nightclub for greaseballs, I guess.'
'Sounds all right.'
He took a cigarette out of his package of Camels and held it for a moment in his big hand, then he set it down on the desk blotter and put a stick of gum in his mouth. His eyes smiled at me while he chewed.
'The problem is that a lot of it's a drag,' he said. 'Discovery investigations for lawyers, stuff like that. It's not like the old days in Homicide when we used to really make them wince. You remember when we-'
'No, I don't remember, Clete.'
'Come on, Dave. It was all full-tilt boogie rock 'n' roll back then. You loved it, mon. Admit it.' He kept grinning, and his teeth clicked while he chewed his gum.
'Why the piece?'
'It gets interesting once in a while. I run down bail jumpers for a couple of bondsmen. Pimps, street dealers, bullshit like that. What a bunch. I think the Orkin Company ought to get serious in this town. I'm not kidding you, New Orleans is turning to shit. The fucking lowlifes have crawled out of the cracks.'
I looked at my watch.
'You're worried about your parking meter or something?' he said.
'Sorry. I just need to be back in New Iberia this afternoon.'
'How's everything at home?'
'It's okay. Good.'
The smile went out of his eyes. I looked away from him.
He spread his fingers on the desk blotter. His hands looked as big as skillets.
'Bootsie's having trouble again?' he said.
'Yes.'
'How bad?'
'You never know. One day's fine and full of bluebirds. The next day the gargoyles come out of the closet.'
He took the gum out of his mouth and dropped it in the wastebasket. I heard him take a deep breath through his nose.
'Let's walk on over to the Pearl and have some oysters,' he said. 'Then we'll talk about these three buttwipes you're looking for.'
'I'm a little tapped out right now.'
'I've got a tab there. I never pay it, but that's what tabs are for. Let's get out into this beautiful day.'
We walked down Bourbon, which was becoming more crowded with tourists now, past the T-shirt shops, jazz clubs and strip joints that advertised nude dancers and French orgies, to the corner of St. Charles and Canal, where we went inside the Pearl and sat at the long counter that ran the length of the restaurant. The tables were covered with checkercloth, wood-bladed fans turned overhead, and the e re black men in aprons were shucking open raw oysters over the ice bins behind the bar. We ordered two dozen on the half-shell, a glass of iced tea for me and a small pitcher of draft for Clete.
'Run it by me again,' he said.
I went over all the details of Garrett's murder, the shootout, the description of three intruders, the names I had heard them call each other while my ears had roared like the sea with the sound of my own blood.
Clete was silent, his green eyes thoughtful under his porkpie hat while he squeezed a lemon on his oysters and dotted them with Tabasco sauce.
'I don't know about the guy named Eddy or the guy with the scrap metal in his mouth,' he said. 'But this sawed-off character named Jewel sounds like a local I used to know. I haven't seen him around in a while, but I think we might be talking about Jewel Fluck.'
'What?'
'You heard me. That's his name. His family came from Germany and he grew up in the Channel. He tried to make it as a jockey out at Jefferson Downs, but he was too heavy and so worked as a hot-walker till they caught him doping a horse. He's a mean little bastard, Dave.'
'Fluck? '
'You got it. Maybe his name screwed him up. When you think of Jewel Fluck, think of a hornet somebody just poured hot water on.'
'Why doesn't he have a record?'
'He does. In Mississippi. I think he did four or five years in Parchman.'
'What for?'
'Cutting up a colored guy who was scabbing on a job. Or something like that. Look, the only reason I know about this guy is he hid out a bail jumper I was looking for. The jumper was in the AB. I heard Fluck is, too.'
'The Aryan Brotherhood?'
'Integrated jails breed them like fungus. I used to think it was the Black Muslims we had to worry about. But this is your genuine psychopathic white trash with a political cause up their butts. Hitler would have loved them.'
He signaled the bartender for another pitcher of beer.
'Something wrong with your oysters?' he said.
'I'm just trying to figure this guy's tie-in with Weldon Sonnier,' I said.
'Maybe it was just a robbery gone bad, Dave. Maybe it's not that complicated a deal.'
'You didn't see the inside of the house. They really did a number on it. They were after something specific.'
'Maybe this Sonnier guy is holding some dope. We live in greedy times. The coke money's a big temptation. A lot of straights have nosed up to the trough.'
'It could be. When's the last time you saw Fluck?'
'A year or so ago. I don't think he's around town. I'll ask around, though. Look, Dave, from what you've told me, this Sonnier character has invited a pile of shit into his life. He also sounds like one of these white-collar cocksuckers who think cops have about the same status as their yardmen. Maybe it's time he learned the facts of life.'
'Sir, could you watch your language, please?' the bartender said.
'What?' Clete said.
'Your language.'
'What about my language?'
'We're okay here,' I said to the bartender. He nodded and walked farther down the bar and started mixing a drink.
Clete continued to stare after him.
'Does Fluck still have relatives in New Orleans?' I asked.
'I don't know,' he answered, his eyes coming back into mine. 'His mother probably wishes she'd thrown him away and raised the afterbirth. Forget about Fluck a minute. I've got a thought, a funny memory about somebody. The guy with the crowbar, the one named Eddy, tell me what he looked like again.'
'His head was real big, his face full of bone. The kind you break your fist on.'
'Did he have a tattoo?'
'I don't remember.'
'A red and yellow tiger on his right arm?'
I tried to see it in my mind's eye, but the only image that came back was the bone-heavy face and the ridges of muscle under the T-shirt.
'Maybe I couldn't even pull him out of a lineup with any certainty,' I said.
'There's one guy around town, he has a head like a tree. His name's Raintree, from Baton Rouge. I don't know his first name, though.'
'Go on.'
'I get a security retainer out at the yacht club. Sometimes I check out backgrounds on potential members, keep out the riffraff supposedly, which means the south-of-the-border crowd. The tomato pickers are very big on clubs these days. But I also do security at dances, receptions, Republican geek shows, that kind of stuff. So one night Bobby Earl has a big gig out there. It's black-tie stuff, respectable, people from the Garden District, no Red
