'I've tried to be polite,' he said. 'You're from out of town, you had some questions, I tried to answer them. You think maybe you're abusing the situation here?'
'I came here to pass on a couple of observations, Joey. When you try to get a cop on a pad and you don't know anything about him, get somebody to lend him money, don't leave it in his mailbox.'
'What are you talking about?'
'The two thousand is in the Iberia Parish sheriff's desk drawer. At the end of the year it'll probably be donated to the city park program.'
He was grinning again.
'You're saying I tried to bribe you? You drove all the way over here to tell me somebody's two thou is wasted on you? That's the big message?'
'Read it like you want.'
'It's been a lot of fun talking to you. Hey, I didn't tell you I own a couple of goony golf courses. You like goony golf? It's catching on here in New Orleans. Hey, Louis, give him a couple of tickets.'
The man with the cigar and green visor was grinning broadly, nodding his head up and down. He took a thick pack of tickets from his shirt pocket, popped two out from under the rubber band, and placed them on the desk in front of me.
Joey Gouza made a pyramid out of his hands and tapped the end of his fingers together.
'I heard you were an intelligent man, Joey. But it's my opinion you're a stupid shit,' I said.
His eyes went flat, and his face glazed over.
'You fucked with Cletus Purcel. That's probably the worst mistake you ever made in your insignificant life,' I said. 'If you don't believe me, check out what happened to Julio Garcia and his bodyguard a few years back. I think they wished they had stayed in Managua and taken their chances with the Sandinistas.'
'That's supposed to make me rattle? You come in here like you fell out of a dirty-clothes bag, making noise like you got gas or something, and I'm supposed to rattle?' He pointed into his breastbone with four stiff fingers. 'You think I give a fuck about what some pissant PI's gonna do? Tell me serious, I'm supposed to get on the rag because he whacked out a spick nobody in New Orleans would spit on?'
'Clete didn't kill Garcia. His partner did.'
I saw the recognition grow in his eyes.
'Tell those three clowns they're going down for the murder of a sheriff's deputy,' I said. 'Stay out of Iberia Parish. Stay away from Purcel. If you fall again, Joey, I'm going to make sure you go down for the bitch. Four-time loser, mandatory life.'
I flipped the goony golf passes on his shirt front. The man in the green visor sat absolutely still with his cigar dead in his mouth.
CHAPTER 7
When I got back to New Iberia I showered, shaved, put on fresh clothes, and ate lunch with Bootsie in the backyard. I should have felt good about the day; it wasn't hot, like yesterday, the trees were loud with birds, the wind smelled of watermelons, the roses in my garden were as big as fists. But my eye registered all the wrong things: a fire burning in the middle of the marsh, where there should have been none; buzzards humped over a dead rabbit in the field, their beaks hooked and yellow and busy with their work; a little boy with an air rifle on the bank of the bayou, taking careful aim at a robin in an oak tree.
Why? Because we were on our way back to the specialist in Lafayette. The treatment of lupus, in our case, had not been a matter of finding the right medication but the right balance. Bootsie needed dosages of corticosteroid to control the disease that fed at her connective tissue, but the wrong dosage resulted in what is called steroid psychosis. For us her treatment had been like trying to spell a word correctly by repeatedly dipping a spoon into alphabet soup.
There were times I felt angry at her, too. She was supposed to avoid the sun, but I often came home from work and found her weeding the flower beds in shorts and a halter. When we went out on the salt to seine for shrimp, she would break her promise and not only leave the cabin but strip nude, dive off the gunnel, and swim toward a distant sandbar, until she was a small speck and I would have to go after her.
We got back from Lafayette at 4 Pm. with a half-dozen new prescriptions in her purse. I sat listlessly on the front porch and stared at the smoke still rising into the sky from the cypress trees burning in the marsh. Why had no one put it out, I thought.
'What's wrong, Dave?' Alafair said.
'Nothing, little guy. How you doing?' I put my arm around her small waist and pulled her against me. She had been riding her horse, and I could smell the sun in her hair and horse sweat in her clothes.
'Why's there a fire out there?'
'Dry lightning probably hit a tree during the night,' I said. 'It'll burn itself out.'
'Can we go buy some strawberries for dessert?'
'I have to go by the office a few minutes. Maybe we'll go to town for some ice cream after supper. How's that?'
'Dave, did the doctor say something bad about Bootsie?'
'No, she's going to be fine. Why do you think that?'
'Why did she do that with those, what d'you call them, those things the doctor gives her?'
'Her prescriptions?'
'Yeah. I saw her dump her purse all over her bed. Then she wadded up all those 'scriptions. When she saw me she put them all back in her purse and went into the bathroom. She kept running the water a long time. I had to go to the bathroom and she wouldn't let me in.'
'Bootsie's sick, little guy. But she'll get better. You just got to do it a day at a time. Hey, hop on my back and let's check up on Batist, then I have to go.'
She walked up on the steps and then climbed like a frog onto my shoulders, and we galloped like horse and rider down to the dock. But it was hard to feign joy or confidence in the moment or the day.
The wind changed, and I could smell the scorched, hot reek of burnt cypress in the marsh.
I drove to the office, talked briefly with the sheriff about my visit to New Orleans, my search through biker bars for Eddy Raintree, and my conversation with Joey Gouza.
'You think he's pulling the strings on this one?' the sheriff said.
'He's involved one way or another. I'm just not sure how. He controls all the action in that part of Orleans Parish. The guys who beat up Clete wouldn't have done it without Gouza's orders or permission.'
'Dave, I don't want you putting a stick in Gouza's cage again. If we nail him, we'll do it with a warrant and we'll work through New Orleans P.D. He's a dangerous and unpredictable man.'
'The New Orleans families don't go after cops, sheriff. It's an old tradition.'
'Tell that to Garrett.'
'Garrett stumbled into it. In 1890 the Black Hand murdered the New Orleans police chief. A mob broke eleven of them out of the parish prison, hanged two from street lamps, and clubbed and shot the other nine to death. So cops like me get bribe offers and guys like Clete get brass knuckles.'
'Don't start a new precedent.'
I went to check my mailbox next to the dispatcher's office. It was five-fifteen. All I had to do was glance at my mail and thumb through my telephone messages and make one phone call, and I was sure that when Drew picked up the phone she would be calm, perhaps even apologetic for her distraught behavior of yesterday, and I would be on my way home to dinner.
Wrong.
The dispatcher had written Drew's message in blue ink across the first pink slip on the stack:
Her house was only two blocks from the drawbridge that I would cross on my way home, I told myself. I would give myself fifteen minutes there. Friendship and the past required a certain degree of obligation, even if it was only a ritualistic act of assurance or kindness, and it had nothing to do with marital fidelity. Nothing, I told
