Maybe because of his visceral hatred of Robert Weingart, or his conviction that Timothy Abelard trailed the vapors of the crypt from his wheelchair, Clete decided to take a ride down to the Abelard compound on the southern rim of St. Mary Parish. It was a fine day for it, he told himself. The rain had quit; the clouds were soft and white against a blue sky; the oaks along Bayou Teche looked washed and thick with new leaves. What was there to lose? His gold pen had been stolen from him and used to set him up for the killing of Herman Stanga. He still had resisting-arrest charges against him because of his flight from the St. Martin cops the night he busted up Herman Stanga behind the Gate Mouth club. His best friend had almost been clipped in that gig down by the river in Jeff Davis Parish, then had been dissed by the local cops. In the meantime, Clete had watched a pattern that seemed to characterize his experience in law enforcement for over three decades: The puppeteers got blow jobs while their throwaway minions stacked time or got their wicks snuffed.
He put down the top on his Caddy, made a stop at a convenience store for a six-pack of Bud and a grease- stained bag of white boudin still warm from the microwave, and motored on down the road, Jerry Lee Lewis blaring “Me and Bobby McGee” from the stereo.
Outside Franklin, he drove south on the two-lane through a corridor of gum and hackberry trees and slash pines that grew along the edge of flooded sawgrass and expanses of saltwater intrusion where the grass had turned the color of urine. As he neared the Abelard compound, he saw a pickup truck backed into a cleared area that contained a cast-iron Dumpster. The top of the Dumpster was open, and a large black woman wearing rubber boots was standing in the truck bed, hefting a series of plastic garbage bags and flinging them into the Dumpster.
Abelard’s nurse, he thought. What was her name? Had Dave said she was Abelard’s out-of-wedlock daughter? A white man was sitting in the cab of the truck reading a sports magazine, his door open to catch the breeze.
Clete turned in to the clearing, cut the engine, and set his can of Bud on the floor. “Need a hand with that?” he said.
The black woman paused in her work, studying Clete, trying to place him. “No, suh, we got it,” she said. She flung a heavy sack with both hands into the Dumpster.
Clete got out of the Caddy and removed his shades and stuck them in his shirt pocket. His shoes were shined, his golf slacks ironed with sharp creases, his flowery sport shirt still crisp from the box. “It’s Miss Jewel, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, suh. You came out for lunch one day with Mr. Robicheaux.”
Clete glanced at the white man behind the wheel. His hair was peroxided and clipped short, the sideburns long and as exact as a ruler’s edge, his jaw square. He never lifted his eyes from the magazine. Clete picked up two large vinyl bags and walked them to the Dumpster and tossed them inside.
“I got the rest of them, suh. It’s not any trouble,” Jewel said.
Clete nodded and put an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth and gazed across the road at the wood bridge that led to the Abelard compound. A blue heron was rising from the lily pads that grew in the water by the bridge, the edges of its wings rippling in the wind. “Got a match?” he said to the man behind the steering wheel.
“Don’t smoke,” the man said, not looking up.
“Got a lighter in there?”
“It doesn’t work.”
Clete nodded again. “Have I seen you somewhere?”
This time the man held Clete’s gaze. “I couldn’t say.” He sucked on a mint. His eyes were of a kind that Clete had seen before, sometimes in his dreams, sometimes in memory. They didn’t blink; they didn’t probe; they contained no curiosity about the external world. They made Clete think of cinders that had been consumed by their own heat.
“You a military man?” Clete asked.
“No.”
“But you were in, right?”
“Ruptured disk.”
Clete pulled his unlit cigarette from his mouth and held it up like an exclamation point. “I got it. That’s why you couldn’t help Miss Jewel out.”
The man dropped his eyes to the magazine, then seemed to give it up, as though his few minutes of retreat from the distractions of the world had been irreparably damaged. He closed the door and started the engine, his mouth working on the mint while he waited for the black woman to get in.
“You know where I think I’ve seen you?” Clete said.
“Couldn’t even guess.”
“I was looking through some binoculars. You were in a field down by a river in Jeff Davis Parish. It was raining. Ring any bells? Some heavy shit went down. Maybe a couple of your friends got their lasagna slung all over the bushes. I never forget a face.”
“Sorry, I’m from Florida. I think you’re confused.”
“It wasn’t you? I would swear it was. You guys know how to kick ass. It was impressive.”
“Watch your foot.”
Clete stepped back as the man cut the wheel and turned in a circle, opening the passenger door for the black woman. Clete pointed his finger at the driver. “Airborne, I bet. That’s how you got that ruptured disk. You’re doing scut work for the Abelards and Robert Weingart now? That must be like drinking out of a spittoon. I bet you’ve got some stories to tell.”
As the truck crossed the two-lane and turned onto the wood bridge that spanned the moat around the Abelard house, Clete memorized the tag and dialed a number on his cell phone. Then he lost service and had to punch in the number a second time. The call went into voice mail. “Dave, it’s Clete. I’m outside the Abelard place. I need you to run a Florida tag. It belongs to a real piece of work, maybe one of the shitbags from the gig on the river. I tried to rattle him but didn’t have any luck.” He closed his eyes and said the tag number into the cell. “Get back to me, noble mon. Out.”
Clete rumbled across the bridge and up the knoll that formed the island on which Timothy Abelard’s columned manor stood like an abandoned shell from a movie set. The pickup truck driven by the man from Florida was parked by the carriage house, but no one was in sight. When Clete knocked on the door, he could hear no one inside. “Hello?” he called out. No response.
He walked around the side of the house, past a chicken coop and an ancient brick cistern that was veined with dead vines. In the backyard the black woman was hoeing in a vegetable garden, a sunbonnet tied under her chin, her big arms flexing as she notched weeds out of the rows planted with carrots and radishes. Clete did not speak when he walked up behind her, though he had no doubt she was aware of his presence. He took off his hat and studied the refracted glare of the sun inside the flooded cypress snags between the house and the bay. “Mr. Abelard home?” he said.
The woman kept her eyes on her work, a line of sweat sliding out of her bonnet onto her forehead. “No, suh.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone to Lafayette for his dialysis.”
“As his nurse, wouldn’t you normally go along with him?”
“I got chores to do here.”
“Is Kermit or Robert Weingart around?”
“No, suh, they’re in New Orleans for the day.”
“What’s the deal on our peroxided friend from Florida, Miss Jewel?”
Locks of her hair hung outside her bonnet. They were threaded with silver, damp with her work and the humidity that seemed to rise from the composted soil and the dead water surrounding the knoll. Her hoe was rising and falling faster, thudding into the ground, flashing in the sun. “Your name is Mr. Clete, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Clete said.
“You need to leave, suh. It’s not a good time for you to be here.”
“You in trouble, Miss Jewel?”
“No, suh. I been here all my life. I was born in the quarters, back up the road where the old mill use to be. I just do my job. I go my own way. Nothing bad is gonna happen to me.”
“Who’s the dude from Florida?”
