CLETE’S SECRETARY TOLD me he had gone home for lunch. I found him by his cottage at the motor court on East Main, reading a book in a lawn chair under the oaks, his wire-frame glasses down low on his nose. Next to him was a card table set with a tray of sandwiches and a sweating pitcher of sangria and cracked ice. The sandwiches were cut in triangles and filled with cream cheese and chives. He lowered his book and smiled.
“Plutarch’s Lives?” I said.
“Yeah, this is great stuff. Did you know Alexander the Great was AC/DC and his sweat smelled like flowers? He also got plastered every night.” Clete picked up a glass of sangria and drank from it, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Where’d you get the sandwiches?”
“Somebody dropped them off.”
“Would you answer the question?”
“Emma Poche was in the neighborhood.”
“I think you have brain damage. There’s some kind of tumor loose in your head.”
“Look, she feels bad. She apologized.”
“For what? Killing Herman Stanga?”
“We don’t know she did that. This is what she told me: ‘I’ve done some hateful and bad stuff. I did it because some of the good people took a lick off me. It’s my fault, but they got their lick, and I figured I should get something for it.’”
“That’s the rhetoric of a female recidivist. What’s the matter with you?”
“Want a sandwich?”
“Where’s your throwdown?”
“In the glove compartment.”
“Check.”
“I don’t have to. I just saw it. Why are you worried about my throwdown?” He lifted his glass of sangria to his mouth.
“I came from the Abelard house. Somebody killed the old man and the guy you called a greaseball. The old man was strung up with his feet barely touching the floor. Whoever did it to him wanted him to go out slow and hard.”
Clete lowered his glass without drinking from it. “Somebody left a throwdown?”
“Yeah, they did.”
“Well, it’s not mine. Who do you make for it?”
“Weingart,” I said.
“My vote would be for the Bobster, too. I never met a cell-house bitch yet who wasn’t mean to the core. Where is he now?”
“Supposedly New Orleans.”
“What about the grandson? Kermit Dick Brain or whatever?”
“In New Orleans, too.”
Clete seemed to study my face without seeing me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“We’re the target, not the old man and the greaseball.” His eyes came back into focus. He continued to stare at me. “Something else happened over there, didn’t it?”
“The black woman, Jewel Laveau, told me I was disappearing.”