“Your food is getting cold.”
“I’ll be there in a second,” I said, still looking down the street, where Cesaire’s truck was stopped at the traffic light in front of an 1831 antebellum home called the Shadows.
“What’s bothering you, Dave?” Molly said.
“I’ve never had a more perplexing case. It’s like trying to hold water in your fingers. The real problem is most of the people I keep looking at would probably have led normal lives if they hadn’t met one another.”
“Start over again.”
“I have. None of it goes anywhere.”
She kneaded the back of my neck, then ran her fingers up into my hair, her nails raking my scalp. “I’ll always be proud of you,” she said.
“What for?”
“Because you’re incapable of being anyone other than yourself.”
I closed the door and turned around. I wanted to hold her, to pull her against me, to whisper words to her that are embarrassing when they are spoken in a conventional situation. But she had already gone back into the kitchen.
AFTER LUNCH, I returned to the office and once again got out all my notes on Yvonne Darbonne’s death. Except this time I had something else to go on: Slim Bruxal’s firsthand account of how Yvonne had died. At 2 p.m. Helen came into my office. “Where’s Clete Purcel?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” I replied.
“NOPD just tried to serve a warrant at his cottage. It’s empty. The owner says Clete left late last night with a young blond woman. You have no idea where he is?”
“Nothing specific,” I replied, squinting thoughtfully at the far wall.
She closed the door behind her so no one could hear her next words. “Don’t let them get their hands on him, Dave. They’re not talking about six months in Central Lockup. It’s Angola on this one. The insurance companies are tired of Clete destroying half of New Orleans.”
“Glad to know the city is looking out for the right interests,” I said.
She looked at the crime scene photos and case files spread on my desk. “Where are you doing?” she said.
“I think maybe I found the key in the murder of Tony Lujan.”
I DIDN’T TRY to explain it to her. Instead, I went looking for Monarch Little. His next-door neighbor told me Monarch was doing body-and-fender work for a man who ran a repair shop in St. Martinville.
“You know the repairman’s name?” I asked.
The neighbor was the same woman who had shown great irritation at Monarch for getting drunk with his friends and throwing beer cans in her yard after his mother died.
“Monarch done straightened up. Why don’t y’all leave him alone?” she said.
“I’m not here to hurt him, ma’am.”
Her eyes wandered over my face. “He’s working for that albino man on the bayou, the one always grinning when he ain’t got nothing to grin about,” she said.
A half hour later I parked by the side of the sagging, rust-streaked trailer of Prospect Desmoreau, the same albino man who had repaired the Buick that had run down Crustacean Man. Monarch Little was under the pole shed, pulling the door off a Honda that had evidently been broadsided.
“You’re looking good, Mon,” I said.
“My name is Monarch,” he said.
“I need your help.”
“That’s why you’re here? I’m shocked.”
“Lose the comic book dialogue. I’m looking for a black guy who rides a bicycle and salvages bottles and beer cans from the roadside. A black guy who might have seen what happened when Yvonne Darbonne died.”