“If I was you, I’d call for one,” I said.
“They’re gonna clean your clock.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“People wit’ big money. More than you can dream about. Axel was gonna tap into it.”
“Axel Devereaux was into something besides pimping?”
“Something to do with Arabs and uranium,” he said. He spat a piece of metal off his tongue.
“This is southern Louisiana. We don’t have Arabs or sand dunes or centrifuges.”
“I told you what I know. Axel thought he was gonna be in the movies. He got to eat his baton instead. Maybe they’ll do that for you.”
“The movie people are going to hurt me?”
“Maybe it’s those guys out of Jersey. The ones backing the casinos. Guys who knew Nicky Scarfo. You think the Indians run their show? The wiseguys wouldn’t wipe their ass on them.”
“The foster father of Lucinda Arceneaux lives a few hundred yards from here. Did you know her?”
“Saw her around. She thought her shit didn’t stink.”
I got to my feet. My knees were weak, my eyes stinging with sweat.
“Tell me something,” he said.
“What?”
“Did you get into her bread?”
“Whose bread?”
“Bella Delahoussaye’s. She fucked my brains out. You ought to give it a try, if you haven’t already.” He was grinning. Two of his teeth were broken off. He spat a clot of blood onto the floor and laughed to himself.
“I’ve got to give it to you,” I said.
“For what?” he replied.
“I never met a worse cop. You give shit a bad name.”
I filled a water glass that was on the wash basin and placed it in his hand. I stared at him a long time, until he had to look away.
“What?” he said.
“I killed Asian men I had nothing against,” I said. “Speak disrespectfully of Miss Bella again, and what happened here tonight will be just a tune-up.”
I took the glass from his hand and threw the water in his face.
Chapter Eighteen
Clete and Alafair were both back from Arizona, but I told neither of them about my troubles with Frenchie Lautrec. Clete came to my house Monday night. “I saw Bella Delahoussaye at the Winn-Dixie. She said this creep Lautrec smeared you with some photographs on the Internet. The message was supposed to be racial.”
“That sounds right,” I replied.
“What happened?”
“I dropped by his house.”
“And did what?”
“Maybe he swallowed some camera parts. A couple of teeth, too.”
“He didn’t dime you?”
“I heard he took sick leave. He’s a dirty cop. He can’t afford to dime anybody.”
“He photographed you getting it on with Bella?”
“Her son was being gang-raped at Angola. I tried to comfort her.”
“Horizontally?” he said.
We were in the kitchen. It was dark outside. I could see the stars above the park; the trees resembled black cutouts. “Why is your elevator always stuck in the basement, Clete?”
“Answer the question. Are you getting it on?”
“No. Lautrec wanted to do some payback for Axel Devereaux. Or maybe he wanted to get me fired so I’d hook up with him.”
“Pimping?”
“Who knows? Get this. He says Devereaux knew something about Arab money and uranium. He learned about it through the movie people.”
“This is from outer space, Dave.”
“That’s what I told him. He said the Jersey guys might be mixed up in it. Nicky Scarfo’s crowd.”
“Little Nicky is dead,” Clete said.
“I know. So forget it.”
It was quiet in the room. I could hear the tree frogs down on the bayou.
“You kicked Lautrec’s ass pretty bad?” Clete said.
“You could say that.”
“But it wasn’t about the pictures on the Internet, was it?” he said.
“Nope.”
“Bailey Ribbons let you down?”
“I had higher expectations of her.”
“Cut her some slack, for Christ’s sake. How about the women I’ve dated? I’m lucky I haven’t woken up with my throat slit.” He waited for me to reply. “Come in, Earth.”
“She was smoking dope. With sycophants and frauds.”
“That’s not the equivalent of original sin,” he said.
“What say we talk about something else?”
“Helen’s not going to drop the IA referral?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You’re planning to square all this on your own?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“Can I have one of your diet Docs?”
“Help yourself.”
He went to the icebox and popped a can of Dr Pepper. “Mind if I tag along, do oversight, make sure things stay under control?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Cletus.”
There are lessons you learn in the military or jail or any other institutional situation where survival is dependent on your ability to think more clearly than your enemies or the people around you. Here are a few admonitions from the bottom of the food chain. They can be interpreted literally or metaphorically, depending on the situation.
1) Don’t silhouette on a hill.
2) Get rid of your jewelry, particularly civilian junk. Ostentation can put you in a box.
3) Don’t make enemies with anyone in records.
4) Don’t threaten anyone who knows your location when you don’t know his.
5) Never piss off the people who prepare or serve your food.
6) Be aware that clerks and secretaries run the world and own rubber stamps that can turn your life into a broken pay toilet.
7) Never sass a hack or drill sergeant or any dull-witted white Southerner who has authority over others.
8) Grin and walk through the cannon smoke. It drives the bad guys up the wall.
9) Get the right people on your side. Who would you rather have covering your back in a back-alley brawl, an academic liberal or a hobnailed redneck?
10) Never buy into the acronym FEAR (fuck everything and run). Swallow your blood and don’t let others know you’re hurt. If that doesn’t work, spit it in their faces.
11) Even in the most desperate of situations, stay away from the Herd. Situating yourself between loud oinking sounds and the trough is a surefire way to get trampled to death.
12) Burn this list before anyone catches you with it.
In my vanity, I wanted to think of myself as a vigilante or, even worse, a knight errant. But I was flailing at the dark. Men like Lautrec and Devereaux were surrogates. The person who’d murdered Lucinda Arceneaux and mounted her on a cross and floated her out to sea was either a master manipulator or someone with motivations that were armor-plated in the unconscious. My badge was in limbo. I had no legal power. How could I proceed in a case that had become a room without doors?
On Tuesday morning, I was sitting on my back steps with Mon Tee Coon and Snuggs, throwing pecans into a hat, when I heard someone walk through the porte cochere and come around the side of the house. Mon Tee Coon scampered up an oak tree. Bailey Ribbons walked across the grass, her small black shoes crunching on the patina of red and orange and yellow leaves I had not raked up. “Good morning,” she said.
I stood up. “How you doin’, Bailey?”
“May I sit down?” She was wearing a dark skirt and a lavender blouse and a gold chain with small heart charms on it.
“Let me get you a chair. The steps are dirty.”
“That’s all right,” she said, sitting down on the steps. She looked up at the oak in front of us. “Did I scare off your coon?”
“He doesn’t know you yet.”
“I feel very bad, Dave. I got the stars in my eyes out there in Arizona. I was acting like an idiot. It’s an honor to be your partner.”