“Penny is a lot of laughs,” I replied. “I’ve never figured out how he stays on the street.”
“Is there a second meaning there?”
“How can I be of assistance to you?” I said.
“I doubt if you can. I’ve run Penny in two or three times. If you’ve got a problem with him, let us know. In the meantime, stay out of matters that are not in your jurisdiction.”
Clete’s messages were about the little boy Homer and the possibility that Carolyn Ardoin was in danger at the hands of Kevin Penny or Maximo and JuJu. By the time I had cleaned up my messages, my head was splitting. I went to the water cooler and took two aspirins, then returned to my office and lowered the blinds on the door glass.
Helen believed I was not responsible for Dartez’s death, but only because Baby Cakes hadn’t identified me and instead had identified Kevin Penny. In other words, I’d caught a break. The only forensic evidence against me was the smudged fingerprints on the broken window glass of Dartez’s pickup truck. I could simply say I had been at his house and touched the glass there. Except I would be lying.
In the meantime, I had interviewed Penny and later beaten him half to death with a pool cue and almost drowned him in the commode, apparently without his being completely aware that I was the man he had followed the night Dartez died. Better put, he had probably followed my vehicle rather than me.
I might skate, but Penny might also.
People are shocked when they learn that cops sometimes salt the crime scene and commit perjury. Or maybe they cancel a bad guy’s ticket and fold his hand over a throw-down and squeeze off a round with his dead finger to make sure gunpowder residue is on his person. Call it situational ethics, call it murder. It’s a big temptation, particularly when it comes to guys like Kevin Penny and perhaps even Spade Labiche.
Two days later, Clete got a call made by a staff member at Lafayette General. Carolyn Ardoin had been transferred from an emergency unit in Jennings and admitted at 4:16 A.M. She was in the ICU and had asked the staff member to call Clete.
“She was in an accident?” Clete said.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“How bad is she?”
“Sir, we can’t give out specific information.”
“Can you put her on the phone?”
“That’s not possible.”
“Is she going to live?”
“Sir, she’s getting the best of care. That’s all I can say.”
“Put someone on with the authority to give out information. Is there a cop there?”
“No. How far away are you?”
“Twenty miles.”
“Drive carefully. I’ll tell her you’re coming. I know that will make her happy.”
“Don’t do this to me.”
“I’m sorry,” the staff member said.
Clete took the four-lane into Lafayette, the needle at ninety. He parked illegally and went through the emergency room into the intensive care unit before anyone could stop him. “Where’s Carolyn Ardoin?” he asked at the desk.
“Are you a relative?” the nurse said.
“Her grandfather. Where is she?”
The nurse raised her eyes from her paperwork.
“I’m a close friend,” he said. “Was it an accident?”
“No,” the nurse said. “Follow me.”
Carolyn was behind a screen. When he saw her, he tried to keep his face empty, his eyes flat. “How you doin’, kid?” he said.
There were streaks of dried blood in her hair. Both eyes were swollen as big as plums. Her bottom lip was stitched. There were finger-shaped bruises on her throat and neck and shoulders.
“Who did this?” he said.
“I was unloading groceries in the driveway. It was dark. Somebody hit me.”
“Was Homer with you?”
“He’s at my mother’s.”
“Was it one guy or more than one guy?”
“I just remember a fist hitting me. Then I was on the ground, and the fists kept pounding my face. I tried to speak—” She couldn’t finish.
“I’m going to take care of Homer. I’m also going to find out who did this. What did the Jennings cops say?”
“They just asked me questions. One was a woman. Sherry something.”
“How’d they treat you?”
“Fine. Everyone has been kind.”
“I have to use the bathroom,” Clete said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“There’s one here.”
“It’s too small for a guy my size.”
He went down the hall to a restroom in the waiting area, but not for the reason he had given. An old Technicolor video, one that held interest for fewer and fewer people these days, had begun replaying itself on a screen inside his head. The slick hung in the air above the ville, its rotary blades throbbing. He heard the treads of the zippo track clanking out of the rice paddy and saw an orange flame arch out of its cannon and smelled a stench like burning kerosene and animal hair. People were running, the hooches bursting alight, the ammunition cached under them popping like strings of Chinese firecrackers. Clete cupped water onto his face and dried himself with paper towels, then went to Carolyn’s room, the video not finished, a navy corpsman from Birmingham hitting him with a syrette of morphine: “Hang on, gunny. Here comes the dust-off. You’re Freedom Bird — bound.”
Carolyn had fallen asleep. He stroked her hair and felt a pain in his chest that he had nowhere to put. Two or three faces floated before his eyes like helium balloons with ugly features painted on them. As he stroked her hair, his left hand curled and uncurled and curled again. He knew where he was going and what he would do when he got there. But there was something else he had do first.
He called me on his cell and told me about the assault.
“Where are you now?” I said.
“On the way to Lake Charles. Penny’s little boy is with Carolyn’s mother.”
“Leave him there.”
“The mother is an invalid.”
“You’re not set up to take care of a child, Clete.”
“I hired a black lady. Now butt out.”
“Don’t do what you’re thinking about.”
“This isn’t an act of random violence. It happened in her driveway. Either Penny, Maximo Soza, JuJu Ladrine, or any combination of the three did this.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Clete—”
“Out,” he said.
I called Tony Nine Ball at his office and told the secretary who I was.
“Just a moment,” she said. I looked at the second hand on my watch. Thirty-three seconds passed. “I’m sorry, he’s still in a meeting.”
“Tell him to pick up or I’ll be over there in ten minutes and shove that phone up his ass.”
One minute later, Tony was on the line. “What’d you say to my secretary?”
“Not to lie.”
“So what’s so important you got to upset people with bad language?”
“Nothing had better happen to Clete Purcel. We had a deal.”
“What deal?”
“I gave you an intro to some producers and agents. That means nobody lays a hand on Clete.”
“Those guys in Hollywood like me. Why should I be mad at Purcel or you?”
“Why wouldn’t you take my call?”
“I was indisposed. She’s leaving now. Out the back door. The best piece of ass in New Orleans. Thanks for ruining one of the few good moments in my current life.”
Three days passed with no word from Clete. Then I got a call from Detective Sherry Picard in the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department.
“What can I do for you?” I said.
“I’m at a crime scene south of Jennings. Can you come over here?”