The New Iberia Blues

Chapter Thirty-Three

I picked up Bailey at six o’clock. Or tried to pick her up. She came to the front door in a gingham dress. I was wearing a suede sport coat and freshly pressed slacks and a light blue shirt and a plum-colored necktie. “Ready?”

“Where are we going?” she said, as though surprised.

“Dinner and a movie.”

“I already fixed something.”

“Then a film?”

“Whatever you like. Are you turning into a monk?”

“If so, I’m not aware of it.”

“Come in, Dave. We need to talk.”

I didn’t want to come in or to talk. If someone had pointed a gun at me and asked me to state my honest feelings about Bailey, I wouldn’t have known what to say. My obsession with her was probably as great as Desmond’s. Maybe I was trying to reclaim my youth; maybe I wanted to be her protector. It was hard for me to separate her from the image of Cathy Downs standing by the road while Henry Fonda tells her that one day he may return to Tombstone, although he knows full well that his business with the Clantons is not over and he will never be back.

Yes, it was hard for me to separate Bailey from Clementine Carter, until I thought about the three men Bailey had set on fire.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. She had set the dining room table and lit a candelabra in the center. “You’re looking at me that way again. It makes me very uncomfortable,” she said.

“That’s a pretty dress. You look beautiful in it. You’re beautiful in anything, Bailey.”

“I wish I hadn’t told you about what I did in Montana. You think I should resign my job?”

“For what purpose?”

“Maybe I should report myself to the authorities in Montana.”

I could feel my heart thudding, my stomach churning. “This is the reality. The case was closed years ago. In the eyes of the law, three meth dealers blew themselves up. Probably all three had records as dealers and predators. Their deaths were marked off as good riddance. If you reopen the case, you will be involved with the courts for two or three years and then probably be given probation. Everybody involved with the case will secretly wish you stayed in Louisiana. In the meantime you will be financially destitute and ruined professionally. What good would come out of it?”

“I’d sleep again,” she said.

I had tried. But I couldn’t even convince myself. And I had not addressed the arson investigation at the school in Holy Cross, even though I had discussed it with Clete, for which I felt another layer of guilt.

“Desmond hired a PI to dig up dirt on you,” I said. “Or rather, he got Lou Wexler to hire the PI who dug up your past.”

“Pardon?”

“You were part of an arson investigation when you were thirteen. The fire was at a Girl Scout meeting in Holy Cross.”

“Yes, it was an accident.”

“I talked to a retired fire department superintendent,” I said. “He believed they cut you some slack because of the problems in your home.”

“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.”

“Think so?”

Once again I had become his priest. “Yeah, over the gunnels with the doodah.” But I was bothered by Tillinger’s death, too. I thought he got a raw shake all the way around. I tried to change the subject. “Did you and Alafair have a good time at Red Lerille’s last night?”

“She didn’t tell you about the run-in with Tee Boy Ladrine?”

“The jail guard who got fired?”

“Yeah, Lou Wexler deliberately plows into him, then apologizes by pounding on his back until the guy can’t breathe.”

“Wexler has a beef with him or something?”

“Something about civil rights and how the inmates got treated in the jail. He got a little sensitive with me.”

“You?”

“So I tell him he’s quite a guy, and he starts talking about Desmond Cormier and Roncevaux and how much he loves and pities Cormier.”

“Alafair didn’t tell me any of this.”

“Wexler’s gay?”

“I don’t know. He seems attracted to Alafair.”

“What’s this stuff about Roncevaux?”

“It’s high up in the Pyrenees. A battle took place there in the eighth century. The Song of Roland is a celebration of it.”

“So what do medieval guys clanking around like bags of beer cans have to do with Hollywood?”

“It’s a little more complex than that.”

“Speak slowly and I’ll try to catch on. Use flash cards if you have to.”

“Clete, I was trying to—”

“Forget it,” he said.

