"I just didn't act very smart. I'm sorry," I said.
"Where is the gun?" the older of the two cops said. He was big and bareheaded and wore pilot's sunglasses.
"In the house."
"I suggest you leave it there. I also suggest you call us the next time you think somebody's trying to hurt you."
"Yes, sir, I'll do that. Actually I tried. Didn't the handbill man call you all?"
"The what?"
"A guy who puts handbills on front doors. I sent him to the grocery to call you when I thought my line was cut." I realized that I was getting back into the story again when I should let it drop.
"I don't know anything about it. Believe me, I hope I don't hear any more reports from this address. Are we fairly straight on that?"
"Yes, sir, you're quite clear."
They left, and I tried to reorder my morning. When the squad car had pulled up out front, some of the neighbors had come out on the porches. I determined that I was not going to be a curiosity who would hide in his house, so I put on my running shorts and an old pair of boat shoes and began pulling weeds in the front flower bed. The sun was warm on my back, and the clover among the rye grass in the yard was full of small bees. The willow trees out on the river were bent in the breeze. After a few minutes a man's shadow fell across my face and shoulders.
"The phone was broke. I had to go up on Broadway," the man said. His clear blue eyes looked down at me from under his cap.
"Oh, yeah, how you doing?" I said.
"Look, I'm sorry to send you running off like that. It was sort of a misfire."
"I saw the cops leave from the corner. So I had me a soda. Everything worked out all right, huh?"
"Yeah, and I owe you five bucks. Right?"
"Well, that's what you said. But you don't have to, though. It was three blocks before I found a phone."
"A deal's a deal, partner. Come inside. I'll get my wallet."
I opened the screen and walked ahead of him. He caught the screen with his elbow rather than his hand when he came in.
"Could I have a glass of water?" he asked.
"Sure."
We went into the kitchen, and as I took a jelly glass out of the cabinet I saw him slip both hands into his back pockets and smile. I filled the glass from the tap and thought how his smile reminded me of lips painted on an Easter egg. He was still smiling when I turned around and he raised the slapjack and came across my forehead with it. It was black and flat and weighted at the end with lead, and I felt it knock into bone and rake across my eye and nose, then I was falling free into a red-black place deep under the basement floor, with a jelly glass that tumbled in slow motion beside me.
I woke as though I were rising from a dark, wet bubble into light, except my arms were locked behind my head, I couldn't breathe or cry out, and I was drowning. Water cascaded over my face and ran down my nostrils and over the adhesive tape clamped across my mouth. I gagged and choked down in my throat and fought to get air into my lungs and felt the handcuffs bite into my wrists and the chain clank against the drainpipe under the sink. Then I saw the handbill man squatting on his haunches next to me, an empty iced tea pitcher in his hand, a curious expression on his face as though he were watching an animal at the zoo. His eyes were sky blue and laced with tiny threads of white light. He wadded up a ball of paper towels in his hand and blotted my face dry, then widened my eyes with his fingers as an ophthalmologist might. By his foot was one of his handbill sacks.
"You're doing all right. Rest easy and I'll explain the gig to you," he said. He took an Instamatic camera from his bag, focused on my face and the upper half of my body, his mouth askew with concentration, and flashed it twice in my eyes. My head throbbed. He dropped the camera back in his bag.
"I got to take a piss. I'll be right back," he said.
I heard him urinate loudly in the toilet. He flushed it, then walked back into the kitchen and knelt beside me.
"The guy wants before-after shots," he said.
"So I give him before-after shots. He's paying for it, right? But that don't mean I have to do everything else he wants. It's still my gig. Hell, it's both our gig. I don't think you're a bad dude, you just got in the wrong guy's face. So I'm going to cut you all the slack I can."
He looked steadily into my face. His eyes were vacuous, as clear and devoid of meaning as light itself. i "You don't understand, do you?" he asked.
"Look, you piss a guy off bad, you make him look like shit in front of people, you keep turning dials on him, you show him up a punk in front of his gash so they ain't interested in his Dream-sicle anymore, he's going to stay up nights thinking about you."
His eyes were serene, almost kind, as though it had all been explained in a way that should be acceptable to even the most obtuse.
"You're a little thick, aren't you?" he said.
"Look, you're supposed to go in pieces, left lung, then cock in the mouth. But I say fuck that. At least not while the guy knows it. Nobody tells me how to do my work, man. Hey, this maybe isn't much comfort to you, but it could be a lot worse. Believe me."
He put his left palm flat on my chest, almost as if he were reassuring or comforting me or feeling for my heartbeat as a lover might, and reached behind him into the canvas sack with his right hand. The knife was a foreign imitation of the Marine Corps K-Bar, t with a stainless steel blade, saw teeth on the top, a black aluminum handle with a bubble compass inserted in the butt. I remembered seeing them advertised for six dollars in the Times-Picayune Sunday magazine.
