She was dead wrong, but I let it go. “Tony Nemo is in town.”
“Tony Nine Ball is in New Iberia?”
“He wants Alafair to do a film adaptation of Levon Broussard’s Civil War novel.”
“Lucky her.”
“I went to see Levon about it. He talked about his wife’s suicide attempt and her depression. I expected him to say something about Jimmy Nightingale not being under arrest.”
“So?”
“I thought it was kind of funny, that’s all.”
“If I ever saw an instance of Southern inbreeding, it’s that guy,” she said. “The day Levon Broussard makes sense to you is the day you should have yourself lobotomized.”
* * *
CLETE HAD BROUGHT Homer Penny to New Iberia and placed him during the day with a Creole woman in an Acadian cottage on the road to St. Martinville. According to legend, it was built in the late eighteenth century and was the oldest structure in the parish. Each morning she took him to school, and each afternoon he rode the school bus back to the cottage, where Clete picked him up at five. In the meantime, Clete visited Carolyn Ardoin at her home in Jennings and brought her flowers and candy and baskets of fruit and books from the library, his heart emptying out each time he looked at the damage that her assailant or assailants had done to her. He also launched his own investigation into the attack, starting with Pookie the Possum Domingue.
Clete found him early in the day at an upscale billiard hall in Lafayette, one that had a bar and a mixologist and rows of beautifully maintained tables. Pookie was shooting a game of rotation by himself. He wore an expensive oversize suit and a loud tie and tasseled loafers and a crisp shirt with cuff links. His pointy face shrank when he saw Clete walking toward him.
“Know who Carolyn Ardoin is?” Clete said.
“Maybe I heard the name,” Pookie said.
“Wrong answer. She’s my lady friend. Know what happened to her?”
Pookie rested the butt of his cue on the floor. He looked at the people drinking and eating at the bar. The free lunch that day was chipped beef poured on crushed beignets. A bowl of it sat on a chair by Pookie’s pool table. It looked like cat puke.
“Want me to ask you again?” Clete said.
“There’s a shutdown on information in that area.”
“Because of Kevin Penny?”
“Cool it, huh?”
“Who did him?”
“I don’t know, Purcel. I don’t want to know.”
“Who attacked Miss Carolyn?”
“I warned you about Maximo and JuJu.”
“Tony sicced them on Miss Carolyn?”
“I ain’t said that. You don’t get it. It’s the dope, man. That’s what all this is about.”
“The stuff coming in off I-10?”
“It comes from everywhere. There’s legal marijuana farms in Puerto Rico now. The meth labs are gonna take a hit. You know the drugs you can buy in any school yard in this state?”
“I don’t care about that,” Clete said.
“Nobody does. That’s why guys like Tony the Nose are happy. You might pass that on to the broad in the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department, dresses like she’s at the rodeo.”
“Sherry Picard?” Clete said.