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He looked disappointed.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I thought I’d fish a little bit more today, that’s all. Anyway, let’s get something to eat and I’ll fill you in on some stuff I found out about Joey Gouza and the white man’s hope.”
We drove down the street to a small café run by a black man. Crushed beer cans littered the floor of Clete’s car, and I could smell beer on his breath.
“Are things slow at your office?” I asked.
“I just felt like taking off, that’s all. Hey, let’s eat.”
We took paper plates loaded with red beans, rice, and links of sausage to a plank table under a live-oak tree. The café owner didn’t have a beer license, and Clete went to the trunk of his car and came back with a sweating six-pack of Jax. It was warm in the shade of the trees, and smoke from a barbecue fire floated in a blue haze through the overhead limbs.
“I did some checking on Joey’s business connections around town,” Clete said. “I’m talking about his legitimate businesses—a linen service, a movie house up on Prytania, a bunch of dago restaurants, places where he launders his drug money for the IRS. Anyway, the word is Joey and his peo
ple are putting up big gelt for Bobby Earl’s U.S. Senate campaign. In other words, the greaseballs are into PACs now.”
I nodded. “Yeah?”
“That’s it.”
“So what’s new in that? It’s what we thought all along.”
“You’re reading it wrong, noble mon.”
“How’s that?”
“If Joey Meatballs was piecing off his drug action to Bobby Earl, he wouldn’t have to give him money through a bunch of PACs. He’d already own the guy.”
“Maybe that’s the way he launders Earl’s cut.”
“They don’t do it that way, Streak. They give the guy something he can’t resist, they bring him in on one of their deals, their shylocks lend him money, they set him up with some hot-ass broad on videotape. But they don’t go into the drug business with the guy, then create a lot of public records to show everybody they got the guy’s tallywacker tied around their neighborhood fireplug.”
“You drove all the way to New Iberia to tell me Bobby Earl is clean?”
“Oh, they know all the same people, and Joey would like to put a U.S. senator in his pocket, but there’s no law against that, mon.”
“Bobby Earl’s dirty.”
“Maybe so. I’m just telling you what I found out and what I think. The guy’s a sonofabitch but so are half the politicians in Louisiana.”
“I get the feeling something else is bothering you, Clete.”
He ripped open another beer and lit a cigarette, his food unfinished.
“It comes with the territory. It’s nothing new,” he said.
“What is it?”
“I might get my PI ticket pulled.”
“What for?”
He bit one of his fingernails and shrugged.
“I’ve had two or three beefs since I opened my office. It’s my own fault,” he said.
“You’re always in a beef, Clete. Why is somebody giving you trouble about your ticket now?”
“That’s what I asked this bozo who called me up from Baton Rouge.”
