Clete took a shower and dressed and sat down again at the table, his hair wet-combed, his eyes clear. “I didn’t know I had a daughter until Gretchen was fifteen,” he said. “Her mother called collect from the Dade County stockade and said Gretchen was in juvie and I was her father. I don’t think Candy could have cared less about her daughter; she wanted me to bail her out of the can. I got a blood test done on Gretchen. There was no doubt she was mine. In the meantime she’d been transferred from juvie to foster care. Before I could get the custody process in gear, she disappeared. I tried to find her two or three times. I heard she was a hot walker at Hialeah, and she started hanging with some dopers and then got mixed up with some Cuban head cases, guys who think a political dialogue is blowing up the local television station.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“Think I’m proud I fathered a child who was left in the hands of a sadist? I’m talking about the guy who did what’s in those pictures.”
I waited for him to go on. His beer can was empty, and he was staring at it as though unsure where it came from. He crunched it and tossed it in the trash, his eyes looking emptily into mine.
“What happened to her abuser?” I asked.
“He moved down to Key West. He had a small charter boat business. He used to take people bone fishing out in the flats.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s still there,” Clete said.
I looked at him.
“He’s going to be there a long time,” Clete said.
I didn’t acknowledge the implication. “How can you be sure she’s the one who shot Golightly?”
“Candy sent me pictures showing the two of them together only two years ago. Candy is back on the spike and says Gretchen comes and goes and drops out of sight for a year at a time. She doesn’t know what Gretchen does for a living.”
“You know who killed Bix Golightly. You can’t hold back information like that, Clete.”
“Nobody at NOPD wants to see me anywhere near a precinct building. When is the last time they helped either one of us in an investigation? You were fired, Dave, just like me. They hate our guts, and you know it.”
“Does Gretchen know you’re her father?”
“I’m not sure. I saw her for maybe five minutes when she was in juvie.”
“Does she know you live in New Orleans?”
“Maybe. I can’t remember what I told her when we met. She was fifteen. How many fifteen-year-old girls are thinking about anything an adult says?”
“Who do you think she’s working for?”
“Somebody with a lot of money. The word is she gets a minimum of twenty grand a hit. She’s a pro and leaves no witnesses and no money trail. She has no bad habits and stays under the radar.”
“No witnesses?” I repeated.
“You heard me.”
“Did she see you?”
“After she left, she came back and looked at the alleyway where I was standing,” he said. “Maybe she thought she saw something. Maybe she was just wondering if she picked up all her brass. She was whistling ‘The San Antonio Rose.’ I’m not making this up. Stop looking at me like that.”
Helen Soileau could be a stern administrator. She also had a way of forgetting her own lapses in professional behavior (straying arbitrarily into various romantic relationships, whipping her baton across the mouth of a dope dealer who was chugalugging a bottle of chocolate milk after he insulted her), but no one could say she was unfair or afraid to take responsibility when she was wrong.
On Wednesday morning I had a doctor’s appointment and didn’t arrive at work until ten A.M. I was going through my mail when Helen buzzed my extension. “I just got off the phone with Tee Jolie Melton’s grandfather,” she said. “He tried to get ahold of you first, then he called me.”
“What’s the deal?”
“He says there’s a witness to Blue Melton’s abduction. He says St. Martin Parish won’t do anything about it.”
“We’re out of our jurisdiction,” I said.
“Not anymore. If the witness’s account is accurate, we just became players. It’s not something I wanted, but that’s the way it is, bwana. I suspect you couldn’t be happier. Check out a cruiser, and I’ll meet you out front.”
We drove up the two-lane state road to the home of Avery DeBlanc in St. Martinville, up the bayou from the drawbridge and the old cemetery, one that was filled with white crypts. He was waiting for us in a rocking chair on his gallery, both of his walking canes propped across his thighs. He stood up when we approached him, lifting his crippled back as straight as he could. “T’ank y’all for coming,” he said.
I introduced Helen, then helped him sit down. “Can you tell us again what this little boy told you, Mr. DeBlanc?” I said.
