HOOKE HAD OVERDONE IT WITH HIS CALL TO G-HOP, AND AS Elodie Moreau had predicted, his snake-bite symptoms recurred and his eyes quit on him for almost a week. The doc also said there was some permanent damage to his kidneys, which Regence could give a shit about. The constable got himself hooked up to dialysis, morphine, and industrial-grade antibiotics. He wasn’t so contrary about bed rest now, as he found that he did some of his best thinking while under the influence of narcotics. Also, there comes a point when a man realizes that being pigheaded just leads a fella to slaughter.
So medical attention it was, and on day six Hooke’s sight returned and the mask of civility that he wore for the general public slipped on account of his dozy state.
He opened his eyes, took one look at the nurse, and said, “Shit, Elodie, you done let yourself go.”
To which the nurse said, “I ain’t no Elodie, asshole. She’s on the night shift.”
Regence reckoned that this lady mustn’t be aware of his nature or she wouldn’t’ve been mouthing off. This was a good thing, as it meant his cover was intact. He preferred the reputation that preceded him to be one of civic responsibility, and so the constable did not admonish the nurse as he would surely have liked to do but instead apologized for his own rudeness, blaming his insensitive comment on the drugs coursing through his system.
The nurse did not look in the least mollified and treated Hooke to a withering glare, the likes of which was usually reserved for unemployed cheaters on cable TV shows.
Hooke gave the nurse time to finish her rounds of the small ward, then packed up his gear, dragged on his trousers, one leg at a time, and got the hell out of there.
Ten minutes and one signed waiver later he was in his Chevy and back on the job.
Because Regence Hooke did have an actual job he was supposed to be doing while he was clandestinely pursuing his dreams of constructing a metal pipeline up the Pearl and from there to California and NYC. He was the one and only constable for Petit Bateau and was two years into a six-year term. What had drawn Hooke to this ward was the vague nature of the qualifications required: An applicant needed only to be of good moral character and be able to read and write the English language. Hooke could read and write just fine, and he considered his own moral character to be in line with his ambitions. Luckily, the constable’s office was part-time, and so long as Hooke submitted reasonable expenses and kept up with his justice of the peace subpoenas, he was left pretty much alone. It was an open secret in Louisiana that the office of constable was a dinosaur from the previous century which was outrageously exploited all across the state by entrepreneurial part-timers who bumped up their expenses to hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum. There was a time when a smart operator could grease the right wheels and hold onto a constable’s badge for two or three decades, but with the advent of published expenses, the public was wising up to some extent and unlikely to reelect someone riding the city gravy train. So a constable’s options were to do the job right, or grab as much as possible over the six-year term.
Hooke did the job right. He served whatever needed serving, no matter how deep into the swamp it took him, and he claimed his delivery fees and mileage back through his salary. He worked whichever three days a week suited him and did a little enforcement work on the side for the mayor and his buddies in the next ward. And in return, Mayor Shine gave Hooke the use of an office and secretary. Hooke wasn’t technically supposed to take on any city police duties, but constables generally did, and the Petit Bateau residents were glad to have an army man around to break up bar fights or transport the occasional burglar to the Slidell lockup.
The previous constable had been the local bus driver, and it was said in the local bars that old Derrick didn’t know how to spell “good moral character,” never mind possess a bunch of it. So the public were satisfied enough with Hooke, who was, admittedly, a little intimidating, but there had been a vertical drop-off in larceny since he took it upon himself to walk a beat around the town in the evenings. And Hooke wasn’t a letter-of-the-law kind of guy either, in that he employed a live-and-let-live code. Drunks were generally dropped off at their own front doors rather than locked up, and kids smoking weed were given a swift kick in the seat of the pants rather than getting themselves a record.
The townspeople felt safer in their beds, and Regence Hooke’s cover was complete.
When he cashed out of the army, Hooke had put considerable research into where he would pitch his stall. The Colonel Faraiji model had appealed to him: i.e., get into law enforcement and open trade links to other regions. He had picked Petit Bateau because it was a gateway to the North through the swamp. Also, he had heard of this guy Conti through the dark web: a wannabe gangster who was buying up any soldiers on the force. Any force. Paying good money, too.
The first thing Hooke did when the city hired him was spend his days off surveilling Ivory’s family, so when his hothead nephew Vincent got himself thrown into the beatdown room of a strip joint for pawing the dancers, Hooke was able to step in and defuse the situation, which got him on a bar stool adjacent to Rossano Roque, which led to an offer from Ivory. So now Hooke had two salaries, plus the sizeable nest egg from the military-fuel racket he’d had going in Iraq. That had been a sweet scam which had fallen apart months after Hooke’s discharge, resulting in a hundred-plus enlisted personnel and military officers being convicted of theft, bribery, and contract rigging valued at tens of millions of dollars during their deployment. Hooke had laughed his ass off when that news trickled back to him stateside.
