“I was always pissed off at Sonny, I can't even tell you why. When I heard he got clipped, I felt really bad the way I treated him. I was in the can at Tujague's last night, washing my hands, and that strawberry bruise was gone.”
He held up the back of his hand in the sun's red glow off the dashboard.
“This stuff's in your mind, Clete.”
“Give me some credit, mon. My hand throbbed all the time. Now it doesn't. I think Johnny Carp used both of us to set up the whack.”
He turned left off the two-lane, drove past a collapsed three-story house that had been a gambling club in the sixties, then followed a dirt road to a woods where people had dumped raw garbage and mattresses and stuffed chairs in the weeds. Clete backed the Caddy into the gloom of the trees. The sun was below the horizon now, the air thick with birds.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Helen Soileau got the warrant on Sweet Pea's house. Guess what? He'd ripped the carpet out of his Caddy.”
The radio was off now, and when he cut the engine I heard movement in the trunk, a shift of weight, the scrape of shoe leather against metal.
“This is a mistake,” I said.
“Watch the show. He's a geek. Geeks get off on being the center of attention.”
Clete took a can of beer from the Styrofoam cooler in the backseat and popped the trunk. Sweet Pea Chaisson's long body was curled between the tire wells, his webbed eyes glistening in the enclosed heat, his tin-colored silk shirt swampy with sweat. He climbed out over the bumper, his small mouth compressed as though he were sucking a mint.
“Hey, Dave. What's the word, babe?” he said.
Clete shoved him backward across a log, onto the ground.
“Streak lost his shield, Sweet Pea. We're operating on different rules now. Bad time to be a wiseass, know what I'm saying?” Clete said.
Sweet Pea inserted his little finger into an empty space in his teeth, then looked at the blood on the tip of it and spit in the weeds. He grinned up at Clete.
“I got to go to the bat' room he said.
”Do it in your clothes,“ Clete said. Then to me, ”I found our man behind a colored juke joint. He was beating the shit out of one of his chippies with a rolled newspaper.“
”That was my wife,“ Sweet Pea said.
Clete pitched the can of beer into his lap.
”Rinse your mouth out. Your breath's bad,“ he said.
”T'anks, Purcel,“ Sweet Pea said, ripped the tab, and drank deeply from the can. His face was covered with pinpoints of sweat and dirt. ”Where we at?“ He looked off into the purple haze above the cane fields. ”Oh yeah, my mother's grave was right across them railway tracks.“
”Who put the whack on Sonny?“ Clete said.
”I live in Breaux Bridge now. A crawfish getting run over on the highway is big news there. How do I know?“
Sweet Pea tipped the beer can to his mouth. Clete kicked it into his face. Sweet Pea's lips were suddenly bright red, his eyebrows dripping with beer foam, his face quivering with the force of the blow. But not one sound came from his throat. I pushed Clete away from him.
”No more,“ I said.
”Take a walk down the road. Enjoy the evening. Stroll back in ten minutes,“ he said. His blue-black .38 one-inch hung from his right hand.
”We take him back to wherever you got him. That's the way it is, Cletus.“
”You're screwing it up, Streak.“
Behind me, I heard Sweet Pea stirring in the weeds, getting to his feet.
”Stay where you are, Sweet Pea,“ I said.