Juke Charpentier had a vague sense that his day was beginning badly when he heard the constant and faraway ringing of a telephone. He figured he was dreaming and if he just lay rigid long enough, the ringing would go away.
But it wouldn't, and, whatever. Lying rigid was about all Juke could do for the moment.
The more the phone rang, the more conscious he became of his condition and his position. He was alone in bed and, as far as he could tell, fully clothed; light was pouring through a tattered shade of his dingy and unkempt bedroom in the amazingly unkempt expanse of his apartment. Since his second divorce three years earlier, a divorce in which he'd lost his second house, Juke had pretty much given up on housekeeping.
He ran a hand, extricated from the back of his head, slowly down his chest to points south. Along the way, he encountered obstacles.
Ah, a cigarette butt.
Ah, a deep and jagged burn mark across my lapel.
Self-immolation had most certainly not been Juke's goal, but given his condition he wondered whether it perhaps might have been merciful. For a man who was no stranger to hangovers, this one was going to be enshrined in the record books.
Juke, aware that the friggin’ phone was still ringing and that it was his land-line, not his cell phone, further propped himself up so that he now sat erect. This brought on a sharp pain in his head and a sudden bout of dizziness.
The phone continued to ring and ring and ring, which could only mean one thing: the office was calling.
Well, more precisely: Louella LeBoeuf was calling on behalf of the tyrannical Tom Huff.
This caused Juke to see the morning, or what was left of it, with more clarity than he'd expected, since the mental image of his sawed-off boss in a rage immediately entered his consciousness like a splash of icy water. Clearly he was late for work, though how late he could not yet ascertain. He needed his watch, which was no longer on his wrist. Eyes closed, he patted himself. His cell phone and wallet were missing, too.
“Aw, man. I've screwed the pooch,” he said under his breath. “Hell, I've screwed a whole pack of dogs this time.”
Juke rose unsteadily and did the one thing he thought might give him a chance of recovering the day. He lurched to his bathroom, parted a ripped shower curtain, and turned on the spigot. Steadying himself by holding on to a nearby towel rack, he kept one hand under the shower stream. When it became warm enough, he stepped in fully clothed—trying to undress, he realized, would give him vertigo.
For about ten minutes he let the water cascade over his head until he felt a glimmer of balance. He doffed his soggy coat, dropping it onto the shower floor. He stepped out and padded his way back into the bedroom, shedding water like a golden retriever exiting a river.
Looking around, Juke spied his watch on the soiled bedside carpet. His wallet was there, too. Credit cards had spilled out in a loose fan shape. He bent and retrieved both in shaky hands but realized he was too bleary-eyed to focus on either.
He sat back down on the bed and decided to make a major effort to reconstruct the night.
The Alibi, his bar of first and last resort, seemed a safe place to begin, and, oh, damn, there it was. Juke recalled that he had in fact been at the Alibi buying drinks for a few of his pals—quite a few pals—in the sheriff 's office. And a few for the barmaids, too. In fact, all the friggin’ barmaids and all their friends, too.
He remembered being on the verge of scoring big-time with one of the gals—Loretta or some such, a new waitress at the Alibi, and maybe with her friend, whose name he'd forgotten.
Where the hell had they gone?
How did he get home?
And still the friggin’ phone was ringing!
Juke, at this moment, would've traded three five-hundred-dollar whores for his cell phone because then he could ignore the odious ringing landline and phone the office on his own terms.
Still dripping, he walked unsteadily toward his living room, where the ringing phone sat on an end table, prepared to take his medicine. He only hoped he didn't slur his words. He had some vague and uneasy flashback from last evening about dropping his cell phone … in a toilet… and reaching to…
No, don't go there…
Thing was, Huff was always on Juke's ass about something, and it was simply part of the price Charpentier paid for what was otherwise an extraordinary job. Huff paid him to buy influence, and Juke was a gifted shopper.
Given his limited education, Juke couldn't imagine landing in a more lucrative spot. He'd made it all the way out of high school without ever reading an entire book or learning proper grammar or even how to write an error-free simple declarative sentence. Instead, he'd spent his time running with a gang of jocks who smoked in the bathroom and kicked the shit out of boys stupid enough to join the marching band or make good grades (provided these were not boys big enough to defend themselves).