Tens of millions of dollars? Hundreds would be closer to the truth.
He wasn’t worried it would ever come back to him. The army had barely scratched the surface, and his involvement was way subterranean. Subterranean and labyrinthine.
In the negative column, his long-term plans vis-à-vis Ivory Conti’s infrastructure had hit a bump. He would need an act of God to dislodge Ivory from his perch at this rate, and where the hell was he supposed to come across one of those? Surviving that hurricane back in Florida was probably about as much as any god was prepared to do for him.
Maybe if I hadn’t staked out Daddy like a vampire.
Still, no use crying over spilled blood. Better to clear out his in-tray and turn his focus to Squib Moreau.
Once his sight returned, Hooke was reluctantly cut loose by the hospital. He’d had to sign a waiver and was told by the doctor that he was lucky to be out so quick, that his heart had been put under considerable strain and he should take it easy for a couple of months, all advice Hooke intended to roundly ignore because, as fate would have it, Squib Moreau had fallen neatly into Hooke’s in-tray that very morning. He’d called Lori from the Chevy to see what was urgent, and the answer was “Nuthin’ much, Constable.” The half a dozen papers needing serving Lori had already foisted onto the college linebacker Hooke had sworn in as his deputy for twenty bucks a pop. It was money well spent in Hooke’s opinion, and easily earned, in the opinion of the college kid Duke McKlusker, who was known by all and sundry as Kluskerfuck, on account of how he would fuck a person up if’n they resisted his subpoena service.
The only other matter of any note was a weeks-old noise complaint from one of the Beaujean brothers who lived downriver in a converted train carriage on the bayou. Maybe, Lori suggested, Hooke remembered that someone had been dynamiting catfish down there? It would mean a lot to the brothers if Constable Hooke would have a stern word with the usual suspects.
Usual suspects, thought Hooke. I know exactly who’s king of that hill.
He swung the Chevy around in the general store lot and set its grille toward the river.
HOOKE DROVE SLOW down the Moreau lane. A couple of things were different from his last visit. There were no spinning wheels this time around, and his right hand was pretty close to normal, apart from a compression bandage which reminded him of the support tights his mother used to wear—he made a mental note to check if those bandages came in any other color besides nude.
He shuddered, then wrenched his mind away from his mother’s varicose veins and to the problem of Squib Moreau.
There were two ways he could proceed with this investigation, and it was best to settle on one before making his approach.
There was a saying Colonel Faraiji used to throw about, “Softly softly catchy monkey,” to which Hooke often replied, “Shooty, killy motherfucking monkey.”
A response which never failed to pain the colonel, who saw Hooke as his padawan.
“But Regence, my boy, what if you wish to interrogate the monkey?”
“Then I shoot him in the leg.” Which Hooke still believed was a valid argument.
But for today, he thought that perhaps the softly softly approach was the right one to take. Regence was fine with this approach and could pull it off easy enough, apart from one thing. Or two things, to be precise.
His eyes.
Another quote from Faraiji: “The eyes are the windows to the soul. But not in your case, Sergeant. I see no soul.”
Hooke had to agree. He sincerely believed that his soul had been excised, or at least forfeited, so his gray eyes were windows to bedlam. To look into Regence Hooke’s eyes was to understand that this man’s religion was a blend of avarice and chaos.
Hooke knew that people found it difficult to hold his gaze. They felt it in him, the deep well of aggression, the boundless need for conquest.
Hooke could twist his mouth into a grin and relax the tension in his shoulders, but he couldn’t do shit about the eyes.
So he bought himself some Wayfarers to disguise the animal bloodlust.
Hey, it worked for Tom Cruise.
HOOKE RAPPED ON Elodie’s front-window glass through the bug screen. He could have just as easily knocked on the door, but he’d found rapping on windows freaked people the hell out because they assumed that whoever had been knocking on the window had probably just been peeking through it. And most folks’ default emotion when they discovered a peeper was to feel guilty their own selves. Hooke liked interviewees to feel guilty, even the innocent ones.
The curtains were closed, but they were threadbare, and Hooke could clearly see Elodie asleep on the sofa bed, face deep in the cushions, the curve of her thigh rising like the swell of surf, and he thought to himself, Someday, Regence, son.
But not today.
Even so, he resolved to take it easy on the girl. No need to burn bridges entirely.
He rapped again, and Elodie jerked like she’d been prodded, rolling backwards off the sofa onto all fours, an unconscious but practiced move.
