Purple Cane Road Read Free Page B

‘No, I’m from New Iberia.’ So I go, ‘Being on death row makes people celebrities in New Iberia?’ She says, ‘Brush your teeth more often, Fat Man, and change your deodorant while you’re at it.’”
    He put a beignet in his mouth and looked at me while he chewed.
    “What’s she down on?” I asked.
    “Prostitution and possession. She says the vice cop who busted her got her to lay him first, then he planted some rock in her purse. He says he’ll make the possession charge go away if she’ll provide regular boom-boom for him and a department liaison guy.”
    “I thought the department had been cleaned up.”
    “Right,” Clete said. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and picked up his coat. “Come on, I’ll drop this at the tailor’s and take you out to the project.”
    “You said you hooked her up.”
    “I called Nig and got her some slack…Don’t get the wrong idea, mon. Her pimp is Zipper Clum. Little Face stays on the street, he’ll be back around.”
     
    WE PARKED UNDER a tree at the welfare project and walked across a dirt playground toward the two-story brick apartment building with green window trim and small green wood porches where Little Face Dautrieve lived. We passed a screen window and Clete fanned the air in front of his face. He stared through the screen, then banged on the frame with his fist.
    “Lose the pipe and open the front door,” he said.
    “Anything for you, Fat Man. But don’t get on my bat’room scale again. You done broke all the springs,” a voice said from inside.
    “My next job is going to be at the zoo. I can’t take this anymore,” Clete said when we were on the front porch.
    Little Face pushed open the door and held it while we walked inside. She wore cut-off blue jeans and a white T-shirt and had very dark skin and lustrous, thick hair that she wore on her shoulders. Her eyes were no bigger than dimes.
    “This is Dave Robicheaux. He’s a homicide detective in Iberia Parish,” Clete said. “He’s a friend of Letty Labiche.”
    She tilted up her profile and pursed her lips and brushed back her hair with her fingers. She had on heels, and her rump and the backs of her thighs were taut against her shorts.
    “How about flexing your brain instead of your stuff for a change?” Clete said.
    “What he want wit’ me?” she said.
    “Why would you keep all those newspaper clippings about Letty?” I asked.
    “They for Zipper,” she replied.
    “You know how Zipper got his name? He carved all over a girl’s face with a razor blade,” Clete said to her.
    “We still love you, Fat Man. Everybody down here do,” she said.
    “I hate this job,” Clete said.
    I placed my hands lightly on the tops of Little Face’s arms. For a moment the cocaine glaze went out of her eyes.
    “Letty Labiche is probably going to be executed. A lot of people think that shouldn’t happen. Do you know something that can help her?” I said.
    Her mouth was small and red, and she puckered her lips uncertainly, her eyes starting to water now. She pulled out of my grasp and turned away.
    “I got an allergy. It makes me sneeze all the time,” she said.
    The mantel over the small fireplace was decorated with blue and red glass candle containers. I stooped down and picked up a burned newspaper photo of Letty from the hearth. Her image looked like it was trapped inside a charcoal-stained transparency. A puff of wind blew through the door, and the newspaper broke into ash that rose in the chimney like gray moths.
    “You been working some juju, Little Face?” I asked.
    ‘“Cause I sell out of my pants don’t mean I’m stupid and superstitious.” Then she said to Clete, “You better go, Fat Man. Take your friend wit’ you, too. You ain’t funny no more.”
     
    SUNDAY MORNING I WENT to Mass with my wife, Bootsie, and my adopted daughter, Alafair, then I drove out to the Labiche home on the bayou.
    Passion Labiche was raking pecan leaves in the backyard and burning them in