Clete blew into the open breech of the shotgun, closed it, and snapped the firing pin on the empty chamber. He studied my face.
“Listen, Sonny’s a walking hand-job. Stop thinking what you’re thinking,” he said.
“Then why are you thinking the same thing?”
“I’m not. A guy like Sonny isn’t born, he’s defecated into the world. I should have stuffed him down a toilet with a plumber’s helper a long time ago.”
“I’ve seen federal agents with the same kind of cuffs.”
“This guy’s no cop. You buy into his rebop and he’ll piss in your shoe,” he said, and put the shotgun hard into my hands.
Clete ate lunch with us, then I went down to the bait shop and picked up a Styrofoam cooler that I had filled with ice Friday afternoon. The corner of a black garbage bag protruded from under the lid. I walked back up the incline through the shade and set the cooler in the bed of my truck. Clete was picking up pecans from under the trees and cracking them in his hands.
“You want to take a ride to Breaux Bridge?” I asked.
“I thought we were going fishing,” he said. “I hear Sweet Pea Chaisson has rented a place out by the old seminary.”
He smiled broadly.
We took the four-lane into Lafayette, then drove down the road toward Breaux Bridge, past Holy Rosary, the old Negro Catholic school, a graveyard with tombs above the ground, the Carmelite convent, and the seminary. Sweet Pea’s rented house was a flat-roofed yellow brick building shielded by a hedge of dying azalea bushes. The lot next door was filled with old building materials and pieces of iron that were threaded with weeds and crisscrossed with morning glory vines.
No one was home. An elderly black man was cleaning up dog feces in the yard with a shovel.
“He taken the ladies to the restaurant down on Cameron in Lafayette, down by the fo’ corners,” he said.
“Which restaurant?” I said.
“The one got smoke comin’ out the back.”
“It’s a barbecue place?” I said.
“The man own it always burning garbage out there. You’ll smell it befo’ you see it.”
We drove down Cameron through the black district in Lafayette. Up ahead was an area known as Four Corners, where no number of vice arrests ever seemed to get the hookers off of the sidewalks and out of the motels.
“There’s his Caddy,” Clete said, and pointed out the window. “Check this place, will you? His broads must have rubber stomach liners.”
I parked in a dirt lot next to a wood frame building with paint that had blistered and curled into shapes like blown chicken feathers and with a desiccated privy and smoking incinerator in back.
“We’re not only off your turf, big mon, we’re in the heart of black town. You feel comfortable with this?” Clete said when we were outside the truck.
“The locals don’t mind,” I said.
“You checked in with them?”
“Not really.” He looked at me.
“Sweet Pea’s a pro. It’s not a big deal,” I said.
I reached inside the Styrofoam cooler and pulled the vinyl garbage bag out. It swung heavily from my hand, dripping ice and water.
“What are you doing?” Clete said.
“I think Sweet Pea helped set up Helen Soileau.”
“The muff-diver? That’s the one who had her animals killed?”
“Give her a break, Clete.”
“Excuse me. I mean the lady who thinks I’m spit on the sidewalk. What’s in the bag?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I guess I asked for this.” He spit his gum out with a thropping sound.
We went through the door. It was a cheerless place where you could stay on the downside of a drunk without making comparisons. The interior was dark, the floor covered with linoleum, the green walls lined with pale rectangles where pictures had once hung. People whose race would be hard to define were at the bar, in the booths, and at the pool table. They all looked expectantly at the glare of light from the opening front door, as though an interesting moment might be imminent in their lives.
“Man, that Sweet Pea can pick ‘em, can’t he? I wonder if they charge extra for the roaches in the mashed potatoes,” Clete said.
In the light from the kitchen we could see Sweet Pea and another man sitting at a large table with four women. The other man was explaining something, his forearms propped on the edge of the table, his fingers moving in the air. The women looked bored, hungover, wrapped in their own skin.
“Do you make the dude with him?” Clete said close to my ear.
“No.”
“That’s Patsy Dapolito, they call him Patsy Dap, Patsy Bones, Patsy the Baker. He’s a button guy for Johnny Carp.”
The man named Patsy Dapolito wore a tie and a starched collar buttoned tightly around his neck. His face was pinched-looking, the nose thin, sharp-edged, the mouth down-turned, the teeth showing as though he were breathing through them.
“Stay out of overdrive, Dave. Dapolito’s a head case.” Clete said quietly.
“They all are.”
“He baked another hood’s bones in a wedding cake and sent it to a Teamster birthday party.”
Sweet Pea sat at the head of the table, a bib tied around his neck. The table was covered with trays of boiled crawfish and beaded pitchers of draft beer. Sweet Pea snapped the tail off a crawfish, sucked the fat out of the head, then peeled the shell off the tail. He dipped the meat into a red sauce, put it in his mouth, and never looked up.
“Y’all get yourself some plates, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said. He wore cream-colored slacks and a bolo tie and a gray silk shirt that rippled with a metallic sheen. His mouth glistened as though it were painted with lip gloss.
I took the dead coon out of the bag by its hind feet. The body was leathery and stiff, the fur wet from the ice in the cooler. I swung it across the table right into Sweet Pea’s tray. Crawfish shells and juice, beer, and coleslaw exploded all over his shirt and slacks.
He stared down at his clothes, the twisted body of the coon in the middle of his tray, then at me. But Sweet Pea Chaisson didn’t rattle easily. He wiped his cheek with the back of his wrist and started to speak.
“Shut up, Sweet Pea,” Clete said.
Sweet Pea smiled, his webbed eyes squeezing shut.
“What I done to deserve this?” he said. “You ruin my dinner, you trow dead animals at me, now I ain’t even suppose to talk?”
I could hear the air-conditioning units humming in the windows, a solitary pool ball rolling across the linoleum floor.
“Your buddies tried to hurt a friend of mine, Sweet Pea,” I said.
He wrapped a napkin around the coon’s tail, then held the coon out at arm’s length and dropped it.
“You don’t want nothing to eat?” he asked.
“Fuck it,” Clete said beside me, his voice low.
Then I saw the expression on the face of the man called Patsy Dap. It was a grin, as though he both appreciated and was bemused by the moment that was being created for all of us. I felt Clete’s shoe nudge against mine, his fingers pull lightly on my arm.
But it was moving too fast now.
“What d’ we got here, the crazy person hour, fucking clowns abusing people at Sunday dinner?” Dapolito said.
“Nobody’s got a beef with you, Patsy,” Clete said.
“What d’ you call this, creating a fucking scene, slopping food on people, who the fuck is this guy?”
“We got no problem with you, Patsy. Accept my word on that,” Clete said.
“Why’s he looking at me like that?” Dapolito said.
“Hey, I don’t like that. Why you pinning me, man?... Hey...”
My gaze drifted back to Sweet Pea.
“Tell those two guys, you know who I’m talking about, not to bother my friend again. That’s all I wanted to say,” I said.