For the Broussards, honor was a virtue that, once tarnished, could never be restored. They may have been aristocrats and slave owners who lived inside a fable, but they still heard the horns blowing along the road to Roncevaux and accepted genteel poverty and isolation if necessary but would be no more capable of changing their vision of the world and themselves than Robert E. Lee could have become a used-car salesman.
That was why I had a hard time believing that Levon could have tortured and murdered Kevin Penny. I had even greater difficulty believing he would throw in his lot with Tony Nemo in order to weigh the balance in his upcoming trial in Jefferson Davis Parish.
On Monday morning, I got a call at my office from Sherry Picard. “I need your help,” she said.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, trying to suppress my feelings about Clete’s involvement with younger women in general and this one in particular.
“Catch you at the wrong time?”
“Not at all.”
“I still have prints from the Penny homicide scene that I believe are significant. The fast-food trash. Penny kept the area around his motorcycle clean. That means the person who left it there was on the property the day Penny died.”
“What does this have to do with me?” I said.
“I want to fingerprint the Nightingale employees. I’m not getting anywhere.”
“St. Mary Parish was teleported from the fourteenth century. Historians come from far away to study it.”
“Did I do something to offend you?”
“I can’t help you in St. Mary.”
“How about with Levon Broussard?”
“What about him?”
“I want to fingerprint his wife. I think she may have been an accomplice.”
“I’m not convinced Levon is guilty, much less his wife.” I could feel her resentment coming through the phone. I tried again. “What makes you suspicious about his wife?”
“Her general attitude. I think she needs a flashlight shined up her ass.”
How about that?
“Did you hear me?” she said.
“Absolutely.”
“Absolutely what?”
“That I heard you,” I said.
“What’s your problem?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Are you pissed off because of Clete and me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We called it off. That’s why you’ve got your tally whacker in the hay baler?”
“I’ll talk with Levon, Ms. Picard.”
“Detective Picard.”
I softly replaced the receiver in the cradle.
The phone rang three minutes later. I thought she was calling back. I felt embarrassed as I picked up the receiver and wished I hadn’t hung up on her. Surprise time.
“I heard you used to live in New Or-yuns,” a voice said. “You were a police officer in the Quarter.”
I sat up in my chair. “That’s right.”
“I had an artist friend who knew you. He painted people’s pictures in Jackson Square. He said you were an honest police officer.”
I waved my arm at a cop in uniform passing in the hallway. He looked through the glass. I pointed at the receiver. He nodded and disappeared down the hallway.
“What’s your name?” I said. “I’ll help you if I can.”
“I think you know who I am.”
“Not for sure. Are you visiting in New Iberia?”
“Some people call me Smiley.”
“That doesn’t ring bells.”
“I want to ask you a question.”
“Yes, sir, go right ahead.”
Helen was at the glass in my door now. I mouthed the word “Smiley.”
“Does the man named Purcel have a boy?”
“You mean Clete Purcel?”
“A boy lives with him?” he said.
“Clete doesn’t have a birth son, but he takes care of an orphan. Is that the boy you’re talking about?”
He cleared his throat but didn’t speak.
“You there, Smiley?”
“Yes.”
“Did you want to tell me something?”
“What’s the boy’s name?”
“Homer.”
“What’s the rest of it?”
“Homer Penny is his full name.”
I waited in the silence. I had given up information I normally wouldn’t. But this situation was outside the parameters of any in my career.
“Did you try to hurt Clete, Smiley?”
“This call is a relay. It won’t help you to trace it.”
“I figured. That means we can talk as long as you want. Where’d you get your nickname?”
No answer.
“Know who your accent reminds me of?” I said. “Tennessee Williams. He said ‘New Or-yuns’ just like you. I knew him when he lived in the Quarter.”
I could hear him breathing against the mouthpiece, as though deciding whether or not to hang up. “I don’t care about him.”
“Have you been to Algiers?” I said. “A couple of bad black dudes got their grits splattered over there.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Between you and me, I think they probably had it coming. You hear anything about that?”
“They were bad to a colored lady. Her name was Miss Birdie.”
“Did you smoke these dudes?”
“Maybe,” he said. “If you’re bad or treacherous with me, I’ll smoke you, too.”
“I believe you. But I’d rather be friends with you.”
“I wouldn’t hurt a child,” he said, his voice downshifting.
“I know what you mean. There’s nothing worse than the abuse of children or animals. That’s why Clete takes care of Homer. Clete had a hard upbringing.”
“I’m sorry. Tell him that.”
“Tell Clete?”
“Yes. I didn’t know about the boy.”
“I read you loud and clear, partner. Know anything about Kevin Penny, Smiley?”
“He was a bad man.”
“You didn’t help him do the Big Exit, did you?”
“You’re trying to trick me.”
“Not me. I’m not that smart. You’re like a shadow. You come and go, and nobody has a clue. Who was your artist friend?”
“He was my friend for a while. Then he wasn’t my friend anymore.”
“Could we work out a way to communicate when both of us have more time? I’m pretty tied up right now.”
“I can come by your house.”
He had me. I could almost see him grinning. “You’re calling the shots. Did you ever hear Louie Prima and Sam Butera play at the Dream Room on Bourbon?”
“You want to know how old I am? Remember fifteen years ago when a house was torn down on Calliope and a body fell out of the wall? It had been in there long enough not to smell anymore. This man was bad to somebody who trusted him and got walled up with his paintbrushes stuffed in his mouth. He was a very bad boy. Bye-bye.”
The line went dead. I looked blankly at Helen through the glass. I had witnessed two deaths by electrocution in the Red Hat House at Angola. On both occasions I’d felt that I was watching an element in the human gene pool for which there was no remedy, and I mean the desire to kill, either on the part of individuals or the state. I took a Kleenex from a drawer in my desk and cleared my throat and spat in it, then dropped it into the waste can.
At noon, I took Clete to lunch at Bon Creole out on East St. Peter Street. We ordered fried-oyster po’boys and sat at a table under a blue-and-silver marlin mounted on the wall.