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I walked outside into the sunshine. Sweat was running out of my hair; the backdraft of a passing sanitation truck enveloped me with dust and the smell of decaying food. I wi
ped my forehead on my sleeve and was repelled by my own odor.
CLETE AND I DROVE out of the Quarter, crossed Canal, and headed up Magazine in his convertible. He had left the top down while the car had been parked on the street and the seats and metal surfaces were like the touch of a clothes iron. He drove with his left hand, his right clenched around a can of beer wrapped in a paper sack.
"You want to forget it?" I asked.
"No, you want to see the guy, we see the guy."
"I heard Jimmy Fig wasn't a bad kid before he was at Khe Sanh."
"Yeah, I heard that story. He got wounded and hooked on morphine. Makes great street talk. I'll tell you another story. He was the wheelman on a jewelry store job in Memphis. It should have been an easy in-and-out, smash-and-grab deal, except the guys with him decided they didn't want witnesses, so they executed an eighty-year-old Jew who had survived Bergen-Belsen."
"I apologize to you and Megan for what I said back there."
"I've got hypertension, chronic obesity, and my own rap sheet at NOPD. What do guys like us care about stuff like that?"
He pressed his aviator glasses against his nose, hiding his eyes. Sweat leaked out of his porkpie hat and glistened on his flexed jaw.
JIMMY FIGORELLI RAN A sandwich shop and cab stand on Magazine just below Audubon Park. He was a tall, kinetic, wired man, with luminous black eyes and black hair that grew in layers on his body.
He was chopping green onions in an apron and never missed a beat when we entered the front door and stood under the bladed ceiling fan that turned overhead.
"You want to know who put a hit on Cool Breeze Broussard? You come to my place of business and ask me a question like that, like you need the weather report or something?" He laughed to himself and raked the chopped onions off the chopping board onto a sheet of wax paper and started slicing a boned roast into strips.
"The guy doesn't deserve what's coming down on him, Jimmy. Maybe you can help set it right," I said.
"The guys you're interested in don't fax me their day-to-day operations," he replied.
Clete kept lifting his shirt up from his shoulders with his fingers.
"I got a terrible sunburn, Jimmy. I want to be back in the air-conditioning with a vodka and tonic, not listening to a shuck that might cause a less patient person to come around behind that counter," Clete said.
Jimmy Figorelli scratched an eyebrow, took off his apron and picked up a broom and began sweeping up green sawdust from around an ancient Coca-Cola cooler that sweated with coldness.
"What I heard is the clip went to some guys already got it in for Broussard. It's nigger trouble, Purcel. What else can I tell you? Semper fi," he said.
"I heard you were in the First Cav at Khe Sanh," I said.
"Yeah, I was on a Jolly Green that took a RPG through the door. You know what I think all that's worth?"
"You paid dues lowlifes don't. Why not act like it?" I said.
"I got a Purple Heart with a V for valor. If I ever find it while I'm cleaning out my garage, I'll send it to you," he said.
I could hear Clete breathing beside me, almost feel the oily heat his skin gave off.
"You know what they say about the First Cav patch, Jimmy. 'The horse they couldn't ride, the line they couldn't cross, the color that speaks for itself,'" Clete said.
"Yeah, well, kiss my ass, you Irish prick, and get out of my store."
"Let's go," I said to Clete.
He stared at me, his face flushed, the skin drawn back against the eye sockets. Then he followed me outside, where we stood under an oak and watched one of Jimmy Fig's cabs pick up a young black woman who carried a red lacquered purse and wore a tank top and a miniskirt and white fishnet stockings.
"You didn't like what I said?" Clete asked.
"Why get on the guy's outfit? It's not your way."
