“I hear Battering Ram Shanahan thinks you’re soft on the Amanda Boudreau investigation. I hear she wants to use a nail gun on your co-jones,” he said.
“News to me,” I replied.
“Her case sucks and she knows it.”
“Seen any good movies lately?” I asked.
“Tee Bobby’s innocent. He wasn’t even at the murder scene.”
“His beer can was.”
“Littering isn’t a capital crime.”
“It was good seeing you, Perry.”
“Come out to the island and try my bass pond. Bring Bootsie and Alafair. We’ll have dinner.”
“I will. After the trial,” I said.
He winked at me, then drove down the road, the sunlight through the trees flicking like gold coins across the waxed surfaces of his automobile.
I heard Clete walking through the leaves behind me. His hair was wet and freshly combed, the top buttons of his tropical shirt open on his chest.
“Isn’t that the guy who wrote the book about the Death House in Louisiana? The one the movie was based on?” he said.
“That’s the guy,” I replied.
Clete looked at my expression. “You didn’t like the book?” he asked.
“Two kids were murdered in a neckers’ area up the Loreauville Road. Perry made the prosecutor’s office look bad.”
“Why?”
“I guess some people need to feel good about themselves,” I answered.
The next morning there was fog in the trees when Alafair and I walked down the slope and opened up the bait shop and hosed down the dock and fired up the barbecue pit on which we prepared links and chicken and sometimes pork chops for our midday customers. I went into the storage room and began slicing open cartons of canned beer and soda to stock the coolers while Alafair made coffee and wiped down the counter. I heard the tiny bell on the screen door ring and someone come into the shop. He was a young man and wore a white straw hat coned up on the sides, a pale blue sports coat, a wide, plum-colored tie, gray pants, and shined cordovan cowboy boots. His hair was ash-blond, cut short, shaved on the neck, his skin a deep olive. He carried a suitcase whose weight made his face sweat and his wrist cord with veins.
“Howdy do,” he said, and sat down on a counter stool, his back to me. “Could I have a glass of water, please?”
Alafair was a senior in high school now, although she looked older than her years. She stood up on her tiptoes and took down a glass from a shelf, her thighs and rump flexing against her shorts. But the young man turned his head and gazed out the screen at the trees on the far side of the bayou.
“You want ice in it?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, I dint want to cause no trouble. Out of the tap is fine,” the young man replied.
She filled the glass and put it before him. Her eyes glanced at the suitcase on the floor and the leather belt that was cinched around the weight that bulged against its sides.
“Can I help you with something?” she asked.
He removed a paper napkin from the dispenser and folded it and blotted the perspiration on his brow. He grinned at her.
“There’s days I don’t think the likes of me is meant to sell sno’balls in Hades. Is there people up at that house?” he said.
“What are you selling?” she asked.
“Encyclopedias, Bibles, family-type magazines. But Bibles is what I like to sell most of. I aim to go into the ministry or law enforcement. I been taking criminal justice courses over at the university. Could I have one of them fried pies?”
She reached up on the shelf again, and this time his gaze wandered over her body, lingering on the backs of her thighs. When I stepped out of the storage room, his head jerked toward me, the skin tightening around his eyes.