Creole Belle (16 page)

Clete left his Caddy parked inside the courtyard at his office and walked to the store operated by the Count and Jimmy the Dime. As soon as he entered the store and the tiny bell over the door rang,
Clete realized some sea change had taken place in his relationship with Jimmy and the Count. “What’s the haps?” he said.

“What it is, Purcel?” Jimmy replied, not looking up from his cash register.

“I’ve got a couple of tickets to WrestleMania at the arena for the Count, because I know he digs it,” Clete said. “I caught these same guys in Lafayette once. A South American dwarf shot Mr. Moto in the crotch with a blowgun.”

The Count was busying himself in the back of the store, whipping a feather duster across a row of capped jars filled with mushrooms and herbs and pickled amphibians. “I’m looking for a hitter named Caruso,” Clete said. “I think maybe the Count can be of great help to me.”

“Stow it, Purcel,” Jimmy said.

“This one is personal. Don’t you guys stonewall me on this.”

“I got news for you. Everything is personal. Like us getting mixed up in a homicide is personal,” Jimmy said. “Like another nickel in Angola is personal.”

“Did I get Nig and Wee Willie off your case when you couldn’t pay the vig on your bond?” Clete said.

“I burned a candle for you at the cathedral,” Jimmy replied. “I paid for the candle, too.”

“I’m about to arrange your funeral service there unless you stop cracking wise,” Clete said.

“She came in here yesterday,” Jimmy said.

“How did you know it was her?”

“The Count’s seen her. But where, I don’t know, and he ain’t saying.”

“What’d she want?”

“A book on Marie Laveau. Then she saw my cash register and wanted to buy it. She said she has an antique store in the Keys.”

“How about it, Count? Is that straight?” Clete said.

The Count was not answering questions.

“I’m jammed up on this one, you guys. I really need y’all’s help,” Clete said.

Neither man answered. “I’m going to tell y’all something I haven’t told anybody but Dave Robicheaux. I think Caruso is my daughter.
She’s had a lousy life and, in my opinion, deserves a better shake than the one she’s had.”

His entreaty was to no avail. He removed two admission tickets to the New Orleans Arena from his wallet and placed them by the cash register. “You might really dig this, Count,” he said. “I once saw the Blimp. He had a curtain of fat hanging down to his knees so he looked like six hundred pounds of nakedness when he climbed into the ring. Plus he had BO you could smell ten rows into the seats. He’d get his opponent in a bear hug and fall on him and smother him in sweat and blubber and GAPO from hell until the guy was screaming for the ref. Nobody can equal the Blimp in terms of gross-out potential, but see what you think.”

“What’s GAPO?” Jimmy said.

“Gorilla armpit odor,” Clete replied.

He went back outside and lit a cigarette by a parking meter and tried to think. A man in a split-tail coat and tattered top hat rode by on a unicycle. A man in a strap undershirt was watering his plants with a hose on a balcony across the street, an iridescent mist blowing from the palm and banana fronds into the sunlight. On the corner, under the colonnade, a lone black kid with iron shoe taps was dancing on the sidewalk, a portable stereo blaring out “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Wrong time of day, wrong place, wrong tune, wrong century, kid
, Clete thought, then tried to remember when he had been this depressed. He couldn’t.

He felt someone touch him on the shoulder. He turned and looked into the hawklike glare that constituted Count Carbona’s gaze. “Good earth,” the Count said.

“What are you saying?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t. Are you talking about the name of a book?”

The Count continued to stare into Clete’s face. “I’m no code breaker, Count,” Clete said.

The Count pressed a book of paper matches into Clete’s palm. The cover had a satin-black finish with words embossed in silver letters.

“This joint is in Terrebonne Parish?” Clete said. “That’s what you’re telling me? Caruso left this in your store?”

The Count’s cheeks creased with the beginnings of a smile.

