The cab drove away. Chester stood among the crowd on the pavement, the arc lights burning overhead, his knees scraped from the fall. He watched the two black guys walk away and get into an old Honda in the parking lot. Chester grabbed the next taxi in line, one driven by an Arab who had turned his cab into a bead-strung mosque that smelled of burning incense and was filled with yowling sounds. “My name is Chester. What’s yours?”
“Mohammed,” the driver said.
“Do you see those two black boys?”
“I see them, sir.”
“They’re friends of mine. I want to go where they go.”
The driver turned all the way around to get a full look at his passenger. He had a beard like shaggy black rope wrapped under his nose and scrolled on his cheeks. “I have seen those two men before. They are not good young men, sir.”
“They’re bad?”
“They are very bad.”
“They shouldn’t be acting like that,” Chester said. “I’ll tell them.”
The driver started the meter and drove onto I-10, not far behind the Honda.
They crossed the river into Algiers and continued into a neighborhood of empty buildings, alleys oozing trash, bars on windows, rap music blaring from a club, hookers strolling under the neon. Up ahead, the Honda pulled in to the gravel drive of a darkened frame house built up from the street. There were no lights inside.
“Let me out,” Chester said.
“Maybe you should let me take you somewhere else, sir,” the driver said.
“This is as far as I go. How much is the fare?”
“Twenty-eight dollars.”
Chester got out and paid the driver through the window. He added a five-dollar tip. “I like your music.”
“Thank you, sir,” the driver said. “God is good.”
Chester squinted to show that he didn’t understand.
“Be careful, sir,” the driver said. “There are evil men in the world.”
Chester watched the taxi drive away, then began wheeling his bag down the broken sidewalk toward the elevated house. Someone had turned on a light in back, and he saw a shadow move across the kitchen window. There were no streetlamps on the block. He pulled his bag between two cars whose engines had been stripped, and unlocked and unzipped his wheelie bag and removed a nickel-plated snub-nose .357 Magnum from the gun case inside the bag. He walked up the steps of the house, set down his beach bag, and rested his wheelie against the wall, then worked on a pair of thin cotton gloves. The screen and inside door were unlocked. He stepped inside and walked through the living room and into the hallway. The two black guys were eating out of cans at the kitchen table, their cigarettes burning in an ashtray, quart bottles of beer by their elbows.
“Hi, again. My name is Chester. You hurt my knees and made fun of Miss Birdie.”
“How the fuck—” the taller guy began.
“A taxi. Some people call me Smiley. Know why?”
They stared at the revolver in his hand and shook their heads. “No,” one of them said, so frightened that his mouth did not move and Chester could not tell which one had spoken.
“I like children. They make me happy,” Chester said. “You were very bad.”
“We didn’t mean nothing,” the shorter one said. There was dried food on his bottom lip. His fork was trembling on top of an open tuna can.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“Sure, man,” the tall one said, as though he had been released from a bathysphere. “Sit down. You want a beer?” He raked back a chair, his face popping sweat.
“You didn’t say it like you meant it,” Chester said.
“We mean it, man! Come on, man, don’t point that at me. Please.”
Just as lightning crashed into someone’s yard, Chester shot each of them, one through the throat, one through the chest. They were still alive when he stood over them and shot them again. Then he sprinkled their uneaten food in their faces and turned off the light and retrieved his beach bag and travel case and went out the back door.
A soft rain was falling, the clouds flickering, thunder rolling dully across the wetlands. The wheels on his bag clicked monotonously down the broken sidewalks, past the abandoned buildings that were probably shooting galleries, past the club that shook with rap music. The hookers had gone inside, out of the rain. He stared through the window at the people inside and smiled at the way they danced and seemed to enjoy themselves. The neon glow of the club slid off his body like dissolving watercolor. See? he thought. Life wasn’t complicated at all. In a minute he would be gone, subsumed inside the great American night, a tiny point of light inside a galaxy that became a snowy road arching into infinity.
He tilted back his head and let the rain fall into his mouth. He licked the drops off his lips as he would sprinkles on ice cream.
Clete had gone home for lunch. Homer was at private school in the little town of Cade, on the other side of Spanish Lake. Clete had begun splitting a loaf of warm French bread to make a po’boy sandwich when he looked out the window and saw the police cruiser turn in to the motor court and stop in front of his cottage; a woman was behind the wheel. The cruiser had dents and scratches on it, and one headlight hung lower than the other. It was the kind of vehicle that law enforcement agencies often issued to minority members years ago.
A tall brunette woman in jeans and a white shirt and unshined western boots got out and knocked on the door. Clete looked around the room. Homer’s baseball bat and glove were on a chair. He threw his raincoat over them and opened the door.
“Detective Sherry Picard,” she said. “I need a few minutes of your time.”
“I’m about to eat.”
“Put it on hold.” She stepped inside.
“Why don’t you just come in?” he said, shutting the door after her.
“Go ahead with what you were doing.” She sat down at a table by the window and took a pad and ballpoint from her shirt pocket. “You have a nice view.”
“Look, Miss Sherry—”
“Detective.”
“Yes, ma’am. I got to get back to—”
“I’m here for two reasons, Mr. Purcel. We’re looking for a missing kid named Homer Penny. Not ‘missing’ in the real sense but missing from the system, if you get my meaning. Someone went into the crime scene where his father was tortured to death and took his clothes from a dresser. Know who might have done that?”
“Someone who knew the kid needed his clothes. Someone who knew the kid would be better off on the moon than in the hands of the people who returned him to his father.”
Her eyes went to the chair where Clete had thrown the raincoat. One flap hung over the tip of the baseball bat.
“The second reason I’m here is about Kevin Penny. We found a gold cigarette lighter in the trailer. It belongs to Detective Labiche. But he’s got an explanation. He was sent there by Sheriff Soileau to interview Penny.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t go there for other reasons.”
“You’re not a fan?”
“Labiche is a dirty cop.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can smell one. He also has a hard-on for Dave Robicheaux.”
“Thanks for telling me that. Who’s Labiche on a pad for?”
“Tony Nine Ball. Maybe some meth guys in East Texas. Maybe some greaseballs in Tampa or Miami. Take your choice. We’re everybody’s punch.”
“You know who Maximo Soza and JuJu Ladrine are?”
“One’s a psychopath, the other has a triple-A battery for a brain. They both work for Tony.”
“You think they’re capable of crucifying a man and drilling his elbows and knees?”
“Maximo would do it in a blink. It’s not like JuJu.”
“What would be the motivation?”
“What motivates these guys to do anything? Half the things they believe don’t exist. They’re the dumbest shits on earth. That’s why they’re criminals.”