The back door was shut, the yellow linoleum floor glistened with sunlight from the window, water ran from my hair and drenched shirt like ants on my skin, my own breathing sounded like air being forced through sand. His hand moved down my sternum over my stomach, toward my loins, and he shifted his weight on his knees, cupped the knife palm up in his right hand, and moved his eyes slowly over my face. I clanged the handcuff chain against the drainpipe, tried to twist away from him, then jerked my knees up in front of my stomach as a child might, my voice strangling in my throat.
He took his hand away from my body and looked at me patiently.
"Come on, man. Trust me on this one," he said.
A shadow went across the glass window in the back door, then the handle turned and Clete came through the door as though he were bursting through barrel slats, flinging the door back against the wall, knocking a chair across the linoleum, his .38 revolver aimed straight out at the handbill man's face. He looked ridiculous in his old red and white Budweiser shorts, T-shirt, blue windbreaker, crushed porkpie hat, loafers without socks, and nylon shoulder holster twisted across one nipple.
"What's happening, Charlie?" he said, his face electric with anticipation.
"Throw away the shank or I blow your shit all over Streak's wallpaper."
The handbill man's vacuous blue eyes never changed expression. The white threads of light in them were as bright as if some wonderful promise were at hand. He set the knife on the floor and grinned at nothing, resting comfortably on one knee, his right forearm draped across his thigh.
"Charlie almost got away from me," Clete said.
"Sal told me he took his rental back to Missoula and caught a flight last night. Except Charlie's been getting some nook up on the lake and his punch told me she's supposed to meet him at the airport tonight. thought you were a pro, Charlie. You ought to keep your hammer in your pants when you're working. Roll over on your stomach and put your hands behind your neck."
Clete knelt behind him and shook him down, patting his pockets, feeling inside his thighs.
"Where's the key to the cuffs?" Clete said.
The handbill man's face was flat against the floor, pointed at me. His eyes were bright with light.
"Hey, you got problems with your hearing?" Clete said, and kicked him with the point of his loafer in the rib cage.
Still, the handbill man didn't say anything. His breath went out of his. lungs and he breathed with his mouth open like a
fish out of water. Clete started to kick him again, then his eyes went to the top of the kitchen table. He slid the knife across the linoleum with his foot and picked up the handcuff key from the table. He knelt beside me and unlocked one of my wrists. I started to raise up, but before I could he snapped the loose cuff around the drainpipe.
"Sorry, Streak, not just yet," he said.
"Get the tape off your mouth and dangle loose a minute while we talk to Charlie here." He picked up the canvas sack by the bottom and shook it out on the floor. The Instamatic, a roll of pipe tape, and a .22 revolver clattered on the linoleum among the scatter of handbills.
"Sal wanted some pictures for his scrapbook, huh? And it looks like we got a Ruger with a magnum cylinder. Streak, we're looking at your genuine, all-American psychopath here. I got a friend at Vegas PD to pull Charlie's sheet for me."
I had the tape worked loose from my mouth now. I sat up as best I could under the lip of the sink and pinched the skin around my mouth. It was stiff and dead to the touch. I could feel a swollen ridge through my hairline and down my forehead.
"What are you doing, Clete?" I said. My words sounded strange and outside of myself.
"Meet Charlie Dodds. Vegas says he's been tied to five syndicate hits they know about, and maybe he iced a guy on the yard at Quentin. His finest hour was whacking out a federal witness, though. The guy's fourteen-year-old daughter walked in on it, so Charlie took her out, too."
"Give me the key," I said.
"Be mellow, Dave." He had put the .22 in one of the big pockets of his Budweiser shorts. He started to lean over the man on the floor.
"Call the locals, Clete."
He straightened up and looked at me as he would at a lunatic.
"You think you or I can keep this guy in jail? What's the matter with you?" he said.
"He'd be out on bond in three hours, even if these hicks would file charges. No matter how you cut it, he'd be back doing lines with the corn holers before the five o'clock news. I'll tell you something else, too, Dave. The mortician told me a tear was sealed inside Darlene's eye, he couldn't clean it out. You know what she must have gone through before she died?"
His jaw flexed, the skin of his face tightened, the scar that ran through his eyebrow and across his nose reddened, and he kicked the man on the floor hard in the rectum. He kicked him in the same place again, then leaned over him and whipped the barrel of the .38 across the back of his head. Then he said "Fuck" as though an insatiable rage had released itself in him, put his revolver in his other deep pocket, hoisted the man to his feet by his belt, as if he were made of rags and sticks, threw him against the wall and drove his huge fist into his face.
Then Clete held him erect by the throat, hit him again and again, until his knuckles were shiny and red and the man's eyes were crossed and a bloody string of saliva hung from his mouth.
"For God's sakes, cut it out, Clete!" I said.
"The guy's all we've got. Use your head, man."
