Clete had never seen Herman Stanga but had heard him described and had no difficulty singling him out. Stanga was sitting with a woman in the shadows, at a table under a live oak that was not wrapped with lights. Both ends of the tabletop were covered with burning candles, guttering deep inside their votive containers. The woman was over thirty, heavy in the shoulders and arms, her blouse and dress those of a countrywoman rather than a regular at a juke.
Stanga tapped a small amount of white powder from a vial on the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, then held it up to the woman’s nose. She bent forward, closing one nostril, and sniffed it up as quickly as an anteater, her face lighting with the rush.
Clete walked closer, the tree trunk between him and Stanga and Stanga’s female friend. A puff of wind off the bayou swelled the tree’s canopy, rustling the Spanish moss, spinning leaves down on the tabletop and the shoulders of the two figures sitting there. Clete could hear Stanga talking with the kind of hypnotic staccato one would associate with a 1940s scat singer:
“See, baby, you ain’t no cleaning girl I brung up from the quarters in Loreauville. You’re a mature woman done been around and know how the world work. Ain’t nobody, ain’t no
The woman’s eyes, which had seemed sleepy and amused by Stanga’s monologue, wandered off his face to a presence that was now standing behind him. Stanga twisted his head around, the light from the candles flickering on his face, his tiny black mustache flattening under his nostrils. He laughed. “The American Legion hall is down the road,” he said.
“A couple of your girls stiffed Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine for their bail,” Clete said. “I thought you might want to do a righteous deed and direct me to their whereabouts.”
“Number one, I ain’t got no ‘girls.’ Number two, I ain’t no human Google service. Number t’ree-”
“Yeah, I got it.” Clete removed his cell phone from his trouser pocket and opened it with his thumb. He looked at the screen as though waiting for it to come into focus. “A state narc friend of mine is sitting out front in my Caddy. He’s off the clock right now, but for you he might make an exception. You want to take a walk down to the bayou with me or run your mouth some more?”
“Look, I ain’t give you no trouble. I was talking to my lady friend here and-”
Clete pushed the send button on his phone.
“All right, man, I ain’t in this world to argue. I’ll be right back, baby. Order up something nice for us both,” Stanga said.
Clete walked down the slope, ahead of Stanga, seemingly unconcerned with the matter at hand, glancing up at the stars and across the bayou at the lighted houses on the opposite slope. The drawbridge was open upstream, and a tugboat, its deck and cabin lights blazing, was pushing a huge barge past the bridge’s pilings. Clete stared at the shallows and at the bream night-feeding among the lily pads. He watched the gyrations of a needle-nosed garfish that was maneuvering itself on the perimeter of the bream that had schooled up underneath the lilies. He did all these things with the detachment of a resigned, world-weary man who offered little threat to anyone.
“So what this is, man, them two Jews in New Orleans cain’t run their bidness wit’out siccing you on me?” Stanga said to Clete’s back.
But Clete didn’t reply. He adjusted his porkpie hat on his brow and stared at the dark green dorsal fins of the bream rolling in the water, the carpet of lily pads undulating from their movements.
“Hey, you just turn deaf and dumb or something? I been nice, but I got a short fuse with crackers who t’ink they can wipe their ass on other people’s furniture. I ain’t intimidated by your size, either, man. Have your say or call your narc friend, but you quit fucking wit’ me.”
“I identified one of the dead girls in Jeff Davis Parish,” Clete said. “The guy who did her broke bones all over her body. Was she one of yours, Herman? How many girls do you have on the stroll over in Jeff Davis?”
Stanga snapped his fingers. “RoboCop sent you, didn’t he? You got an office up on Main in New Iberia. You’re RoboCop’s windup for the jobs he cain’t do hisself or he’s already fucked up. Let me line it out for you, man. I ain’t involved no more in certain kinds of enterprises. I don’t know what you t’ink you heard me say to that lady back there, but I’m totally into new kinds of endeavors… Are you listening to me? I don’t like talking to somebody’s back.”
Clete turned around slowly. “I’m all ears.”
“What you heard me talking about is the St. Jude Project. It’s an outreach program to he’p people nobody else cares about. That’s what I’m doing these days, not pimping off people, not committing no homicides or whatever it is you t’ink I’m doing. Are you hearing me loud and clear on this?”
“St. Jude, the patron of the hopeless?”
“Hey, big breakt’rew. Let your brain keep doing those push-ups, you getting there, man. We done here?”
“No. You signed the paperwork on two of my bail skips. So under the the law, you’re my collateral. Turn around and place your hands on the tree trunk.”
Stanga shook his head in exasperation, the pixielike quality gone from his face, his expression almost genuine, devoid of guile or theatrics. “You making a big fool out of yourself, man. Busting me ain’t gonna he’p no dead girls, ain’t gonna get no money back for them Jews, ain’t gonna make you look better in front of all these people. Grow up. I don’t sell nothing to nobody they don’t want. How you t’ink I stayed in bidness all these years? ’Cause I was selling stuff people didn’t have no use for?”
“Turn around.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyt’ing you want, man. Big pile of white whale shit go in a black man’s club and blow his nose on people, bust some cat with recreational flake, make the world safe, and maybe get your fat ass on
“You better shut your mouth.”
“Gets to you, don’t it? Well, that’s the way it ought to be. If you didn’t have people like me around, you’d be on welfare. Look around you, man. Are all these people worried about me, or are they worried about you? Who brings the grief into their lives? Go ax them. There wasn’t no problem here till you come out that back door.”
Clete turned Stanga around and pushed him against the tree, trying to suppress the dangerous urge that had bloomed in his chest. When Stanga turned to face him again, Clete stiff-armed him between the shoulders. Then he kicked Stanga’s feet apart and started patting him down, his face expressionless, trying to ignore the attention he was drawing from up the slope.
“What we’re talking about here is hypocrisy, man,” Stanga said over his shoulder. “I can smell weed on your clothes and cooze on your skin. Tell me you ain’t had your dick in a black woman. Tell me you ain’t been on a pad for them New Orleans dagos. You cain’t see past your stomach to tie your shoes, but you t’ink a mail-order badge give you the right to knock around people ain’t got no choice except to take it. I wouldn’t let you clean my toilet, man, I wouldn’t let you pick up the dog shit on my lawn.”
Clete’s right hand trembled as he pulled his handcuffs free from behind his back.
“Take out your cell-phone cameras,” Stanga called to the crowd that was gathering up the slope. “Check out what this guy is doing. Y’all seen it. I ain’t done nothing.”
“Shut up,” Clete said.
“Fuck you, man. I was in an adult prison when I was fifteen years old. Anyt’ing you can do to me has already been done, magnified by ten.”
Then Herman Stanga, his wrists still uncuffed, turned and spat full in Clete’s face.
Later, Clete would not be exactly sure what he did next. He would remember a string of spittle clinging to his face and hair. He would remember Herman Stanga’s fingers reaching for his eyes; he would remember the sour surge of whiskey and beer into his mouth and nose. He would remember grabbing Stanga from the back, lifting him high in the air, and smashing him into the tree trunk. He knew he fitted his hand around the back of Stanga’s neck and he knew he drove Stanga’s face into the bark of the tree. Those things were predictable and not