C
LETE WAITED IN
his office until sunset, then drove deep into Terrebonne Parish, south of Larose, almost to Lake Felicity, down where the wetlands of Louisiana dissolve into a dim gray-green line that becomes the Gulf of Mexico. The sun was an orange melt in the west, veiled with smoke from a sugar refinery or a grass fire, the moss in the dead cypress trees lifting in the breeze. The nightclub and barbecue joint advertised on the book of matches was located in a clearing at the end of a dirt road, right at the edge of a saltwater bay, the trees strung with multicolored Japanese lanterns. Clete thought he could hear the sounds of an accordion and fiddle and rub-board drifting out of a screened pavilion behind the nightclub.

He had put on his powder-blue sport coat and gray slacks and had shined his oxblood loafers and bought a new fedora with a small feather in the band. Before he got out of the Caddy, he gargled with a small amount of Listerine and spat it out the window. He also took off his shoulder holster and put it under the seat, along with his heavy spring-loaded leather-wrapped blackjack shaped like a darning sock. When he entered the nightclub, the refrigeration was set so low, the air felt like ice water.

He sat at the bar and laid out his cigarettes and his Zippo lighter in front of him and ordered a Bud and gazed out the back window at the last spark of sun on the bay and at the band inside the screened pavilion. He salted his beer and drank it slowly, enjoying each moment of it in his mouth, letting its coldness slide down his throat, lighting places inside him that only the addicted know about. He didn’t have long to wait before he knew she was in the room. How or why he knew she was there, he couldn’t explain. He felt her presence before he saw her in the bar mirror. He smelled her perfume before he turned on the stool and watched her drop a series of coins in the jukebox. He saw her midriff and exposed navel and the baby fat on her hips and resented its exposure to other men in a way that
was completely irrational. He looked at the fullness of her breasts and the tightness of her jeans and the thickness of her reddish-blond Dutch-boy haircut and felt protectiveness rather than erotic attraction. He felt as though someone else had slipped into his skin and was thinking thoughts that were not his.

He ordered another Bud longneck and two fingers of Jack. The girl sat down at the bar, three stools from him, and idly tapped a quarter on the bar’s apron, as though she had not made up her mind. Clete looked at the mirror and tossed back his Jack, a great emptiness if not a balloon of fear swelling in his chest. The Jack went down like gasoline on a flame. He began opening and closing his Zippo, his heart racing, an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

She tilted her head forward and massaged the back of her neck, her fingers kneading deep into the muscle. Then she turned and gazed at the side of his face. “You eyeballing me in the mirror, boss?” she said.

“Me?” he said. When she didn’t reply, he asked, “You talking to me?”

“Is someone else sitting on your stool?”

“You had some tats removed from your arms, maybe. I guess I noticed that. I know what that can be like.”

“I never had tats. Would you put a needle in your arm that an AIDS patient has used?”

“So where’d you get the scars?”

“I was in an accident. My mother’s diaphragm slipped, and I was born. Is that your come-on line?”

“I’m over the hill for come-on lines. On a quiet day, I can hear my liver rotting. For exercise, I fall down.”

“I get what you’re saying: Old guys are rarely interested in getting in a girl’s pants. That would be strange, wouldn’t it?”

“Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

“At the convent.” The bartender brought her a drink in an oversize glass without her having ordered one. She used both hands to pick it up and drink. She took a cherry out of it and broke it between her teeth.

“Why not order your next one in a bathtub and put a straw in it?” Clete said.

“Not a bad idea,” she said. Her cheeks had taken on a deeper color, and her mouth was glossy and red with lipstick. “I’ve seen you around.”

“I doubt it. I’m a traveling man, mostly.”

“You’re a salesman?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re a cop.”

“I used to be. But not anymore.”

“What happened?”

“I had an accident, too. I popped a government witness.”

“‘Popped,’ like made him dead?”

“Actually, getting snuffed was the noblest deed in his career. The DA’s office here made a lot of noise about it, but the truth is, nobody cared.”

She picked a second cherry out of her drink by its stem and sucked on it. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Are you from New Orleans?”

“Sure.”

“Say ‘New Orleans.’ Say it like you regularly say it.”

“‘Neu Or Luns.’”

“It’s not ‘Nawlens’?”

“Nobody from New Orleans uses that pronunciation. TV news-people do it because it gives the impression they know the city.”