There ain’t one goddamn thing I’m seeing here that I don’t like, thought Hooke. I know there are finer women who don’t need persuading, but Miss Elodie is a peach, no doubt.
Inside the house, Elodie climbed up along the table leg, then stood in place, swaying slightly.
That goddamn woman is asleep, Hooke realized, and gave one more knock at the window.
Barely a minute later Elodie appeared at the screen door. She hadn’t needed a minute to shrug on a dressing gown, being as she was still in her night-shift duds.
Hooke was disappointed.
A little slovenly, he thought, a person sleeping in her clothes. That’s something I’ll have to fix.
Still he kept his professional face on, hiding his eyes behind the Wayfarers, hoping the Polaroids reflected the light both ways so she wouldn’t see the lasers coming out of him. Not yet, leastways.
Elodie opened the door, eyes down, in the manner of sleepy people. Hooke’s navy uniform trousers with their gold piping were enough to shake half the sleep from her system.
“Constable Hooke,” she said, taking a barefoot step back, surprised to see him at her door, especially so soon after his snake bite. It was true that he had called on her before, but never out of the blue. “Constable.”
Hooke approximated a friendly smile. It came out something like a guy sucking on a slice of lemon.
“That’s two ‘Constables.’ Hell, that near to makes me a captain—Captain Hooke. Get it?”
Elodie shook her wedge of dark hair.
Hairdo looks like someone hacked it off the back of her head with an axe, thought Hooke. I believe she does it herself. Squib’s, too. Guess she only knows that one style.
“Oh, I see,” mumbled Elodie, rubbing one eye. “Captain Hooke. Like in the book.”
Stupid Cajun, thought Hooke. I like that. “I think you might find it was a movie,” he said kindly. “If you went and looked into it.”
Elodie blinked maybe half a dozen times, thinking that maybe she was still dreaming.
“I’ll do that. You know, there’s no need to come around, Constable. You done thanked me already, at the clinic. Maybe you don’t remember. You was all drugged up at the time.”
Hooke held up a hand to stop the flow. “No, Elodie. Miss Moreau. It ain’t that. It ain’t that at all. I’m here about something else.”
“About that something else,” said Elodie, placing half her head behind the flimsy protection of the screen door. “I don’t think there is anything else, Constable.”
Hooke knew what Elodie was saying. She had seen him stripped down to the bones personality-wise and thought now that there was no future for them romantic-wise. This surely was a pity, but Hooke had encountered resistance before and he felt confident he could charm his way over that molehill. But not today. Today was for more pressing issues.
Hooke casually nudged the toe of his boot into the frame, in case he had to apply pressure to find out what he needed to know.
Could be I’ll end up here for the day. Six hours shenanigans, two hours cleanup. Then burn the place to the ground.
Hooke always kept that card in his back pocket, which was probably why that telltale glint never left his eyes. Every time he met someone, Hooke was figuring how to murder them and get away with it, in case the need arose.
But this time, it was better to turn that burner down real low. There was an endgame here beyond the usual gratifications.
“I ain’t here about personal stuff,” he said, “though I surely wish that was the case. No, I done had a complaint about your young ’un. Ain’t the first time neither.”
Elodie came completely awake like a switch had been flicked. “Everett? He ain’t done nothing. The boy promised me.”
Hooke sighed like it pained him to be delivering bad tidings. “They promise, don’t they? Sun, moon, and stars. But words don’t mean shit to boys in the long term, pardon my language. They is just convenient at the time.”
Elodie had a bit of fight in her as far as Squib was concerned, her hackles rising even in the face of Hooke. “What’s Everett supposed to have done?”
“This time,” said Hooke keeping up the gentle tone. “What’s Everett supposed to have done this time. Because this surely ain’t the first time.”
Elodie squared her shoulders some and her chin cranked over to one side, which the hunter in Hooke knew as a sign that this lioness was prepared to protect her cub. “Well then,” she said, the steel in her voice challenging Hooke, “what’s he supposed to have done this time?”
“Nothing too serious. Just a spot of dynamiting on the bayou. Stun those catfish to the surface.” Hooke wiggled his pinky finger. “He sure has got previous experience in that particular area, if not expertise.”
Elodie gripped the screen-door slat tight with one hand and her entire frame stiffened, and Hooke realized that with that one little gesture he’d forever blown his chances. It always amazed him how much some mothers actually loved their offspring. Not his, obviously, which was why he found it hard to relate.
“It’s been a while since that incident, Constable,” said Elodie. “Everett’s done straightened up. Boy’s working three jobs trying to get us out of the hole his daddy done dug.”
Hooke was interested. “Three jobs? You don’t say? Mind running those down for me?”
