“We need you on this one, Buddy. That shipping channel is gonna make it a lot easier for us to do our business down here, and Tom's made it his personal business to get it dug. Now, you know the Guv—you and he are tight. We need you to help us help him see this thing our way. You can do this, Buddy. You're the man.”
The speaker, Juke Charpentier, director of public relations for Standard of Texas Oil Company, Southeast Louisiana/Gulf of Mexico Region, stared across the dimness of a corner booth at his lunch companion, the Honorable Prentiss “Buddy” Dupere, duly elected state representative from the Southern District of Chacahoula Parish.
Buddy had no immediate answer.
True, Buddy and Joe T. Evangeline were great podnahs. But these issue things made Buddy nervous. He hadn't been paying much attention to this shipping-channel business, leaving it to his aides to speak on his behalf to the press when such a thing was required. He also wasn't very keen on telling Joe T. what to do. Buddy had become quite used to taking his cues from the governor, which made life pretty simple. The Guv said to say this and Buddy would say this. The Guv said to say that and Buddy would say that. In ex change, the Guv helped Buddy out. He sent lots of goodies, like sidewalks and streetlights and flood-control projects, to Buddy's sprawling, low-lying district.
And, let's face it, the Guv almost single-handedly got Buddy reelected a couple of years back when six other candidates had come out of the thickets to challenge him. If Joe T. Evangeline stumped for you down in Buddy's neck of the marsh, man, you were more popular than boiled crawfish.
Juke prodded Buddy again. “So, what you thinkin’, Buddy? You with us on this?”
Buddy nodded, more wearily than he intended to. “Sure, why not, Juke. You got some paper for me? Somethin’ I can give Joe T. when I see him?”
“Oh, yeah, we'll load you down with all the paper you can carry. We've got the oil industry's new study on the environmental impacts, which, by the way, ain't no more worrisome than a flea on a dog's ass. And Tom himself has written up a nice li'l summary of why this project is good for everybody, no matter what the damned environmentalists and shrimpers say.”
Buddy was sorry to hear the word “shrimpers.” He had no real opinion of environmentalists, other than that they seemed to complain a lot. But he had lots of shrimpers living in his district; if his particular shrimpers were among the shrimpers Juke was talking about, this could be a problem. He might have to do something.
Buddy was going to reply when he found himself interrupted by the appearance of a waitress at his booth. This was a good development: he could order another drink and Juke would unquestionably be distracted. He knew Juke all too well.
“Ah, Wanda, there you are, darlin’,” said Juke. “What kept you, baby? Bring another drink for Representative Dupere here. Bring me one, too.”
“The same?” Wanda asked, smiling at Buddy but avoiding eye contact with Juke altogether.
“You bet,” Juke replied.
Wanda nodded, turned, and headed briskly for the bar.
Juke nudged Buddy across the table. “Man, look at her, Buddy. That girl's got a butt like two bulldogs in a bag. Man, I'd like to get into some of that one night.” He made a crude gesture that showed what he had in mind.
Buddy peered at Wanda as she walked away. Even he could see that Wanda, despite a waitress uniform that included an apron adorned with a cartoonish red crawfish, cut an imposing figure. She was tall, lithe, and dark haired, and she carried herself in a way that spoke of poise and intelligence— begging the question of what she was doing in a place like this.
But Buddy had no immediate comment, for, in fact, he was neutral about Wanda. She was friendly and got the bartender to pour him stiff drinks, but his enthusiasm ended there. At forty-nine and a half, Buddy had never married and hadn't had much luck with women. Lately, he'd been steering clear of them.
Buddy, in fact, wondered if he was having a sexuality crisis or whether he even had a sexuality. Everybody else seemed to have a sexuality—Juke obviously had a supersexuality. But Buddy's seemed to have gone missing, or was he looking for it in the wrong place?
The “gay” word had occurred to Buddy, since a lot of people seemed to be gay these days. It was all over the news and the TV—gay this, gay that. Buddy realized he hadn't fully grasped the implications of this, however, until he clicked on a gay website that he'd found, with ease that startled him, on AOL.
Holy bowl of gumbo! They did that?
Buddy was dumbfounded. Even if he were gay, what they were doing was too far-fetched for him.
Of course, this wasn't something he could share with his pal Juke, who would ridicule him mercilessly.
So, Buddy, his Cajun-accented speech ratcheted down into first gear by the two whiskys he'd already consumed, finally said, “You right, Juke. She's a fine-lookin’ gal. I'd like to jump her like a bass jumps a shiner.” (Buddy wasn't a fisherman, either, but he'd heard other guys use the analogy and knew it to be manly.)
Wanda Dugas, twenty-two years old and soon to be a college graduate, returned quickly with the drinks. Charpentier, a gangly, thin man with a narrow, angular face pocked by acne and dulled by a smoker's pallor, tossed a ten-dollar bill on the table. “Here, Wanda, baby,” he said. “Keep the change. I mean it.”