“There are people who believe that the legends of King Arthur and the search for the Holy Grail and the horns blowing along the road to Roncevaux make it all worthwhile.”

“Make what worthwhile?”

“Being born. Dying. That kind of thing.”

Clete pointed a finger at me. “I don’t want to hear that again. I’ve got enough crazy people in my life already.”

Other diners were starting to look at us. Clete bent in to his food. Then he wiped his mouth and said, “This stuff is sick, Dave. The deaths of the women, the subhuman cruelty. I can’t sleep. It’s like coming back from Nam. It’s like I’ve got tiger shit in my brain.”

“We’ll catch whoever is responsible, Clete. It’s a matter of time.”

“What about Alafair?” he said.

“What about her?”

“Somebody was stalking us with a scoped rifle at Henderson Swamp. Maybe the same guy was at Sean McClain’s house. If he can’t clip one of us, maybe he’ll find another target, one whose loss you’ll never survive.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said, my face flushing.

“You know the future?”

“Knock it off.”

“Our guy won’t stop until we tear up his ticket. I’m going to do it, Streak. I’m going to paint the landscape with that cocksucker.”

The tables around us had gone quiet. I stared at my plate, my ears ringing, wondering where Alafair was at the moment.

When I got back on the sidewalk, I called her on my cell. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey, yourself.”

“I’m just checking in on you, Baby Squanto.”

That was her nickname when she was little. She had a whole collection of Baby Squanto Indian books. “I’m at the set, down by Morgan City. We’re shooting some of the last scenes.”

“What time will you be home?”

“Probably by seven. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Clete told me about Lou Wexler getting into it with the guy at Red’s.”

“Lou doesn’t like white men who knock women or minority people around.”

“A man who cares for a woman doesn’t get into a confrontation in front of her,” I said.

“Lou is a good person, Dave. How about laying off the people I work with? Just for one day.”

“I didn’t know I was that bad.”

“I’m going to give you a recorder for your birthday.”

“See you this evening.”

I closed my phone. Clete came out of the cafeteria and crossed the street and got into his Caddy in the alley, where it was parked. He drove away without waving. I wanted to believe he hadn’t seen me. I watched the taillights of the Caddy disappear in the traffic, headed west, toward Lafayette and I-10. I felt even older than my years but did not know why.

Clete drove for three hours to a brick church in the piney woods of East Texas. Behind it, headstones trailed like scattered teeth down a slope to a lake spiked with dead trees, the banks churned with the hoof prints of Angus that had the red scours. The foundation in the church was cracked, the broken panes in the stained glass replaced with cardboard. Clete parked his Caddy and got out. The trees in the distance were bright green, the light harsh. There was a rawness in the wind that chilled his bones.

The post-burial service, which Clete had indicated he would not attend, had just started. He knew none of the people there. They seemed to be simple people, out of yesteryear, with work-worn hands and faces, the kind of people who didn’t quarrel with their lot and accepted death as they would a shadow moving across a meadow, subsuming whatever was in its path. There was an innocence and shyness about them, like that of children, and he wanted to tell them that but didn’t know how.

The grave had been filled in, the humped dirt partly covered by a roll of artificial grass. A tall man in black, his hair hanging over his ears, read from the Book of Psalms. Then the service was over, and the mourners drifted off to a table loaded with food in the shade of the church. Clete’s head was cold, and he wished he had brought his hat. He caught up with the man in black. “Sir?”

The man kept walking. On the far side of the lake, Clete thought he saw a white boxlike truck pull into a grove of pine trees.

“Reverend?” Clete said.

The man in black turned around. His face was chiseled, shrunken in the coldness of the wind. One wing of his starched collar was bent up in a point, like a shark’s tooth. “People here’bouts call me Preacher.”

“My name is Clete Purcel. I’d like to ask you a question about Mr. Tillinger. I’m a private investigator. My question is rather direct and maybe offensive.”

“Go ahead and ask it.”

“Did Mr. Tillinger kill his wife and daughter?”