“Ain’t much to it. The boy lives yonder, down where them pecan trees is at. He said he looked out the window. He said it was night, and a white boat come up the bayou and parked at my li’l dock, and two men got out and went to my house. He said the boat had a fish wit’ a long nose painted on the bow. He said the men went into my house and came back out wit’ Blue. He said he could see all t’ree of them in the porch light. They had a big green bottle and some tall glasses, and they was all drinking out of the glasses and laughing.”
“When did this happen?” Helen interrupted.
“The boy ain’t sure. Maybe a mont’ ago. Maybe more. He’s only eleven. He said Blue was walking wit’ the men toward the bayou, and then she wasn’t laughing no more. The two men took her by the arms, and she started fighting wit’ them. He said they took her down to the dock, and he t’inks one of them hit her. He said he couldn’t see good when they was on the dock. The only light come from the nightclub across the bayou. He t’inks the man hit Blue in the face and put her on the boat. He said she cried out once, then didn’t make no more sounds.”
“The boy didn’t try to tell anybody or call 911?”
“He was home alone. That li’l boy don’t do nothing wit’out permission,” Mr. DeBlanc said.
“Where did the boat go? In which direction?” Helen asked.
“Sout’, back toward New Iberia.”
“Why is the boy telling you this only now?” I asked.
“He said his momma tole him it ain’t his bidness. He said his momma tole him my granddaughters ain’t no good. They’re on dope and they hang out wit’ bad men. But it bothered him real bad ’cause he liked Blue, so he tole me about it.”
“And you told this to the deputy sheriff?” I said.
“I went to his office. He wrote it down on his li’l pad. He said he’d check it out. But he ain’t come to see me or returned my phone calls, and the boy said ain’t nobody talked to him, either.”
Helen and I walked down to the dock. The planks were weathered gray, the wood pilings hung with rubber tires. The bayou was high and dark from the rain, the surface wrinkling like old skin each time the wind gusted. I tried to squat down and examine the wood, but a burst of pain, like a nest of tree roots, spread through my chest. For a moment the bayou and the live oaks on the opposite bank and the whitewashed crypts in the cemetery went in and out of focus.
“I got it, Dave,” Helen said.
“Give me a minute. I’m fine.”
“I know. But easy does it, right?”
“No, I’m going to do it,” I said. I eased down on one knee, swallowing my pain, touching the dock with the tips of my fingers. “See? Nothing to it.”
“There’s no telling how many times it’s rained on those planks,” she said.
“Yeah, but the kid didn’t make up that story.”
“Maybe not. Anyway, let’s have a talk with the deputy or whoever this guy is who can’t get off his ass.”
“Look at this.” I took my pocketknife from my slacks and opened the blade. The tops of the planks in the dock were washed clean and uniformly gray and free of any residue, but between two planks, I could see several dark streaks, as though someone had spilled ketchup. I cut a splinter loose and wrapped it in my handkerchief.
“You think it’s blood?” Helen said.
“We’ll see,” I replied.
We drove to the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Annex, next to the white-columned courthouse past which twenty thousand Union troops had marched in pursuit of Colonel Mouton’s malnourished Confederate troops in their unending retreat from Shiloh, all the way to the Red River parishes of central Louisiana.
The plainclothes sheriff’s deputy was Etienne Pollard. He wore a beige suit and a yellow tie and blue shirt, and he looked tan and angular and in charge of the environment around his desk. By his nameplate was a Disney World souvenir cup full of pens with multicolored feathers. While we explained our reason for being there, he never blinked or seemed disturbed by thoughts of any kind. Finally, he leaned back in his swivel chair and gazed at the traffic passing on the square and the tourists entering the old French church on the bayou. His forehead knitted. “What do you want me to do about it?” he asked.
He used the word “it,” not “abduction,” not “assault,” not “homicide.” Blue Melton’s fate had become “it.”
“We have the impression you haven’t interviewed the boy who saw Blue Melton abducted,” I replied.
“The old man called y’all?” he said, grinning at one corner of his mouth.
“You mean Mr. DeBlanc?” I said.
“That’s what I just said.”
“Yes, Mr. DeBlanc did. He’s a little frustrated,” I said.