Elodie counted down on two fingers. “One, the boy has his own graft on the water. Crawfish, catfish. Sells to Bodi direct. Which is his second port, working the bar and grill, being as Bodi cuts us a deal on this place.”
“Yup,” said Hooke, thinking, Cuts a deal, does he? I wonder, is old Bodi taking his rent in kind?
“Three,” continued Elodie, on her thumb, “Mister Waxman has taken him on as his assistant. He’s doing all sorts of chores over there. It appears Mister Waxman likes to loaf about mostly, and he has Everett keep up his house. My boy is spending every hour the Lord sends on the water. Won’t even take the Sundays for himself. He’s a good son, Constable. Lord knows he sneaks a beer on occasion, but that’s all he does these days. He swore to me, and I believe him. I ain’t breaking my back to throw it all away on bail money and medical fees.”
Hooke tipped his cap back on the crown of his head. “That’s a pretty speech, Miss Elodie. You surely do have a way with the words.”
“Truth makes its own way,” said Elodie, shifting one foot back like she was primed to end this conversation.
“That’s all as may be,” said Hooke. “Unfortunately, I have this here complaint and I got to check it out. So, if you could present the young fella, we can get this cleared up in a jiffy.”
“I can’t present him,” said Elodie, sounding hard like she wouldn’t present him if she could. “He’s at the Pearl, filling Waxman’s shopping list. I don’t know when the boy sleeps. Can’t be getting more than two hours in the bunk every evening.”
Hooke allowed his mirrored gaze to wander all over Elodie’s person, taking his sweet time, moving his head as well as his eyes so that she knew he was looking, because at this point he was pretty sure his chances of getting his hands on that person legitimately were pretty much zero, but he gave it one more try.
“Maybe I could come by later and catch up with the boy? Maybe bring a bottle of that sparkling wine you like?”
Elodie rubbed her neck. “I can’t, Constable. I’m on the late shift all summer. We need the money, Lord knows we do.”
Well now, thought Hooke, there’s the clincher.
He considered snatching the Wayfarers off his own face then, letting this no-account Cajun see exactly what she was turning down. How her life was hanging by a thread every time they spoke.
Take off the glasses, then one hand around her throat, and walk her backwards into the house.
Wasn’t no one around to see. The kid was on the clock.
But that didn’t solve his problem. There was someone out there, maybe with a video of him slitting Carnahan’s belly, but at the very least an eyewitness.
And even after that problem was solved, he had Ivory Conti’s empire to deal with.
It had to be done clever.
He flashed back on a night in Iraq, sitting on a breeze block beside an oil-drum fire, and Colonel Faraiji showing him a stump of cracked wood before he tossed it into the flames.
“Do you see this piece of wood, Regence, my friend?”
“I see it, Colonel,” Hooke had said. “And I bet there’s more to it than wood. I bet nature’s teaching me a lesson I ain’t understood yet.”
Faraiji’s smile was pained but indulgent. He’d never had a son who would listen to the lessons passed down through the generations, so Hooke would have to do.
“This wood is split and weakened. Good for nothing but the fire. How did this happen?”
“Fuck knows,” said Hooke.
“How would you destroy this piece of wood?”
Hooke’s patience was wearing thin. Faraiji never just came out and said stuff. There was always the big buildup.
“I guess I would take an axe to it.”
“And how would the wood feel as the axe came down?”
Sometimes Hooke felt like he was being trained by Yoda. “I guess the wood would shit its wooden trunks.”
“Exactly,” said Faraiji. “So we must take our cue from the desert moisture. Seep into the wood, as a friend, then freeze in the night and split the wood.”
“Fight from the inside is what you’re saying?”
“Exactly, my friend,” said Faraiji. “And even as the wood lay dying, it would not blame the water.”
Fight from the inside, thought Hooke now. Be a friend to all, until the time comes to stop being a friend.
He flashed Elodie a smile that was broader than it was deep. “Hey, you can’t blame a fella for asking, right?” He slid a card from his breast pocket and proffered it to Elodie like he’d pulled it from behind her ear, magician-style. “Ask Squib to give me a call when you see him. It ain’t nothing serious, but I do want to hear from him, okay?”
Elodie took the card, careful not to make fingertip contact. “I surely will tell him, Constable.”
Hooke adopted a jokey Southern drawl. “Don’t make me come back here, hear?”
“I hear ya,” said Elodie, an unconvincing good sport.
Hooke tapped his brim. “Ma’am,” he said, and returned to the Chevy, leaving Elodie Moreau shivering in the thump of ninety-degree Louisiana heat.
The Hooke-Moreau hookup was never going to happen now, and they both knew it.
But, thought Hooke as he climbed into his vehicle, there is surely more than one way to skin a Cajun.