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“It doesn't work the same way, mon. Bondsmen dime one guy just to bring in another. The shit bags are just money on the hoof.”
'35
He took another drink from his boilermaker and the light began to change in his eyes. “Your ME matched up the blood on the floater?” he asked.
“Yeah, it's the guy named Jack. We got the media to sit on the story, though.” He reached across the table and pulled the tissue-paper-wrapped spoon given me by Bertie Fontenot from my shirt pocket. He worked the paper off the embossed tip of the handle.
“What'd they tell you at Cohen's?” he said.
“It's eighteenth-century silverware, probably cast in Spain or France.”
He rubbed the ball of his thumb on the coat of arms, then stuck the spoon back in my pocket. “This came off the Bertrand plantation, you say?” he said.
“yep;”
“I think you're pissing up a flagpole, Streak.”
“Thanks.”
“You don't see it.”
“See what?”
“I think you've got a hard-on for this guy Bertrand.”
“He keeps showing up in the case. What am I supposed to do?”
“That's not it. He's the guy whose shit don't flush.”
“He's dirty.”
“So is the planet. Your problem is Marsallus and the meres and maybe Johnny Carp. You got to keep the lines simple, mon.”
“What do you hear about Patsy Dapolito?” I said, to change the subject.
“I thought I told you. He's in jail in Houston. He told the plastic surgeon he'd put his eye out if he messed up the job.”
“The ME said the guy named Jack was probably terrified when he caught the two nine-millimeters.”
“You mean terrified of Sonny Boy?” he said.
“That's the way I'd read it.”
“There's another side to that guy, Streak. I saw him make a couple of captured army dudes, I mean they were real grease balls guys with children's blood splattered on their boots, so they probably had it coming, but you don't get something like that out of your memory easy-he made them scoop out a grave in the middle of a trail with pie plates and kneel on the edge, then from six inches he blew their brains all over the bushes with a .44 Magnum.”
Clete shook the image out of his face, then held up his empty shot glass at the bartender.
He'd had six boilermakers by the time we finished dinner. He started to order another round. His throat was red and grained, as though it were wind chafed.
“Let's get some coffee and beignets at the Cafe du Monde,” I said.
“I don't feel like it.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Ole Streak, swinging through town like a wrecking ball, pretending everything's under control. But I love you anyway, motherfucker,” he said.
We walked under the colonnade of the French Market, then had coffee and pastry at the outdoor tables. Across the street, in Jackson Square, the sidewalk artists were still set up along the walkway, and at the end of the piked fence that surrounds the park you could see a gut-bucket string band playing adjacent to the cathedral. I walked with Clete back to his office and sat with him on the edge of a stone well in the courtyard while he told me a long-winded story about riding with his father on t