Juke did, however, make A's in high school math. This, and his sycophantic, pack-dog mentality, his utterly amoral view of his job, and a certain sleazy persuasiveness that worked on a surprising range of people—these things had certainly served him well as Tom Huff 's guy Friday.
Juke finally reached the phone, snatched it up, and in a desperate effort to sound normal barked, “Charpentier here.”
“Juke, it's Louella. The boss is looking for you. You were supposed to be here at nine-fifteen. He's on the warpath. You're in deep trouble. Hold on, I'll switch you over.”
“Wait, wait!” Juke found himself exclaiming. “How much trouble?”
“A scale of one to ten? Fourteen. He's already thrown two objects at the wall.”
“Shit,” Juke said. “Anyway, I got what he wants. Maybe—” “Save it for him, Juke. I'm just the messenger.”
Huff came on. “This better be good,” he said.
Juke waited for more but there was an ominous silence. “Uh, hey, boss,” he replied, trying to sound cheerful. “Uh, yeah, it's good. It's all good. I got what you wanted. Got it all. Louella was right. That property we need for our pipeline definitely belongs to that Justin Pitre fella. I know right where he lives and everything.”
“Juke, why are you at home? Did you forget we had a meeting this morning? Did you forget that meeting was to be at nine-fifteen? Did you forget how goddam mad it makes me when certain assholes don't show up for meetings on time?”
“Aw, boss, I'm sorry. See, I was down in the basement of the property assessor's office checkin’ them records, and not only was there no cell phone signal but my friggin’ cell went out on me. So, by the time I got all the goods on Pitre, man, I realized I'd totally lost track of the time. So I came home to, uh, see if I had another cell phone battery, 'cause I thought maybe—”
“Juke,” Huff said coldly into the phone, “you closed down the Alibi last night, and to close down that damned place takes some doin’. Louella checked on you. Who knows what the hell you did after that. So stop diggin’ yourself a bigger hole. You know, I should fire your sorry ass and I still might if I don't hear what I want to hear.”
The “fire” word socked Juke like a block of ice to the face, causing him to blanch and straighten up. Huff often blasted Juke, but he'd never threatened to fire him before.
“Gee, right, uh, boss, uh, well, yeah, I'm sorry but I, uh—”
Huff 's voice grew steely again. “Juke, I don't want your friggin’ apology. I want to know what you know about Justin Pitre, and it better be more than the fact that he owns the property out there.”
“Uh, yeah, gotcha, boss. Okay, I got some good stuff. He's a diesel mechanic. He's got a hotshot truck with one of them big tool racks on it and runs up and down Chacahoula and other bayous workin’ on shrimp boats mostly. He does some Awl Patch work but not for us, though he did work for us once about five years ago. He's one of them fanatic redfishermen—spends a helluva lot of time at that camp of his. He's married to a gal from LaFarge Parish. She's a fanatic redfisherman, too.”
“Hmm,” Huff mused. “Well, that's too bad.”
“Bad? Which part?” Juke replied.
“That he doesn't work for us these days. It sure would make things easier.”
“Right. It shore would, boss. Anyway, I've got some scoop on the property itself. The Pitre guy inherited his camp and them five hundred acres around it from his grandpa, who was one of them ole-school trappers. The old man pretty much lived out there in the wilds most of his life.”
“Well, isn't that a touching story,” said Huff. “All right, Juke, as soon as you get yourself properly sober—and don't give me any lame excuses because I'm still of a mind to fire you—you know what to do next. We'll draw up some papers and make Justin Pitre an offer he can't refuse. Well, let's just say we'll make him an offer he better not refuse.”
“Yes sir. Should be no problem,” Juke replied.
“Oh, one other thing.”
“What's that?”
“I'll pay top dollar if I have to, but don't give away the whole damn farm on the first offer. Who knows? This guy might be one of those dumb coonasses. Maybe we can get that right-of-way for a steal.”
“Yes sir,” said Juke. “That could be. I'll do my best. I'm on it, right now.”
Even Juke didn't think much of the term “coonass,” especially coming from a cou-rouge like Huff. He knew that many rednecks had long put down the Cajuns with that term, a term that implied a low and ignorant person. But it was his job, whether Justin Pitre was a dumb coonass or not, to get that right-of-way fast. And, if possible, to get it cheap.