“From what I hear, Clete Purcel might have been mixed up in this.”
“That’s a lie, and you know it.”
“A cop who killed a federal witness and was a hump for the Mob in Reno and Vegas? Yeah, I can’t imagine him going astray.”
LeBlanc closed the folder and placed it on his desk. His jaw went slack, the way an old man’s does when his thought processes take him into blind alleys. He scratched the row of moles that seemed to leak from his eye. “I can recommend you for temporary reinstatement until we get our administrative problems straightened out. In other words, you’ll be on probation and treated as such. You will also report to me, no one else. You copy?”
I stared into space.
“You got a bug up your ass about something?” he said.
“No.”
“I asked if you copy.”
“I’m extremely copacetic with everything you’ve said, Carroll. I appreciate your oversight. Thanks for being here.”
I could see an incisor whitening his lip. He waited for me to leave, but I didn’t. I let my eyes stay on his. “What?” he said.
“I think there may be an instance of human trafficking going on in Iberia Parish.”
“You’re talking about illegal immigrants?”
“I’m talking about Mark Shondell.”
He tossed my IA folder on the desk. “I knew it. You can’t keep your nose out of trouble.”
“Call the home of Adonis Balangie and ask him where his stepdaughter is.”
“You know the feeling I have about you, Robo?”
“No clue.”
“You think your shit doesn’t stink. You never had to work vice. You never had to clean AIDS puke off your clothes. You never had to let a perv go for your joint.”
“I didn’t know that went with the job. AIDS puke?”
“Get out of my office.”
“Nice to be back working with you, Carroll. Keep fighting the good fight.”
Through the ceiling, I heard a toilet flush, the water powering through the drain pipe, shaking the walls.
I had promised Clete Purcel that one day I would tell him why I’d visited Marcel LaForchette in Huntsville Pen. It was the same reason I’d visited my priest friend Julian Hebert. I wanted to know the origins of human cruelty. Please notice I did not say “evil.” The latter is a generic term; the former is not. Evil can encompass addiction, greed, sloth, bad sexual behavior or just imperfection, and all the other doodah that goes along with the cardinal sins, depending on who the speaker is. Cruelty is different. It has no limits and no bottom. Often it has no motivation. It’s usually fiendish and more often is done collectively than by individuals.
In the year 1600, at the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Age of Reason, Giordano Di Betto was stripped naked and hanged upside down over a fire with his lips pinned together so he couldn’t speak or scream. Jump forward 365 years to an Asian country where I called in Puff the Magic Dragon on a ville after the enemy trapped us in a rice paddy and let loose with RPGs and a captured blooker and a fifty-caliber with tracer rounds just before bagging ass into the jungle.
I still remember the sparks twisting into the evening sky, the glow of the hooches, the screams of children. I tell myself I had no alternative. Am I telling the truth? To this day, I hate people who assure me I did nothing wrong. I hate them most for their sophistry and the hand they place on my shoulder as they talk about things of which they have no understanding. And finally, I hate myself.
I’m really saying I visited Marcel LaForchette in Huntsville Pen and Father Julian in Jeanerette to prove I’m not guilty of the behavior I have seen in others. But I know the level of rage I took with me to Southeast Asia, and I know the number of men I killed as surrogates for the man who cuckolded my father and destroyed my family. I would fire all eight rounds in my .45 auto at an Asian man’s face as though I were sleepwalking. Sometimes I had to be shaken awake by my sergeant when it was over. I received several medals for wounds and acts of bravery and felt I deserved none of them. The only true symbols of my war experience were malaria and scar tissue from jungle ulcers and the abiding conviction that the Beast had left his imprint on me.
On an early Friday afternoon, Clete Purcel got off the plane in Fort Lauderdale and took a cab up to Pompano Beach. The two-lane street bordering the beach was cluttered with coconut palms and neon signs and stucco motels painted with pastel colors. He checked in to a ten-story hotel that looked over the water, then he showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes, including a Panama hat and a Hawaiian shirt. Then he rented a car and drove down to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, where Eddy Firpo kept his recording studio, one half block from the ocean.
When Clete opened the door and went inside, an electronic chime rang in back and the clock over the counter said 4:49. No one was up front. Through a door behind the counter, he could see chairs and musical instruments and guitars and microphones and a glassed-in sound engineer’s booth. He flipped through a collection of celluloid-encased photos in a folder on the counter. The photos went back into the 1950s — working-class Italian kids from the Jersey Shore, R&B singers, a shot of Muddy Waters and Etta James together, Swamp Poppers who created what was called “the New Orleans sound.” The last photo was of Jerry Lee Lewis seated in front of a piano at the Apollo Theater, one two-tone shoe propped on the keys.
Clete heard someone from the inner doorway. A man in white slacks and a silk shirt as black and wet-looking as oil was staring at him, a gold cross hanging on his chest, his skin as brown as leather. “The fuck?” the man said as he realized who Clete was.
“I dig these photos,” Clete said. “But why is it a lot of these people don’t seem to have anything to do with your studio?”
“Take your greasy hands off my book. You wrecked my house and put my security guys in the emergency room. Three of my guests got busted for possession. I checked you out, asshole. You belong in a cage.”
“There’s a lot of agreement on that. Johnny Shondell back there?”
“Are you hearing me?”
“You might have kidnapping charges filed against you, Eddy. That’s a federal rap.”
“Who got kidnapped?”
“Isolde Balangie. Know where she is?”
“I’m a lawyer and promotor. I don’t kidnap people.”
“Did you know Jerry Lee Lewis is from Ferriday, Louisiana?”
Eddy looked from side to side, as though someone else were in the room. “What do I care about Jerry Lee Lewis?”
“He’s in your book.”
Eddy stuck fingers into both his temples as though they were drills. “You need to get yourself lobotomized. You got some kind of brain disease. Like you figured out a way to piss on it.”
“Not a time to be cute.”
“I’ll give you cute. This is South Florida. All I need to do is make one call.”
“You work with Nazis?”
“Keep talking, wisenheimer.”
“Where’s Johnny Shondell?” Clete said.
Eddy began punching in a number on the counter phone. Clete jerked the receiver from Eddy’s hand and wrapped the cord around his neck and pulled it tight, cutting off the carotid. Eddy’s eyes popped and his face darkened, as though someone had lowered a shade on it.
“Answer the question, Eddy,” Clete said.
Eddy’s fingernails were hooked inside the cord, spittle draining from his mouth. Clete tightened the cord. Eddy was making gurgling sounds, his face purple now. He swatted helplessly at the air. Clete unwrapped the cord and let Eddy drop to the floor. “I’m sorry,” Clete said. “You okay down there?”
Eddy made a sound like water being sucked through a water hose. He staggered to his feet, hardly able to speak. “You almost pinched off my head.”