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"Did you call Eddie Keats?"
"Are you kidding? He's a fucking hit man. Is that who they sent?"
"Who did you call?"
His eyes went away from the gun and looked down in his lap. He held his hands between his legs.
"Does my voice sound funny to you?" I said.
"Yeah, I guess so."
"It's because I have stitches in my mouth. I also have some in my head. A black guy named Toot put them there. Do you know who he is?"
"No."
"He broke Robin's finger, then he came to New Iberia."
"I didn't know that, man. Honest to God."
"You're starting to genuinely piss me off, Jerry. Who did you call?"
"Look, everybody does. it. You hear something about Bubba Rocque or somebody talking about him or maybe his people getting out of line, you call up his club about it and you get a hunnerd bucks. It don't even have to be important. They say he just likes to know everything that's going on."
"Hey, you all right in there, Jerry?" the voice of the other bartender said outside the door.
"He's fine," I said.
The doorknob started to turn.
"Don't open that door, podna," I said. "If you want to call the Man, do it, but don't come in here. While you're at it, tell the heat Jerry's been poking things up his nose again."
I looked steadily into Jerry's eyes. His eyelashes were beaded with sweat. He swallowed and wiped the dryness of his lips with his fingers.
"It's all right, Morris," he said. "I'm coming out in a minute."
I heard the bartender's feet walk away from the door. Jerry took a deep breath and looked at the gun again.
"I told you what you want. So cut me some slack, okay?" he said.
"Where's Victor Romero?"
"What the fuck I know about him?"
"You knew Johnny Dartez, didn't you?"
"Sure. He was in all these skin joints. He's dead now, right?"
"So you must have known Victor Romero, too."
"You don't get it. I'm a bartender. I don't know anything that anybody on the street don't know. The guy's a fucking geek. He was peddling some bad Mexican brown around town, it had insecticide in it or something. So he had to get out of town. Then I heard him and Johnny Dartez got busted by Immigration for trying to bring in a couple of big-time greasers from Colombia. But that must be bullshit bec
ause Johnny was still flying around when he went down in the drink, right?"
"They were busted by Immigration?"
"I don't know that, man. You stand behind that bar and you'll hear a hunnerd fucking stories a night. It's a soap opera. How about it, man? Do I get some slack?"
I eased the hammer down carefully and let the .45 hang from my arm. He expelled a long breath from his chest, his shoulders sagged, and he wiped his damp palms on his pants.
