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He looked away at a sound in the front of the house, then tapped his fingertips on the glass tabletop. His nails were chewed back to the quick, and the fingertips were flat and grained.
"I'm going to explain it to you once because we're friends," he said. "I own a lot of business. I got a dozen oyster boats, I got a fish-packing house in New Iberia and one in Morgan City. I own seafood restaurants in Lafayette and Lake Charles, I own three clubs and an escort agency in New Orleans. I don't need guys like Eddie Keats. But I got to deal with all kinds of people in my business—Jews, dagos, broads with their brains between their legs, you name it. There's a labor lawyer in New Orleans I wouldn't spit on, but I pay him a five-thousand-dollar-a-year retainer so I don't get a picket in front of my clubs. So maybe I don't like everybody on my payroll, and maybe I don't always know what they do. That's business. But if you want me to, I'll make some calls and find out if somebody sent Keats and this colored guy after you. What's the name of this motormouth at Smiling Jack's?"
"Forget him. I already had a serious talk with him."
"Yeah?" He looked at me curiously. "Sounds mean."
"He thought so."
"Who's the friend that got hurt?"
"The friend is out of it."
"I think we got a problem with trust here."
"I don't read it that way. We're just establishing an understanding."
"No. I don't have to establish anything. You're my guest. I look at you and it's like yesterday I was watching you leaning over the spit bucket, your back trembling, blood all over your mouth, and all the time I was hoping you wouldn't come out for the third round. You didn't know it, but in the second you hit me so hard in the kidney I thought I was going to wet my jock."
"Did you know I found Johnny Dartez's body in that plane crash out at Southwest Pass, except his body disappeared?"
He laughed, cut a piece of boudin, and handed it to me on a cracker.
"I just ate," I said.
"Take it."
"I'm not hungry."
"Take it or you'll offend me. Christ, have you got a one-track mind. Listen, forget all these clowns you seem to be dragging around the countryside. I told you I have a lot of businesses and I hire people to run them I don't even like. You're educated, you're smart, you know how to make money. Manage one of my clubs in New Orleans, and I'll give you sixty thou a year, plus a percentage that can kick it up to seventy-five. You get a car, you cater trips to the Islands, you got your pick of broads."
"Did Immigration ever talk to you?"
"What?"
"After they busted Dartez and Victor Romero. They tried to smuggle in some high-roller Colombians. You must know that. I heard it in the street."
"You're talking about wetbacks or something now?"
"Oh, come on, Bubba."
"You want to talk about the spicks, find somebody else. I can't take them. New Orleans is crawling with them now. The government ought to send massive shipments of rubbers down to wherever they come from."
"The weird thing about this bust is that both these guys were mules. But they didn't go up the road, and they didn't have to finger anybody in front of a grand jury. What's that lead you to believe?"
"Nothing, because I don't care about these guys."
"I believe they went to work for the feds. If they'd been muling for me, I'd be nervous."
"You think I give a fuck about some greasers say they got something on me? You think I got this house, all these businesses because I run scared, because the DEA or Immigration or Minos Dautrieve with his thumb up his pink ass say a lot of bullshit they never prove, that they make up, that they tell to the newspapers or people that's dumb enough to listen to it?"
His eyes were bright, and the skin around his mouth was tight and gray.
"I don't know. I don't know what goes on inside you, Bubba," I said.
"Maybe if a person wants to find out, he's just got to keep fucking in the same direction."
"That's a two-way street, podna."
