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"Except they were sweating so bad the janitor had to scrape the
B.O. off the furniture. They had another problem, too. Like keeping napkins over their boners."
"Sorry, I'm just not following all this," I said.
"Sammy calls the FBI. They send some guys out and Sammy looks at all these photos and says that's not the guys who were in the club. One of the FBI guys says, "Well, these are the hijackers who died in the planes."
"Sammy says, "Yeah, but there must have been other hijackers whose planes got grounded. The guys in my club are the ones who probably never got off the tarmac Even while he's talking you can already hear the toilet flushing.
"Two weeks go by and Sammy calls the FBI in Washington. He tells some agent there they're looking in the wrong place for terrorists. He says these guys are not Muslim revolutionaries, they're degenerates and losers, just like the other jack-offs who come into the club. Sammy says to the FBI agent, "Use your fucking head. These guys weren't hanging in mosques or living in Nebraska. They were holed-up in Miami and Vegas and hanging in dumps like mine 'cause they want to get laid. You want to nail 'em, float some cooze out on the breeze and see what happens.""
People at other tables were turning to stare.
"Maybe we should move to a quieter spot," I said.
"Well, excuse me. Here's the briefer version so I don't offend anybody," she said, her eyelids fluttering. "The FBI agent blew Sammy off, so he set up an Internet site out in Arizona to sell his movies. He was using a PI. to run the credit card numbers of anybody with a Mideastern name who bought from the site."
"Who were his partners?" I said.
"You met a couple of them," she replied.
"The Dellacroces?" I said.
She raised her eyebrows innocuously.
"Tell him the rest of it, Janet," Clete said.
"Sammy got paid in crystal. It's cooked across the border and comes through Tucson," she said. Then she looked at nothing, the whites of her eyes veined, her facial skin like flesh-colored clay that had been molded on bone. "Sammy wasn't a bad guy. He took us all to Disney World once. He wore a Mouseketeer hat on the plane all the way back home."
"Who popped him, Janet?" I said.
"I don't know. Sammy always said it was the normals you got to watch out for, 'cause they never learn who they really are."
She stared through the front windows at the palm trees beating in the wind and the rain slashing on the glass.
Chapter 23.
It was afternoon when Clete dropped me off at the house. The sky was a cold blue, dense and flawless in texture and color, the lawns along the street ridged with serpentine lines of leaves where the rainwater had receded into the streets. I shaved, showered, changed clothes, and went to the office.
Helen listened quietly while I told her of what had happened in New Orleans, her gaze fixed out the window on the crypts in the old cemetery.
"You called N.O.P.D. about Coll?"
"Yes."
"When?" she said.
"When we left town."
"I don't think you wanted to arrest him."
"Then why would I have chased him across town?"
"You should have called N.O.P.D. as soon as you saw him inside the church."
"Picture this scene, Helen. A couple of hot dogs coming through the vestibule with M-16s and 12-gauge pumps and Max Coll with a nine-millimeter," I said.
"Coll saved your life. You think you owe him."
