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General worked on him all night and saved his life. When he got the bill, he
refused to pay it. A lawyer called him up and tried to appeal to his
conscience. Sookie told him, 'I ain't worth ten thousand dollars and I ain't
paying it.' It was the only time anyone around here remembered Sookie telling
the truth about anything."
"You're a police officer?" the shorter gambler said.
"Sookie told you that?" I said, and laughed, then raised my magazine and
began reading it again.
But as I watched the three of them walk outside, all of them gazing with
the innocuous interest of tourists at the trees and antebellum homes along the
street, I knew that being clever with the emissaries of greed and profit was a
poor form of Valium for the political reality of the state where I was born,
namely, that absolutely everything around us was for sale.
I went up the stairs to Perry's office.
"You trying to bring casinos into Iberia Parish?" I said.
"No, people here have voted it down," Perry answered from behind his
desk.
"Then why are those two characters in town?"
"If it's any of your business, there are people in Lafayette who believe
gaming revenues shouldn't go only to the parishes on the Texas border," he
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replied.
"Gaming? That's a great word. You don't have any bottom, Perry. I was out
to Ladice Hulin's place this morning. The same day Amanda Boudreau was
murdered, you told Tee Bobby that Legion Guidry was his grandfather. He came
home in a rage, put his sister in the car, then went to find Jimmy Dean
Styles. But you knew all this from the jump. You're going to let Tee Bobby
take the needle rather than see your family's dirty bedsheets hung on the wash
line."
He sat very still in the deep softness of his black leather chair. He
wore a cream-colored suit and a sky-blue shirt, opened casually at the collar.
His mouth was puckered, as though he had sucked the moisture out of it, the
folds of flesh in his throat pronounced, his hands cupped slightly on his desk
blotter, the heated intensity of his eyes focused no more than six inches in
front of him.
When he spoke, his vocal cords were a phlegmy knot.
"For one reason or another, you seem to have a need to demean me whenever
we meet," he said. "Obviously I can't discuss the case of a client with you,
but since you've chosen to attack me personally on this gambling stuff, maybe
I can offer you an explanation that will allow you to think better of me. Most
of the hot-sauce companies use foreign imports now. We don't. We've never
laid off an employee or evicted a tenant. That's our choice. But it's an
expensive one."
He looked up at me, his hands folded now, his posture and demeanor
suggestive of the cleric he had once studied to be.
"I don't have it all figured out yet, Perry. But I think the story is a
lot dirtier than you're letting on," I said.
He clicked the edges of a pad of Post-its across his thumb. Then he
pitched the pad in the air and let it bounce on his desk. "You'd better go
take care of your own and not worry so much about me," he said.
"You want to take the corn bread out of your mouth?"
"Your friend, the Elephant Man, Purcel, is it? He pulled Legion Guidry
off a counter stool in Franklin this morning and threw him through a glass
window. A seventy-four-year-old man. You two make quite a pair, Dave," he
said.
I went back to the office and called the jail in St. Mary Parish and was told
by a sheriffs deputy that Clete Purcel was in custody for disturbing the peace
and destroying private property and would appear in court that afternoon.
"No assault charges?" I asked.
"The guy he tossed through a window didn't want to press charges," the
deputy replied.
"Did the guy give an explanation?"
"He said it was a private argument. It wasn't no big deal," said the
deputy.
No big deal. Right.
After work I drove to Clete's apartment. From the parking lot I saw him
up on his balcony, above the swimming pool, in a Hawaiian shirt and faded
jeans that bagged in the seat, grilling a steak, a can of beer balanced on the
railing.
"How's it hangin', noble mon?" he called, grinning through the smoke.
I didn't reply. I went up the stairs two at a time and through his front
door and across his living room toward the sliding glass doors that gave onto
the balcony. He drank from his beer, his green eyes looking at me over the top
of the can.
"There's a problem?" he said.
"You threw Legion Guidry through a window?"
"He's lucky I didn't feed it to him."
"He's going to come after you."
"Good. I'll finish what I started this morning. You know what he did to
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Barbara in the western store?"
"No, I don't."
He told me about the scene in the store, Legion Guidry blowing his breath
in Barbara's face while he crushed the bones in her hand.
"He's setting you up, Clete. That's why he didn't file against you," I
said.
He forked his steak off the grill and slapped it on a plate. "I don't
want to talk about it anymore. Get some bread and a Dr Pepper out of the
icebox," he said.
"What's eating you?"
"Nothing. The world. My weight problem. What difference does it make?"
"Clete?"
"Barbara's shitcanning me. She says we're not a match. She says I deserve
more than she can give me. I can't believe it. That's the same line I used
when I broke it off with Big Tit Judy Lavelle."
"When did she tell you this?"
"A little while ago."
"After you got out of jail for defending her?"
"It's not her fault. My ex said I always smelled like dope and whores.
The only person who won't accept what I am is me."
He went into the kitchen with his steak and took a bottle of whiskey from
the cabinet and poured three fingers in a glass. He glanced at me, then
opened the icebox and tossed me a can of Dr Pepper.
"Get that look off your face. Everything is under control," he said.
"You going to get drunk?" I asked.
"Who knows? The evening is young."
I blew out my breath. "You're going to try to make up with Zerelda
Calucci, aren't you?"
He drank his whiskey in one long swallow, his eyes watering slightly from
the hit his stomach took.
"Wow, the old giant killer never lets you down," he said.
That night I helped Batist in the bait shop, but I couldn't let go of Perry
LaSalle's smug complacency. I picked up the phone and called him at his home
on Poinciana Island.
"Just a footnote to our conversation this afternoon," I said. "Legion
Guidry physically abused Barbara Shanahan in public. He called her a bitch
and almost broke her hand. This is the woman you supposedly care about. In the
meantime, you denigrate Clete Purcel for going after the guy who hurt her. In
this case the guy is your client."
"I didn't know this."
My hand was squeezed tight around the phone receiver, another heated
response already forming in my throat. But suddenly I was robbed of my anger.
"You didn't know?" I said.
"Legion did that to Barbara?" he said.
"Yes, he did."
He didn't reply and I thought the line had gone dead.
"Perry?"
"I apologize for saying what I did about Purcel. Is Barbara all right? I
can't believe Legion did that. That rotten son of a bitch," he said.
On Saturday morning I called Clete's apartment, but there was no answer and
his machine was turned off. I tried again Sunday morning, with the same
result. That afternoon I hitched my outboard and trailer to the pickup and
headed toward Bayou Benoit and stopped at Clete's apartment on the way. He was
lying in a recliner by the pool like a beached whale, his body glowing with
lotion and sunburn, a bottle of vodka and a tall glass filled with crushed ice
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