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”How did you know?“
”You want absolution for what you did to this guy?“
”Yes.“
”Dave, when we say the Serenity Prayer about acceptance, we have to mean it. I can absolve sins but I can't set either one of us free from the nature of time.“
”It has nothing to do with time. It's what we've allowed them to do-all of them, the dope traffickers, the industrialists, the politicians. We gave it up without even a fight.“
”I'm all out of words,“ he says, and lays his hand on my shoulder. It has the weightlessness of an old man's. He looks at the empty diamond with a private thought in his eyes, one that he knows his listener is not ready to hear.
”Come on down to the office and talk to somebody for me, will you?“
Clete said when I answered the phone early the next morning. Then he told me who.
”I don't want to talk to him,“ I said.
”You're going to enjoy this. I guarantee it.“
Twenty minutes later I parked my truck in front of the office. Through the window I could see Patsy Dapolito sitting in a wood chair next to my desk, his brow furrowed as he stared down at the BB game that he tilted back and forth in his hands. His face looked like stitched pink rubber molded against bone.
I walked inside and sat behind my desk. The new secretary looked up and smiled, then went back to typing a letter.
”Tell Dave what's on your mind, get his thoughts on it,“ Clete said to the back of Patsy's head.
”You guys hire operatives. Maybe we can work something out,“ Patsy said.
”Like work for us, you mean?“ I asked.
”Nobody catches any flies on you. I can see that,“ he answered, and tilted more BB's into the tiny holes of his game.
Clete widened his eyes and puffed air in his cheeks to suppress the humor in his face.
”We're not hiring right now, Patsy. Thanks, anyway,“ I said. ”Who tried to peel your box?“ he said. Clete and I looked at each other.
”You didn't know your place got creeped?“ He laughed, then pointed with his thumb to the safe. ”You can punch 'em, peel 'em, or burn 'em.
The guy tried to do this one was a fish. He should have gone through the dial.“ Clete got up from his desk and rubbed his fingers along the prised edge of the safe, then went to the front and back doors. ”How'd the guy get in?“ he said to me, his face blank. ”It's called a lock pick, Purcel,“ Patsy said. ”There're no scratches,“ Clete said to me.
”Maybe the safe was already damaged when you got it from Nig,“ I said.
But Clete was already shaking his head. Patsy lit a cigarette, held it upward in the cone of his fingers, blew smoke around it as though he were creating an artwork in the air. ”There's a hit on me. I got a proposition,“ he said. ”Tell me who Charlie is,“ I said. ”Charlie?
What the fuck you talking about?“
”Would you watch your language, please,“ I said. ”Language? That's what's you guys got on your mind, I use bad language?“ he said. ”You're a beaut, Patsy,“ I said. ”Yeah? Well, fuck you. The hit's coming from Johnny Carp. You stomped the shit out of him, Robicheaux; Purccl bounced money off his face. That gives all of us a mutual interest, you get my drift?“
”Thanks for coming by,“ I said. He stood up, ground his cigarette out in an ashtray, stabbing it into the ceramic as though he were working an angry thought out of his mind. ”Marsallus ever wash up on the shore?“
he said. ”No, why?“ I said. ”No reason. I wish I'd been there for it. It was time somebody broke that mutt's legs.“
”Get out,“ I said. When he walked past the secretary, he drew his finger, like a line of ice water, across the back of her neck. When I closed the bait shop that night and walked up the dock toward the house, I saw Luke Fontenot waiting for me in the shadows of the oaks that overhung the road. He wore a pair of pink slacks, a braided cloth belt, a black shirt with the collar turned up on the neck. He flipped a toothpick out onto the road. ”What's up, partner?“ I said. ”Come out to the plantation wit' me.“
”Nope.“
”Ruthie Jean and me want to bring all this to an end.“
”What are you saying?“
