“Could I speak to Levon, please?” I said.
“What for?”
“It’s of a personal nature.”
“How’s this for personal: Why don’t you do your job and leave us alone?”
“Where is he, Ms. Broussard?”
“He just went out the door. With his favorite shotgun. Maybe you can catch him.”
When I got to the Broussard home, I heard the popping sounds of gunfire from behind the house. It was twilight, the yard deep in shadow, the sky marbled with purple and red clouds. I skirted the house and came out in the backyard. Levon was firing with a twelve-gauge at clay pigeons he launched from an automatic trap thrower, bursting them above Bayou Teche, regardless of the neighbors on the far side of the water.
He took the plugs out of his ears. He was wearing a sleeveless shooting jacket stuffed with shells. His face seemed thinner, his eyes receded, the color of buckshot. “Slumming?” he asked.
“I need a lesson or two about film rights and such. Tony Nemo is on Alafair’s case.”
“About what?”
“He wants her to write a screenplay or adaptation or whatever you call it based on your novel.”
“I’ve heard from my agent and a couple of producers this character has been pestering. Evidently, you stoked him up.”
“I told him he could create a historical piece that wasn’t dependent on your novel.”
“Thanks a lot for doing that,” Levon said.
“He says these guys in Hollywood actually want to go into business with him.”
“They probably do. Nemo is wired in to the entirety of the casino culture. He knows how to get around the unions. He launders money. Hollywood is Babylon by the Sea. He’s a perfect fit.”
“According to Alafair, period pieces are dead on arrival.”
“Now they are.”
“But someday?”
“What do I know? I don’t care, either.”
“What writer wouldn’t want to see his work on the screen?” I said.
“J. D. Salinger.”
“Salinger didn’t like to see people, either. That’s why he put his name on his mailbox, out on the road.”
“You want to shoot?” he asked.
“No.”
He ejected the spent shell from the chamber and began thumbing five fresh rounds into the magazine.
“You don’t keep a sportsman plug in the magazine?” I said.
“I don’t have to. I don’t hunt. I shoot only clay targets.” He rested the shotgun in the crook of his arm.
“You don’t look the same,” I said.
“What?”