Clete lived on Main, too, farther down the bayou, in a stucco, 1940s motor court, set back from the street in deep shade. Because it was Sunday, I found him at home, reading in a deck chair, his glasses perched on his nose, his leviathan body glistening with suntan oil. An iced tomato drink with a stick of celery floating in it rested on the gravel by his chair. "What's the haps, noble mon?" he said.
I told him about my visit to Troy's bedside and how Jimmie and I met Ida Durbin in Galveston on the Fourth of July in 1958. I told him about the beating Jimmie gave the pimp, Lou Kale, and how Ida disappeared as though she had been sucked through a hole in the dimension.
Clete was a good investigator because he was a good listener. While others spoke, his face seldom showed expression. His eyes, which were smoky green, always remained respectful, neutral, occasionally shifting sideways in a reflective way. After I had finished, he ticked a fingernail at a scar that ran diagonally through his left eyebrow and across the bridge of his nose. "This guy Troy was working with pimps?" he said.
"The uncle was a cop on a pad. Troy was evidently a tagalong," I said.
"But he believed they killed the girl?"
"He didn't say that," I replied.
"House girls are full-time cash on the hoof. Their pimps usually don't kill them."
But Clete knew better. He raised his eyebrows. "Dave, a thousand things could have happened. Why think the worst? Besides, if there's any blame, it's on your half-crazy brother. Remodeling a pimp's face on behalf of a whore probably isn't the best way to do RR. for her."
He laughed, then looked at my expression. "Okay, mon," he said. "If you want to scope it out, I'd start with Bordelon's ties to other people. Run that by me again about the two sheriff's deputies."
"They braced me in the hospital parking lot."
"They thought Bordelon gave up somebody?"
"That was my impression."
"So Troy Bordelon's family is -"
"They do scut work for the Chalons family in St. Mary Parish."
Clete removed the celery stalk from his drink and took a long swallow from the glass. His hair was sandy, with strands of white in it, cut like a little boy's. When the vodka and tomato juice hit his stomach, the color seemed to bloom in his face. He looked up at me, squinting against the sunlight.
"I have crazy thoughts about going back to 'Nam sometimes, finding the family of a mamasan I killed, apologizing, giving them money, somehow making it right," he said. He looked emptily out into the sunlight.
"What are you saying?"
"I'd let sleeping dogs lie. But you won't do that. No, sir. No, sir. No, sir. Not ole Streak," he replied, pressing the bottom of his glass hard into the moist gravel.
Clete was wrong. I disengaged from thoughts about Ida Durbin. During the week, I bass-fished on Bayou Benoit, repaired the roof on the shotgun house I had just taken a mortgage on, and each dawn jogged three miles through the mist-shrouded trees in City Park. In fact, listening to Clete's advice and forgetting Ida was easier than I thought. I even wondered if my ability to give up an obsession was less a virtue than a sign of either age or a newly acquired callousness.
But airliners crash because a twenty-cent lightbulb burns out on the instrument panel; a Civil War campaign is lost because a Confederate courier wraps three cigars in a secret communique; and a morally demented man takes a job in a Texas book depository and changes world history.
It was early the next Monday, the rain hitting hard on the tin roof of my house, when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver on the kitchen counter, a cup of coffee in one hand. Between the trees on the back slope of my property, I could see the rain dancing on the bayou, the mist blowing into the cattails. "Hello?" I said.
"Hey, Robicheaux. What do you say we buy you breakfast?" the voice said.
"Who's this?" I asked, although I already knew the answer.
"J. W. Shockly. Talked to you outside Baptist Hospital last week? Billy Joe and I have to do a favor for the boss. I'd really appreciate your help on this."
"I'm pretty jammed up, partner."
"It'll take ten minutes. We're at the public library, a half block down the street. What's to lose?"
I put on a hat and raincoat and walked under the dripping limbs of the live oaks that formed a canopy over East Main. I passed the site of what had once been the residence of the writer and former Confederate soldier George Washington Cable and the grotto dedicated to Christ's mother next to the city library. J. W. Shockly and the other sheriff's deputy from the hospital parking lot, both in civilian clothes, were standing under the shelter at the library entrance, smiles fixed on their faces inside the mist, like brothers-in-arms happy to see an old friend.
"Can we go somewhere?" Shockly said, extending his hand. "You remember Billy Joe Pitts."
So I had to shake hands with his partner as well. When I did, he squeezed hard on the ends of my fingers.
"That's quite a grip you've got," I said.
"Sorry," he said. "How about coffee and a beignet down at Victor's?"
I shook my head.
"Here's what it is," Shockly said. "The sheriff sent me down here because me and you go back. See, the nurse who was in Troy's hospital room with you is the sheriff's cousin. She says Troy was telling you some bullcrap about a crime involving a prostitute. The sheriff thinks maybe you're working for the defense. That maybe the restaurant owner's family has hired you to prove Troy was a lowlife or procurer or something, that maybe he was propositioning the waitress and the restaurant owner went apeshit. You following me?"
"No, not at all," I replied.
Shockly's hair was buzz-cut, his pale blue suit spotted with rain. His breath smelled like cigarettes and mints. His gaze seemed to search the mist for the right words to use. "Nobody wants to see the restaurant owner ride the needle. But he's not going to skate, either. So how about it?"
"How about what?" I said.
"You working for the defense or not?" Billy Joe, his friend, said. He was a shorter man than Shockly, but tougher in appearance, his eye sockets recessed, the skin of his face grainy, his teeth too large for his mouth.
"I already explained my purpose in visiting the hospital. I think we're done here," I said.
Billy Joe raised his hands and grinned. "Enough said, then." He popped me on the arm, hard enough to sting through my raincoat.
When I got back home, I washed my hands and dried them on a dish towel. I fixed a bowl of Grape-Nuts and berries and milk and sat down to eat by the kitchen window. The air blowing through the screen was cool and smelled of flowers and wet trees and fish spawning in the bayou, and in a few minutes I had almost forgotten about Shockly and Pitts and their shabby attempt to convince me their visit to New Iberia was an innocuous one.
But just as I started to wash my dishes I heard footsteps on the gallery. I opened the front door and looked down at Billy Joe Pitts, who was squatted on his haunches, scraping the contents from a pet food can onto a sheet of newspaper for my cat, Snuggs. J. W. Shockly waited at the curb in a black SUV, the exhaust pipe smoking in the rain. "What do you think you're doing?" I said.
"Had this can in the vehicle and saw your cat. Thought I'd treat him to a meal," Pitts said, twisting around, his bottom teeth exposed with his grin.
Snuggs had just started to eat, but I scooped him up and cradled him in one arm. He was a white, short-haired, unneutered male, thick-necked, heavy, ropy with muscle, his ears chewed, his head notched with pink scars. He was the best cat I ever owned. "Snuggs says thanks but he's on a diet. And I say adios, bud."