The detective was big and wore a gray suit and spit-shined needle-nosed cowboy boots, a gold badge on his belt.
“I was sleeping,” Clete said. “Until you beat on the door.”
“What are you doing here, in this part of Louisiana?”
“Passing through to New Iberia. I’m a PI. I’m on a case.”
The detective raised his hand for the paramedics to stop their work. He unzipped two bags, already on the gurneys. “Step out here.”
“I’m not dressed.”
“Nobody is interested in your dick. You know any of these people?”
Clete stepped into the hallway. His gaze moved across the faces of the three gunshot victims, lingering for less than a second on the face of Jaime O’Banion.
“No, I don’t know any of these people,” he said.
“You’re a liar,” the detective said.
“I used to be a homicide cop at NOPD,” Clete said. “A dog-fuck on your own turf is no fun. But that’s your grief, not mine. So how about eighty-sixing the insults?”
“Get your clothes on.”
“Search my room. Check my piece. I’m not your guy. You know it.”
The detective put a cigarette into his mouth but didn’t light it. “You’ll like our facilities. After two or three days, the baloney sandwiches start to grow on you.”
“Fuck you.”
“What did you say?”
“You’re queering your own investigation,” Clete said.
“The guy’s an asshole,” the deputy said. “How about we let it slide?”
“Hook him up,” the plainclothes said.
“In his shorts?”
“Throw a blanket over him. Take him down the back stairs. Maybe he won’t trip.”
I parked my pickup and hung my badge around my neck. To circumvent the emergency vehicles and personnel, I cut through the restaurant and went out the exit, headed for the motel. A waitress was smoking a cigarette by the back door. She had a sweater over her shoulders. Clete was being marched toward a squad car, his wrists cuffed behind him. Someone had draped a blanket on his head. His boxer shorts and bare legs were exposed.
“Detective Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Sheriff’s Department,” I said. “Wait up.”
A plainclothes looked at me. His eyes were as hard as agate. “Problem?”
“Yeah,” I said. “This man belongs in a hospital. I’m here to pick him up.”
“There’re three stiffs in the meat wagon. One looks like he was drug facedown a fire escape. His name is Jaime O’Banion. Your friend says he never saw him before.”
“That’s why you hooked up Clete Purcel?”
“Interfere with this investigation and you can join him.”
On the edge of my vision, I saw a waitress, her arms folded across her chest. She dropped her cigarette into a butt can and approached us. “Couldn’t help listening in, Stan,” she said to the plainclothes. “If you’re busting my friend there, you got the wrong fellow.”
“Don’t give me a hard time, Flo,” he said.
“Trying to save you from making a mistake, Stan. You can check my time card,” she replied. “I punched in at six-fifteen. Before that, I was in my friend’s room from midnight until six-ten.”
“This guy killed a federal witness.”
“Cut it out, Stan. He was in the Crotch. In Vietnam.”
“Are you sure about the times, Flo?”
“Do you think I enjoy talking about this in public?”
The plainclothes turned to the deputy. “Unhook him.” He pointed his finger at Clete. “Have a nice day.”
Clete pulled the blanket around him. He smiled at the plainclothes. “Hey.”
“Hey, what?” the plainclothes said.
“Next time I’m in town, I’ll drop by. We’ll have coffee. I really dig this place. It’s the prototype for Shitsville. When you’re here, you know you can’t go any lower. There’s got to be a kind of serenity in that.”
I stepped in front of the plainclothes, interdicting his line of sight. “Thanks for your courtesy, Detective.”
His eyes lit on mine. “Get him out of here.”
“That’s a done deal,” I said.
I watched him and the deputy walk away. I had known his kind all my life — mean to the bone, a walking penis, angry from the day he came out of the womb. He’d get even down the track, perhaps with a stun gun or a baton or a sap, on the body of an unsuspecting victim who would have no idea why he was being abused, and the rest of us would pay the tab, as always.
When I turned around, the waitress was gone.
“You were shacked up last night?” I said.
“Are you kidding?” Clete said. “My stomach was a septic tank.”
“What’s the story on the woman?”
“I don’t know. I got to check her out. You see the way she walks? Cute ta-tas, narrow waist, big smooth rump.” He pulled on himself under the blanket. “My plunger just woke up.”
“Stop that.”
“Everything is copacetic. Hold all my calls. I’ll be right back.” He walked through the fire trucks and ambulances and squad cars and emergency personnel and spectators to the motel entrance and went inside, his blanket flapping at his heels, like a misplaced prophet who had stumbled into the twenty-first century. But that was Clete Purcel.
Ten minutes later he was back, his hair wet-combed, his loafers buffed, his tie on, and his suit coat buttoned.
“I’ve got my flasher on my pickup,” I said. “Stay on my bumper.”
“I’ve got to talk with the lady first. What was her name? Flo?”
“It’s time to go, Clete.”
“When a woman wants you to know something, she lets you see her thoughts. You didn’t know that?”
“You see her thoughts?”
“Come with me. I’ll tell her you’re on the square.”
What was the best way to have a conversation with Clete Purcel? You said nothing, and you didn’t try to understand what he said. You grabbed a noun and a verb here and there and went with it.
I followed him inside. Flo was behind the counter. No one else was within earshot.
“What’d you want to tell us, Miss Flo?” Clete said.
She looked in my direction.
“Dave is my podjo from NOPD, back when we were the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide,” Clete said.
“There was a little guy in here,” she said. “He had a red mouth, like he was wearing lipstick. He was bleeding under his jacket. Talked with a lisp.”
“He give you a name?” Clete said.
“No. He asked for a fried pie and a scoop of ice cream to go. Know anybody like that?”
I placed my business card on the counter. “Call me if you see him again, Miss Flo.”
She pushed the card back at me. “Nope.”
“Nope, what?” I said.
“I don’t borrow trouble,” she replied.
“Perfectly understandable,” Clete said. He took a ballpoint from his pocket and began clicking it. “You dig movies? I live for movies. I love people who love movies.” He pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and slid it and the pen toward her. She wrote a number on it. He stuck the napkin in his pocket. “Why didn’t you dime the guy?”
“Every girl has a soft spot.” She held his eyes.
Clete blushed. I couldn’t believe it.
The next day, Helen called the detective who had hooked up Clete, and he emailed her the video from the security camera at the motel. She and Bailey and I watched it in her office. Bailey said little and didn’t look in my direction. Even though I was watching Smiley Wimple sling blood on the walls, I couldn’t get my mind off Bailey Ribbons. What a fool I was, I thought. I longed to touch her, to hold her, to smell her skin and hair, to be inside her. To be honest, I don’t see how any man on earth can live without a woman. Women are the perfect creation. I don’t care who hears that. Even before I hit puberty, they lived nightly in my dreams, and I have the feeling they’ll live with me in the grave.