“Levon doesn’t think Civil War adaptations have a future.”
“He’s a snob, and sour grapes is what he is,” Tony said. “I ain’t a bad man, no matter what everybody says. I didn’t invent the rules. I go by the rules. I’m a ruthless son of a bitch who always keeps his word. You could do worse in this business.”
He began choking again, the handkerchief pressed to his mouth, his face turning purple. His driver spread his gloved hand on Nemo’s back.
“You better take him to Iberia General,” Alafair said.
Tony waved weakly at the air. “I want you on that script. You’ve got balls.”
“I’ve got what?”
“Balls. You got balls,” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
She wondered how so many people could be afraid of such a sick man. The driver held an oxygen cup to Tony’s face.
“I hope you’re better, Mr. Nemo,” Alafair said.
Then she jogged across the green toward the drawbridge at Burke Street, her tanned legs flashing in the sunlight.
Chapter 20
She didn’t tell me about her encounter with Tony until that evening.
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier, Alf?” I said.
“You were at work. He’s a pitiful man. I think we should feel sorry for him.”
“Don’t tell Clete Purcel that.”
“You should have seen him.”
“Tony Nemo should have been sent to a rendering plant a long time ago.”
“Pretty callous, Dave.”
“I’ll feel as bad about that as I can.”
But you can’t get mad at your daughter because she’s compassionate, even if you think her feelings are misdirected. I called Levon’s house. Rowena answered.
“Could I speak to Levon, please?” I said.
“What for?”
“It’s of a personal nature.”
“How’s this for personaclass="underline" Why don’t you do your job and leave us alone?”
“Where is he, Ms. Broussard?”
“He just went out the door. With his favorite shotgun. Maybe you can catch him.”
When I got to the Broussard home, I heard the popping sounds of gunfire from behind the house. It was twilight, the yard deep in shadow, the sky marbled with purple and red clouds. I skirted the house and came out in the backyard. Levon was firing with a twelve-gauge at clay pigeons he launched from an automatic trap thrower, bursting them above Bayou Teche, regardless of the neighbors on the far side of the water.
He took the plugs out of his ears. He was wearing a sleeveless shooting jacket stuffed with shells. His face seemed thinner, his eyes receded, the color of buckshot. “Slumming?” he asked.
“I need a lesson or two about film rights and such. Tony Nemo is on Alafair’s case.”
“About what?”
“He wants her to write a screenplay or adaptation or whatever you call it based on your novel.”
“I’ve heard from my agent and a couple of producers this character has been pestering. Evidently, you stoked him up.”
“I told him he could create a historical piece that wasn’t dependent on your novel.”
“Thanks a lot for doing that,” Levon said.
“He says these guys in Hollywood actually want to go into business with him.”
“They probably do. Nemo is wired in to the entirety of the casino culture. He knows how to get around the unions. He launders money. Hollywood is Babylon by the Sea. He’s a perfect fit.”
“According to Alafair, period pieces are dead on arrival.”
“Now they are.”
“But someday?”
“What do I know? I don’t care, either.”
“What writer wouldn’t want to see his work on the screen?” I said.
“J. D. Salinger.”
“Salinger didn’t like to see people, either. That’s why he put his name on his mailbox, out on the road.”
“You want to shoot?” he asked.
“No.”
He ejected the spent shell from the chamber and began thumbing five fresh rounds into the magazine.
“You don’t keep a sportsman plug in the magazine?” I said.
“I don’t have to. I don’t hunt. I shoot only clay targets.” He rested the shotgun in the crook of his arm.
“You don’t look the same,” I said.
“What?”
“Everything copacetic?”
“I’m not the issue. Rowena is.”
“I’m sorry all this has happened to you, Levon.”
“Actually, I’m surprised you’re here. You must not have seen the local news this evening,” he said. “You were the lead story. I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news.”
At ten P.M. Alafair and I watched the replay of the interview with T. J. Dartez’s wife. It was hard. Her grief and incomprehension were real. All of her features were round, without corners or angles, her face without makeup, a pie plate full of dough. Her husband was dead, killed, she said, by someone in the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department, a man who had harassed both her and her husband. She had no income and was about to be evicted from the Quarters outside Loreauville.
Alafair started to turn off the set.
“Let’s hear her out,” I said.
Mrs. Dartez was crying, her handkerchief twisted between her fingers. The interview had been prefaced with the caption “Justice Denied?” The newsman was obviously moved and had trouble completing the interview. He thanked her for being there, then looked silently at the camera.
“Someone is doing a job on you, Dave,” Alafair said.
“Nobody has that kind of beef against me.”
“Labiche does.”
“He’s not that smart.”
“At this point you should get a lawyer.”
“A lawyer will tell me to shut up and not cooperate with the department. Everything I do will be interpreted as an indicator of guilt.”
She couldn’t argue with that one.
I had been in the midst of Katrina and its aftermath. Oddly, I wanted to return to those days. There is a purity in catastrophe. We see firsthand the nature of both human courage and human frailty, the destructive and arbitrary power of the elements, the breakdown of social restraint and our mechanical inventions and the release of the savage that hides in the collective unconscious. An emergency room lit only by flashlights and filled with the moans of the dying and feet sloshing in water becomes a medieval scene no different than one penned by Victor Hugo. It is under these circumstances that we discover who we are, for good or bad. And when all this passes, we never talk about it, lest we lose the insight it gave us.
Wars have the same attraction. Rhetoric fades away; truth remains. In my hometown, I was trapped by shadows that had neither substance nor face.
Helen called me in the next morning. “I just got back from the prosecutor’s office.”
“He watched the news last night?” I said.
“The wire services and networks are on him. I’ve had three calls myself.”
“I see.”
“Internal Affairs is taking over.”
“Internal Affairs is a joke,” I said.
“Let me put you on the desk. All this will pass.”
“Not for me it won’t. Maybe I killed Dartez. I have dreams I can’t remember. I think he’s in them. I see headlights shining and hear glass breaking. I see blood coming from someone’s mouth.”
It was obvious that she didn’t want to hear it. “We have a witness who puts Kevin Penny at the scene,” she said. “That’s reasonable doubt. The prosecutor knows this isn’t a prosecutable case.”
“Then why doesn’t he say that?”
“At some point all of us will. Then a shitload of criticism will come down on our heads, and time will go by, and everybody will forget it.”