I DROVE DOWN East Main at sunrise the next day, under the arched canopy of live oaks that lined the street, and picked Clete up at the apartment he had rented downtown. The moon was still up, the air heavy with the smell of night-blooming flowers and wet trees and bamboo and water that has seeped deep into the soil and settled permanently around stone and brickwork.
But three hours later Clete and I were in a rural area north of New Orleans that in terms of toxicity probably has no environmental equivalent in the country. The petrochemical plants on the edge of the wetlands bleed their wastes into the drainages and woods, systemically killing all life in them, layering the soil with a viscous, congealed substance that resembles putty veined with every color in the rainbow.
The man we were looking for, Garfield Jefferson, lived at the end of a row of tin-roofed shotgun shacks left over from the days of corporate plantations. The rain ditch in front was blown with Styrofoam litter, the yard heaped with upholstered furniture.
"This guy's a gun dealer?" I said.
"He creates free-fire zones for other people to live in and keeps a low profile in Shitsville. Don't be deceived by his smile, either. He's a mainline grad of Pelican Bay," Clete said.
Garfield Jefferson's skin was so black it gave off a purple sheen, at least inside the colorless gloom of his tiny living room, where he sat on a stuffed couch, legs spread, and grinned at us. The grin never left his face, as though his mouth were hitched on the corners by fishhooks.
"I'm not following y'all. You say you a cop from New Iberia and some dude give you my name?" he said.
"Johnny Remeta says you sold him the piece he did Zipper Clum with. That puts you deep down in the bowl, Garfield," I said.
"This is all new to me, man. How come the guy is telling you this, anyway? He just running around loose, popping people, calling in information from the phone booth?" Jefferson said.
"Because he fucked up a hit for the wrong people and he knows his ass is hanging over the fire. So he wants to cut a deal, and that means he gives up a few nickel-and-dime pus heads like yourself as an act of good faith," Clete said.
Jefferson looked out the window, grinning at nothing, or perhaps at the outline of a chemical plant that loomed over a woods filled with leafless trees. His hair was shaved close to the scalp, his wide shoulders knobby with muscle under his T-shirt. He fitted a baseball cap backwards on his head and adjusted it, his eyes glowing with self-satisfaction.
"A turned-around cap in Louisiana mean a guy don't do drugs. You white folks ain't caught on to that. You see a nigger with his hat on backwards, you think 'Mean-ass motherfucker, gonna jack my car, get in my daughters bread.' I ain't dealt no guns, man. Tell this cracker he be dropping my name, I be finding his crib. I got too much in my jacket to sit still for this shit," he said. He grinned innocuously at us.
Clete stood up from his chair and remained standing on the corner of Jefferson 's vision. He picked up a ceramic lamp, the only bright object in the room, and examined the motel logo on the bottom of it.
"You got a heavy jacket, huh?" I said.
"Eighteen Streeters always get Pelican Bay. Twenty-three-hour lockdown. But I'm through with all that. I come back here to be with the home folks," Jefferson said.
Clete smashed the lamp across the side of Jefferson 's head. Pieces of ceramic showered on the couch and in Jefferson 's lap. For a moment his face was dazed, his eyes out of focus, then the corners of his mouth stretched upward on wires again.
"See, when people got a weight problem, they go around pissed off all the time, big hard-on 'cause they fat and ugly and don't want no full-length mirrors in their bathrooms," Jefferson said.
"You think you're funny?" Clete said, and hit him with the flat of his hand on the ear. "Tell me you're funny. I want to hear it."
"Clete," I said softly.
"Butt out of this, Streak." Then he said to Jefferson, "You remember those three elementary kids got shot at the playground off Esplanade? The word is you sold the Uzi to the shooter. You got something to say about that, smart-ass?"
"Free enterprise, motherfucker," Jefferson said, evenly, grinning, his tongue thick and red on his teeth.
Clete knotted Jefferson's T-shirt with his left hand and drove his right fist into Jefferson 's face, then pulled him from the couch and threw him to the floor. When Jefferson started to raise himself on his arms, Clete crashed the sole of his shoe into his jaw.
"It looks like you just spit some teeth there, Garfield," Clete said.
"Get away from him, Clete," I said.
"No problem. Sorry I lost it with this outstanding Afro-American. Do you hear that, Garfield? I'll come back later sometime and apologize again when we're alone."
"I mean it, Clete. Wait for me in the truck."
Clete went out into the yard and let the screen slam behind him. He looked back at me, his face still dark, an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth. I helped Jefferson back onto the couch and found a towel in the bathroom and put it in his hand.
"I'm sorry that happened," I said.
"You the good guy in the act, huh?" he replied.
"It's no act, partner. Clete will tear you up."
Jefferson pushed the towel tight against his mouth and coughed on his own blood, then looked up at me, this time without the grin, his eyes lackluster with the banal nature of the world in which he lived.
"I didn't sell the piece to the cracker. He wanted one, but he ain't got it from me. He got some wicked shit in his blood. I don't need his grief," he said.
"What are you talking about?"
"He do it for hire. But if there wasn't no money in it, he'd do it anyway. You say he fucked up a hit? I don't believe it. He gets off on it, man. Somebody done reamed that dude good."
Clete and I drove into the French Quarter, then across the river into Algiers. We talked to hookers, pimps, house creeps, stalls, dips, strong-arm robbers, fences, money washers, carjackers, petty boosters and addicts and crack dealers, all the population that clings to the underside of the city like nematodes eating their way through the subsoil of a manicured lawn. None of them seemed to know anything about Johnny Remeta.
But an ex-prizefighter who ran a saloon on Magazine said he'd heard a new button man in town had bought a half dozen clean guns off some black kids who'd burglarized a sporting goods store.
"Who's he working for, Goldie?" I asked.
"If he waxed Zipper Clum, the human race," he answered.
At dusk, when the sun was only an orange smudge over the rooftops and the wind was peppered with grit and raindrops, we found one of the kids who had broken into the sporting goods store. Clete pulled him out of a fig tree down the street from the St. Thomas Welfare Project.
He was fourteen years old and wore khaki short pants and tennis shoes without socks. Sweat dripped out of his hair and cut lines in the dust on his face.
"This is the mastermind of the group. The ones who got away are younger than he is," Clete said. "What's your name, mastermind?"
"Louis."
"Where's the guy live you sold the guns to?" Clete asked.
"Probably downtown somewhere."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"'Cause he drove toward downtown. The same direction the streetcar go to."
"Pretty smart deduction, Louis. How much did he give you for the guns?" Clete said.
"A hunnerd dollars."
"For six guns?" Clete said.
"He said he didn't have no more money. He showed us his wallet. It didn't have no more money in it."
"One of those guns was used to kill somebody, Louis," I said.
He looked into space, as though my words and the reality they suggested had nothing to do with his life. He must have weighed eighty pounds. He looked like an upended ant, with small ears, hooked teeth, and eyes that were too large for his face. His knees and elbows were scabbed, his T-shirt glued to his chest with dried food.