I slipped my .45 from my holster, pulled back the slide on a hollow-point round, and moved through the trees toward the rear of the shack while Clete approached the front. The water had receded only recently, and the sand was wet and curled over my tennis shoes like soft cement. I heard sound inside the shack, then realized a radio was playing. It was Ravel's Bolero, compelling and incessant, building like a painful obsession you can't let go of.
I came out of the trees ten feet from the rear of the shack and saw Clete poised by the front entrance, his face waiting. I held up my hand, then brought it down and we both went in at the same time.
Except my foot punched through a plank on the back step that was as soft as rotted cork. I stumbled into the interior still limping, my .45 pointed straight out with both hands. Clete was silhouetted against the broken light beyond the front door, his rifle hanging from his right hand. He was looking at something on the floor.
Then I saw him, amidst the litter of soiled clothes and fishing gear and barbells. He lay on his back by a small table with a shortwave radio on it, dressed in jeans, a sleeveless green T-shirt, suspenders, his bare feet like pale white blocks of wood. A dark pool shaped like a deformed three-leaf clover swelled from the back of his neck. I knelt beside him.
He opened his mouth and coughed on an obstruction deep in his throat.
His tongue was as red and bright as licorice. I started to turn him on his side.
“Don't do it, chief,” he whispered. “He broke the shank off inside.”
“Who did this to you, Emile?”
“Never saw him. A pro. Maybe that cocksucker Marsallus.”
His eyes came together like BB's, then refocused on my face.
“We're going to put you on my boat, then get you out in the bay so a chopper can pick you up,” I said.
But he was already shaking his head before I finished my words. His eyes slid off my face onto my shirt.
“What is it?” I said.
“Lean close.”
I lowered my ear toward his mouth, then realized that was not what he wanted. His hand lifted up and clenched around my religious medal and chain, knotted it across his knuckles, held me hovering above the shrunken pinpoints of his eyes.
“I ain't got the right words. Too many bad gigs, chief. I apologize for the Dutchie,” he whispered.
When his hand fell from my chain, his breath mushroomed out of his mouth and struck against my face like a fist. A bottle fly crawled across his eyes.
Clete clicked off the dial on the shortwave set. The dead radio tubes crackled in the silence.
Chapter 33
NEXT MORNING Helen Soileau walked with me into Clete's office on Main.
The front and back doors were open, and the papers in Clete's wire baskets lifted and ruffled in the breeze. Helen looked around the office.
“Where's Avon's answer to the Beast of Buchenwald?” she said.
“What's the problem?” Clete said from behind his desk, trying to smile.
“They knew we were coming, that's the problem,” she said.
“Terry? Come on,” he said.
“Where is she?” Helen said.
“Getting some stuff photocopied.”
“Does she have any scratches on her?” I said.
“You want me to strip-search my secretary?”
“It's not funny, Clete,” I said.