“You’re saying I’m a firebug?”
“No,” I said. But the word stuck in my throat.
“So what am I?”
“Someone who had a hard young life. Like a lot of us.”
“What do we do now? Make love? Eat dinner? Pretend nothing has happened?”
“I’m not sure.”
She went to the dining room table and pinched out the candles one at a time. “There. Good night, sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
I stared at her dumbly. She avoided my eyes. I think she was on the edge of crying. I went outside and got into my truck and drove home in the last of the sunset. I don’t think I ever felt more alone.
That same evening, Alafair and Clete went to Red Lerille’s Health and Racquet Club in Lafayette. Alafair played tennis with a friend under the lights in the outdoor courts, then joined Clete inside, where he was slowly curling and lowering a hundred-pound barbell, his upper arms swelling into muskmelons. Then she realized Lou Wexler was in the free-weight room also, forty feet away, dead-lifting three hundred pounds, his back and thighs knotted as tight as iron. He released the bar, bouncing the plates on the platform.
“Hey, you,” he said.
“Hey,” she replied. “I thought you had to go back to Los Angeles to work out something with the union.”
“Got it done on the phone,” he said. “Des wants to keep me close by. He seems to go from one mess to the next.”
“I’d rather not talk about Des.”
“Right-o. I saw the big fellow over there, what’s-his-name, Purcel. You’re here with him?”
“Y’all haven’t met formally?” she said.
“No, just a nod or two. I saw him at Monument Valley, I think. When he visited the set. No need to bother him.”
“You two would hit it off.”
“You know me, Alafair, I’m a bit private.”
She gestured for Clete to come over anyway. “This is Lou Wexler, Clete. He’s a producer and writer on our film.”
“Glad to know you,” Clete said, extending his hand.
“Likewise,” Wexler said. He didn’t take Clete’s hand. His attention had shifted to a man in a black-and-white jumpsuit wearing yellow workout gloves who had just walked in and begun pumping twenty-pound dumbbells. The man in the jumpsuit stiff-armed the dumbbells straight out in front of him, twisting them rapidly back and forth, the veins in his neck cording. His head was shaped like a lightbulb, with several strands of hair combed across the crown.
Alafair followed Wexler’s line of sight to the man in the jumpsuit. “Who’s that?”
“One of the happy little fellows who was indicted in the Iberia Parish prison scandal.”
“That’s Tee Boy Ladrine,” Clete said. “He was a guard at the jail. He was found not guilty.”
“How could anybody work there and not know what was going on?” Wexler said.
“I know what you mean,” Clete said. “He was tight with Frenchie Lautrec, the guy who hanged himself. But Tee Boy rents his brain by the week. On a good day he can tie his shoes without a diagram.”
“What does intelligence have to do with pretending he didn’t know a man was suffocated in there?” Wexler said.
“You don’t have to tell me, noble mon.”
“Noble what?”
“I was saying jail sucks,” Clete said. “I’ve been in a number of them, and not as a visitor.”
“Tell me, Mr. Purcel, would you stand by while some poor fellow has the air crushed out of his lungs?” Wexler asked.
“Probably not.”
“That’s the only point I was making. A decent fellow acts decently. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to let a bugger in a jumpsuit come into a fine club like this.”
Clete’s gaze focused on nothing. “I’d better grab a shower and one of those health drinks.”
Alafair put her hand on Clete’s upper arm. It felt as hard as a fire hydrant. “We’ll have a drink together. Right, Lou?”
“Of course. Let me hit the shower, too. What a fine evening. Shouldn’t get fired up over a cretin who probably never heard a shot fired in anger.”
They walked toward the locker rooms, and Alafair thought Wexler’s absorption with the former jail guard was over. Then Wexler veered off course as though he had tripped. He collided solidly into Ladrine, knocking him into the mirror above the dumbbell racks.
“Sorry, there,” Wexler said. “Must be some soap on the floor. Are you all right? You look like someone shoved a baton up your ass. Order up at the bar. I have a tab. The name is Wexler.”
Then he continued on his way. Alafair’s face was burning.
“The guy is from overseas,” Clete said to Ladrine. “I think he took a round in the head from ISIS or something.”
“Oh yeah?” Ladrine said. His eyes were tiny coals.
“The next time I see you at Bojangles’, the drinks are on me,” Clete said.
Twenty minutes later, Clete and Alafair and Wexler met at the juice bar. Just as their drinks arrived, Ladrine walked by, unshowered, still wearing his jumpsuit, a gym bag hanging from his hand.
“Excuse me a moment,” Wexler said. He caught up with Ladrine. “Apologies again, fellow. It’s chaps such as you who keep the darkies in their place. You’re a genuine testimony to the superiority of the white race.” He sank his fingers into Ladrine’s arm and slapped him three times between the shoulder blades, hard, putting his weight into it, leaving Ladrine stupified.
Wexler came back to the bar and chugged half his tropical drink, blowing out his breath. “I wonder who he voted for.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Alafair said.
“Just having a little fun,” Wexler said. “I’m sure he took it as such.” Clete had remained silent. Wexler caught it. “You want to say something to me?”
“You’re quite a guy,” Clete said. “I thought his lungs were going to come out of his mouth.”
“No, I’m not quite a guy,” Wexler said. “Desmond is the man, the champion of us all, and about to go to hell in a basket. He belongs at Roncevaux and yet won’t heed the call. I guess that’s why I love and pity him so.”
Alafair looked at Wexler as though she had never seen him before.
Early the next morning, Clete called and asked me to meet him at Victor’s, where he ate almost every day.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“I just want to have breakfast with you.”
I knew better. Clete never did anything in a whimsical way or without a purpose.
He was waiting for me at the door of the cafeteria, wearing a dark blue suit and a dark tie, his shoes shined. He wasn’t wearing his porkpie hat, which, by anyone’s standards, was a tacky anachronism. We got into the serving line, and he began stacking his tray with scrambled eggs, sausage patties, bacon, hash browns with a saucer of milk gravy on the side, toast dripping with butter, grits, orange juice, coffee and cream.
“Sure you got enough?” I said.
“I’ve been cutting back on sugar and the deep-fried stuff. Can you tell?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said.
We found a table in the corner and started eating. I wondered how long it would take for him to get to the subject at hand, whatever it was.
“Why the suit?” I asked finally.
“I’m going over to East Texas. There’s a service for Hugo Tillinger.” He stared innocuously at the door as though he had said nothing of consequence.
“You don’t owe Tillinger anything, Clete.”
“If I’d called in a 911 when he jumped off the top of that freight train, maybe a lot of this stuff wouldn’t have happened. Later I had a chance to bust him, and I didn’t do that either.”
“He wasn’t a player. Lose the sackcloth and ashes. And leave those people in Texas alone.”