Pollard pinched his eyes. “Here’s the deal on that. Blue Melton was a runaway. She was suspended from school twice, once for smoking dope in the restroom. She and her sister had a reputation for loose behavior. The old man wants to think otherwise. If it’ll make everybody feel better, I’ll look into this boy’s story about somebody dragging the girl onto a boat.”
“You’ll look into it?” Helen said. “In a homicide investigation, you’ll look into an eyewitness account of an assault on the victim and her possible abduction?”
“Homicide?” Pollard said.
“What did you think we were talking about?” Helen said.
“What homicide?”
“Blue Melton floated ashore in St. Mary Parish inside a block of ice,” Helen said.
“When?”
“Four days ago.”
“I’ve been on vacation. We were in Florida. I just got back Monday,” Pollard said.
“Today is Wednesday,” Helen said.
Pollard took one of the pens from his souvenir cup and twirled it with his thumb and index finger, studying the colored feathers. His skin was as unlined as wet clay turned on a potter’s wheel. The grin returned to the corner of his mouth. I tried to ignore the vacuous glint in his eye.
“We found what appears to be blood on the DeBlanc dock,” I said.
Pollard glanced out his office door into the corridor, as though looking for someone hiding just outside the doorway. “She was in a block of ice?” he said. “That’s what y’all are saying? In this kind of weather?”
“That’s correct,” I said.
“You had me going. The sheriff put y’all up to this, didn’t he?” he said. He shook his head, an idiot’s grin painted on his mouth, waiting for us to acknowledge our charade.
We interviewed the eleven-year-old who had seen Blue Melton forced onto a boat that had an emblem of a fish painted on the bow. He said the fish looked like it was smiling, but he could add little to what he had already told the grandfather. His time reference was not dependable, and it was obvious he was afraid and wanted to tell us whatever he thought would please us. People wonder how justice is so often denied to those who need and deserve it most. It’s not a mystery. The reason we watch contrived television dramas about law enforcement is that often the real story is so depressing, nobody would believe it.
When we got back to New Iberia, I went to the office of our local newspaper, The Daily Iberian. The previous month the drawbridge at Burke Street had been stuck three nights in a row, jamming up barge and boat traffic north and south of the bridge. Each night a staff photographer had taken many photographs from the bridge, although the paper had run only a few of them. He sat down with me and showed me all his pictures on a computer screen. The photographer was an overweight, good-natured man who wheezed when he bent forward to explain the images. “The moon was up, so I had some nice lighting,” he said. “The small boats could get under the bridge without any problem, but some of them got behind the barges and had to wait longer than they planned. You see the boat you’re looking for?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I said.
He cleared the screen and brought up another set of photos, then another. “How about these?” he said.
“Behind the tugboat. Can you blow up that image?” I said.
“Sure,” he replied. “It’s funny you noticed that particular boat. The guy driving it was impatient and got out of line and worked his way past a barge full of shale that had been waiting two hours.”
The boat was sleek and white and constructed of fiberglass, with a deep-V hull and a flared bow and outriggers for saltwater trolling. I suspected it was a Chris-Craft, but I couldn’t be sure. “Can you sharpen the bow?” I asked.
“Probably not a whole lot, but let’s see,” the photographer replied.
He was right. The image was partially obscured by another boat, but I could make out the shape of a fish, thick through the middle, cartoonish in its dimensions. It seemed to have a snout. Maybe a marlin or a bottlenose dolphin? The image was like one I had seen somewhere, as though in a dream. I tried to remember, without success.
“You have any other photos?” I asked.
“No, that’s it, Dave,” the photographer said.
“Did you see a girl on board?”
“I’m sorry, I just wasn’t paying that much attention. Maybe there were two guys in the cabin. The only reason I remember them is because they were pretty rude about pushing their way ahead of the other boats.”
“Do you remember what they looked like?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“How about the painting of the fish on the bow? You remember any details about it?”
“Yeah, it was like the paintings you see in photographs of World War Two bomber planes, like Bugs Bunny or Yosemite Sam.”
