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Clete walked directly across the clipped grass to an umbrella-shaded table where a middle-aged man in cream-colored slacks and a yellow shirt covered with blue parrots sat with two other men who were as dark as Indians and built like fire hydrants. The man in the print shirt was one of the most peculiar-looking human beings I had ever seen. His face was triangular-shaped, with a small mouth and very small ears, and his eyes were absolutely black. Three deep creases ran across his forehead, and inside the creases you could see tiny balls of skin. On his wrist was a gold watch with a black digital dial, and he smoked a Bisonte with a cigarette holder. The two dark men started to get up protectively as we approached the table, but the man in the yellow and blue shirt gestured for them to remain seated. His eyes kept narrowing as though Clete's face wer
e floating toward him out of a memory.
"What's happening, Julio?" Clete said. "There's a guy out front puking his lunch all over the grass. It really looks nasty for the neighborhood. You ought to hire a higher-class gate man."
"Purcel, right?" Segura said, the recognition clicking into his eyes.
"That's good," Clete said. "Now connect the dots and figure out who this guy with me is."
One of the dark men said something to Segura in Spanish.
"Shut up, greaseball," Clete said.
"What do you think you're doing, Purcel?" Segura asked.
"That all depends on you, Julio. We hear you're putting out a very serious shuck about my partner," Clete said.
"Is this him?" Segura asked.
I didn't answer. I stared straight into his eyes. He puffed on his cigarette holder and looked back at me without blinking, as though he were looking at an object rather than a man.
"I heard you been knocking the furniture around," he said finally. "But I don't know you. I never heard of you, either."
"I think you're a liar," I said.
"That's your right. What else you want to tell me today?"
"Your people killed a nineteen-year-old girl named Lovelace Deshotels."
"Let me tell you something, what's-your-name," he said. "I'm an American citizen. I'm a citizen because a United States senator introduced a bill to bring me here. I got a son in West Point. I don't kill people. I don't mind Purcel and his people bothering me sometimes. You got la mordida here just like in Nicaragua. But you don't come out here and tell me I kill somebody." He nodded to one of the dark men, who got up and walked to the house. "I tell you something else, too. You know why Purcel is out here? It's because he's got a guilty conscience and he blames other people for it. He took a girl out of a massage parlor in the French Quarter and seduced her in the back of his car. That's the kind of people you got telling me what morality is."
"How'd you like your teeth kicked down your throat?" Clete asked.
"I got my attorneys coming out right now. You want to make threats, you want to hit people, you'll make them rich. They love you."
"You're a pretty slick guy, Julio," I said.
"Yeah? Maybe you're a cute guy, like your partner," he answered.
"Slick as Vaseline, not a bump or a handle on you," I said. "But let me tell you a story of my own. My daddy was a trapper on Marsh Island. He used to tell me, 'If it's not moving, don't poke it. But when it starts snapping at your kneecaps, wait till it opens up real wide, then spit in its mouth.' What do you think of that story?"
"You're a mature man. Why you want to be a fool? I didn't do nothing to you. For some reason you're finding this trouble for yourself."
"What's the worst thing you've ever seen happen to somebody, Julio?" I asked.
"What're you talking about?" he said. His brow was furrowed, and the tiny balls of skin in the creases looked like strings of purple BBs.
"I hear you have some cruel guys working for you. Probably some of Somoza's old national guardsmen, experts in garroting journalists and murdering Catholic priests."
"You don't make no sense."
"Sure I do," I said. "You probably got to visit the basement in some of Somoza's police stations. You saw them hung up by their arms, with a cloth bag soaked in insecticide tied over their heads. They screamed and went blind and suffocated to death, and even a piece of shit like yourself had a few nightmares about it. You also knew about that volcano where the army used to drop the Sandinistas from a helicopter into the burning crater. It's pretty awful stuff to think about, Julio."
"They really sent us a pair today. A vice cop with puta in his head and another one that talks like a Marxist," he said. Some of the people around the pool laughed.
"You're not following my drift," I said. "You see, to you a bad fate is what you've seen your own kind do to other people. But once you got away from the horror show down there in Managua, you figured you were safe. So did Somoza. He got out of Dodge with all his millions, then one day his chauffeur was driving him across Asuncion in his limo, with a motorcycle escort in front and back, and somebody parked a three-point-five bazooka rocket in his lap. It blew him into instant lasagna. Are you following me, Julio?"
"You going to come after me, big man?" he asked.
