“You poisoned my drink?”
“We’re kind to people with pickled brains.”
Clete picked up his porkpie hat from the bar and put it on. “Don’t let me in here again.”
He went outside into a misting rain and the smell of the bayou. In the distance he could see lights burning in the sugarcane refinery and smoke rising from the stacks, electricity leaping through the thunderheads. A gas-guzzler was idling in the parking lot, the driver’s door open, the ignition wires hanging under the dashboard. Travis Lebeau had assumed the position, both hands on the hood, his legs spread.
Don’t do this, said a voice inside Clete’s head.
“Why y’all bracing this poor bastard?” Clete said.
“We know you?” Axel said.
“Clete Purcel. I got a PI office on Main Street.”
“So you know what ‘on the job’ means. In your case, it also means get lost.”
“This guy’s my confidential informant. That makes my lawyer his counsel. That means right of presence extends to me.”
Axel laughed. “Where’d you get that?”
“The guy’s trying to go straight,” Clete said. “Give him a break.”
“He stole this car,” Axel said. “Check the ignition.”
“I got the pink slip,” Travis said over his shoulder. “I lost the key.”
“I’ll take him home,” Clete said.
“You’re interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty,” Axel said.
“You were the guard who stuck a sock down an inmate’s throat?”
“No, this is what I did,” Axel said. “Because he doesn’t know when to leave the wrong broad alone.” He inserted a short wood club between Travis’s legs and wedged it into his colon. Travis clenched his buttocks, the blood draining from his face. “Got the message?” Axel said.
“Yeah!” Travis said, his knees shaking.
Axel pulled the club loose. “That’s better. We’re getting there.”
“You’re on a pad for a pimp?” Clete said to Axel.
“We’re telling you this guy is driving drunk and probably driving a stolen car,” the other man said. His hair was scalped on the sides. There was a circle of whiskers around his mouth. “We’ll put him on a D-ring and have his car towed, then buy you a drink. How about it?”
“Who’s the pimp y’all in with?” Clete said.
Axel turned around and rested the point of his club on Clete’s sternum. “You’re way over the line, lard-ass.” He moved the club up Clete’s chest to his throat and chin. “You copy?”
Clete’s right hand opened and closed in the darkness. He gazed at the rain rings on the bayou, the wobbling reflection of a house trailer on its surface. The wind changed, and he smelled an odor like mushrooms on a grave, like a disturbed bog deep in a swamp, the water swelling over his shoes and ankles. Someone pushed open the front door of the nightclub. Clete heard the woman on the stage singing a tale about the House of the Rising Sun.
“Take the baton out of my face, please,” he said.
“No problem,” Axel said. “We cool?”
“No.”
“You’re Robicheaux’s cornhole buddy, aren’t you.”
“We both worked homicide at NOPD. Before that we walked a beat on Canal and in the Quarter.”