I thanked him for his time and went back to my office. It was past noon, and officially I was off the clock. I checked my mail and returned a couple of phone calls and thumbed through my in-basket. For the first time in years, there seemed to be no pressing matters on my desk. So why was I standing in the middle of my office rather than walking out the front door and down the street to my house, where I would fix ham-and-onion sandwiches and eat with Alafair?
There was only one answer to my question: Clete Purcel had told me he’d seen his out-of-wedlock daughter cap Bix Golightly. I wanted to go into Helen Soileau’s office and tell her that. Or call Dana Magelli at the NOPD. What was wrong with making a clean breast of it?
Answer: Clete Purcel would be in the cook pot; he had not seen his daughter since she was fifteen, and his identification of her as Golightly’s killer was problematic; last, the NOPD and the Orleans Parish district attorney were in the process of investigating and prosecuting New Orleans cops who had shot and killed innocent people during Katrina, in one instance trying to hide their guilt by burning the victim’s body. Other than exploiting the opportunity to ruin Clete’s career, how much time would the DA be willing to invest in finding the killer of men like Bix Golightly and Waylon Grimes?
My conscience wouldn’t let go of me. I went down to Helen’s office, perhaps secretly hoping she wouldn’t be there and the issue would be set in abeyance and would somehow resolve itself. When she saw me through the glass, she waved me inside. “Did you have any luck at The Daily Iberian?”
“I was going to write you a memo in the morning. The photographer has a shot of a white fiberglass boat that has a fish painted on the bow. I suspect the guys on board are the ones who abducted Blue Melton.”
“Can you see them in the photo?”
“Not at all.”
“You wanted this case, Dave. The boat’s presence at the bridge gives us jurisdiction. What are you down about?”
I repeated everything Clete had told me about his daughter, about her status as a killer, about the fact that the woman Bix had called Caruso before he died was, in Clete’s opinion, his errant daughter, Gretchen. Helen sat motionlessly in the chair while I spoke, her chest rising and falling, unblinking, her hands resting on her desk blotter. When I finished, there was complete silence in the room. I cleared my throat and waited. No more than ten seconds passed, but each of those seconds was like an hour. Her gaze locked on mine. “I’m not interested in thirdhand information about a street killing in New Orleans,” she said. I started to speak, but she cut me off. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My office is not a confessional, and I’m not a personal counselor. Do you copy that?”
“I do.”
“You tell Clete Purcel he’s not going to drag his problems into my parish.”
“Maybe you should do that.”
“What if I twist your head off and spit in it instead?”
“I’m going to ask that you not speak to me like that.”
She stood up from her desk, her face tight, her breasts as hard-looking as cantaloupes against her shirt. “I was your partner for seven years. Now I’m your supervisor. I’ll speak to you in any fashion I think is appropriate. Don’t push me too far, Dave.”
“I told you the truth. You didn’t want to hear it. I’m done.”
“I can’t begin to tell you how angry you make me,” she said.
Maybe I had handled it wrong. Maybe I had been self-serving in dumping my problems of conscience on Helen’s rug. Or maybe it was she who was out of line. Regardless, it wasn’t the best day of my life.
Clete Purcel was determined to find the shooter Bix Golightly had called Caruso just before he ate three rounds fired directly into his face. But if Caruso was the pro Clete thought she was, she would avoid the mistakes and geographical settings common to the army of miscreants and dysfunctional individuals who constitute the criminal subculture of the United States. Few perpetrators are arrested during the commission of their crimes. They get pulled over for DWI, an expired license tag, or throwing litter on the street. They get busted in barroom beefs, prostitution stings, or fighting with a minimum-wage employee at a roach motel. Their addictions and compulsions govern their lives and place them in predictable circumstances and situations over and over, because they are incapable of changing who and what they are. Their level of stupidity is a source of humor at every stationhouse in the country. Unfortunately, the pros-high-end safecrackers and jewel thieves and mobbed-up button men and second-story creeps-are usually intelligent, pathological, skilled in what they do, middle class in their tastes, and little different in dress and speech and behavior from the rest of us.
