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“I’m worried about Kevin Penny,” he said. “I think he’s got you on the brain.”
“He’s not coming after me, Clete. If he does, we’ll punch his ticket. He knows that.”
“You don’t get it. He’s an obvious habitual, but he’s not on parole, he has no outstanding warrants, and he doesn’t have to register as a sex offender, even though he was up on sexual assault charges a couple of times. I don’t know how he got out of Raiford, either. They should have welded the door on him and poured concrete on top of it.”
“What was he in for?”
“Distribution of cocaine and assault with a deadly weapon. But they couldn’t get him for the bigger charge: He and two other guys tortured a dealer in Little Havana for his stash. They hung him from a hoist on a wrecker and put a propane torch on him.”
“You’re saying Penny is protected?”
“He has to be. Pukes in the projects do life for three street busts involving amounts of money you could steal from bubble-gum machines.”
“Who’s his protector?”
“I know you don’t like this, but I think Jimmy Nightingale is a player in this.”
“A player in what?”
“Setting you up.”
“Maybe I wasn’t set up. Maybe I killed T. J. Dartez.”
“This is what Penny just told me—”
“Wait a minute. You just saw Penny?”
“This morning. I saw the social worker who’ll be looking after his kid, too. I told Penny I’d be visiting him, kind of like an old friend. Penny says Nightingale is a geek. He says he’s AC/DC and humps his sister or half sister or whatever she is.”
“This guy has no credibility, Clete.”
“Penny says Nightingale is eaten up with guilt. Maybe he killed somebody.”
I didn’t reply.
“You don’t buy it?”
“I don’t know. Rowena Broussard says he raped her. He claims he never touched her. When I interviewed him, he almost had me convinced.”
“Go on.”
“I felt like he wanted to confess. But not to rape. Something else. Maybe Penny is right.”
He forked the steak off the flames and laid it on a plate. “Is that what you came by to tell me?”
“No, I got the loan on my house. You’re a quarter of a mil richer than you were this morning.”
“You actually did that?”
“Why not?”
His eyes were shiny. He wiped them on his forearm. “I’ve got to get out of this smoke.”
“Pay off those bums and get them out of your life.”
“You’re truly a noble mon, noble mon. I’ll brown us some bread.”
* * *
