“Who is this?”
“ Who is this? Who do you think, asshole?” Bix said.
“In case it’s escaped your attention, I’m not feeling too good, and I’ve already told you what happened, and I don’t need any more of your bullshit, Bix.”
“Did I hear right? You don’t need my bullshit. If an elephant is sleeping, you don’t take a dump on its head and wipe your ass with its trunk and stroll off down the street.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think I just saw Purcel’s car go through the intersection.”
“It was you who threatened Purcel’s family, not me.”
“The point is, I wasn’t gonna do anything.”
“How is Purcel supposed to know that? Most people around here think you got brain damage.”
“Where are you?” Bix asked.
“What do you care?”
“I want to give you your cut on the Houston job. Are you at that fuck pad you got?”
“You said the fence hadn’t paid you.”
“He just did.”
“It’s true you bit off the nose of the psychiatrist at Angola?”
“No, it’s not true, you little bitch. My cellmate did. You want to know what I’m gonna do if you don’t clean up this mess?”
“Speak slower, will you? I’m taking notes on this so I can send Purcel a kite and tell him what you got planned for his family.”
Bix’s hand was opening and closing on the cell phone, his fingers sticking to the surface. “You got twenty large coming. You want it or not?”
“Change your twenty large into nickels and shove them up your nose. While you’re at it, go fuck yourself, because no broad is gonna do it. I heard some guys in the AB say you were queer bait and on the stroll at Angola. Is that why you never get laid?”
Before Bix could reply, the connection went dead, and he found himself squeezing the cell phone so tightly he almost cracked the screen. There was a pain behind his eyes as if someone had hammered a nail into his temple. He tried to concentrate and rid his head of all the energies that seemed to devour him from dawn to dusk. What was that word people were always using? Focus? Yeah, that was it. Focus. He heard the wind in the palm trees and the sound of the streetcar reversing itself for the return trip up St. Charles Avenue. Music was playing in a cafe over on Carrollton. Then a Hispanic guy who looked like a pile of frijoles came roaring around the side of the building on a mower that didn’t have a bag or muffler on it, the discharge chute firing a steady stream of grass clippings and ground-up palm fronds and dog turds against the walls. Screw focus, Bix thought.
“Hey, you! The greaseball down there! Yeah, you!” Bix shouted. “Hey, I’m talking here!”
The driver, who was wearing ear protectors, smiled stupidly at the balcony and kept going.
“Think that’s funny?” Bix said. He waited until the mower had made a turn and was passing under the balcony again. The flowerpot he picked up was packed with dirt and a root-bound palm and felt as heavy as a cannonball. Bix gripped the pot solidly with both hands, judging distance and trajectory like a bombardier, and lobbed it into space.
He couldn’t believe what happened next. He not only missed the gardener and the mower; just as he let fly, the neighbor’s poodle, whom Bix called the Barking Roach, ran out from the patio below and got knocked senseless by the pot. Then the driver swung the mower in a circle to cut another swath in the opposite direction and crunched over the broken pot and the compacted dirt and the palm plant and its exposed roots and shredded all of them without ever noticing that Bix had just tried to brain him. The only break Bix got was the fact that the Barking Roach ran back into its apartment and, unless it knew Morse code, wouldn’t be able to report him.
Before Bix could reload for a second shot, he saw the maroon Caddy come around the corner and park in front of a refurbished double-shotgun house called the Maple Street Bookstore. Maybe it wasn’t Purcel, Bix thought. What would an albino ape be doing in a bookstore, particularly one named Purcel, unless it sold porn or bananas? Time to stop messing around and get to the bottom of things. He Velcro-strapped a. 25 auto on his ankle, pulled his trouser cuff over the grips, and headed downstairs.
He crossed the street and took up a position in front of the bookstore, leaning back on the Caddy’s fender, his arms folded comfortably on his chest. Five minutes later, Purcel came out with a couple of books in a plastic sack, wearing cream-colored pleated slacks and oxblood loafers and a pale blue long-sleeve shirt and a straw hat that had a black band around the crown, like he was some kind of planter in the islands instead of an alcoholic bail-skip chaser for Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine. “You dogging me?” Bix said.
“Get off my car.”
“I asked you a question.”
“If I was following you around, would I park my car next to your crib?”
“It ain’t a crib. It’s a condo. You want Waylon Grimes, or do you just want to look through people’s windows?”
“What I want is your germs off my fender.”
“Relax. We go back, right? Old school. I didn’t sic Grimes on your secretary.”
“Who said it was Grimes?” Clete asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t. What I’m saying is I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Clete unlocked the driver’s door and threw his books on the seat. “You threatened to harm my sister and niece. You think you’re going to walk off from that?”
Bix stepped up on the curb, away from the car, flexing his neck the way he used to before he came out of his corner in the first round, both gloves flying into his opponent’s face. “You’re a bum and your word don’t mean anything, Purcel. Sorry your secretary got hurt, but it’s on you, not me.” He squeezed his penis and pulled it taut against his slacks. “You don’t like that, bite my stick.”
“Here’s what doesn’t make sense, Bix. Why is it that after all these years you guys end up with an old marker you think you can use to steal my home and my office? Who could think up a harebrained scheme like that?”
“I told you. Frankie Giacano opened up Didi Gee’s safe as a favor for somebody.”
“For who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where was the safe?”
“At the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. How would I know? Ask Frankie Gee.”
“I think you’re lying. Didi Gee kept a two-thousand-pound safe right by his aquarium, the one that was full of piranhas. I don’t think that safe went anywhere. I did some checking on the ownership of Didi’s old building. It’s owned by a guy named Pierre Dupree. Is that the guy y’all got the marker from?”
“This is all over my head.”
“You look a little uncomfortable, Bix. You don’t have a meth problem, do you?”
“I don’t have any kind of problem,” Bix said, leaning forward, pointing his stiffened fingers into his own chest. “It’s you who’s got the problem, Purcel. You were a dirty cop. Everybody laughed at you behind your back. Why do you think our whores slept with you? It’s because Didi Gee told them to. I put you in a cab once outside the Dos Marinos. You had puke on your clothes and cooze on your face. Why are you staring at me like that?”
“I think you’re scared.”
“Of you?”
“No, of somebody else. I think you and your lamebrain friends went out on your own and ended up stepping in your own shit. Now you’ve gotten somebody else jammed up, and they’re about to clamp jumper cables on your ears. That’s it, isn’t it, or something close to it?”
“What gave you this brilliant idea?”
“All this time you haven’t said anything about money. Every one of you guys has got only one thing on the brain, and it’s money. Y’all never talk about anything else. Not sex, not sports, not politics, not your families. You talk about money from morning to night. You never get enough of it, you don’t give five cents of it away, and you don’t tip in restaurants unless you can make a production out of it. For you guys, greed is a virtue. But there hasn’t been one peep out of you about the money you say I owe you. Are you hooked up with some kind of new action in the city? Something besides smash-and-grab scores on old people?”
