“You’re tapped?”
“Remember when we had to smoke that greaser and his bodyguard in the back of their car? I know IAD had a tap on me then. Sounds just like it. You coming down?”
“Clete—”
“Lighten up.”
He told me the name of the restaurant.
It was on the far side of Morgan City, just off the highway by a boat basin lined with docks, boat slips, and tin-roofed sheds that extended out over the water. Clete was at a linen-covered table set with flowers by the window. On the horizon you could see rain falling out of the sunlight like a cloud of purple smoke. He had a small pitcher of draft beer and an ice-filmed schooner and plate of stuffed mushrooms in front of him. His face was glowing with alcohol and a fresh sunburn.
“Dig in, noble mon. I’ve got some fried soft-shells on the way,” he said.
“What’s the gen on Sonny?” I left my coat on to cover my .45.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, as though he had forgotten the reason for our meeting. “These two mules, I know them because they’re bondsmen now and handle a lot of the pukes dealing crack in the St. Bernard where I run down about three skips a week. They were flying reefer and coke out of Belize, which was some kind of stop-off place for a whole bunch of runs going in and out of Colombia and Panama. These guys say there were a lot of weird connections down there, CIA, military people, maybe some guys hooked into the White House. Anyway, they knew as swipe and say everybody had him made for DEA.”
“Asswipe’ is Sonny Boy?”
His eyes fluttered. “No, I’m talking about a Maryknoll missionary. Come on, Dave, stop letting this guy job you. His parents should have been sterilized or given a lifetime supply of industrial-strength rubbers.”
“You buy what these bondsmen say?”
“Not really. Marsallus never finished high school. The DEA hires college graduates, Notre Dame jocks with brains, not street mutts with tattoos and rap sheets.”
“Then why’d you have me come down here?” I asked.
But even as his eyes were drifting toward the door of the restaurant, I already knew the answer. John Polycarp Giacano had just come through the carpeted foyer, a raincoat draped on his shoulders as a movie actor might wear it. He was talking to a man behind him whom I couldn’t see.
“Wait in the car. It’s all right,” he said, his palms raised in a placating way. “Fix yourself a drink. Then we’ll catch some more fish.”
He slipped his coat off his shoulders and handed it to a waitress to hang up, never speaking, as though his intention should automatically be understood. He wore white boating shoes, pleated slacks that were the color of French vanilla ice cream, and a navy blue tropical shirt that was ablaze with big red flowers. He walked toward us, smiling, his close-set eyes, thick brows, nose, and mouth all gathered together like a facial caricature in the center of a cake.
“You shouldn’t have done this, Clete,” I said.
“It’s got to be cleared up, Streak. Patsy Dap listens to only one man. Just let me do the talking and everything’s going to be cool.”
“How you doin’, fellas?” Johnny Carp said, and sat down.
“What’s the haps, John?” I said.
He picked up a stuffed mushroom with his fingers and plopped it in his mouth, his eyes smiling at me while he chewed.
“He asks me what’s the haps,” he said. “Dave, I love you, you fucking wild man.”
“Glad you could make it, Johnny,” Clete said.
“I love to fish,” he said. “It don’t matter redfish, gaff top specs, white trout, it’s the fresh air, the waves flopping against the boat, Dave, you’re a fucking zonk, we ain’t living in the days of the O.K. Corral no more, know what I’m saying?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Johnny,” I said.
“Hey, Clete, get us some drinks over here, some snapper fingers, some oysters on the half shell, make sure they’re fresh, I got to talk to this crazy guy,” Johnny said.
“I don’t think you do, John,” I said.
“What’s he saying, Clete?”
“Streak doesn’t like to bother people with his trouble, that’s all, Johnny.”
“His trouble’s my trouble. So let’s work it out. I got a guy out in the car gonna have to have plastic surgery over in Houston. This is a guy nobody needs to have pissed off at him. I’m talking about a face looks like a basketball with stitches all over it. This guy couldn’t get laid down at the Braille school. This ain’t something you just blow out your ass because you happen to be a cop, Dave.”
“You’re a generous man with your time, Johnny,” I said. “But I didn’t ask for a sit-down.”
“What, I’m here to play with my dick under the table?”
A family sitting close to us got up and left.
“Your man went across the line,” I said.
“I think we got a problem with pride here, Dave. It ain’t good.”
“There’re cops in New Orleans who would have blown out his candle, Johnny,” I said.
“You ain’t in New Orleans. You degraded the man. He works for me. I got to square it, I’m being up-front here.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me. I was off my turf. So your man’s not down on an assault charge. End of subject, Johnny,” I said.
“You’re burning up a lot of goodwill, Dave. That’s the oil makes all the wheels turn. You’re educated, I ain’t got to tell you that,”
Johnny said. “The guy I got out in the car never had your advantages, he don’t operate on goodwill, he operates out of respect for me. I don’t honor that respect, then I don’t get it from nobody else, either.”
“What do you think you’re going to get here today?” I asked.
“I got an envelope with ten large in it. You give it to the guy for his hospital bill, just say you got no hard feelings. You ain’t even got to say you’re sorry. The money don’t matter ‘cause I’m paying his hospital bill anyway and he’ll have to give me the ten back. So everybody wins, everybody feels better, and we don’t have no problems later.”
“Are you serious?” I said.
“I throw a net over a guy makes some people wake up with cold sweats, pump him full of Demerol so he don’t kick out my fucking windows, just so I can get him off your back, you have the fucking nerve to ask me if I’m serious?”
He took a comb out of his shirt pocket and ran it through his hair, touching the waves with his fingers simultaneously, his knurled forehead furrowing as his eyes bored into my face. The teeth of his comb were bright with oil.
“Come on, Johnny, Dave’s not trying to dis anybody. The situation just got out of control. It happens.”
“He’s not trying to what?” Johnny said.
“Dis anybody. He doesn’t mean any disrespect.”
“I know what it means, why you using nigger language to me?”
Clete eased out his breath and lifted his shirt off his collarbone with his thumb. “I got fried out in my boat today, Johnny,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t say things very well. I apologize.”
“I accept your invitation to dinner, you talk to me like I’m a goddamn nigger?”
The waiter set down a Scotch and milk in front of Johnny, another pitcher of beer for Clete, an iced tea for me, and a round tray of freshly opened oysters flecked with ice. Johnny reached across the table and popped Clete on top of the hand.
“You deaf and dumb?” he said.
Clete’s green eyes roved around the room, as though he were appraising the fish nets and ship’s life preservers hung on the wall. He picked up a oyster, sucked it out of the shell, and winked at Johnny Carp.
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Johnny said.
“You’re a lot of fun, John,” Clete said.
Johnny took a deep drink out of his Scotch and milk, his eyes like black marbles that had rolled together above the glass. He rubbed a knuckle hard across his mouth, then pursed his lips like a tropical fish staring out of an aquarium. “I’m asking you in a nice way, you’re giving me some kind of queer-bait signals here, you’re ridiculing me, you just being a wiseass ‘cause we’re in public, what?” he said.