In the 1980s, out by Lake Pontchartrain, Clete Purcel nailed a home invader who had warrants on him in seventeen states and had only one conviction, for check forgery, on his sheet. He had not only escaped from custody three times, he had successfully passed himself off as a minister, a Dallas oil executive, a stockbroker, a self-help author, a psychotherapist, and a gynecologist. When Clete later transported him to Angola, he asked the home invader, who was hooked to the D-ring in the backseat of the cruiser, how he had acquired all his knowledge, since he had no formal education.
The home invader replied, “Easy. I get a public library card in every city I live in. Everything in every book in that building is free. I also read every story and every column in the morning newspaper, from the first page to the last. Pretty good deal for two bits.”
“How does that help you?” Clete asked.
“Where you been, man? Most kinds of work are based on appearance, not substance. Stick a bunch of ballpoints in your shirt pocket and carry a clipboard and you can play it till you drop.”
Clete believed Caruso was in New Orleans, primarily because Frankie Giacano, the third member of the triad who had tried to scam Clete, was alive. But where would Caruso hole up? Not in the black areas, where there was a high police presence. Nor anyplace where there were hookers or dealers working the corners. No, she’d be in a guesthouse uptown, or in a white working-class neighborhood, or maybe around Tulane and Loyola, where a lot of college kids lived and hung out. Or she might be strolling the streets of the French Quarter in the morning, when the revelers had been replaced by family people who gazed through the windows of the antique stores on Royal or visited St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square or enjoyed coffee and hot milk and beignets under the pavilion at Cafe du Monde.
So far the only person who had shown any knowledge about Caruso was Count Carbona, aka Baron Belladonna, who had freeze-dried his head with Owsley purple at the Stones concert in Altamont, where the decade of the flower children ended and the music flew away in a helicopter, leaving a dead man on the stage and outlaw bikers beating concertgoers with pool cues.
Clete left his Caddy parked inside the courtyard at his office and walked to the store operated by the Count and Jimmy the Dime. As soon as he entered the store and the tiny bell over the door rang, Clete realized some sea change had taken place in his relationship with Jimmy and the Count. “What’s the haps?” he said.
“What it is, Purcel?” Jimmy replied, not looking up from his cash register.
“I’ve got a couple of tickets to WrestleMania at the arena for the Count, because I know he digs it,” Clete said. “I caught these same guys in Lafayette once. A South American dwarf shot Mr. Moto in the crotch with a blowgun.”
The Count was busying himself in the back of the store, whipping a feather duster across a row of capped jars filled with mushrooms and herbs and pickled amphibians. “I’m looking for a hitter named Caruso,” Clete said. “I think maybe the Count can be of great help to me.”
“Stow it, Purcel,” Jimmy said.
“This one is personal. Don’t you guys stonewall me on this.”
“I got news for you. Everything is personal. Like us getting mixed up in a homicide is personal,” Jimmy said. “Like another nickel in Angola is personal.”
“Did I get Nig and Wee Willie off your case when you couldn’t pay the vig on your bond?” Clete said.
“I burned a candle for you at the cathedral,” Jimmy replied. “I paid for the candle, too.”
“I’m about to arrange your funeral service there unless you stop cracking wise,” Clete said.
“She came in here yesterday,” Jimmy said.
“How did you know it was her?”
“The Count’s seen her. But where, I don’t know, and he ain’t saying.”
“What’d she want?”
“A book on Marie Laveau. Then she saw my cash register and wanted to buy it. She said she has an antique store in the Keys.”
“How about it, Count? Is that straight?” Clete said.
The Count was not answering questions.
“I’m jammed up on this one, you guys. I really need y’all’s help,” Clete said.
Neither man answered. “I’m going to tell y’all something I haven’t told anybody but Dave Robicheaux. I think Caruso is my daughter. She’s had a lousy life and, in my opinion, deserves a better shake than the one she’s had.”
His entreaty was to no avail. He removed two admission tickets to the New Orleans Arena from his wallet and placed them by the cash register. “You might really dig this, Count,” he said. “I once saw the Blimp. He had a curtain of fat hanging down to his knees so he looked like six hundred pounds of nakedness when he climbed into the ring. Plus he had BO you could smell ten rows into the seats. He’d get his opponent in a bear hug and fall on him and smother him in sweat and blubber and GAPO from hell until the guy was screaming for the ref. Nobody can equal the Blimp in terms of gross-out potential, but see what you think.”
