DR10 - Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke Page B

sheriff said.
    "He threw sweat on her. He hit her in the chest with his
elbow. He got off light," I said.
    "A guy with twenty-eight stitches in his head?"
    "You told us to pick him up, skipper. That guy would be a
loaded gun anyplace we tried to take him down. You know it, too," I
said.
    He crimped his lips together and breathed through his nose.
    "I'm madder than hell about this," he said.
    The room was silent, the air-conditioning almost frigid. The
sunlight through the slatted blinds was eye-watering.
    "All right, forget the suspension and IA stuff. See me before
you go into St. Mary Parish again. In the meantime, you find out why
Cisco Flynn thinks he can bring his pet sewer rats into Iberia
Parish… Helen, you depersonalize your attitude toward the
perps, if that's possible."
    "The sewer rats?" I said.
    He filled his pipe bowl from a leather pouch and didn't bother
to look up until we were out of the room.
     
    THAT EVENING CLETE PURCEL parked his
Cadillac convertible
under the shade trees in front of my house and walked down to the bait
shop. He wore a summer suit and a lavender shirt with a white tie. He
went to the cooler and opened a bottle of strawberry soda.
    "What, I look funny or something?" he said.
    "You look sharp."
    He drank out of the pop bottle and watched a boat out on the
bayou.
    "I'll treat y'all to dinner at the Patio in Loreauville," he
said.
    "I'd better work."
    He nodded, then looked at the newscast on the television set
that sat above the counter.
    "Thought I'd ask," he said.
    "Who you going to dinner with?"
    "Megan Flynn."
    "Another time."
    He sat down at the counter and drank from his soda. He drew a
finger through a wet ring on the wood.
    "I'm only supposed to go out with strippers and junkies?" he
said.
    "Did I say anything?"
    "You hide your feelings like a cat in a spin dryer."
    "So she's stand-up. But why's she back in New Iberia? We're
Paris on the Teche?"
    "She was born here. Her brother has a house here."
    "Yeah, he's carrying weight for a psychopath, too. Why you
think that is, Clete? Because Cisco likes to rehabilitate shank
artists?"
    "I hear Helen beat the shit out of Boxleiter with a slapjack.
Maybe he's got the message and he'll get out of town."
    I mopped down the counter and tossed the rag on top of a case
of empty beer bottles.
    "You won't change your mind?" he said.
    "Come back tomorrow. We'll entertain the bass."
    He made a clicking sound with his mouth and walked out the
door and into the twilight.
     
    AFTER SUPPER I DROVE over to Mout'
Broussard's house on the
west side of town. Cool Breeze came out on the gallery and sat down on
the swing. He had removed the bandage from his cheek, and the wound he
had gotten at the jail looked like a long piece of pink string inset in
his skin.
    "Doctor said I ain't gonna have no scar."
    "You going to hang around town?" I asked.
    "Ain't got no pressing bidness nowheres else."
    "They used you, Breeze."
    "I got Alex Guidry fired, ain't I?"
    "Does it make you feel better?"
    He looked at bis hands. They were wide, big-boned, lustrous
with callus.
    "What you want here?" he asked.
    "The old man who made your wife cook for him, Harpo
Delahoussey? Did he have a son?"
    "What people done tole you over in St. Mary Parish?"
    "They say he didn't."
    He shook his head noncommittally.
    "You don't remember?" I said.
    "I don't care. It ain't my bidness."
    "A guy named Harpo may have executed a couple of kids out in
the Basin," I said.
    "Those dagos in New Orleans? You know what they do to a black
man snitch them off? I'm suppose to worry about some guy blowing away
some po'-white trash raped a black girl?"
    "When those men took away your wife twenty years ago, you
couldn't do anything about it. Same kind of guys are still out there,
Breeze. They function only because we allow them to."
    "I promised Mout' to go crabbing with him in the morning. I
best be getting my sleep," he said.
    But when I got into my truck and looked back at him, he was
still in the