“I see.”
“He’s caught between his own inclinations and what his constituency wants. It’s not easy for him,” she said.
“His inclinations? I’ll float that by Letty Labiche if I get a chance.”
“I tried to help. I don’t know what else you want.”
“Where’s Belmont now?”
“I wouldn’t know. Try his office. But I’m out of this. You understand? Frankly, I just don’t want any more of your rudeness,” she said.
“What’s your relationship with Jim Gable, Connie?” I said.
But the connection had already gone dead.
Connie Deshotel had said she didn’t know Belmont Pugh’s whereabouts. But today was Wednesday, and I knew where to find him. When Belmont had been a traveling preacher and broom salesman, he had made a regular midweek stop at a slat-board fundamentalist church outside the little settlement of Lottie, in the middle of the Atchafalaya Basin. The congregation had paid thirty-five dollars for every sermon Belmont gave, and today, either out of gratitude or the aura of humility his continued presence at the church brought him, Belmont was still a regular at Wednesday night meetings.
That evening I drove up through Opelousas and took Highway 190 toward Baton Rouge, then turned down a shale road and crossed a railroad track and went deeper into the Basin, past a community of small houses with rusted screens, to a church building with a blue neon cross on the roof.
The congregation had laid out dinner on plank tables by a grove of cedar trees. Among the cluster of pickup trucks and 1970s gas-guzzlers I saw Belmont’s black Chrysler, a patina of gray mud on the fenders.
The windows were down in the Chrysler, and when I walked past it I could see a bored state trooper behind the wheel and a woman in back who was smoking a cigarette. She looked like she had been reconstructed in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, with silicone implants, a face tuck, chemically dyed skin, and industrial-strength perfume. She blew her nose on a Kleenex and dropped it out the window on the grass.
Belmont’s mouth was full of food, his Stetson pushed back on his head so that the ends of his hair were mashed against his forehead like a little boy’s.
“You’re not gonna punch nobody out, are you, son?” he said.
“I need to talk with you about Letty Labiche.”
“I knew it.”
“She’s got two weeks.”
“You don’t need to remind me of that. I got people marching with signs in front of the capitol. I got Italians calling me from the Vatican.”
“You don’t want this on your conscience, Belmont.”
He tossed a chicken bone over his shoulder and got up from the table.
“Walk with me,” he said.
We went into the grove of cedars; the sky was purple now and filled with the drone of locusts. There was grease on his hands, and he kept opening and closing them and looking at the shine the grease made on his skin.
“I’ll be right by the phone the night the death warrant is read. I get new evidence or hear from the federal court, I’ll stop it. Otherwise, it goes forward,” he said.
“It’s wrong. You know it.”
“I’m the governor. Not a judge. Not a jury. I didn’t have a damn thing to do with that trial. It’s on y’all’s self, right down there in Iberia Parish. You quit carrying your guilt up to Baton Rouge and throwing it on my doorstep, you hear?”
He turned away from me and let out his breath. The curls on the back of his neck moved like chicken feathers in the breeze. In the distance his black Chrysler was painted with a red light against the western sun. Someone inside the church turned on the neon cross.
“Who’s the lady in the car?” I asked.
“She’s a missionary, as in ‘missionary position.’ I’m a sinner. I don’t hide it. You stop climbing my back, Dave.”
“Connie Deshotel warned me.”
“What?”