“Introduce Nightingale to this writer.”
“What do you care?” I said.
“I’m on third base. I want to produce one of the guy’s books. I’m talking about cable. That’s where they’re making real art and not this computerized stuff.”
I couldn’t believe I was having a conversation about art with a man who had chopped up an enemy, freeze-dried the parts, and hung
them from a wood-bladed ceiling fan in a family grocery on Magazine.
“I don’t know anything about that, Tony. I went to dinner with Jimmy and the Broussards. I also left the dinner.”
“I treated you decent. You stabbed me in the back.”
“Fire your psychiatrist. He’s not helping you.”
“I should have known better,” he said.
“About what?”
“You’re a juicer, the kind that don’t ever get cured. You got no honor.”
“I’m going to hang up now. Don’t call here again.”
“Like I want to,” he replied.
* * *
I WALKED TO work. It had rained during the night, and the sky had cleared and the sun had come up bright and hot, and the lawns of the antebellum and Victorian homes along East Main were sprinkled with the pink and red petals of the azalea bushes that bloomed all over Louisiana in the early spring. I passed the grotto and the statue of Jesus’ mother next to the library, and walked down the long oak-shaded drive to the huge brick building on the bayou where I made my livelihood. I poured a cup of coffee and went to Helen Soileau’s office. The door was open. I tapped on the jamb just the same.
“What’s shaking, bwana?” she said from behind her desk.
“Can I close the door?”
She nodded, her face somber, as it always was in enclosed or personal situations. I pulled up a chair. She waited for me to speak.
“Did you ever hear anything about Jimmy Nightingale having ties to dope or prostitution? Around Jeff Davis Parish in particular?”
“No. In fact, that sounds ridiculous.”
“I feel the same way.”
“Where’d you hear this?”
“Clete got it from a pimp named Kevin Penny.”
“Great source.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
“It bothered me. I just introduced Jimmy to Levon Broussard and his wife.”
She picked up her ballpoint and flipped it into the air and let it bounce on her ink blotter. “Why do you get mixed up with these people, Dave?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I’ll answer it for you. Both you and Clete hate the rich but pretend you don’t.”