Clete finished jotting down her words about the boat in his notebook. “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“What is it?” she said, her left eye wrinkling at the corner.
“Why are you smashing your dishware?”
“Because the goddamn insurance company just told me my policy doesn’t cover water damage. Because I thought I’d give their worthless asses breakage they could understand. Because they just fucked me out of every cent I got from my divorce.”
Clete looked down the street, suppressing a smile. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name. Like to take a break, get something to eat?” he said.
IT WAS NOON, Wednesday, and I was in Clete’s New Iberia office, located in a refurbished brick building on Main Street, listening to his account of his most recent trip to New Orleans. The nineteenth-century tin ceiling was stamped with a fleur-de-lis design and the walls were decorated with antique firearms. Outside the rear window was a brick-paved patio, shaded by potted palm and banana trees, where Clete often ate his lunch. But today he couldn’t stop talking about the Melancon brothers and Andre Rochon and the new woman he had met down the street from Otis Baylor’s house.
I believed Clete was still wired from Katrina and was now giving himself over to an obsession, one that allowed him to believe if he nailed the guys who had run over him with their automobile, he could somehow revise all the events that had
turned a gingerbread Caribbean city into food for every kind of jackal in the book.
“I got it figured, big mon,” he said. “Bertrand Melancon almost collided into an airboat full of NOPD guys, so he swerved down this alley behind Courtney’s house—”
“Whose house?”
“The gal I told you about, the one breaking dishes all over her terrace. Bertrand bagged it down the alley and hid Sidney Kovick’s goods somewhere along the way. The hospital is only three blocks from Courtney’s. I think I even found his boat. It was wedged under a pile of trees. The motor was gone, but it’s a green, aluminum job. Ducks Unlimited is painted on the hull. I bet they boosted it from a rescue operation.”
“I think you’re spending more time on these guys than you should,” I said.
“How’d you arrive at that brilliant idea?”
“Twisting these guys won’t bring back New Orleans, Clete. It’s gone. Just like our youth. The place we knew will be a place we look at in books that feature historical photography.”
He got up from behind his desk and stared out the window. He was wearing a short-sleeved green shirt with bluebirds and flowers printed on it. The back of his neck was pitted, his hair lightly oiled and clipped. I could see the color rising in his neck. “Don’t say that about New Orleans.”
“All right, I won’t. The guys who let people drown for two days are going to pour billions into rebuilding poor neighborhoods.”
He turned and faced me. The flattened scar that ran through one eyebrow and across his nose was the dull color and shape of an elongated tire patch. “The shield I carry could have come out of a cereal box. The only credibility I have is the degree of respect I instill in scum like the Melancons. I wish it was different. I wish I was still with NOPD. But I flushed my legitimate career a long time ago. Don’t be lecturing at me, Streak.”
The room was silent a long time.
“I got a call this morning on my cell from Bertrand Melancon,” he said.
“The Melancons have your number?” I replied, glad to have something else to talk about.
“Nig gave it to Bertrand. He says his brother was kidnapped out of our Lady of the Lake. He wants me to get him back. That’s what I was trying to tell you, but you kept interrupting me.”
“Who kidnapped him?”
“Bertrand thinks it was Sidney Kovick’s people.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I don’t work for street pukes, particularly ones I think are rapists.”
“What’s the rest of it?”
“I made a mistake. I should have figured out a way to bring him in. Bertrand must have found something in that house he can’t fence. In fact, I got the impression he’s not sure what he’s holding.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“That’s what I told Bertrand. He wants to cut a deal with Sidney to get his brother back, but he thinks whatever it is he’s holding is so hot Sidney is going to kill him and Eddy and Andre Rochon once he gets it back.”
“Don’t get any deeper in this.”