“Stanga was playing to an audience. I blew it. I stepped into his trap. He claims to be a member of a street-people outreach program called the St. Jude Project. You ever hear of it?”
“That’s not the issue now. I’ll have a lawyer down here in the morning to get you out. In the meantime—”
“Don’t shine me on, Dave. What do you know about this St. Jude stuff?”
“Either I stay here tonight to protect you from yourself, or you give me your word you’re finished pissing off everybody on the planet.”
“You don’t get it, Streak. Just like always, you’ve got your head wrapped in concrete.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re yesterday’s bubble gum. We’re the freaks, not Herman Stanga. That guy has wrecked hundreds, maybe thousands, of people’s lives. Guys like us follow around behind him with a push broom and a dustpan.”
“What happened at the Gate Mouth?”
“I saw villagers in the Central Highlands. We’d lit up the ville. I heard AK rounds popping under the hooches. All the old people and children and women were crying. The VC had already blown Dodge, but we torched the place with the Zippo track anyway. It was a resupply depot. Their wells were full of rice. We had to do it, right?”
I leaned my forehead lightly against one of the bars. When I looked up, Clete was staring at the back of the cell as though the answer to a mystery lay inside the shadows cast by the lights in the corridor.
On the way out of the annex, I saw Emma Poche in a small side office, reading her book. “Your friend quiet down?” she said.
“I’m not sure. Call me again if there’s any more trouble.”
“Will do.”
“What are you reading?”
She held up the cover so I could see it. “The Green Cage by Robert Weingart,” she said. “He’s an ex-con who supposedly works with some kind of self-help group around here. What do they call it? He’s hooked up with a rich guy in St. Mary Parish.”
“The local rich guy is Kermit Abelard.”
“Good book,” Emma said.
“Yeah, if you like to get into lockstep with the herd, it’ll do the trick,” I replied.
“You’re a joy, Streak,” she said, and resumed reading.
BY NOON THE next day Clete had been charged with destroying private property, resisting arrest, and felony assault. I went his bond for twenty-five thousand dollars and drove him back to the motor court on East Main in New Iberia, where he lived in a tan stucco cottage, under spreading oaks, no more than thirty yards from Bayou Teche. He showered and shaved and put on fresh slacks and a crisp shirt, and I drove him to Victor’s cafeteria and bought him a huge lunch and a pitcher of iced tea. He ate with a fork in one hand and a piece of bread in the other, his hat tilted forward, his skin lustrous with the energies that burned inside him.
“How you feel?” I asked.
“Fine. Why shouldn’t I?” he replied. “I need to rent a car and get back to my office and talk to my insurance man.”
“Why is it I think you’re not going to do that at all? Why is it I think you’ve got Herman Stanga in your bombsights?”
The cafeteria was crowded and noisy, the sound rising up to the high nineteenth-century stamped-tin ceiling. Clete finished chewing a mouthful of fried pork chop and mashed potatoes and swallowed. He spoke without looking at me, his eyes intense with thought. “Stanga set me up and I took the bait. He’ll be filing civil suit by the end of the day,” he said. “I’m going to take Stanga down with or without you, Dave.”
I paused before I spoke again. I could leave Clete to his own devices and let him try to resolve his troubles on his own. But you don’t let your friends down when they’re in need, and you don’t abandon a man who once carried you down a fire escape with two bullets in his back.
“Robert Weingart may be hooked up with this St. Jude Project,” I said. “At least that’s the impression I got from Emma Poche.”
“Weingart works with Stanga?”
“I’m not sure of that,” I said.
Clete wiped his mouth with his napkin and drank from his iced tea, pushing his half-eaten lunch away. “Does the St. Jude Project have an office hereabouts?”
“Not exactly. Want to take a little trip back into ‘the good old days’?” I said.