“I fixed coffee,” he said.
“Yeah, I smelled it.”
“Where are the cups?” he said.
She rubbed her forearm, her expression a mixture of indecision and frustration. “Clete, I don’t know how else to say this. You treated me with distrust and disdain. You hurt me deeply. And you did it after we made love. The word is ‘after.’ You made me feel dirty and cheap.”
“It wasn’t intentional. It just worked out that way.” He stared hopelessly at the ceiling. “What should I have done? Not tell you that somebody planted a gold pen with my name on it at a homicide scene?”
But she made no reply.
“Who’s Tookie?” he said.
She had to think a second to make the connection. “Where’d you hear about Tookie?”
“I just saw her name in your book.”
“Which book?”
“Your A.A. book. She wrote a note in there.”
Emma was frowning, obviously not understanding. He reached up on the shelf and opened the blue hardcover on his lap and turned to the title page. “See, she wrote-”
“Tookie Goula was my sponsor for a short time. She has jailhouse tats all over her arms. She used to hook in truck stops in the Upper South. Truckers call them ‘pavement princesses.’ Tookie looks more like the Beast of Buchenwald now. Or a reverse Beast of Buchenwald. A fat, lumpy lampshade with tats.”
Clete tried to assimilate what he had just heard. In the silence, Emma seemed to grow even more irritable. “Does that answer your question?” she asked.
“I guess. You play tennis? I saw the racquet in your car.”
“I hit a few balls on the wall at the park sometimes.”
“I’d like to take that up myself,” he said.
She began taking down cups and saucers from one of the kitchen cabinets. Then she stopped and turned around. “I’ve already moved on, Clete. I don’t hold what you did against you. But you need to find somebody else.”
“You’ve got another guy?”
“That’s my business.”
“Your friend Tookie, the one who gave you the book, you’d already read her inscription in there?”
“Yeah, she gave me the book. To tell you the truth, I think you should see a counselor. Or go to A.A. meetings or spend more time with Dave Robicheaux, because I think both of you have broken glass in your head.”
“I think you’re right.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’ve got some terrible character defects, the chief of which is I’m a rotten judge of people.”
“Say again?”
“Nope. I’m eighty-sixing myself from your house,” he replied, blowing out his breath.
He went outside and let the screen slam behind him. He walked toward his Caddy, across the lawn, past her car, glancing inside again at the tennis racquet and the can of balls. Clete knew little about the cost of tennis racquets, but the logo on the cover of this one indicated that it was probably expensive and not of a kind that a casual player would purchase, particularly one who lived on a parish deputy’s salary. He heard the screen door open behind him.
“Clete?” she said. She was standing on the gallery, her hands on her hips. “The coffee is ready. Come back in and have a cup. We’re still friends. I didn’t mean to talk so harshly.”
A smile wrinkled at the corner of her mouth. The wind blew a strand of hair on her cheek. She squared her shoulders slightly, tightening her breasts against her cowboy shirt. Clete folded his big arms across his chest and seemed to think for a long time, as though trying to recover a detail from his memory that was of enormous importance. “I dug your butterfly tattoo. The truth is, I dug you, too, Emma,” he said. “But when somebody lies to me, it’s like somebody spitting in the punch bowl. I find another watering hole.”
Then he got in his Caddy and drove away, clicking on a CD of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” full- blast.
HE CAME to my house early Saturday morning and said he wanted to go fishing, but I didn’t believe that was the reason for his visit. Clete’s external scars and his indifference to them belied the level of injury that he often carried inside him. Regardless of how badly he was treated by women, or how treacherous they turned out to be, he always blamed himself for the failed relationship. Even more paradoxically, he refused to speak ill of them under any circumstances and would not allow others to do so, either. Like most Irish, the pagan in him was alive and well, but he kept a pew in a medieval cathedral where the knight-errant genuflected in a cone of stained light, blood-soaked cloak or not.
“You think I just blew it, or maybe-” he said.
We were sitting in his Caddy, the top down, under the overhang of the trees on East Main. The morning was still cool, the sunrise barely visible through the canopy. “Maybe what?” I said.
“She’s dirty.”
“Dirty on what?”
“Everything. I started running the tape backward in my head. When I’m surveilling Carolyn Blanchet at the motel, Emma comes walking out of the lounge and sees me and says she’s waiting for her uncle. Except the uncle never shows up, and I end up getting loaded with her and in the sack with her later that night. Then my gold pen disappears and shows up in Stanga’s swimming pool. Then I see this expensive tennis racquet in her car and I start thinking about who else plays tennis. Like Carolyn Blanchet. Then Emma lies to me about seeing the inscription in the A.A. book. That book had never been opened. Then she tries to get me to come back in the house, maybe for some more high-octane boom-boom. I got to admit it was a temptation.” Clete rubbed the tops of his bare arms. “I feel like I’ve walked through cobwebs.”
“You’re trying to put yourself in the mind of a wet drunk.”
“I
“No, you’re not. You’re still an amateur.”
“Will you stop trying to make me feel better? Do you think I got taken over the hurdles or not?”
“Why would Emma Poche want to help somebody frame you for clipping Stanga?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You think she was at the motel to meet Carolyn Blanchet?”
“It occurred to me,” he replied. “But if she’s a lesbian or a switch-hitter, she had me fooled. When you take a ride with Emma Poche, there’s no eight-second buzzer.”
“Will you grow up? This woman is trying to ruin your life, and you talk about her like you’re seventeen years old.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Vidor Perkins came to my office.”
“Are you serious?”
“He says he’s writing a book. He says Timothy Abelard, Kermit’s grandfather, was involved in the drug trade with the Giacano family. He claims Timothy Abelard stiffed the Giacanos, and they had his son and the daughter- in-law wrapped in chains and dropped in sixty feet of water.”
“Abelard got his own kid killed?”
“That’s what Perkins says.”
“And he’s putting this in a book and telling you about it?”
“That’s about it.”
“Is he trying to extort the Abelards or get himself killed?”
“I think he genuinely believes he’s a great talent. He’s already contacted a literary agency and says he and Alafair are going to be colleagues.”
Clete rubbed his forehead. He’d had a haircut the day before and a good night’s sleep, and his face looked pink and youthful, his intelligent green eyes full of warmth and mirth, the way they were years ago when we walked a beat on Canal. “We’ve had a good run, haven’t we?” he said.
