second one gently from behind his teeth and dropped it in the wastebasket, then wiped his face with a handful of crumpled paper towels and placed a couple of dry towels in his hand. “Tilt your head back,” I said.
He raised his eyes to mine, then cleared his throat and spat into one of the towels. “You saw what he did,” he said.
“No, I’m not sure what happened here,” I replied. “It looks like a personal dispute that got out of control, maybe.”
Weingart propped his hands on his knees, his gaze still fastened on me, his pupils dilated. He resembled a man who had looked into a great darkness and could not readjust to light. “He almost drowned me.”
“If you like, you can file charges, Mr. Weingart,” I said. “I’ll contact the police reporter at
“What do you say, Bobster? Don’t just sit there picking steel wool off your tongue. Show a little respect,” Clete said, slapping him on the side of the head.
“Mr. Purcel, I want you to wait outside on the curb,” I said.
Clete gave me a look.
Clete pulled the polyethylene gloves off his hands and threw them in the waste can. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and blew the smoke in Weingart’s face. “The Abelard family isn’t going to be able to help you. In my opinion, every guy like you I take off the board is a star in my crown. Know that expression about the shit hitting the fan? Your journey through the fan just started. You mentioned Sally Dio. Use your LexisNexis to find out what happened to Sal and his fellow gumballs and the plane they were flying on in western Montana. You ever see pulled pork raked out of a ponderosa tree?”
I wanted to punch Clete in the side of the head.
Ten minutes later we were outside on the sidewalk, Clete with his boxed-up breakfast tucked under his arm, a fresh unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. I pulled it out and threw it in the street. “How much trouble can you get into in one day?” I asked.
“Who told you I was here?”
“Who cares? It doesn’t matter where you go. Five minutes after you arrive, plaster is falling out of the ceiling. You’re like a train trying to drive down a dirt road.”
“Weingart deserves a lot worse than he got.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
We were in the shadow of the building. People were passing us on the sidewalk, glancing away when they heard the tenor of our voices. “I got to go,” he said.
“Where?”
“To check on a lady I was with.”
“You mean last night?”
“Maybe.”
“Who was she?”
“Her name escapes me.”
“You were still drunk this morning. Weingart could have died of a coronary. How long was his head under water?”
“Her name is Emma Poche,” he said. “I got it on with her.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“What’s wrong with Emma?”
“Do I have to tell you? You’re not interested in any woman who doesn’t have biker tats or a history at the methadone clinic.”
“She has a butterfly on her butt. That’s the only one. I think it’s cute.”
“Cute?” I repeated.
“Lighten up, Streak. It’s only rock and roll.” His eyes were still lit with an alcoholic glaze, his throat nicked in two places by his razor, his cheeks bladed with color.
I gave it up, in the way you give up something with such an enormous sense of sadness rushing through you that it leaves no room for any other emotion. “What are we going to do, Cletus?”
“About what?”
“You.”
“We all end up in the same place. Some sooner than others. What the hell. We’re both standing on third base,” he said.
I wanted to say something else, but I couldn’t find the words. I left him there and walked down the street and got in my cruiser and returned to the office, an image in my mind I couldn’t shake: that of a flag being lifted from a coffin and folded into a military tuck by a white-gloved, full-dress marine, his scalped head and hollow eyes as stark as bone. Would Clete Purcel’s life focus into that one bright brassy point of light and then disappear with the firing of blank cartridges into the wind? Was this ultimately the choice we had made for both of us?
KERMIT ABELARD and Robert Weingart and Kermit’s agent, Oliver Fremont, picked up Alafair in a white stretch limo, and all of them headed up the St. Martinville highway toward Breaux Bridge and the Cafe des Amis. Alafair wore a simple black dress and black sandals and silver earrings, and sat on the rolled leather seat close to the door, while Kermit poured drinks out of a cocktail shaker. Oliver Fremont had a degree in publishing from Hofstra University yet spoke with an accent that was vaguely British. He was blond and tall and handsome, and he had perfect manners, but it was his accent, or rather his candor about it, that became for Alafair his most engaging quality.
“Did you live in England?” she asked.
“I’ve traveled there some, but no, I never lived there,” he replied.
“I see,” she said.
“You’re wondering about my accent?”
“I thought you might have gone to school in the UK.”
“It’s an affectation, I’m afraid. When the upper echelons in publishing have a few drinks, they start sounding like George Plimpton or William and James Buckley. My father sold shoes in Great Neck. He’d be a little amused by me, I think.”
Alafair looked at his profile and the evening light marbling on his skin. He gazed out the tinted window at the oak trees and the sugarcane fields sweeping past. “This is a grand area, isn’t it? I can see why you write with such
