"They said my urine was dirty when I come back to the house the other day. I say you can look at my arm, I ain't got no new tracks. The proctor, she says I'm skin popping in my thighs, the other women halfways seen it in the shower. I ain't skin popped, though, that's the troot, and I ain't smoked no rock in thirty-seven days."
"How'd you U.A. dirty, then?" Clete said.
She picked at her earlobe and raised her eyebrows. "Don't ax me," she said.
"Why'd Mookie kill your John?" I asked.
"He said he was doing it to hep out some friends. He said the guy didn't have no bidness messing around with black women, anyway."
"You work for Dock Green, Brandy?" I asked.
"I got a street manager."
"You got a Murphy artist," Clete said.
Her jawbone flexed along one cheek.
"Why'd Mookie let you slide?" I asked.
"He said he liked me. He said I could have China white, all the rock, all the tar I want, all I gotta do is ax. He was smoking rock in his car. He got a look in his face that makes me real scared. Suh, I gotta get out of Lou'sana or he's gonna find me again."
"You've got to give me more information, Brandy," I said.
"You the po-liceman from New Iberia?"
"That's right."
"He know all about you. He know about this one wit' you, too."
Clete had started to light a cigarette. He took it out of his mouth and looked at her.
"He was saying, now this is what he say, this ain't my words, 'If the fat one come around again where he ain't suppose to be, I got permission to burn his kite.'"
"When was this?" I said.
"A week ago. Maybe two weeks ago. I don't remember."
"Is there a way I can get a message to this guy?" Clete asked.
"I don't know no more. I ain't axed for none of this. Y'all gonna give me train fare for me and my li'l boy?"
I pulled an envelope from my back pocket and handed it to her.
"This ain't but two hundred dollars," she said.
"My piggy bank's tapped out," I said.
"That means it's out of the man's pocket," Clete said.
"It don't seem very much for what I tole y'all."
"I think I'll take a walk, throw some rocks at the garfish. Blow the horn when you're ready to boogie. Don't you love being around the life?" Clete said.
The night before the election I lay in the dark and tried to think my way through the case. Why had the gargantuan black man with the conked hair hung around New Orleans after the hit on the screenwriter? Unless it was to take out Mingo Bloomberg? Or even Clete?
But why expect reasonable behavior of a sociopath?
The bigger question was who did he work for? Brandy Grissum had said the black man had made a threat on Clete one or two weeks ago, which was before we visited Dock Green. But Dock had probably already heard we'd been bumping the furniture around, so the time frame was irrelevant.