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“I came here to speak with Mr. Younger, and I did,” I said. “That’s it. We’re gone.”
I started walking as though our departure were a done deal. Alafair and Clete hesitated, then caught up with me.
“You’re just going to walk away?” Clete said.
“I appreciate what you did back there,” I replied. “Now we’re going home.”
“What was all that about, anyway?” Alafair asked.
“One of the men who attacked Wyatt Dixon and his girlfriend stole his Tony Lama boots. He said they were cordovan, just like the ones this guy Kyle is wearing.”
“He’s wearing Lamas?” Clete asked.
“He said they were Justins. He wouldn’t show them to me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Clete said. “Hang loose.”
He turned around and headed straight for a tent where Kyle was standing by himself, lighting a cigarette, both hands cupped around the burning match. His eyes lifted above the flame as Clete came toward him. He flicked away the match and removed the cigarette from his lips and blew a stream of smoke into the air.
“Hey, I forgot to tell you something,” Clete said.
“I can’t wait to find out what that is.”
“You know what the Eleventh Commandment in New Orleans is?”
“Tell me, blimpo.”
“Don’t try to put the slide on the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.”
“The who?”
“I knew you’d say that. Take off your boots.”
“Tell you what, I’ll let you shine them,” Kyle said. He lifted his cigarette to his mouth and took a puff. “While you’re down there, you can cop my stick.”
Clete stared at his reflection in Kyle’s sunglasses. The image was anatomically distorted, the head small, the body elephantine, the skin amber-tinted, like those of a miniaturized man trapped inside a beer bottle. “The sign out there says For Staff Only,” he said. “You want to pollute the place reserved for your fellow employees?” Clete pulled the cigarette from Kyle’s mouth and flipped it out on the grass. Then he dropped the flap on the front of the tent.
“Buddy, you just don’t learn,” Kyle said.
“Pull up your pants leg.”
“Enough with the boots. They’re boots. What the fuck is with you?”
“There’s no chance you and your buds tore the clothes off a woman up the Blackfoot and poured dirt in her mouth, is there? Right before two of you held her down and the third guy climbed on top of her?”
“You and your friend got a serious thinking disorder.” Kyle started out of the tent, but Clete stepped in his way.
“I want your boots.”
“If you haven’t noticed, there’s maybe five hundred people out there. A lot of them are my friends.”
“You’re right,” Clete said. “Forget everything I said, and let’s see if we can’t find another way.”
Clete cupped his left hand behind Kyle’s neck, almost as if consoling him, then drove his right fist into the man’s stomach, the blow sinking so deep that Kyle’s upper body jacked forward and his mouth formed into a cone, as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t, the blood draining from his cheeks.
Clete pushed him onto the ground, stepped on one of his ankles, and twisted the boot off his other foot. He looked at the label inside. “That’s what I call really low-rent. You steal the boots off a guy like Wyatt Dixon? He’s probably got hoof-and-mouth disease. Did you get his socks, too?”
He stuck the boot under his coat and walked out of the tent onto the fairway. Kyle stumbled after him, thrashing his way through the tent flap. He slipped on the grass and fell down again, gasping for air.