She turned her stool toward him, her thighs slightly spread, her eyes roving over his face and body. She pursed her lips. “What are you looking for, hon? An easy lay out here in the swamps? I don’t like people who make comments about the scars on my arms. None of my scars look like they came from tattoo removal.”

“I was just making conversation.”

“If that’s your best effort, it’s a real dud.”

“I think you’re beautiful. I wouldn’t say something to offend you.”

He hadn’t meant to say that. Nor did he know why he had. His face was burning. “Sometimes I say things the wrong way. I bet you like baseball and outdoor dance pavilions and barbecues and stuff like that. I bet you’re a nice girl.”

“You go around saying things like that to people you don’t know?”

“You look like an all-American girl, that’s all.”

“If you’re determined to pick up girls in bars, this is what I suggest: Call Weight Watchers, don’t let your swizzle stick do your talking for you, and change your deodorant. You’ll get a lot better results.”

Clete poured his glass full but didn’t drink. He felt a sensation similar to a great spiritual and physical weariness seeping through his body.

“I was kidding. Brighten up,” she said. “Your problem is you’re a bad actor.”

“I’m not following you on that.”

“I’ve seen you before.” She fixed her eyes on his and held them there until he felt his scalp tighten. “Are you an Orioles fan?”

“Yeah, I like them. I go to baseball games everywhere I travel.”

“You ever go to exhibition games in Fort Lauderdale?” she asked.

“They call it Little Yankee Stadium, because the Yankees trained there before the Orioles.”

“That’s where I bet I saw you,” she said. She moved a strand of hair off her cheek. “Or maybe I saw you somewhere else. It’ll come to me. I don’t forget very much.”

“Yeah, you look smart, the way you carry yourself and all.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re a mess,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You want to dance?”

“I’m clumsy when it comes to stuff like that. What do you mean, I’m a mess?”

“You’re too innocent for words.”

She went to the jukebox and began feeding coins into it. In spite of the air-conditioning, he was sweating inside his clothes, blood pounding in his temples. He walked out onto the dance floor and stood inches behind her. He could smell the heat in her skin and the perfume in her hair. She turned around and looked up into his face, her eyes violet-colored in the light. “Something wrong?” she asked.

“I got to go,” he said.

“Buy me a drink?”

“No, I got to take care of some stuff. I’m sorry. It’s been good meeting you,” he said.

“You better get yourself some high-octane tranqs, boss,” she said.

“I really like you. I’m sorry for the way I talk,” he said.

His hands were shaking when he got to his car.

C
LETE THOUGHT THE
drive back into the city would calm his heart and give him time to think in a rational manner, but he was wired to the eyes when he pulled into the driveway of the garage apartment down by Chalmette that Frankie Giacano was using as a hideout. He didn’t even slow down going up the stairs. He tore the screen door off the latch and splintered the hard door out of the jamb. Frankie was sitting stupefied in a stuffed chair, a sandwich in his hand, food hanging out of his mouth. “Are you out of your mind?” he said.

“Probably,” Clete said.

“What are you gonna do with that blackjack?” Frankie said, rising to his feet.

“It’s part of my anger-management program. I hit things instead of people. When that doesn’t work, I start hitting people,” Clete said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

He smashed a lamp in half and the glass out of a picture frame on the wall and the glass in a window overlooking the side yard. He went into the kitchen and turned the drying rack upside down and broke the dishes across the edge of the counter and began feeding a box of sterling silverware into the garbage grinder.

With the grinder still roaring and clanking, he grabbed Frankie by the necktie and dragged him to the sink. “One of your skanks told me your nose is too long,” he said. “Let’s see if we can bob off an inch or two.”

“Who pissed in your brain, man?”

“When’d you peel Didi Gee’s safe?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a couple of months ago.”

“Where?”

“In Didi Gee’s old office.”

“Who hired the shooter to cap Golightly and Grimes?”

“How would I know?”

“You’re lying.”

“Yeah, but let me finish.”

“You think that’s cute?” Clete swung Frankie in a circle by his tie and threw him over a chair and against the wall, then whipped the blackjack across the tendon behind one knee. Frankie fell to the floor as though genuflecting, his eyes watering, his bottom lip trembling. “Don’t do this to me, man,” he said.

“Get up!”

“What for?”