"What'd you say to get him upset?" she asked. She was perspiring from her work and her T-shirt was damp and shaped against her breasts. She stood in front of the air-conditioning unit and lifted the hair off the back of her neck.
"I think you're sticking tacks in his head," I said.
"Where the hell you get off talking to me like that?"
"Your brother's friends are scum."
"Two-thirds of the world is. Grow up."
"Boxleiter and I had a talk. The death photo of the black guy in the drainpipe was a setup."
"You're full of shit, Dave."
We stared at each other in the refrigerated coolness of the room, almost slit-eyed with antagonism. Her eyes had a reddish-brown cast in them like fire inside amber glass.
"I think I'll wait outside," I said.
"You know what homoeroticism is? Guys who aren't quite gay but who've got a yen they never deal with?" she said.
"You'd better not hurt him."
"Oh, yeah?" she said, and stepped toward me, her hands shoved in her back pockets like a baseball manager getting in an umpire's face. Her neck was sweaty and ringed with dirt and her upper lip was beaded with moisture. "I'm not going to take your bullshit, Dave. You go fuck yourself." Then her face, which was heart-shaped and tender to look at and burning with anger at the same time, seemed to go out of focus. "Hurt him? My father was nailed alive to a board wall. You lecture me on hurting people? Don't you feel just a little bit embarrassed, you self-righteous sonofabitch?"
I walked outside into the sunshine. Sweat was running out of my hair; the backdraft of a passing sanitation truck enveloped me with dust and the smell of decaying food. I wiped my forehead on my sleeve and was repelled by my own odor.
CLETE AND I DROVE out of the Quarter, crossed Canal, and headed up Magazine in his convertible. He had left the top down while the car had been parked on the street and the seats and metal surfaces were like the touch of a clothes iron. He drove with his left hand, his right clenched around a can of beer wrapped in a paper sack.
"You want to forget it?" I asked.
"No, you want to see the guy, we see the guy."
"I heard Jimmy Fig wasn't a bad kid before he was at Khe Sanh."
"Yeah, I heard that story. He got wounded and hooked on morphine. Makes great street talk. I'll tell you another story. He was the wheelman on a jewelry store job in Memphis. It should have been an easy in-and-out, smash-and-grab deal, except the guys with him decided they didn't want witnesses, so they executed an eighty-year-old Jew who had survived Bergen-Belsen."
"I apologize to you and Megan for what I said back there."
"I've got hypertension, chronic obesity, and my own rap sheet at NOPD. What do guys like us care about stuff like that?"
He pressed his aviator glasses against his nose, hiding his eyes. Sweat leaked out of his porkpie hat and glistened on his flexed jaw.
JIMMY FIGORELLI RAN A sandwich shop and cab stand on Magazine just below Audubon Park. He was a tall, kinetic, wired man, with luminous black eyes and black hair that grew in layers on his body.
He was chopping green onions in an apron and never missed a beat when we entered the front door and stood under the bladed ceiling fan that turned overhead.
"You want to know who put a hit on Cool Breeze Broussard? You come to my place of business and ask me a question like that, like you need the weather report or something?" He laughed to himself and raked the chopped onions off the chopping board onto a sheet of wax paper and started slicing a boned roast into strips.
"The guy doesn't deserve what's coming down on him, Jimmy. Maybe you can help set it right," I said.
"The guys you're interested in don't fax me their day-to-day operations," he replied.
Clete kept lifting his shirt up from his shoulders with his fingers.
"I got a terrible sunburn, Jimmy. I want to be back in the air-conditioning with a vodka and tonic, not listening to a shuck that might cause a less patient person to come around behind that counter," Clete said.
Jimmy Figorelli scratched an eyebrow, took off his apron and picked up a broom and began sweeping up green sawdust from around an ancient Coca-Cola cooler that sweated with coldness.
"What I heard is the clip went to some guys already got it in for Broussard. It's nigger trouble, Purcel. What else can I tell you? Semper fi," he said.
"I heard you were in the First Cav at Khe Sanh," I said.
"Yeah, I was on a Jolly Green that took a RPG through the door. You know what I think all that's worth?"
"You paid dues lowlifes don't. Why not act like it?" I said.
"I got a Purple Heart with a V for valor. If I ever find it while I'm cleaning out my garage, I'll send it to you," he said.
I could hear Clete breathing beside me, almost feel the oily heat his skin gave off.
"You know what they say about the First Cav patch, Jimmy. 'The horse they couldn't ride, the line they couldn't cross, the color that speaks for itself,'" Clete said.
"Yeah, well, kiss my ass, you Irish prick, and get out of my store."
"Let's go," I said to Clete.
He stared at me, his face flushed, the skin drawn back against the eye sockets. Then he followed me outside, where we stood under an oak and watched one of Jimmy Fig's cabs pick up a young black woman who carried a red lacquered purse and wore a tank top and a miniskirt and white fishnet stockings.
"You didn't like what I said?" Clete asked.
"Why get on the guy's outfit? It's not your way."
"You got a point. Let me correct that."
He walked back inside, his hands at his sides, balled into fists as big as hams.
"Hey, Jimmy, I didn't mean anything about the First Cav. I just can't take the way you chop onions. It irritates the hell out of me," he said.
Then he drove his right fist, lifting his shoulder and all his weight into the blow, right into Jimmy Figorelli's face.
Jimmy held on to the side of the Coca-Cola box, his hand trembling uncontrollably on his mouth, his eyes dilated with shock, his fingers shining with blood and bits of teeth.
THREE DAYS LATER IT began to rain, and it rained through the Labor Day weekend and into the following week. The bayou by the dock rose above the cattails and into the canebrake, my rental boats filled with water, and moccasins crawled into our yard. On Saturday night, during a downpour, Father James Mulcahy knocked on our front door.
He carried an umbrella and wore a Roman collar and a rain-flecked gray suit and a gray fedora. When he stepped inside he tried not to breathe into my face.
"I'm sorry for coming out without calling first," he said.
"We're glad you dropped by. Can I offer you something?" I said.
He touched at his mouth and sat down in a stuffed chair. The rain was blowing against the gallery, and the tin roof of the bait shop quivered with light whenever thunder was about to roll across the swamp.
"Would you like a drink, sir?" I asked.
"No, no, that wouldn't be good. Coffee's fine. I have to tell you about something, Mr. Robicheaux. It bothers me deeply," he said.
His hands were liver-spotted, ridged with blue veins, the skin as thin as parchment on the bones. Bootsie brought coffee and sugar and hot milk on a tray from the kitchen. When the priest lifted the cup to his mouth his eyes seemed to look through the steam at nothing, then he said, "Do you believe in evil, Mr. Robicheaux? I don't mean the wicked deeds we sometimes do in a weak moment. I mean evil in the darkest theological sense."
"I'm not sure, Father. I've seen enough of it in people not to look for a source outside of ourselves."
"I was a chaplain in Thailand during the Vietnam War. I knew a young soldier who participated in a massacre. You might have seen the pictures. The most unforgettable was of a little boy holding his grandmother's skirts in terror while she begged for their lives. I spent many hours with that young soldier, but I could never remove the evil that lived in his dreams."