“What’s GAPO?” Jimmy said.
“Gorilla armpit odor,” Clete replied.
He went back outside and lit a cigarette by a parking meter and tried to think. A man in a split-tail coat and tattered top hat rode by on a unicycle. A man in a strap undershirt was watering his plants with a hose on a balcony across the street, an iridescent mist blowing from the palm and banana fronds into the sunlight. On the corner, under the colonnade, a lone black kid with iron shoe taps was dancing on the sidewalk, a portable stereo blaring out “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Wrong time of day, wrong place, wrong tune, wrong century, kid, Clete thought, then tried to remember when he had been this depressed. He couldn’t.
He felt someone touch him on the shoulder. He turned and looked into the hawklike glare that constituted Count Carbona’s gaze. “Good earth,” the Count said.
“What are you saying?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t. Are you talking about the name of a book?”
The Count continued to stare into Clete’s face. “I’m no code breaker, Count,” Clete said.
The Count pressed a book of paper matches into Clete’s palm. The cover had a satin-black finish with words embossed in silver letters.
“This joint is in Terrebonne Parish?” Clete said. “That’s what you’re telling me? Caruso left this in your store?”
The Count’s cheeks creased with the beginnings of a smile.
Clete waited in his office until sunset, then drove deep into Terrebonne Parish, south of Larose, almost to Lake Felicity, down where the wetlands of Louisiana dissolve into a dim gray-green line that becomes the Gulf of Mexico. The sun was an orange melt in the west, veiled with smoke from a sugar refinery or a grass fire, the moss in the dead cypress trees lifting in the breeze. The nightclub and barbecue joint advertised on the book of matches was located in a clearing at the end of a dirt road, right at the edge of a saltwater bay, the trees strung with multicolored Japanese lanterns. Clete thought he could hear the sounds of an accordion and fiddle and rub-board drifting out of a screened pavilion behind the nightclub.
He had put on his powder-blue sport coat and gray slacks and had shined his oxblood loafers and bought a new fedora with a small feather in the band. Before he got out of the Caddy, he gargled with a small amount of Listerine and spat it out the window. He also took off his shoulder holster and put it under the seat, along with his heavy spring-loaded leather-wrapped blackjack shaped like a darning sock. When he entered the nightclub, the refrigeration was set so low, the air felt like ice water.
He sat at the bar and laid out his cigarettes and his Zippo lighter in front of him and ordered a Bud and gazed out the back window at the last spark of sun on the bay and at the band inside the screened pavilion. He salted his beer and drank it slowly, enjoying each moment of it in his mouth, letting its coldness slide down his throat, lighting places inside him that only the addicted know about. He didn’t have long to wait before he knew she was in the room. How or why he knew she was there, he couldn’t explain. He felt her presence before he saw her in the bar mirror. He smelled her perfume before he turned on the stool and watched her drop a series of coins in the jukebox. He saw her midriff and exposed navel and the baby fat on her hips and resented its exposure to other men in a way that was completely irrational. He looked at the fullness of her breasts and the tightness of her jeans and the thickness of her reddish-blond Dutch-boy haircut and felt protectiveness rather than erotic attraction. He felt as though someone else had slipped into his skin and was thinking thoughts that were not his.
He ordered another Bud longneck and two fingers of Jack. The girl sat down at the bar, three stools from him, and idly tapped a quarter on the bar’s apron, as though she had not made up her mind. Clete looked at the mirror and tossed back his Jack, a great emptiness if not a balloon of fear swelling in his chest. The Jack went down like gasoline on a flame. He began opening and closing his Zippo, his heart racing, an unlit cigarette between his fingers.
She tilted her head forward and massaged the back of her neck, her fingers kneading deep into the muscle. Then she turned and gazed at the side of his face. “You eyeballing me in the mirror, boss?” she said.
“Me?” he said. When she didn’t reply, he asked, “You talking to me?”