"Bullshit. Charlie's no sissy. Our man here is a stand-up con." And with that, he wrapped his hand around the back of the man's neck, ran him across the room, and smashed his head down on the side of the stove. I saw the skin split above the eye; then Clete threw him to the floor. The man's eyes had rolled, and his straw-colored hair was matted with sweat.
Clete stuck his wrist down at my face.
"Feel my pulse," he said.
"I'm calm, I'm copacetic, I'm fucking in control of my emotions. I don't have a hard-on. I'm extremely tranquil. I saved your fucking ass this morning. How about a little gratitude for a change?"
"You unlock me, Clete, or I'm going to square this. I swear it."
"You'll never change, Streak. You're unteachable."
Clete picked up the roll of pipe tape and the survival knife from the floor and knelt next to the unconscious man. He ripped off a ten-inch length of tape, sliced through it with the knife, and wrapped the man's mouth. Then he pulled his arms behind him, wrapped each wrist individually, made a thick figure eight between both wrists, and sliced the tape again. The knife was honed as sharp as a barber's razor. He wrapped the man's ankles just as he had done the wrists.
"I don't know what your plan is, but I think it's a bad one," I said.
"I'm not the one up on a murder charge in Louisiana. I'm not the guy cuffed to a drainpipe. I don't have a knot on my head. Maybe I do something right once in a while. Try some humility along with the gratitude."
He went into the front of the house, and I heard him pushing furniture around, tumbling a chair or a table to the floor. A moment later he came back into the kitchen, dragging my living room rug behind him. His face was flushed, and sweat ran out of the band of his porkpie hat. He ripped off his windbreaker and used it to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. The powder-blue sleeves were flecked with blood.
"Sorry to fuck up your house. See if you can write it off on the IRS as part of Neighborhood Watch," he said.
He kicked the rug out flat on the floor and began rolling the man up in it.
"Clete, we can bring Dio down with this guy."
But he wasn't listening. He breathed hard while he worked, and there was a mean bead in his eye.
"You got out of that murder beef in New Orleans. You want them to stick you with another one?" I said.
Again he didn't answer. He went out the back door, then I heard his jeep grinding in reverse across the lawn to the steps. Clete came back into the kitchen, unhooked the spring from the screen door, lifted up the man inside the rolled rug, and dragged him outside to the jeep. When he came back inside his face was dusty from the rug and running with sweat and his big chest heaved up and down for air. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it from a book of matches, and flipped the burnt match out through the open screen into the sunlight.
"You got a hacksaw?" he said.
"In my toolbox. Behind the driver's seat."
He went back outside, and I heard him clattering around in my truck. Then he walked back up the wood steps with the saw hanging from his hand.
"You can cut through the chain in about fifteen minutes," he said.
"If you want to call the locals then, ask yourself how much of this they'll believe. Also ask yourself how much trouble you want over a shit bag like that guy out there."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"It's up to him. Are you really worried about a guy who'd kill a fourteen-year-old girl? The guy's a genetic accident." He pulled up a chair, sat down, and leaned toward me while he puffed on his cigarette and tried to get his breath back at the same time.
"Did you ever think about it this way, Streak? You know how the real' world works, just like I do. But half the time you act like you don't. But it lets you feel good around guys like me. What do your AA pals call it 'drinking down'?"
"That's not the way it is, Cletus."
"Why'd you keep partnering with me at the First District after you saw me bend a couple of guys out of shape?" He grinned at me.
"Maybe because I'd do the things you really wanted to. Just maybe. Think about it."
"Don't kill this guy."
"Hey, I got to be on the road. You want anything before I split? A glass of water or something?" He put the hacksaw in my hand.
"It's never too late to turn it around."
"That's solid gold, Dave. I wonder if ole Charlie out there thinks of something like that while he's doing a job on somebody. Man, that's fucking noble. I got to remember that."
He hooked the spring on the screen door again, worked it back and forth a couple of times, then looked at me and said, "After you cut through the chain, the cuff key's there on the table. You want to take down Sal and that other fart that framed you in Louisiana, get real or buy yourself some Mouseketeer ears. In an hour I'll have Charlie's life story. You want in on it, call me at the Eastgate Lounge at six o'clock."
Then he was gone.
CHAPTER 9
I filled a clean dish towel with ice cubes and cracked them into
a fine, wet paste with a rolling pin on the edge of the sink, then lay down on the living room couch and held the towel to my head. What a sharp ex-cop I proved myself this morning, I thought. I had managed to roust, terrify, and infuriate an innocent telephone man, then invite a contract killer into my house, right after the cops had left, turn my back on him unarmed, when I had access to a .45, a double-barreled twelve-gauge, and a .38 revolver nailed in a holster under a cabinet shelf, and get sapped and manacled to a drainpipe. I didn't want to think about the rest of it: the moist touch of his hand sliding across the quivering muscles of my stomach, the total absence of moral light in his eyes, the transfixed, almost opiated shine in his face while he let the knife hover over my heart cavity.