AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You all right, Joe?” Clete asked.
Joe stared at Clete, his temples pulsing with tiny veins.
“What the fuck you doing here?” he asked.
Then Perry LaSalle decided to continue on his way to the sheriff’s office. “I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” he said.
He accidentally brushed against Joe’s arm.
Joe blindsided him and hooked him murderously in the jaw, the blow whipping Perry’s face sideways, flinging spittle against the wall. Then Joe hit him below the eye and a third time in the mouth before Clete caught him from behind and wrapped his huge arms around Joe’s chest and lifted him off the ground and slammed his face down on a desk.
But Joe freed one arm and ripped an elbow into Clete’s nose, splattering blood across Clete’s cheek. The dispatcher and I both grabbed Joe and threw him against the desk again and kicked his legs apart and pushed the side of his face down on a dirty ashtray.
“Put your wrists behind you! Do it now, Joe!” I said.
Then Joe Zeroski, who had killed perhaps nine men, sank to one knee, the backs of his thighs trembling, his arms forming a tent over his head as he tried to hide the shame and grief in his face.
CHAPTER 5
I walked with Perry LaSalle into the men’s room and held his coat for him while he washed his face with cold water. There was a cluster of red bumps under his right eye and blood in his saliva when he spit. “You cutting that guy loose?” he asked.
“Unless you want to press charges,” I replied.
He felt his mouth and looked in the mirror. His eyes were still angry. Then, as though realizing his expression was uncharacteristic of the Perry LaSalle we all knew, he blew out his breath and grinned.
“Maybe I’ll catch him down the road,” he said.
?
??I wouldn’t. Joe Zeroski was a hit man for the Giacano family,” I said.
His eyes became neutral, as though he did not want me to read them. He took his coat from my hand and put it on and combed his hair in the mirror. Then he stopped.
“Are you staring at me for some reason, Dave?” he asked.
“No.”
“You think I’m bothered because this guy was a meatball for the Giacanos?” he said.
“On my best day I can’t even take my own inventory, Perry,” I said.
“Save the Twelve Step stuff for a meeting, old pard,” he replied.
A few minutes later I walked with Clete Purcel to his car. The top was down and a half-dozen fishing rods were propped against the backseat. We watched Perry LaSalle’s Gazelle pull out of the parking lot and cross the train tracks and turn onto St. Peter Street.
“He’s not going to file on Zeroski?” Clete asked.
“Perry’s grandfather ran rum with the Giacanos during Prohibition. I don’t think Perry wants to be reminded of the association,” I said.
“Everybody ran rum back then,” Clete said.
“Somebody else did his grandfather’s time. You’re not going to try to square that elbow in the nose, are you?”
Clete thought about it. “It wasn’t personal. For a button man Joe’s not a bad guy.”
“Great standards.”
“This is Louisiana, Dave. Guatemala North. Quit pretending it’s the United States. Life will make a lot more sense,” he said.