“No, I do not think that. Hugo would never harm his family. But he had associates who are another matter. Men who do the devil’s work.”

“Sir?” Clete said.

“They sell arms in Africa. I visited Hugo before his escape. He wanted to come clean on his life and get shut of the wrongful things he did.”

“Do you know the names of these guys selling weapons?”

“No, sir.”

“Would anybody else here know?”

“We have nothing to do with those kinds of people. Would you like to have something to eat with us?”

“Yes, I would,” Clete replied. “Thank you.”

He walked with Preacher to the picnic tables in the shade. The white truck was still parked among the pines on the far side of the lake; the folding door on the passenger side was open. Clete thought he saw the sun glint on a pair of binoculars. A jolly fat woman handed him a ham-and-onion sandwich. “You look like you’re fixing to fall down, you poor little thing. You better eat up.”

“Y’all have ice cream trucks hereabouts?” he asked.

“Like anywhere else, I guess,” she said “You don’t want my sandwich?”

“Yes, ma’am, I want it,” he said, biting into the bread.

“Hang around. I got more,” she said. She smiled broadly.

“Got to go to work.”

“I bet you were a deep-sea diver in the service,” she said, still beaming.

He tried to smile at her with his eyes and say nothing, but his energies were used up. “I always liked ham-and-onion sandwiches. Dinner on the ground and that sort of thing.”

The woman continued to smile at him. She looked massive, her skin windburned, her eyes playful. He gazed at the white truck. It couldn’t be Wimple, could it? Was he losing it? The woman was laughing at a joke someone had told, then looking at Clete. She squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t be so solemn. We all get to the same place. I call it the Gingerbread House.”

Had she just said that? Her mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. The preacher was looking at him, too, his hand like a claw around his Bible. Clete left the table and walked toward his Caddy. It seemed too early for the sun to be setting, as though nature had conspired to steal part of the day from him. The white truck was still in the trees. He found a musty sweater in the Caddy’s trunk and put it on under his suit coat; his skin felt dry and cold and raw when he touched it. He drove away from the graveyard, the mourners shrinking inside his rearview mirror.

He turned onto a dirt road and tried to access the far side of the lake but ended up on a cattle guard in front of a locked gate. He got out on the shoulder and scanned the trees with his binoculars. The truck was nowhere in sight. He threw his binoculars onto the passenger seat and drove five miles on a county road, then turned east on the interstate. Just as he crossed the Louisiana line, he thought he saw the white truck behind him.

The heater in the Caddy wasn’t working. He couldn’t remember when he had felt so cold or when his hands had felt so dry and chapped on the wheel. He pulled into a truck stop and had a waitress fill his thermos with black coffee.

“You got some aspirin?” he said.

She glanced at the counters that were stocked with snacks and over-the-counter curatives. “Right behind you.”

“I think I’m about to fall down.”

“Stay here.”

She left the counter, then returned with two aspirins on a napkin. She was tall and dark-haired and middle-aged and seemed out of place and too old for her job. A globe and anchor were tattooed on the inside of her forearm. “You don’t look too good, gunny.”

“How’d you know I was in the Crotch?” he asked.

“I can tell.”

“Can you do something else for me?” he said.

“Depends.”

“Would you look over my shoulder at the gas pumps and tell me if you see an ice cream truck out there?”

“One isn’t there now.”

“Now?”

“I saw an ice cream truck after you came in. It left.”

He put a ten-dollar bill on the counter and checked into the motel behind the truck stop. As he walked toward his room, he felt as though his feet were stepping into holes in the floor. He chain-locked the door and fell onto the bed and pulled a pillow over his head. Behind his eyelids he saw artillery rounds mushrooming in a rain forest, scribbling trails of smoke on the night sky like giant spider legs. A navy corpsman was holding a thumb on Clete’s carotid, his hand shiny with gore, struggling to get a compress on it with the other. The corpsman’s face looked made of bone under his steel pot.