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"What I mean is, it's like when people do something to one another, or maybe to themselves, something shameful, it kills what might have been between them, doesn't it?"
"I don't know, Kim."
"Yes, you do. It's why my brother Albert is the way he is. Years ago he had a wife and a little girl. Then one night he got drunk at a party and slept with another woman. So he had all this Catholic guilt about what he'd done, and rather than blow it off, he got his wife drunk and talked her into getting into the sack with another guy. All he got out of it was the knowledge that he couldn't love himself anymore, and so he doesn't think anybody else can, either."
"I wouldn't try to figure it all out now, Kim."
"Tony's right. We're the cluster fuck. The human race is."
"Cynics and nihilists are two bits a bagful," I said. "Don't let them sell you that same old tired shuck. Listen, a man named Minos Dautrieve is going to contact you. He's an old friend with the DEA, so trust him. We're going to take care of you."
"I was right, then. You're still a cop."
"Who cares? The only thing that matters here is that you're out of the life. We're clear on that, aren't we?"
"Yes."
I put my hand on her forearm.
"Kim, you stood up for your brother," I said. "Everything you did took courage. Most people aren't that brave. I think you're one special lady."
She looked up at me. Her unswollen eye glimmered softly.
"Really?" she said.
"You bet. I've had some good people cover my back, like Cletus out there, but I'd put my money on you anytime."
She smiled, and her free hand touched the backs of my fingers.
It was still raining when we left the apartment building and got back inside my truck.
"Your face looks like a thunderstorm," Clete said.
"Nate Baxter," I said.
"She was working for him?"
"Yep."
"He's the guy mommies warned them about. I always had the feeling that if we ever had a Third Reich here, you might see Nate manning the ovens."
"There's a bar up here on the corner. I want to stop and use the phone."
"You're not going after Baxter?"
"Not now. But he's not going to get away with this."
"Hmm," Clete said, grinning in the dashboard light, his eyebrows flipping up and down like Groucho Marx's.
We went inside the corner bar, and Clete ordered a drink while I called Minos at his guesthouse from a phone booth next to a pinball machine. I told him about Kim, the beating she had taken from Jimmie Lee Boggs, the fact that she was an informant for Nate Baxter.
"Can you get her into a safe house?" I said.
"If she wants it."
"Tomorrow morning."
"No problem."
