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“And?”
“I came up with nothing that could be called helpful.”
“So you’re dropping it?”
“It’s out of my jurisdiction.”
“Meaning it’s automatically out of mine?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you thought it.”
“Only three of the seven dead girls and women are certifiable homicides, Clete. There’s no telling how the others died. Drug overdoses, hit-and-run accidents, suicide, God only knows.”
“Only three, huh?”
“You know what I meant.”
“Right,” he said. He put his shades back on and got in his Caddy, twisting the key hard in the ignition.
“Don’t leave like this.”
“Go back inside and fight with your family, Streak. Sometimes you really put me in the dumps.”
He backed into the street, lighting a cigarette with his Zippo simultaneously, an oncoming vehicle swerving around him, blowing its horn.
CLETE STARTED HIS search for Herman Stanga in New Iberia’s old red-light district, down Railroad Avenue, where the white girls used to go for five dollars and the black girls on Hopkins went for three. He cruised past the corner hangouts and the old cribs, their windows nailed over with plywood, a drive-by daiquiri store, and rows of unoccupied houses in front of which bagged garbage and junked furniture and split mattresses were stacked three feet high. He passed a stucco bungalow that had been blackened by fire and was now used as a shooting gallery. He saw the peculiar mix of addiction and prostitution and normal blue-collar life that had become characteristic of inner-city America. Then he drove down Ann Street, where black teenage drug vendors stood one kid to each dirt yard, their faces vacant, their bodies motionless, like clothespins arranged on a wash line, their customers flicking on a turn signal to indicate they were ready for curb service.
The sky had the color and texture of green gas, the trees throbbing with birds. In the west, the sun was a tiny red spark inside rain clouds. Clete parked on a corner in front of a paint-peeling shotgun house and waited. His top was down, his porkpie hat tilted on his brow, his fingers knitted on his chest, his eyes closed in repose. Three minutes went by before he felt a presence inches from his face. He opened one eye and looked into the face of a boy who was not more than twelve, a baseball cap riding on his ears.
“What you want, man?” the boy asked.
“Affirmative action is forcing Herman Stanga to hire midgets?”
“I ain’t no midget. You parked in front of my friend’s house, so I axed you what you want. If you’re looking for Weight Watchers, you’re in the wrong neighborhood,” the boy said.
“You’re about to get yourself wadded up and stuffed in my tailpipe.”
“Won’t change nothing. You’ll still be a big fat man calling other people names.”
“I’m looking for Herman Stanga. I owe him some money.”
The boy’s expression showed no recognition of the lie. He stepped back from the Cadillac, nodding in approval, touching the chrome back of the outside mirror with his fingertips. His head was too small for his body, and his body too small for his baggy pants and bright orange and white polyester T-shirt.
“You just cruising around, handing out money? Leave it wit’ me. I’ll get it to the right person.”
“What’s your name?”
“Buford.”
“Tell your parents to use a better form of birth control, Buford.”
Then Clete saw a strange transformation take place in the boy’s face, a flicker of injury, the kind that went deep and couldn’t be feigned, like the pain of a stone bruise traveling upward from the foot into the viscera. Clete dropped his transmission into drive, then stuck it back in park. “What’s your last name?” he said.
“I ain’t got one. No, I take that back. My last name is Kiss-My-Ass-Fat-Man.”
“Get in the car, Kiss-My-Ass.”
