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"I'm cool. Don't worry about it."
"You bothered because you want to do this guy?"
"No."
"You listen to me. It's a perk when you get a chance to grease a guy like that. You take him off at the neck and the world applauds." But he saw his words were having no effect. "What happened in that coulee?"
"I thought my clock had run out. I don't think I behaved very well. I always thought I would do better."
"Nobody handles it well. They cry, they call out for their mother. It's a bad moment. It's supposed to be."
"You don't feel the same about yourself later."
He picked at the calluses on his hands, his eyes downcast.
"My noble, grieving mon," he said.
"Look, Clete, I appreciate—"
"You know what I think all this is about? You want to drink. Whenever I went out on the edge of the envelope, I'd mellow out with some skull-fuck muta and JD on the rocks. You can't drink anymore, so you walk around wit
h this ongoing horror show inside you."
"How about we put the cork in the five-and-dime psychology? Look, I think Cardo's heavy into crank."
"He's a speed freak?"
"He came into my apartment in the middle of the night and snapped a revolver under his chin."
Clete grinned, shook his head, and rolled a match-stick across his teeth.
"What's funny?" I said.
"This is the guy you're going to get next to with a wire? And you worry about Boggs or whether you still got your guts? Streak, you're a pistol."
I talked with Minos Dautrieve that afternoon and made arrangements to have my converted jugboat moved from Morgan City to a commercial dock at Cocodrie, near Terrebonne Bay. Over the phone I sensed a fine wire of anxiety in Minos's voice.
"What is it?" I said.
"It bothers me they don't want Purcel with you."
"He got in Fontenot's face. Clete has a way of scaring the hell out of people he doesn't like."
"Maybe."
"Are you worried about the half million?"
"I'm worried about you. But some other people are having misgivings about the operation. It's a big expenditure. Cardo's not getting brought into things the way he should."
"I can't help that."
"They're thinking about their own butts. They don't want to get burned. But that's not your problem. The Coast Guard's going to track the mother boat and nail it after you're gone. So the government'll get its money back. I don't know why these guys are sweating it. They piss me off."
"Run Cardo's military record for me."
"What for?"
"Something about Vietnam is eating his lunch."
