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"I'd leave it alone, Dave."
"Breeze has lived for twenty years with her death on his conscience."
"There's another script, too. Maybe he did her," Clete said. He bit into his sno'ball and held his eyes on mine.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Batist telephoned the house from the dock.
"There's a man down here want to see you, Dave," he said.
"What's he look like?"
"Like somebody stuck his jaws in a vise and busted all the bones. That ain't the half of it. While I'm mopping off the tables, he walks round on his hands."
I finished my coffee and walked down the slope through the trees. The air was cool and gray with the mist off the water, and molded pecan husks broke under my shoes.
"What's up, Swede?" I said.
He sat at a spool table, eating a chili dog with a fork from a paper plate.
"You asked about this guy Harpo Scruggs. He's an old fart, works out of New Mexico and Trinidad, Colorado. He freelances, but if he's doing a job around here, the juice is coming out of New Orleans."
"Yeah?"
"Something else. If Scruggs tried to clip a guy and blew it but he's still hanging around, it means he's working for Ricky the Mouse."
"Ricky Scarlotti?"
"There's two things you don't do with Ricky. You don't blow hits and you don't ever call him the Mouse. You know the story about the horn player?"
"Yes."
"That's his style."
"Would he have a priest killed?"
"That don't sound right."
"You ever have your IQ tested, Swede?"
"No, people who bone you five days a week don't give IQ tests."
"You're quite a guy anyway. You shank Anthony Pollock?"
"I was playing chess with Cisco. Check it out, my man. And don't send any more cops to my place. Believe it or not, I don't like some polyester geek getting his hand on my crank."
He rolled up his dirty paper plate and napkin, dropped them in a trash barrel, and walked down the dock to his car, snapping his fingers as though he were listening to a private radio broadcast.
RICKY SCARLOTTI WASN'T HARD to find. I went to the office, called NOPD, then the flower shop he owned at Carrollton and St. Charles.
"You want to chat up Ricky the Mouse with me?" I asked Helen.
"I don't think I'd go near that guy without a full-body condom on," she replied.
"Suit yourself. I'll be back this afternoon."
"Hang on. Let me get my purse."
We signed out an unmarked car and drove across the Atchafalaya Basin and crossed the Mississippi at Baton Rouge and turned south for New Orleans.
