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“I tell you what. I’ll handle Joe, you deal with Zerelda,” he said.
Joe Zeroski’s car was parked down the block, across the street, in front of a small grocery store. A woman was behind the wheel. Her hair was black and long, the neckline of her blouse plunging, her nails and mouth painted arterial red. I opened my badge holder and lifted it into the light so she could see it. A holstered revolver sat on the seat between the woman and Joe Zeroski.
“We need you to move your car out of here,” I said.
“Pull your pud on somebody else’s time,” she said. I heard Clete snicker behind me.
“Sorry?” I said.
“You’re out of your jurisdiction. Go screw yourself,” she said.
“You have a permit for that gun?”
“I don’t need one. In Louisiana the automobile is an extension of the home. But in answer to your question, yes, I do have a permit. Now, how about moving yourself out of my view?”
I looked across the seat at Joe Zeroski. His stolid face and wide-set eyes had all the malleability of a cinder block.
“She’s doing her job,” he said.
“Tee Bobby didn’t kill your daughter, Joe,” I said.
“Then why were you asking about him down at that pickup corner, the one my little girl was abducted from?” he replied.
I blew out my breath and recrossed the street with Clete.
“Lighten up, Streak. I think Zerelda likes you. Notice how she squeezed her .357 when she told you to fuck off?” he said, his eyes beaming.
We went through the side entrance of the nightclub. It was loud and hot inside, the air hazy with cigarette smoke, dense with the smells of whiskey and boiled crabs and beer sweat. Tee Bobby was at the microphone, his long-sleeved lavender shirt plastered against his skin, a red electric guitar hanging from his neck. He drank from a long-necked bottle of Dixie beer and wiped the moisture out of his eyes on his sleeve and stumbled slightly against the microphone, then began singing “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” His eyes were closed while he sang, his face suffused with a level of emotion that at first glance might have seemed manufactured until you heard the irrevocable sense of loss in his voice.
“Guitar Slim didn’t have anything on this guy. Too bad he’s a rag nose,” Clete said.
“How do you know he is?” I asked.
“He was snorting lines off the toilet tank. I thought that might be a clue.”
We found Jimmy Dean Styles in his office at the rear of the club. He sat at a cluttered desk, above which was a framed autographed photo of Sugar Ray Robinson. He was counting money, his fingers clicking on a calculator. His eyes lifted to mine.
“See, I went out of Angola max-time. That means I ain’t got my umbilical cord thumbtacked to some P.O.’s desk. How about respecting that?” he said.
“Where’d you get the autographed photo of Sugar Ray?” I said.
“My grandfather was his sparring partner. You probably don’t know that ’cause when you growed up most niggers around here picked peppers or cut cane,” he replied.
“You told me you cut Tee Bobby loose. Now I see him up on your bandstand,” I said.
“Little Albert Babineau own half this club. He feel sorry for Tee Bobby. I don’t. Tee Bobby got a way of stuffing everything he make up his nose. So when he finish his gig tonight, he packing his shit.” His eyes shifted to Clete. “Marse Charlie, don’t be sitting on my desk.”
“There’s a guy outside named Joe Zeroski. I hope he comes in here,” Clete said.
“Why’s that, Marse Charlie?” Styles said.
“He was a mechanic for the Giacanos. Nine or so hits. Your kind of guy,” Clete said.
“I’ll be worried about that the rest of the night,” Styles replied.
Clete stuck a matchstick in the corner of his mouth and stared at Styles, who had gone back to counting a stack of currency, his fingers dancing on the calculator.
I touched Clete on the arm and we walked back through the crowd and out the side door. The parking lot smelled of dust and tar, and the stars were hot and bright above the trees. Clete stared back into the club, his face perplexed.