Highballs at the Alibi Lounge & Restaurant were $2.50 at lunchtime, which partly explained the dump's popularity, so it was a decent tip. Wanda pocketed the ten and mustered a medium-friendly “Thank you.” To herself she said, Your baby is one thing I'll never be.
Wanda, having worked most of her way through Judah P. Thibodeaux College waiting tables and bartending at the Alibi, had caught a lot of the Buddy and Juke show. Representative Dupere she knew to be dull but good-hearted; Juke Charpentier was neither dull nor good-hearted.
Juke, who slicked his thinning, yellowed hair back in a dated impression of Elvis, had a long reputation among the cocktail waitresses at the Alibi as a serial grab-ass. A few double whiskys and he considered copping a feel his constitutional right. Some of the waitresses tolerated it; so did the bar's owner, Laurent Prosperie, so long as the groped waitress didn't object and any extracurricular arrangements were made outside the bar. Laurent was an entrepreneur, and he encouraged entrepreneurism in his waitresses.
Everybody knew Juke controlled a very generous Big Tex expense account and spread the money around like a New Orleans big shot. Everybody also knew that Juke wore Tom Huff's leash. The fine li'l girls working the bar and tables at the Alibi weren't supposed to know this (or express it, even if they knew it). But of course Wanda knew these things and a lot more.
The Alibi, a low-slung, windowless brick building tucked off the edge of a pretty Black Bayou residential district, was a great listening post. A predominantly Oil Patch hangout, it was part greasy spoon, part beer joint—a man's place. A dim, smoke-filled, boozy joint, it dished up a tasty, inexpensive plate of jambalaya at lunch and cheap booze throughout the day—even for break-fast—and was reliably the last place open in town every night. For that reason it had become wildly popular with oil-field salesmen trying to close deals on drilling mud and fishing tools; for dry-mouthed roughnecks just returned from a week offshore, their pockets bulging with pay; and for various mid-level Oil Patch types like Juke Charpentier who came swaggering in for lunch with their expense accounts and their clients trying to close deals or curry (or buy) favors.
Juke and Buddy Dupere were invariably part of the lunch crowd, though Wanda happened to know Juke often came back to the Alibi late, usually drunk or close to it, throwing around money and hoping to arrange a little more than a feel behind the bar. Wanda figured he sometimes got lucky. She had come to realize that some women would do anything for money (including lying bored and disgusted beneath the gold-chained, heavy-panting, foul-breathed Juke Charpentier).
At lunch, Juke and Representative Dupere would sit in a booth at the end of the bar and order oyster po'boys with extra pickles and mayonnaise (Juke pronounced it “MY-nez”) and double-whisky highballs. Sometimes lunch wandered far into the afternoon. Juke and Dupere liked to talk, and the more they drank, the more they said.
A lot of pretty damned interesting stuff filtered Wanda's way. She knew, for example, that today's discussion about the shipping channel (which she vigorously opposed) was rather innocuous given some of the things Juke and Buddy had talked about in the past. Something far more interesting—and perhaps sinister—was going on with Juke, his boss, Tom Huff, and the governor. Wanda had only caught snippets, though Juke, with enough booze in him, was at times laughably indiscreet for a guy with a job like his. Wanda knew Juke was no PR man; he was Tom Huff 's fixer.
But Wanda also knew that recent Juke and Buddy discussions had to do with an issue that had been percolating in the press concerning whether Governor Evangeline might have been unduly influenced by forces within the oil industry when he settled a long-running state suit over arrear oil royalties a few months back. This battle, called the rig-tax fight, was about whether Big Oil had, with state complicity, cheated on its taxes by underreporting revenue or wildly inflating exemptions. Potentially hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake, and some reformist, good-government types had accused the state (and thus the governor) of settling the suit to Big Oil's advantage. If true, a chief beneficiary would have been Big Tex.
Wanda also knew that the Republican do-gooders who now ran the federal attorney's office in New Orleans were sniffing around the settlement, though it wasn't clear (from press accounts thus far) whether there was an actual investigation. The governor, if you believed Juke, was keen to find out what the feds were up to, and Tom Huff was going to help him in some way.
Wanda played dumb and observed Laurent Prosperie's rule that what was heard in the bar stayed in the bar. She didn't particularly like working at the Alibi, but the tips were sometimes spectacular and the hours flexible. A double major in history and psychology, she had her sights on law school, hoping to follow in the steps of her bright older first cousin, Julie Galjour. Julie had also bootstrapped herself through undergraduate and law school and now had an extremely important job in the corridors of Baton Rouge, where she was dedicating her life to saving Louisiana's rapidly eroding wetlands.
Wanda didn't want to save the swamp or the whales (though she cared about both). She was going to work for a couple of years (hopefully in a law office), take her LSATs, then go to LSU, graduate, and make her career handling sexual-harassment cases against the likes of Juke Charpentier.
She went off to wait on another customer, wondering if Juke even realized he was basically seen by every Alibi waitress as a commodity with wildly fluctuating values depending upon a waitress's proclivities. Buddy saw Juke ogling Wanda as she walked away and was eager to avoid more banter having to do with sexuality.
