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heard her daughter's voice out in the front yard at the same hour her daughter
died. Her daughter was saying, 'Please help me, Momma.' I don't remember
seeing that in either your book or the movie."
"You make a remark about my family again, and cop or no cop, I'm going to
bust your jaw, Dave."
"Give your grief to Barbara Shanahan. I think you two deserve each
other," I said.
My hands were shaking when I brushed past him.
That night Clete Purcel called the house. I could hear an electric guitar and
saxophones and laughter and people talking loudly in the background.
"I can hardly hear you," I said.
"I thought I'd have another run at Jimmy Dean Styles. I'm at a joint he
owns in St. Martinville. I thought you'd like to know who's parked across the
street."
"It's late, Clete."
"Joe Zeroski. He's got a P.I. with him, his niece, Zerelda Calucci. Her
old man was one of the Calucci brothers."
"Tell me about it tomorrow."
"The kid you're looking at for the murder of the girl in the cane field?
He's playing here."
"Say again?"
"What's his name? Hulin? He's up there on the bandstand. Anyway, I'd
better hit the road. The only other thing white in this place is the toilet
bowl. Sorry I bothered you." "Give me a half hour," I said.
I drove up the Teche, under the long canopy of live oaks on the St.
Martinville highway, the same road that federal soldiers had marched in 1863,
the same road that Evangeline and her lover had walked almost a century before
the federals came.
Jimmy Dean Styles owned only a half-interest in the nightclub Clete had
called from. His business partner was a black bondsman named Little Albert
Babineau who had recently made the state news wires after he threw packages of
condoms off a Mardi Gras float. Each package was printed with the words "Be
Sure You 'Bond' Right. Be Safe with Little Albert. 24-Hour Bail Bonds. Little
Albert Will Not Let You Down."
The club was built of plywood that had been painted blue and strung with
yellow and purple lights. The window glass and walls literally shook from the
noise inside. I pulled in at the back, where Clete waited for me next to his
Cadillac. Through the trees below the club I could see a glaze of yellow light
on Bayou Teche and the wake of a large boat slapping into the elephant ears
along the banks.
"You're not pissed off because I took another run at Styles?" Clete said.
"Why should I be? You never listen to anything I say, anyway."
"How you want to play it?" he asked.
"We need to get Joe Zeroski out of here. What was that you said about a
P.I.?"
"It's his niece. I'd like to develop a more intimate relationship with
her, except I always get the feeling she'd like to blow my equipment off. Wait
till you see the bongos on that broad."
"Will you stop talking like that? I'm not kidding you, Clete. It's an
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illness."
He put two sticks of gum in his mouth and chewed them loudly, his eyes
full of mirth, his head seeming to turn in all directions at once.
"I tell you what. I'll handle Joe, you deal with Zerelda," he said.
Joe Zeroski's car was parked down the block, across the street, in front
of a small grocery store. A woman was behind the wheel. Her hair was black and
long, the neckline of her blouse plunging, her nails and mouth painted
arterial red. I opened my badge holder and lifted it into the light so she
could see it. A holstered revolver sat on the seat between the woman and
Joe Zeroski.
"We need you to move your car out of here," I said.
"Pull your pud on somebody else's time," she said. I heard Clete snicker
behind me.
"Sorry?" I said.
"You're out of your jurisdiction. Go screw yourself," she said.
"You have a permit for that gun?"
"I don't need one. In Louisiana the automobile is an extension of the
home. But in answer to your question, yes, I do have a permit. Now, how about
moving yourself out of my view?"
I looked across the seat at Joe Zeroski. His stolid face and wide-set
eyes had all the malleability of a cinder block.
"She's doing her job," he said.
"Tee Bobby didn't kill your daughter, Joe," I said.
"Then why were you asking about him down at that pickup corner, the one
my little girl was abducted from?" he replied.
I blew out my breath and recrossed the street with Clete.
"Lighten up, Streak. I think Zerelda likes you. Notice how she squeezed
her .357 when she told you to fuck off?" he said, his eyes beaming.
We went through the side entrance of the nightclub. It was loud and hot
inside, the air hazy with cigarette smoke, dense with the smells of whiskey
and boiled crabs and beer sweat. Tee Bobby was at the microphone, his
long-sleeved lavender shirt plastered against his skin, a red electric guitar
hanging from his neck. He drank from a long-necked bottle of Dixie beer and
wiped the moisture out of his eyes on his sleeve and stumbled slightly against
the microphone, then began singing "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do." His eyes
were closed while he sang, his face suffused with a level of emotion that at
first glance might have seemed manufactured until you heard the irrevocable
sense of loss in his voice.
"Guitar Slim didn't have anything on this guy. Too bad he's a rag nose," Clete
said. "How do you know he is?" I asked. "He was snorting lines off the toilet
tank. I thought that might be a clue."
We found Jimmy Dean Styles in his office at the rear of the club. He sat
at a cluttered desk, above which was a framed autographed photo of Sugar Ray
Robinson. He was counting money, his fingers clicking on a calculator. His
eyes lifted to mine.
"See, I went out of Angola max-time. That means I ain't got my umbilical
cord thumbtacked to some P.O.'s desk. How about respecting that?" he said.
"Where'd you get the autographed photo of Sugar Ray?" I said.
"My grandfather was his sparring partner. You probably don't know that
'cause when you growed up most niggers around here picked peppers or cut
cane," he replied.
"You told me you cut Tee Bobby loose. Now I see him up on your
bandstand," I said.
"Little Albert Babineau own half this club. He feel sorry for Tee Bobby.
I don't. Tee Bobby got a way of stuffing everything he make up his nose. So
when he finish his gig tonight, he packing his shit." His eyes shifted to
Clete. "Marse Charlie, don't be sitting on my desk."
"There's a guy outside named Joe Zeroski. I hope he comes in here," Clete
said.
"Why's that, Marse Charlie?" Styles said. "He was a mechanic for the
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Giacanos. Nine or so hits. Your kind of guy," Clete said.
"I'll be worried about that the rest of the night," Styles replied.
Clete stuck a matchstick in the corner of his mouth and stared at Styles,
who had gone back to counting a stack of currency, his fingers dancing on the
calculator.
I touched Clete on the arm and we walked back through the crowd and out
the side door. The parking lot smelled of dust and tar, and the stars were hot
and bright above the trees. Clete stared back into the club, his face
perplexed.
"That guy's dirty. I don't know what for, but he's dirty." Then he said,
"You think his grandfather really sparred with Sugar Ray Robinson?"
"Maybe. I remember he was a boxer."
"What happened to him?"
"He was lynched in Mississippi," I said.
But our evening at the club owned by Jimmy Dean Styles and Little Albert
Babineau wasn't over. As Clete and I walked toward my truck, we heard the
angry voices of two men behind us, the voices of others trying to restrain or
pacify them. Then Tee Bobby and Jimmy Dean Styles burst out the back door into
the parking lot, with a balloon of people following them. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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