“Maybe I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. You want Grimes, I’ll give you Grimes.”
“I didn’t think AB guys did that.”
“So I’m making an exception. Grimes deserves anything that happens to him. Also, I’m tearing up your marker.”
“You already missed your opportunity. I’ll find Grimes on my own. If I discover you told him to hurt Miss Alice, I’m going to cancel your whole ticket. In the meantime, you might start thinking about giving back your ink.”
“Say again?”
Clete Purcel pulled a small recorder from his pants pocket and rewound it until he isolated the moment when Bix had said he was making an exception to the code of the Aryan Brotherhood and was willing to rat out Waylon Grimes. “By tomorrow this will be on several Aryan-supremacist message boards.”
“You can’t do that, man.”
“Get on the Internet in the morning. You’re going to be a celebrity. Maybe I can get some pics from your jacket and post them on there.” Clete Purcel got in the Caddy and turned the ignition, an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth. “Look, go to a psychiatrist. Get some help. Getting over on you is like cruelty to animals. It’s really depressing.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, man. Hey, come back here. Come on, Purcel, we always got along. Hey, man, you don’t know what you’re doing. We’re old school, right?”
It was almost ten P.M. when Clete called me at the house. “I creeped Bix Golightly’s crib. His toilet seat is inlaid with silver dollars. His interior decorator must do the decor for cathouses.”
“You broke into Golightly’s apartment?”
“I got into his phone records and listened to all the messages on his machine. I also got into his computer. He’s a degenerate gambler. He must have half a dozen bookies and shylocks after him. That’s why he was trying to squeeze me. I think he’s been trying to fence some stolen paintings, too. Or forgeries. He had written some e-mails about an Italian painter. What does a guy like Golightly know about art?”
“Where are you now?”
“Over in Algiers. Golightly is parked by an old brick apartment building. I think that’s where Grimes is holed up.”
“Get out of there.”
“No, I’m going to take the pair of them down.”
“That’s really dumb, Clete.”
“So is letting one of them pour scalding water on my secretary.”
“Why’d you call me?”
“In case it doesn’t go right, I want you to know what happened. This is what I think is going on. Golightly is working for somebody he’s afraid of. He and Frankie Giacano got ahold of my marker and decided to score a few easy bucks, then somebody else came down on their case. Now Golightly is sweating marbles on several fronts. The old-time Giacanos always behaved like family men and lived in the suburbs and didn’t draw attention to themselves. Golightly and Frankie and Grimes broke the rule.”
“Are you carrying a drop?”
“I always carry one.”
“Don’t do what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t let myself know what I’m thinking. So how can I do what I’m thinking if I don’t know what I’m thinking? Lighten up, big mon.”
Try arguing with a mind-set like that.
Clete folded his cell phone and set it on the passenger seat of the Caddy. He was parked behind a truck on a tree-lined street in an old residential neighborhood of Algiers that had gone to seed and been rezoned for commercial development. Across the Mississippi, he could see the lights of the French Quarter and the black outline of the docks on the Algiers side and a greasy shine on the surface of the river. Bix Golightly’s van was parked just beyond the streetlamp at the corner, in the lee of a two-story purple brick building, Bix puffing on a cigarette behind the wheel, the window half down, smoke drifting in the wind.
Why didn’t Bix go in? Clete wondered. Was he waiting for Grimes to go to bed? Was he planning to pop him? It was possible. Bix usually hired button men, homicidal morons like Grimes, to do payback for him, but now his voice was on tape blowing off the AB, and in the meantime he’d probably brought some extra heat down on himself for queering somebody else’s action. Would Bix cap a guy like Grimes to wipe at least part of the slate clean?
Would anybody who knew Bix Golightly even ask the question?
Clete reached into his glove box and removed a. 32 auto that was one cut above junk. The numbers were acid-burned, the wood grips wrapped with electrician’s tape, the sight filed off. He dropped it in his coat pocket and got out of the Caddy and walked up the street in the shadows of the buildings. He saw Bix take a final hit off his cigarette and flick it sparking onto the asphalt. Showtime, Clete thought.
Then he realized why Bix had remained in his van. Two city cops came out of a corner cafe on the side street and got in their cruiser and drove through the intersection and on down toward the river. Ironically, they paid no attention to the van, but the cop in the passenger seat looked directly at Clete. The cruiser’s brake lights went on briefly, then it turned at the next intersection, and Clete knew he had not only been made, but by cops who considered him an adversary.
He reversed direction, got in the Caddy, throwing the drop in the glove box, and backed all way through an alley until he popped out on the next street, one block away, his mouth dry, his heart beating. He turned off his engine, his breath coming hard in his chest, and knew with no doubt what he had been planning for Bix Golightly and Waylon Grimes.
Just rein it in, he thought. You can still take them down. It doesn’t have to be for the whole ride.
Right?
Right, he answered himself.
He waited until he was sure the cruiser had left the neighborhood, then he got out of the Caddy and began walking up the alley toward the street where Golightly’s van was parked.
The inside of the apartment building was poorly lighted and smelled of old wallpaper and carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in months. Bix climbed the stairs to the second floor, taking them three at a time, pulling on the banister with the elasticity of a simian swinging through the trees. He felt a sense of anticipation he hadn’t experienced in years. The blood-pounding rush of a big score had long ago faded into a memory, like the joys of sex or flashing money at the track. Intravenous drugs once were a great source of pleasure and secret comfort, but they no longer got him high and he shot up only to maintain, as they said in the trade. Which meant he was a zero plugged into the end of a needle. The vices he could easily afford had become bland and uninteresting, and there were days when Bix felt that someone had done a smash-and-grab on his life.
He walked down a hallway that was lit by low-wattage bulbs inside fluted shades gray with dust, the wallpaper stiff from water seepage, the fire escape framed against the glow of the Quarter across the river. He paused in front of a door that had a metal number seven on it and slipped a credit card from his wallet and started to wedge it between the lock and the doorjamb, then realized the door was unlocked. He replaced the card in his wallet and put his wallet in his side pocket and peeled the Velcro strap off the. 25 auto strapped to his ankle. He twisted the knob a second time and stepped quickly inside the room.
It was almost totally dark. A digital clock glowed on top of a stereo; a television set was playing in the bedroom, the sounds of a woman in orgasm bleating from the speakers. Bix held the. 25 behind him, staring into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. “Waylon?” he said.
There was no response.
“It’s Bix. I got a little hotheaded on the phone. I’m getting too old and don’t know how to hold my water sometimes.”
The only sound in the room came from the porn film.
“Hey, Waylon, what’s going on?”
Bix felt on the wall for the light switch, the. 25 flat against his thigh. Then his hand froze on the switch. He stared at the silhouette of a man sitting in a cloth-covered chair, the red glow of the clock reflecting a nickel-plated
