“He doesn’t act drunk.”
“What’s all that noise in the background?”
“Four deputies trying to move him from the tank into an isolation cell.”
The kitchen was dark, the moon high over the park on the far side of the bayou, the trees in the backyard full of light and shadows. I was tired and didn’t want to be pulled into another one of Clete’s escapades. “Tell those guys to leave him alone. He’ll settle down. He has cycles, kind of like an elephant
in must.”
“That pimp from New Iberia, what’s his name?”
“Herman Stanga?”
“Purcel tore him up at a bar in the black district. And I mean tore him up proper. The pimp’s lawyer is down here now. He wants your friend charged with felony assault.”
“Stanga must have done something. Clete wouldn’t attack someone without provocation, particularly a lowlife like Stanga.”
“He just poleaxed a deputy. You’d better get your ass up here, Dave.”
I dressed and drove up the bayou ten miles to the lockup in the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Annex, next to the white-columned courthouse that had been built on the town square in the 1850s. Emma Poche met me at the door and walked me down to the holding cell where Clete had been forcibly transferred. Emma was around thirty-five and had gold hair and was slightly overweight, her cheeks always pooled with color, like a North European’s rather than a Cajun’s. A softcover book was stuffed in her back pocket. Before we got to the cell, she glanced behind her and touched my wrist with her fingers. “Does Purcel have flashbacks?” she said.
“Sometimes.”
“Get him moved to a hospital.”
“You think he’s psychotic?”
“Your friend isn’t the problem. A couple of my colleagues have a real hard-on for him. You don’t want him in their custody.”
“Thanks, Emma.”
“You can dial my phone anytime you want, hon.” She winked, her face deadpan. Then waited. “That was a joke.”
I wouldn’t have sworn to that. She stuck me in the ribs with her finger and walked back down the corridor, her holstered pistol canting on her hip. But I didn’t have time to worry about Emma Poche’s lack of discretion. Clete looked terrible. He was alone in the cell, sitting on a wood bench, his big arms propped on his kneecaps, staring straight ahead at the wall. He didn’t speak or acknowledge my presence.
Clete was a handsome man, his hair still sandy and cut like a little boy’s, his eyes a bright green, his skin free of tattoos and blemishes except for a pink scar through one eyebrow, where another kid had bashed him with a pipe during a rumble in the Irish Channel. He was overweight but could not be called fat, perhaps because of the barbells he lifted daily and the way he carried himself. When Clete’s boiler system kicked into high register, the kind that should have put his adversaries on red alert, his brow remained as smooth as ice cream, his eyes showing no trace of intent or anger, his physical movements like those of a man caught inside a photograph.
What usually followed was a level of mayhem and chaos that had made him the ogre of the legal system throughout southern Louisiana.
He turned his head sideways, his eyes meeting mine through the bars. The knuckles on his left hand were barked. “Just passing by?”
“Why’d you bust up Herman Stanga?”
“He spat on me.”
“So you had provocation. Why’d you run from the St. Martin guys?”
“I didn’t feel like putting up with their doodah.” He paused a moment. “I’d been smoking some weed earlier. I didn’t want them tearing my Caddy apart. They ripped out my paneling once before.”
So you wrecked your convertible for them, I thought.
“What?” Clete said.
“Did you knock down a screw?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe he slipped. I told those guys to keep their hands off me.”
“Clete—”