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"Clete and I want to go out to Segura's place."
"Vice considers that their territory," Captain Guidry said.
"They're talking about killing a cop. It's our territory now," I said.
"All right, but no cowboy stuff," he said. "Right now we don't have legal cause to be out there."
"Okay."
"You just talk, let him know we're hearing things we don't like."
"Okay, Captain."
He rubbed his fingernail over one of the crusted implants in his head.
"Dave?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Forget what I said. He's threatening a New Orleans police officer and we're not going to tolerate it. Put his head in the toilet. Tell him it came from me, too."
Oleander, azalea, and myrtle trees were planted thickly behind the scrolled iron fence that surrounded Segura's enormous blue-green lawn. Gardeners were clipping the hedges, watering the geranium and rose beds, cutting away the dead brown leaves from the stands of banana trees. Back toward the lake I could see the white stucco two-story house, its red tile roof gleaming in the sun, the royal palms waving by the swimming pool. Someone sprang loudly off a diving board.
A muscular Latin man in slacks and a golf shirt came out the front gate and leaned down to Clete's window. There were faded tattoos under the black hair on his forearms. He also wore large rings on both hands.
"Can I help you, sir?" he said.
"We're police officers. We want to talk to Segura," Clete said.
"Do you have an appointment with him?"
"Just tell him we're here, partner," Clete said.
"He's got guests right now."
"You got a hearing problem?" Clete said.
"I got a clipboard with some names on it. If your name's on it, you come in. If it ain't, you stay out."
"Listen, you fucking greaseball…" Without finishing his sentence, Clete got out of the car and hit the man murderously in the stomach with his fist. The man doubled over, his mouth dropped open as though he had been struck with a sledgehammer, and his eyes looked like he was drowning.
"Got indigestion troubles? Try Tums," Clete said.
"What's the matter with you?" I said to him.
"Nothing now," he said, and pushed back the iron gate so we could drive through. The Latin man held on to the fence with one hand and labored to get his breath back. We drove up the driveway toward the stucco house. I continued to look at Clete.
"You never worked vice. You don't know what kind of scum these bastards are," he said. "When a greaseball like that gets in your face, you step all over him. It defines the equations for him."
"Did you get drunk last night?"
"Yeah, but I don't need an excuse to bash one of these fuckers."
"No more of it, Clete."
"We're in, aren't we? We're the surprise in Julio's afternoon box of Cracker Jacks. Look at that bunch by the pool. I bet we could run them and connect them with every dope deal in Orleans and Jefferson parishes."
About a dozen people were in or around the clover-shaped pool. They floated on rubber rafts in the turquoise water, played cards on a mosaic stone table and benches that were anchored in the shallow end, or sat in lawn chairs by the slender gray trunks of the palms while a family of dwarf servants brought them tall tropical drinks filled with fruit and ice.
