“The deputy who shot my friend Hugo Tillinger is named Sean McClain.”
“Tillinger is your friend?”
“Why did the deputy kill him?”
“Tillinger pointed a Luger at McClain. At Dave Robicheaux, too. Dave’s on the square. You know that. I’m going to turn on my side, okay?”
“I took the gun from under your mattress.”
“I’m still going to turn on my side. Look, you got a rotten deal as a child. I can relate to that. But you’re coming down on the wrong people. Diggez-vous on that, noble mon?”
“Dig what?”
“Sean McClain is a good kid. He’s going through a bad time over what happened. Like you said, the Mob is your problem. They’re assholes, not interesting guys who look like Marlon Brando and James Caan. What do you know about the Jersey crowd?”
“They lent a lot of money to a movie company here.”
“You hear anything about Russians?”
“They’re building atomic reactors. They launder money in a place called Malta.”
“How do you know this shit?”
“I hear people in Miami and New Or-yuns talk.”
“Unhook me. I’ll give you a free pass. You got my word.”
“Do you want to be my friend?”
“I think you’re a righteous dude. Everybody has a few character defects.”
“You know what I’ll do if you lie, don’t you?”
“I got a sense of your potential when you poured Drano down Tony Nemo’s throat.”
Smiley got up and stuck the semi-auto into his pants pocket. His stomach was pouched over his waistband. He leaned down, pausing long enough to search Clete’s eyes. He popped the manacle with Clete’s key and stepped back.
Clete pushed himself up in bed, his hands in full view. “What’d you do with my piece?”
“Your thirty-eight?”
“Yeah, my thirty-eight.”
“You’ll find it when you go wee-wee.”
“You dropped my thirty-eight in the bowl?”
“I flushed first.”
“Can I dress?”
“No.”
“This is getting to be a drag. Will you tell me what you want and get out of my life?”
“I want to hire you to cover my back. I’ll be your friend.”
“I appreciate the compliment, but you’ve killed too many people. I think you enjoy it. That’s not a good sign.”
“The people I killed hurt children.”
“I don’t think that one will wash, Wimple. Sorry. Smiley.”
“If they didn’t hurt children, they protected people who did. Are you calling me a liar?”
“Look, you did me a solid once. You took out a former gunbull who was two seconds from snuffing my wick. But you started a gunfight that killed a female detective. She was my lady for a while. That one won’t go away.”
“It was an accident.”
“Tell her that.”
Smiley’s teeth looked like rows of tiny white pearls, the gums barely holding them in place. His nostrils were slits. “In or out?”
“Out,” Clete replied, his eyes flat. He waited, his mouth dry.
“You’re making me mad,” Smiley said.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Smiley stood up from the chair. “Sometimes I do bad things when I get mad.”
“Really?”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I didn’t. You took on the Mob. Nobody has ever done that. You’ve probably got them dumping in their drawers. But don’t let them take you alive. You copy on that? Go out smoking.”
A gust of rain and wind swept across the roof; lightning that made no sound bloomed around the edges of the curtains.
“Will you try to follow me?” Smiley said.
“No.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“No, you do not know what I’m thinking,” Clete said.
“We’re alike.”
“Time to beat feet, podjo.”
“We’re two of a kind. I like you. I want you to be my friend.”
“You’re getting weird on me, little mon. Are you hearing me? Hello, Mars.”
“Little mon?”
“Take it as a compliment.”
“I’ll be in touch. So will she.”
“Who is ‘she’?”
“Wonder Woman. She looks over me.”
Clete sat on the edge of the bed, his hands cupped on his knees. He stared at the floor. “I’ve really enjoyed this. But I’m going in the bathroom now.”
“You took care of an orphan boy.”
“You can’t win on the game you pitched last week,” Clete said.
Clete continued to gaze at the floor, his head bowed. He heard the door open and felt the rain rush inside, then heard the door close. He got up from the bed and looked through the curtains. The driveway was black and shiny and empty. He went into the bathroom and retrieved his snub-nose from the toilet bowl and washed it, then dried it and oiled it and put it into its holster and lay back down and stared at the ceiling and listened to rain pattering on the roof, his eyelids stitched to his forehead.
He was at my back door early the next morning. Alafair and I were at the breakfast table. This was an old routine with Clete. At sunset he would begin deconstructing the world and himself, then at sunrise be at my door, forlorn and stinking of rut and weed and beer sweat and in need of my absolution, as though I had any such power.
I pushed open the screen. “I don’t hear any sirens.”
He brushed past me. “That’s not funny. Hi, Alafair.”
“Hi, yourself, big guy,” she replied.
“About to take off for the set?”
“Not for a while,” she said.
Clete’s eyes were wandering all over the kitchen. Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon were eating out of their bowls on top of a newspaper, their muddy tracks strung behind them. “I was just passing by,” he said.
I grinned at him. “Tell me what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s why your BP is about two hundred or so,” I said.
“Can I be honest here?” he said, glancing at Alafair.
“Get the marbles out of your mouth, will you, Clete?” I said.
“It’s what I didn’t do. Wimple was in my cottage last night. He was not only in it last night, he waited for me under the bed all afternoon.”
For some reason Snuggs stopped eating and looked up at him.
“He hooked you up or something?” I said.
“How’d you know?”
“Because it’s the kind of stuff Smiley does. Did you call it in?”
“I let him slide.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I gave him my word.”
“I don’t believe this,” I said.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Until you get a shiv between your shoulder blades.”
“Wimple finds people we can’t get close to,” he said. “There’s nothing about the Mob he doesn’t know. He’s like a worm inside a corpse.”
Alafair put down the toast she was eating. “Thanks, Clete.”
“Can I have a cup of coffee?” he said. “I got the shakes. Wimple creeped me out. It’s like talking to a giant slug.”
“You know I have to report this to Helen.”
“Do anything you want. What’s better, getting to the bottom of Lucinda Arceneaux’s death or putting a guy in a cage who’s got a triple-A battery for a brain?”
“Helen might have you picked up, Clete.”
“For what, not getting myself killed? Wimple said there’s Jersey and Russian money going to a movie company hereabouts. He said the money gets laundered in Malta.”
“Malta as in Maltese cross?” I said.
“Yeah, the kind that’s been showing up on dead people.”
“How does a piece of stamped metal or a tattoo on a dead person connect with money laundering?” I asked.
“Let me turn it around on you. If the Maltese cross isn’t a signal about money, then what does it represent? Some guy’s fascination with the prizes in a box of Cracker Jack?”