“So, look, Juke, back to this channel business. I dunno. I'm happy to talk to the Guv, but the Guv has strong opinions and he'll probably make up his own mind on this one.”
Juke shook his head as though Buddy had spoken some blasphemy.
“Buddy, Buddy. Man, see, you underrate yourself. You've got the Guv's ear, and Tom's countin’ on you to deliver the goods. And anyway, we've got some other stuff we can throw on the table.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you've been readin’ the papers. The damned Republicans in the Senate have been making noises about an investigation into the rig-tax settlement. The Guv can't like that.”
Juke looked around, then lowered his voice. “Look, we've got a lawyer up in Baton Rouge, a first-rate guy, with a kick-ass PR firm that likes rough-andtumble stuff. Tom's willing to spring for their services.”
Buddy could feel a headache coming on. Juke bought him a lot of drinks and lunches, but he made Buddy's life far too complicated sometimes.
“So, what you want me to do?” Buddy asked.
“Okay, hang with me, Buddy. Let's just say you caucus with some of your like-minded podnahs up there in the House. Maybe you circulate a petition that denounces the Republican inquiry—you know, call it a political witch hunt, blah, blah, blah. Don't worry, we'll write it up for you. This gets in the press and puts some heat on the bad guys. Meanwhile, we do a li'l inquiring of our own. You know the guy spearheadin’ this, that redneck asshole Senator John Brasser from Livingston Parish? Well, turns out he was a director of a bank up there that went down a couple years ago and a lot of widows and orphans and poor redneck farmers got hurt. Who knows what else we might find. Maybe the guy's a chicken fucker. Whatever, Tom's willin’ to finance somethin’ like this—just to show how much he appreciates the Guv.”
Chicken fucker? Is this another kind of sexuality? That one stumped Buddy cold.
He still wasn't sure what Juke wanted him to do. “Then what?” he said.
“Okay, see, you lead the charge on the petition. Then you just let the Guv know how we're helpin’ him out because right now, well, the Guv doesn't want to talk directly to us. Anyway, we scratch his back, he scratches ours. You're the middleman—the key to the whole deal. See? It's a beautiful world.”
Buddy took a sip of his third highball and nodded. It still seemed complicated, but Juke clearly wasn't gonna be denied. Buddy was spared from replying by the reappearance of Wanda.
“Mr. Charpentier,” she said, “you've got a phone call. It's Louella LeBoeuf saying Mr. Huff needs you back at the office right away. Oh, and she says that I'm supposed to remind you that if you don't start keeping your cell phone on, Mr. Huff will fire you.”
Juke looked at Wanda, wondering whether the meek and mild Louella had actually said exactly that or Wanda was yanking his chain. He had some vague notion that Louella and Wanda knew each other beyond Louella's frequent calls to fetch him from the bar.
“Aw, sweetheart,” Juke replied, “I'd keep my cell phone on for you but not for her. And how many times I gotta tell you to call me Juke?”
“I'll keep that in mind, Mr. Charpentier,” said Wanda. “You know where the phone is.”
Juke rose, feeling vaguely like he'd been dissed again, and walked past Wanda, who had bent to replace the sweating coaster under Buddy's drink. Glancing back, he caught Buddy's eye and, with Wanda's back still to him, roughly formed the outlines of her posterior with his hands. He then jerked both thumbs up.
Even Buddy couldn't believe how juvenile Juke could be.
Wanda went back to the bar, and in a moment Juke returned to his seat.
“Aw, Buddy, I'm sorry to have to abandon you like this, but Tom's got somethin’ for me to do PDQ. I don't suppose you know a guy named Justin Pitre? Tom needs some scoop on him.”
“Cain't say I do, though they got lotsa Pitres in the world. He's from my district?”
“Nah, I don't think so. Just thought it might ring a bell. Say, listen, when you goin’ back up to Baton Rouge?”
“T'morrow.”
Looking around and then leaning forward, Juke said in a whisper, “Can you take somethin’ to Joe T. from us?”
“Sure.”
“Great. Make sure he gets this—give it to him yourself. It's important,” said Juke, handing Representative Dupere a large, brown, and unmarked sealed envelope.
“No problem,” said Buddy.
Juke rose to leave. “And listen, stay here as long as you like. Order more drinks. Just tell my girlfriend Wanda to put it on my tab, okay?”
For Buddy, this was actually the best development of the day. He could drink in peace for free without being badgered by Juke.
An hour later, Representative Dupere, satiated on po'boys and whisky, edged out into the bright afternoon sun, which stabbed at his eyes even through his ultradark glasses. He got into his white Lincoln Town Car— which his good podnah Joe T. Evangeline had leased for him in a deal that neither would want to discuss in public—and started the engine. He turned on KLRZ, a Cajun-music station, and took out the envelope Juke had given him. He carefully unsealed it with a small penknife.
He'd never seen so many one-hundred-dollar bills before.
Buddy took out three or four, licked the envelope, tried to seal it with his thumb, and put it back in his jacket pocket.
They ain't gonna miss a few, thought Buddy, happy as an oyster at rising tide.