“It is 1865. You never quit the field. The battle is never over.”
“You’re going to defeat the forces of evil by joining up with Tony Nemo? Stop being a foo
l.”
“A pox on you, Dave Robicheaux. You’re the one person who should know better.”
And that’s the way he left it, stumbling down the street, tripping where the sidewalk had been wedged up by giant live oaks, talking to himself. Then he did something I will never understand, nor do I wish to understand, because it truly scared me. He stopped in front of the Shadows and stared through its piked fence as though having a conversation with people, perhaps comrades in arms, whom no one else could see. I do not believe it was an illusion on my part. Nor do I believe he was deranged. I believed Levon was who he was, and that was what scared me about him.
TWO MONTHS PASSED. The man in red tennis shoes seemed to have disappeared. The days were long and hot, the palm fronds and banana plants rattling dryly when the wind blew. Years ago, during the summer, rain showers fell throughout southern Louisiana at almost exactly three o’clock every afternoon. Now the gumbo soil in the sugarcane field was baked as hard as ceramic and cracked just as easily.
Most people believe that law enforcement and the solving of crimes and the apprehension and prosecution of criminals proceed in a systematic, linear fashion. The opposite is true. A successful outcome is usually produced by informants and dumb luck. The waiting, the missed opportunities, the bureaucracy, the tainted or lost evidence, the witnesses who change their accounts are endless. Lassitude, frustration, and anger become a way of life.
Mrs. Dartez continued to tell anyone who would listen that I was the murderer of her husband. The prosecution of Levon Broussard for the murder of Kevin Penny crept forward in Jefferson Davis Parish. Location scouts and line producers working for Levon and Tony Nine Ball began arriving in town, with all the attendant excitement. Homer was taken away from Clete and placed in a foster home, but he ran away and crawled through a window in Clete’s cottage and hid there for two days until Clete returned from his office in New Orleans. So far, the social welfare agency had not tried to take him back. Alafair finished her initial adaptation of Levon’s book, then consented to do the polish and to stay on the set after production began. Levon was drunk a lot. I went to meetings. Spade Labiche stayed in the background and said little, although I still believed that every day was his Ides of March. And no one talked anymore about the Jeff Davis Eight.
But while the rest of us were absorbed with our minutiae, Jimmy Nightingale was on the move. He appeared on network morning shows. He was the emissary of the New South, urbane and humble and jocular, a self-deprecating glint of the rogue in his eye. The host or hostess threw him softball questions about his casinos, his oligarchical history, his association with scum like Tony the Squid. He was the aviator who flew biplanes under bridges, an oilman who warned about global warming, an advocate for rural blacks whose neighborhoods were dumping ponds for petroleum waste. One host compared him to the young Bill Clinton, another to the young John F. Kennedy. When Jimmy got finished with an interview, the audience had one reaction: thunderous heartfelt applause.
On a dark night, the clouds crackling with dry lightning, Clete Purcel was knocking back shots in an end-of-the-line mixed-race joint in North Lafayette, the kind that had a pine-plank bar and red bulbs above the mirrors and where the clientele copulated in their cars without embarrassment. It was set back from the highway in a black neighborhood where some of the streets were still unpaved and desiccated privies still stood in backyards. Clete had a shot glass and a small pitcher of beer in front of him, and he stood rather than sat at the bar so he could watch the door. The air was thick was smoke, the restroom door open and stinking of urine and ammonia and weed. He could only guess at the race of the people around him.
A woman in jeans and boots and a western shirt came through the front door, her black hair tied up with a bandana. He had to rub his eyes with the backs of his wrist to make sure his vision wasn’t failing him. She stood next to him and looked around. “This is where you hang out?”
“I’m supposed to meet a skip,” he replied.
“What’d he skip on?”
“Felony assault, a fifty-grand bond. Were you looking for me?”
“I went by the motor court. Homer was alone. He said you were here.”
He felt his face burn. “I check on him every thirty minutes.”
“He’s a nice kid.”
“I know that, Miss Sherry. You want a drink?”
“Just a glass.” She tinked a fingernail against the pitcher. “Let’s go over in the corner. God, what a dump.”
They sat at a table by a painted-over window, a wood-bladed fan turning overhead. She had carried a clean glass from the bar. He poured it full, the foam running over the edge. He kept his eyes on the door, waiting for a skip who was probably a no-show.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about the Penny investigation,” she said.
“Levon Broussard is going down for it, right?”
“Too many people think Penny got what he deserved. Tony Nine Ball’s influences aren’t to be taken lightly, either.”
“Tony got to somebody?” Clete said.
“That’s why squids have tentacles.”
“Dave Robicheaux thought the guy in red tennis shoes was going to clip Tony.”
“Why?” she said.
“The guy’s a cleaner.”
“Somebody bigger than Tony Nemo is pulling the strings?”
“Or the agenda is bigger than Nemo’s,” he said. “Do you know who was the only guy to deal successfully with the Mafia?”