Bo drove his vehicle just like he did everything else—full-throttle, not taking prisoners, as though the rest of the world had become his enemy simply because it was on the other side of his windshield. We passed through miles of sawgrass, all of it yellowed by submersion, water and mud splashing above the hood, Bo driving with one hand on a road that was hardly a road, the frame bouncing on the springs.
The bar was at a rural intersection where the stoplight and the cable it hung on had been wrapped by storm winds around a telephone pole. Most of the bar’s metal roof was gone and had been replaced with plywood and canvas and blue felt. The rain ditches along the two intersecting roads were compacted with dead trees and detritus from a tidal surge that had wiped the coastal end of the parish off the map.
The inside of the club was dark, creaking with heat, the only power from a gas-operated generator chugging in back. Clete sat at a round table in the corner, his shoulder-holstered .38 strapped in plain sight across a Hawaiian shirt that stuck to his skin like wet Kleenex. A bottle of tequila, a salt shaker, a shot glass, and a saucer of sliced limes were on the table. So was a sweating can of Bud, which he picked up and sipped from without expression when he saw me and Bo Diddley enter the club.
Two sun-browned men in khaki clothes were drinking coffee at the bar. They nodded at Bo, then returned to their conversation.
“Trying to stoke up the locals?” I said to Clete.
“Who’s he?” he said, indicating Bo.
“Bo Wiggins,” Bo said, extending his hand.
“Those guys at the bar work for you?” Clete replied, either ignoring or not seeing Bo’s hand.
“They said you had some trouble at an old drill location on my lease. They said they heard a couple of pops in the wind and saw a guy roaring down the canal in a boat. They thought maybe this guy tried to rob you. So I called Dave and we drove out.”
Clete’s face was oily and dilated, his eyes bleary with fatigue and early-morning booze. “See, that’s not what happened. The guy in the boat is a guy I’ve been chasing through three parishes. See, he’s a guy who maybe tortured a lady friend of mine to death. They tortured her for a long time, and they put a plastic bag over her head and dumped her over the gunnels down by the salt. They did this because that’s the kind of guys they are, guys who get off working out their fantasies on a woman who can’t fight back.
“But right now the problem I got is your friends moved my Caddy somewhere and they don’t want to tell me where it is. So it would be really good if you would ask them to bring my Caddy around and to put the keys in my hand. Because if they don’t, it’s really going to mess up my day.” Clete held up the face of his watch for Bo to look at. “See, I’m already late for church.”
Bo listened with a half-smile on his face, his forearm on the table, his buzz haircut and jug ears silhouetted against a window. The back of his neck was red and pocked with acne scars and greasy with sweat. “No problem, Mr. Purcel. Your car will be here in five minutes,” he said.
Bo went to the bar and spoke to his employees, who kept their attention on him and did not look again in Clete’s direction.
“You don’t know those two guys?” I said.
“No, why?”
“You didn’t know one of them served in Vietnam?”
“No, I never saw either one of them. Who’s that guy with you?”
“Forget about him. You actually shot at somebody?”
“It’s a long story, but three separate people told me they saw that boat in the bay where Courtney’s body was found. I hired an airboat and chased the guy all along the coastline. I gave up, then a guy at a dock told me he’d seen the boat down by an oil platform. I drove my car down the levee and almost had him. When he took off, I figured he had to be dirty. I let off two rounds at the waterline. Then those two dudes at the bar showed up and said I was trespassing.”
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“I think sleep is highly overrated.”
“You never saw those guys at the bar?”
He blew out his breath. “I melted my head. I identified Courtney’s body from a photograph. The facial shot was taken close up. The plastic bag was only part of it. I’m going to cool those guys out, Dave. Don’t try to stop me. It’s a done deal.”
He picked up his jigger of tequila and drank it half empty, his eyes never leaving mine.
THAT EVENING I put Clete to bed in his cottage at the motor court, and in the morning I brought him a boxed breakfast from Victor’s.
“Is there any chance you hit the guy you shot at?” I asked.
“I didn’t see any feathers fly, if that’s what you mean.”
“What’d the guy look like?”
“He looked guilty.”
He got into the shower, the water drumming on the tin walls. I couldn’t take any more of his booze-soaked craziness.