Then I rejoined Molly in the backyard and did not mention my exchange with Raphael Chalons. Tripod climbed down from his perch in the live oak, and Snuggs appeared out of the bamboo, his tail pointed straight up, as stiff as a broomstick. The four of us commenced to share breakfast at the redwood table.
When the world presents itself in the form of a green-gold playground, blessed with water and flowers and wind and centuries-old oak trees, and when you're allowed to share all these things on a fine Sunday morning with people and animals you love, why take on the burden of the spiritually afflicted?
That afternoon I jogged through City Park and saw Clete sailing a Frisbee with a bunch of black kids by the baseball diamond. He was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of swim trunks and his porkpie hat, his skin running with sweat.
"Married?" he said.
"Right. Last night. Got something smart to say?" I said.
"Know somebody a few weeks, start a shitstorm all over town, then hit the altar with about three hours planning… Seems normal to me," he said.
I told him about Raphael Chalons's offer to put me on his payroll.
"That's what rich guys do. I don't see the big deal there," he said.
"No, I think he wants to prove to himself that someone close to him didn't kill his daughter."
Clete sailed the Frisbee to a black kid, then sat on a bench in the shade and drank from a glass of iced tea. He wiped his hair and chest with a towel. There were strawberry bruises ringed around his brow and scabs in his scalp where his tormentors in Miami had wrapped a chain around his head. "So you told the old man to fuck himself?" he said.
"Not in those words."
"You should have. We need to take it to them."
"In what way?" I said.
"Same rules as when we were at NOPD – bust 'em or dust 'em."
"That's why we're not at NOPD any longer."
"It's not over between me and this Lou Kale dude, either. By the way, where's Jimmie?"
"I think he may have gone to find Ida Durbin."
"Think?"
"I don't have his umbilical cord stapled to the corner of my desk. You're the one who brought back the story about Ida saving your ass. Now, give it a rest."
"Married life must really be agreeing with you."
"Clete, you can absolutely drive people crazy. I mean it. You need your own Zip code and time zone. Every time I have a conversation with you, I feel like I have blood coming out of my ears."
"What'd I say?" he replied, genuinely perplexed.
The only sound was the creak of the trees and the kids playing by the ball diamond. "Molly wants you to come over for dinner this evening. We called earlier but you weren't home," I said.
"Why didn't you try my cell?"
"I don't remember."
"Better check with your wife again."
You didn't put the slide on Clete Purcel. But at 6:00 p.m. he was at the house anyway, resplendent in a new blue suit, his face glowing with aftershave. He clutched a dozen red roses in each meaty paw, a wedding gift wrapped in ribbon and satin paper clamped under one arm. It contained a sterling silver jewelry box that probably cost him several hundred dollars. "I'm really happy for Dave," I heard him say to Molly when I was in another room. "He's got polka dot giraffes running around in his head, but he's the best guy I've ever known."
On Monday morning I undertook a task that no drunk willingly embarks upon. I tried to find out what I had done during a blackout, where I had gone, and the identity of the people who had seen me commit acts that were so embarrassing, depraved, or even monstrous that my conscious mind would not allow me to remember them.
I checked out a cruiser and returned to the camp in the Atchafalaya Basin where I had awakened on a Sunday morning, hovering on the edges of psychosis, praying the sky might rain Jack Daniel's at any moment and let my drunkard's game go into extra innings.
I found the Creole woman who had watched over me that morning and who had told me I had been in the company of poachers and men who carried knives. Her name was Clarise Lantier, and she was picking up trash behind the lakefront bar her husband operated, stuffing it heavily into a gunnysack. She wore trousers and men's work shoes, and when she stooped over and stared at me sideways, her recessed, milky-blue eye and misshapen face were like those of a female Quasimodo.
"Who were these poachers and men with knives, Miss Clarise?" I asked.
"They live yonder, 'cross the lake. Don't ax me their names, either, 'cause they don't give them. Maybe they from up nort'."
"How do you know?"
"They talk different from us."
"You're not telling me a whole lot."
"They dangerous men, Mr. Dave. That's enough to know, ain't it?" she said.
But she gave me directions to their camp, anyway. I drove on a dirt track around the northern rim of the lake, through stands of swamp maples and persimmon and gum trees. The interior of the woods was dark with shade, the grass a pale green, the canopy rippling in the wind. On the east shore I saw a shack built on stilts by the water's edge, an outboard and a pirogue tied under it. A pickup with crab traps in back and a Tennessee plate was parked up on the high ground, a bullet hole in the rear window.
There are not many places left in the United States where people can get off the computer, stop filing tax returns, and in effect become invisible. The rain forests in the Cascades and parts of West Montana come to mind, and perhaps the 'Glades still offer hope to those who wish to resign from modern times. The other place is the Atchafalaya Basin.
I got out of the cruiser and stood behind the opened door, my right hand on the butt of my.45. "It's Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department. I need somebody to come down here and talk to me," I called up at the shack.
A dark-haired man with a ragged beard appeared in the back doorway, just above the wood steps that led down to dry ground. "Holy shit, you're a cop?" he said.
"Keep your hands where I can see them, please," I said. "Who else is in the camp?"
"Nobody. They went to run the trot line."
"Come down here, please," I said.
His body was so thin it looked skeletal. His jeans and T-shirt were filthy, his neck beaded with dirt rings. He walked slowly down the steps, as though his connective tissue barely held his bones together. It was impossible to tell his age or estimate his potential. He seemed ageless, without cultural reference, painted on the air. He had teeth on one side of his mouth and none on the other. There was a black glaze in his eyes, a long, tapered skinning knife in a scabbard on his belt. His odor was like scrapings from an animal hide that have burned in a fire.
"I sure didn't make you for no lawman," he said.
"What's your name, podna?"
"Same name it was when we met you 'cross the lake at the bar – Vassar Twitty."
"I'm not here to bother you guys about game regulations, Vassar. I don't care what kind of history you might have in other places, either. But I've got a personal problem I think you might be able to help me with. I went on a bender and don't know what I did."
It felt easier saying it than I had thought. He sat down on a step, his knees splayed, and looked about the ground with an idiotic grin on his face.
"Want to let me in on the joke?" I asked.
"You was pretty pissed off. We kept telling you to just have another drink and come coon hunting with us. But you was set on getting even with some guy."
"Which guy?" I said.
"Some TV newsman you said was jamming you up. We tried to get your keys away from you, but there wasn't nothing for it."
"For what?" I said, swallowing.
"When a man wants to rip somebody from his liver to his lights, you leave him alone. We left you alone. I reckon nothing bad happened or you wouldn't be driving a cruiser. Right? Boy, you was sure stewed," he said.
The wind gusted off the lake. It must have been ninety in the shade, but my face felt as cold and bright as if I had bathed it in ice water.