“Is someone else sitting on your stool?”
“You had some tats removed from your arms, maybe. I guess I noticed that. I know what that can be like.”
“I never had tats. Would you put a needle in your arm that an AIDS patient has used?”
“So where’d you get the scars?”
“I was in an accident. My mother’s diaphragm slipped, and I was born. Is that your come-on line?”
“I’m over the hill for come-on lines. On a quiet day, I can hear my liver rotting. For exercise, I fall down.”
“I get what you’re saying: Old guys are rarely interested in getting in a girl’s pants. That would be strange, wouldn’t it?”
“Where’d you learn to talk like that?”
“At the convent.” The bartender brought her a drink in an oversize glass without her having ordered one. She used both hands to pick it up and drink. She took a cherry out of it and broke it between her teeth.
“Why not order your next one in a bathtub and put a straw in it?” Clete said.
“Not a bad idea,” she said. Her cheeks had taken on a deeper color, and her mouth was glossy and red with lipstick. “I’ve seen you around.”
“I doubt it. I’m a traveling man, mostly.”
“You’re a salesman?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re a cop.”
“I used to be. But not anymore.”
“What happened?”
“I had an accident, too. I popped a government witness.”
“‘Popped,’ like made him dead?”
“Actually, getting snuffed was the noblest deed in his career. The DA’s office here made a lot of noise about it, but the truth is, nobody cared.”
She picked a second cherry out of her drink by its stem and sucked on it. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Are you from New Orleans?”
“Sure.”
“Say ‘New Orleans.’ Say it like you regularly say it.”
“‘Neu Or Luns.’”
“It’s not ‘Nawlens’?”
“Nobody from New Orleans uses that pronunciation. TV news-people do it because it gives the impression they know the city.”
She turned her stool toward him, her thighs slightly spread, her eyes roving over his face and body. She pursed her lips. “What are you looking for, hon? An easy lay out here in the swamps? I don’t like people who make comments about the scars on my arms. None of my scars look like they came from tattoo removal.”
“I was just making conversation.”
“If that’s your best effort, it’s a real dud.”
“I think you’re beautiful. I wouldn’t say something to offend you.”
He hadn’t meant to say that. Nor did he know why he had. His face was burning. “Sometimes I say things the wrong way. I bet you like baseball and outdoor dance pavilions and barbecues and stuff like that. I bet you’re a nice girl.”
“You go around saying things like that to people you don’t know?”
“You look like an all-American girl, that’s all.”
“If you’re determined to pick up girls in bars, this is what I suggest: Call Weight Watchers, don’t let your swizzle stick do your talking for you, and change your deodorant. You’ll get a lot better results.”
Clete poured his glass full but didn’t drink. He felt a sensation similar to a great spiritual and physical weariness seeping through his body.
“I was kidding. Brighten up,” she said. “Your problem is you’re a bad actor.”
“I’m not following you on that.”
“I’ve seen you before.” She fixed her eyes on his and held them there until he felt his scalp tighten. “Are you an Orioles fan?”
“Yeah, I like them. I go to baseball games everywhere I travel.”
“You ever go to exhibition games in Fort Lauderdale?” she asked.
“They call it Little Yankee Stadium, because the Yankees trained there before the Orioles.”
“That’s where I bet I saw you,” she said. She moved a strand of hair off her cheek. “Or maybe I saw you somewhere else. It’ll come to me. I don’t forget very much.”
“Yeah, you look smart, the way you carry yourself and all.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re a mess,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You want to dance?”
“I’m clumsy when it comes to stuff like that. What do you mean, I’m a mess?”
“You’re too innocent for words.”
She went to the jukebox and began feeding coins into it. In spite of the air-conditioning, he was sweating inside his clothes, blood pounding in his temples. He walked out onto the dance floor and stood inches behind her. He could smell the heat in her skin and the perfume in her hair. She turned around and looked up into his face, her eyes violet-colored in the light. “Something wrong?” she asked.
“I got to go,” he said.
“Buy me a drink?”
“No, I got to take care of some stuff. I’m sorry. It’s been good meeting you,” he said.
“You better get yourself some high-octane tranqs, boss,” she said.
