“He’s a psychopath who works for a bookie and general shithead by the name of W
hitey Bruxal.”
“I had to straighten him out. It wasn’t a major event. You don’t figure him for a listener, huh?”
“What have you done, Clete?”
Then he told me of the beginnings of his romantic involvement with the girl whose nickname he had taken from a song by Jimmy Clanton. Chapter 9
L AST SUNDAY MORNING he and Trish Klein had headed down the four-lane toward New Orleans, the top down, the cane blowing in the fields on each side of them, then they skirted a sun-shower at Morgan City and turned into a convenience store to put up the top. It was still early and there were few vehicles on the highway. A Ford Explorer that had been a quarter mile behind Clete went past the convenience store, a blond man at the wheel, then the road was empty again, the wind balmy and flecked with rain.
“I love it here. You can almost smell the Gulf. That’s the only thing I miss about Miami—the smell of the ocean in the morning,” Trish said.
“You lived by the water?” Clete said.
She had taken a bandanna off her head and was shaking out her hair. Clete couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Nor could he read her or her intentions, or judge whether or not he had any chance with her. All he knew was she had the most beautiful blue eyes and heart-shaped face he had ever seen. “We had a house in Coconut Grove. My grandmother kept a sailboat. We used to sail down into the Keys when the kingfish were running,” she said.
“That must have been great,” he said, his gaze wandering over her eyes and mouth, her words not really registering.
“You want to go now?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“It’s starting to rain.”
“Right,” he said.
They drove back onto the four-lane and crossed the bridge over the wide sweep of the Atchafalaya River. From the bridge’s apex, Morgan City looked like a Caribbean port, with its palm-dotted streets, red-tiled roofs, biscuit-colored stucco buildings, and shotgun houses fronted by ceiling-high windows and ventilated green shutters. As Clete descended the bridge, he glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the Ford Explorer again. The blond man was hunched over the wheel, wearing shades, cutting in and out of the passing lane. Then he dropped behind a semi and disappeared from view.
Clete and Trish crossed another bridge at Des Allemands and ate deep-fried soft-shell crabs in a restaurant by a waterway where the banks were still thickly wooded and undeveloped and houseboats were moored under the overhang of the trees. When they got back on the highway, Clete saw the Explorer swing behind him. Clete took the exit to Luling and approached the huge steel bridge spanning the Mississippi. The Explorer dropped back four cars but stayed with him.
At one point the blond man threw some trash out the window, perhaps a fast-food container, something that splattered and bounced across the pavement.
“Know anybody who drives a dark green Explorer?” Clete said.
“Nobody I can think of.” Trish leaned forward so she could see into the side mirror. “I don’t see one. Where is it?”
“He’s about three cars back now. A blond guy with shades on, throwing garbage on the road.”
“No, that doesn’t sound like anybody I know. He’s following us?”
“He’s probably just a jerk. Sometimes I think we should make littering a capital offense, you know, have a few roadside executions. It would really solve a lot of environmental problems here.”
He could feel her looking at the side of his face. When he glanced at her, she was smiling, her eyes lit with a tenderness that made his loins go weak.
“What’d I say?” he asked.
“Nothing. You’re just a sweet guy.” She touched his shoulder with her fingertips. Clete forgot about the man in the Explorer and wondered if he wasn’t being played.
They drove down I-10 to New Orleans and parked in a multilevel garage in the French Quarter. A storm was blowing off Lake Pontchartrain and the air smelled like salt and warm concrete when the first drops of rain hit it. They walked to the casino, at the bottom of Canal, and Clete could hear the horn blowing on the paddle-wheel excursion boat out on the river. He paused at the steps leading into the casino, under a row of transplanted palms that lifted and straightened in the breeze.
“Sure you want to go in here? Wouldn’t you like to take a boat ride instead?” he said.
“Come on, I’m just going to play a couple of slots. Then I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“You’ll see.” She winked at him.