“How are you going to do that?”
“Nail him as a coconspirator in the death of the Jeff Davis Eight. One way or another, I’m going to get him. I’ve had a good life.”
Then I remembered Jimmy Nightingale had a rally that night at the Superdome.
“I’ll put you in handcuffs if I have to,” I said.
He was already off the line.
I headed for new Orleans in my pickup, the rain twisting out of a gaseous-green sky. Just as I approached the bridge at Des Allemands, my cell phone vibrated on the seat. It was Sherry Picard.
“Clete left me a message,” she said. “Something about him being sorry for his part in it, and if he didn’t see me again, I was a great woman, blah-blah-blah.”
“Clete isn’t into blah-blah-blah.”
“Whatever. He sounded like he was on a banzai mission.”
“He says he’s going to take down Jimmy Nightingale,” I said. “In whatever fashion he can. Nightingale has a rally at the Superdome tonight.”
“Shit,” she said. “Clete’s talking about capping him?”
“I didn’t say that.” I was atop the bridge now. I could see houseboats anchored at a wooded island, the bayou flowing into a chain of lakes, the rain denting the water. Somehow I knew what was coming, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“Here’s the gen,” she said. “Remember the fast-food trash by Kevin Penny’s motorcycle shed? I matched the prints. They belong to Rowena Broussard.”
“I thought she wasn’t in the system.”
“She visited her husband when he was temporarily locked up. I gave her a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.”
“The match might put her at the scene, but not at the time of Penny’s death.”
“It gets worse, at least from a prosecutor’s perspective. The prints of Herb Smith, a social worker, were at the scene.”
“I don’t remember the name,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. His niece was one of the Jeff Davis Eight. Starting to get the picture?”
“You think Rowena did it, but there’s no way she’ll be convicted?”
“That’s right.”
“And Levon won’t, either, because people around here think he walks on water?”
“You got it.”
“What does this have to do with Clete?” I asked.
“He’s convinced himself Jimmy Nightingale is partly responsible for the Jeff Davis Eight and for Penny’s death and for the attempt to put a bomb in his car. I don’t think Nightingale has anything to do with any of it.”
“I wouldn’t rule Nightingale out, Miss Sherry. At least not entirely.”
“Lose the Gone with the Wind stuff, will you? I can’t take that plantation cutesy talk.”
“You know who else told me that?” I asked.
“No.”
“Rowena Broussard,” I said.
“See you at the Dome, hotshot.”
For five days in August 2005, the Superdome had been shelter for more than thirty thousand people during and after Hurricane Katrina. Do not let the term “shelter” mislead you. The Dome became an introduction to hell on earth. The storm stripped off huge chunks of the roof; the power and water supply failed; toilets and urinals overflowed and layered the floors with feces. The food in the refrigerators rotted. The heat and humidity and stench caused television reporters to gag on-camera. Every inch of concrete surrounding the Dome was covered with garbage, clothing, and people sweltering under a white sun. Black people who tried to leave the area by crossing the Danziger Bridge were shot by people officers. One of those who died was a mentally disabled man.
But our excursion into the Garden of Gethsemane had slipped into history, the incompetence and cynicism and villainy of its perpetrators largely unpunished, the bravery and self-sacrifice of its heroes, such as the United States Coast Guard, largely unremembered. Jimmy’s rally was more like Mardi Gras than a political event, even though most of the crowd knew about the murder of his sister. The purple and green columns of light surrounding the Dome were an ode to the ancient world, a pagan display presided over by a rotund and garlanded and sybaritic man who understood his constituency’s love of shared power and empire and blood sports and the opportunity to participate and glory in them.
I called Clete and went directly to voicemail. Dixieland bands played outside and inside the Dome, the musicians in candy-striped jackets and straw boaters, their smiles frozen like ceramic dolls’. Tens of thousands filled the seats and aisles and corridors. The concession stands were heaped with Cajun and Creole cuisine; draft beer was ten dollars a cup, and a double-shot cocktail was fourteen-fifty. Jimmy Nightingale T-shirts and caps were everywhere. The ammonia smell of urinated beer bloomed from the men’s rooms.
By the time Jimmy mounted the stage, the crowd had doubled, and the air was filled with an electric haze and a growing feral odor from the press of bodies in the corridors and aisles.
Jimmy was dressed in mourner’s black. But through the tiny binoculars I carried, I could see a flag pin on his lapel and sequins that had been sprayed on his hand-tooled boots and his gold cuff links that were the size of quarters. His incarnations were endless, like Proteus rising from the sea. In this instance, he vulgarized his own image and yet did it with elegance.
His short-brim Stetson, one he never wore in Franklin, hung from his hand. His expression was neither somber nor celebratory. He gazed silently at the crowd, bathed in light, his posture and trim physique and resolute manner heartbreaking, considering the loss he had just incurred. All sound and motion in the Dome seemed to slow like a film winding down, then stop. Even the beer vendors in the aisles were motionless, their boxlike trays suspended painfully from their necks.
“I want to thank you,” Jimmy said, a tremble in his voice. “I cannot express how much I appreciate your being here. You are the finest people I have ever known. God bless each and every one of you.”
The stage lights were pointed up into his face, giving it the angular splendor of a Byzantine saint. One by one the audience members came to their feet, applauding lightly at first, then breaking into an ovation that shook the building.
Tears slid down both his cheeks. Then Jimmy did something I never saw coming. He went to the back of the platform and motioned for a man to join him. Even the audience seemed stunned. A gaunt figure whose plastic surgery had failed him was being raised from the dead, a modern Lazarus dragged against his will into the light, all his sins forgiven. Even he did not seem to understand his good fortune. He raised one hand timidly, as though afraid of the response.
The audience was transfixed and did not know what to do.
Jimmy lifted a microphone from a stand. “Many of us take different roads in our struggle to keep our country free and pure and unsullied by the millions crossing our borders. Bobby Earl loves his country and the traditions for which our brave fighting men and woman have shed their blood. We help the poor, the immigrant who honors our laws, the destitute and downtrodden, but we do not let others rob us of our heritage and birthright. Bobby Earl devoted his life to an honorable cause, and we will not be party to the political correctness that condemns a man because he speaks his mind and practices the freedoms guaranteed him by the First Amendment.
“Bobby is a good man, a Christian and a patriot. Let’s give him the credit he deserves, and to hell with the people who don’t like it. I’m proud to call Bobby Earl my friend.”
One heartbeat later, someone let loose with a Rebel yell, and the entire place went crazy. That was when I saw Clete Purcel standing in a doorway that led to the concourse. He was eating a hot dog, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin as he chewed. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I looked at the caller ID and put the phone to my ear. “This is Dave.”