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"My, you have busy eyes," she said.
"Yeah, I was noticing the hole over there by the compost pile. Is that where y'all buried No Duh Dolowitz?" he said.
"The little man with the grease mustache? That's what this is about?" she asked.
"He shouldn't have come here, Persephone. He thought he was doing something for me. It was a mistake," I said.
"I see. I'm going to have him hurt?"
"You're a tough lady," I said.
"I have no interest in your friends, Dave. You don't mind if I call you 'Dave,' do you, since you call me by my first name without asking?"
"Mookie Zerrang is a bad button man, Seph. He doesn't do it for money. That means you've got no dials on him."
"Did you ever have this kind of conversation with my father, or do you speak down to me just because I'm a woman?"
"In honesty, I guess I did."
"What Streak means is, he beat the shit out of Didi Gee with a canvas money bag filled with lug nuts. He did this because your old man had his half-brother shot. You might say y'all have a tight family history," Clete said.
Clete's mouth was hooked downward at the corners, his face heated, the scar tissue through his eyebrow and across his nose flexed tight against the skull. She tried to meet his gaze, then looked away at the tongues of vapor rising from her swimming pool.
"What was that about?" I asked him in the truck.
"I told you, I'm tired of being patient with lowlifes. You know what our finest hour was? The day we popped that drug dealer and his bodyguard in the back of their Caddy. The seats looked like somebody had thrown a cow through a tree shredder. Admit it, it was a grand afternoon."
"Bad way to think, Cletus."
"One day you're going to figure out you're no different from me, Dave."
"Yeah?"
"Then you're going to shoot yourself."
He tried to hold the seriousness in his face, but I saw his eyes start
to smile.
"You'll never change, Streak," he said, his expression full of play
again.
I turned the ignition, then looked through the front window and saw Whitey Zeroski, the limo driver, walking toward us. He wore a gray chauffeur's uniform, with brass buttons and a gray cap that sat low, military style, over his white eyebrows.
"What are you guys doing here?" he said through my window, his eyes focusing on the doughnut Clete was about to put in his mouth.
"You want a doughnut, Whitey?" Clete said.
"I don't mind . . . Thanks, Purcel. . . I'm stuck here . . . Dock says I should hang around in case his wife wants to meet him up at Copeland's for breakfast."
"Dock better do a reality check," Clete said.
"That fight, you mean? It goes on all the time. Dock might give up lots of things, but his wife ain't gonna be one of them."
"Oh yeah?" Clete said.
"Dock's nuts, but he ain't so nuts he forgot his wife's got the brains in the family."
