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“Or Labiche knows him.”
“But what’s the agenda of the guy in the red shoes?” she asked.
“Pookie Domingue told Clete the guy’s a cleaner.”
“Pookie the Possum?”
“Clete said he was about to dump in his pants.”
“Can I get a promise from you?” she said.
“What?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. “Forget it.”
“What is it?”
She stood up to go. “Don’t get into it with Labiche again. Got it, bwana? Bwana not have time to evolve. Bwana clean up brain with vacuum now or get thrown through window.”
* * *
SURPRISES NEVER END. Just after work on Wednesday afternoon of the following week, Spade Labiche walked into my backyard while I was washing my boat. Mon Tee Coon was high up in a tree, looking down at us. Labiche was dressed like a sport in two-tone shoes and a panama hat and a tropical shirt that hung outside his slacks, as though he were trying to transform himself from one identity to another, like people do when they can no longer bear their own mistakes and the lives they lead. The swelling had gone out of his face, but the bruises and scrapes were still there. I never thought I could feel sorry for a guy like Labiche, but I did. There was another element in his face, namely, systemic fear, the kind that eats through your stomach and your entrails or the kind you see in people who know the Great Shade is waiting for them.
“Before you tell me to get lost, let me make my case,” he said.
I squirted the hose on the boat’s bow and ran a sponge along its surface. “I don’t think we have much to talk about.”
“Here’s my situation,” he continued, undaunted. “You don’t work undercover in Miami without getting dirty. I crossed lines. I’ve been in situations where I had to either let a guy get smoked or get smoked myself. You ever have a gig like that?”
“Close.”
“You let it play out? You let the guy go down?”
“I popped the guys who were going to pop him.”
“I got it. Mr. Moral Superiority.”
“Your meter is running, Spade.”
“I know things nobody else knows. Something is going on that doesn’t make sense. I got to have a deal.”
“See Helen.”
“She listens to you like she’s got a thing.”
“Lose it,” I said.
“Screw that. I got the key to your head. I got the key to your soul.”
“Are you crazy?”
He stepped closer to me, even though the spray from the hose drifted onto his clothes. He must have smeared himself with deodorant rather than taking a shower before coming to the house. “The guy who clipped the St. Mary deputy and cooked the guy in the ice cream truck probably has a list. But the list doesn’t make sense. Maybe Tony Squid put out the contracts. I think this is political. That means Jimmy Nightingale.”
“
Who killed Penny?”
“With an electric drill? A sadist for hire.”