“I really like you. I’m sorry for the way I talk,” he said.
His hands were shaking when he got to his car.
Clete thought the drive back into the city would calm his heart and give him time to think in a rational manner, but he was wired to the eyes when he pulled into the driveway of the garage apartment down by Chalmette that Frankie Giacano was using as a hideout. He didn’t even slow down going up the stairs. He tore the screen door off the latch and splintered the hard door out of the jamb. Frankie was sitting stupefied in a stuffed chair, a sandwich in his hand, food hanging out of his mouth. “Are you out of your mind?” he said.
“Probably,” Clete said.
“What are you gonna do with that blackjack?” Frankie said, rising to his feet.
“It’s part of my anger-management program. I hit things instead of people. When that doesn’t work, I start hitting people,” Clete said. “Let’s see how it goes.”
He smashed a lamp in half and the glass out of a picture frame on the wall and the glass in a window overlooking the side yard. He went into the kitchen and turned the drying rack upside down and broke the dishes across the edge of the counter and began feeding a box of sterling silverware into the garbage grinder.
With the grinder still roaring and clanking, he grabbed Frankie by the necktie and dragged him to the sink. “One of your skanks told me your nose is too long,” he said. “Let’s see if we can bob off an inch or two.”
“Who pissed in your brain, man?”
“When’d you peel Didi Gee’s safe?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a couple of months ago.”
“Where?”
“In Didi Gee’s old office.”
“Who hired the shooter to cap Golightly and Grimes?”
“How would I know?”
“You’re lying.”
“Yeah, but let me finish.”
“You think that’s cute?” Clete swung Frankie in a circle by his tie and threw him over a chair and against the wall, then whipped the blackjack across the tendon behind one knee. Frankie fell to the floor as though genuflecting, his eyes watering, his bottom lip trembling. “Don’t do this to me, man,” he said.
“Get up!”
“What for?”
“So I don’t start stomping you into marmalade.”
When Frankie didn’t move, Clete pulled him erect by his shirtfront and swung him into the bedroom, knocking his head against the doorjamb and a bedpost. “Pack your suitcase,” he said. “You’re taking the first bus to either Los Angeles or New York, you choose.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“What do you care? You get to live.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Because you’re stupid.”
“You’re trying to save my life? You beat me up so you can save my life?”
“Yeah, the world can’t afford to lose a person of your brilliance. You’ve got three minutes.”
Frankie lifted a suitcase from a shelf in the closet and opened it on the bed and began pulling clothes off the hangers and laying them inside the case. “I got a piece in my sock drawer. I’m gonna take it with me.”
“No, you’re not,” Clete said. He moved between the dresser and Frankie and opened the top dresser drawer and reached inside and lifted out a black semi-automatic pistol. “Where you’d get a German Luger?”
“At a gun show.”
“You’re not a collector, and guys like you don’t buy registered firearms.”
“It was a gift. A guy owed me. So I took it. It’s mine. You don’t have any right to it. Look at the Nazi stamps on it. It was used by the German navy. It’s worth at least two thousand bucks.”
“When you get situated in your new rathole, drop me a card and I’ll mail it to you.”
Frankie looked emptily into space, like a child whose alternatives had run out. “You’re really taking me to the bus station? ’Cause I heard a story about a guy you took out by the lake, a guy nobody saw again.”
“I’m doing you a favor, Frankie. Don’t blow it.” Clete dropped the Luger’s magazine from the frame and pulled back the slide to clear the chamber. He stuck the Luger in his belt. “Time to catch the Dog.”
“How about the airport?”
“The person who put the hit on you has probably broken into your credit cards. So I’m paying for your ticket out of my own pocket. That means you’re riding the Dog.”
“Bix had a new scam going. It was bringing in a lot of cash. But I don’t know what it was. I’m being honest here.”
“The day you’re honest is the day the plaster will fall from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” Clete said.
“Why you got to run me down, man?”
Clete thought about it. “You’ve got a point,” he replied. “Come on, Frankie. Let’s see if we can’t get you on an express to L.A. You might even dig it out there. Here, wipe your nose.”