“I hear people in Miami and New Or-yuns talk.”
“Unhook me. I’ll give you a free pass. You got my word.”
“Do you want to be my friend?”
“I think you’re a righteous dude. Everybody has a few character defects.”
“You know what I’ll do if you lie, don’t you?”
“I got a sense of your potential when you poured Drano down Tony Nemo’s throat.”
Smiley got up and stuck the semi-auto into his pants pocket. His stomach was pouched over his waistband. He leaned down, pausing long enough to search Clete’s eyes. He popped the manacle with Clete’s key and stepped back.
Clete pushed himself up in bed, his hands in full view. “What’d you do with my piece?”
“Your thirty-eight?”
“Yeah, my thirty-eight.”
“You’ll find it when you go wee-wee.”
“You dropped my thirty-eight in the bowl?”
“I flushed first.”
“Can I dress?”
“No.”
“This is getting to be a drag. Will you tell me what you want and get out of my life?”
“I want to hire you to cover my back. I’ll be your friend.”
“I appreciate the compliment, but you’ve killed too many people. I think you enjoy it. That’s not a good sign.”
“The people I killed hurt children.”
“I don’t think that one will wash, Wimple. Sorry. Smiley.”
“If they didn’t hurt children, they protected people who did. Are you calling me a liar?”
“Look, you did me a solid once. You took out a former gunbull who was two seconds from snuffing my wick. But you started a gunfight that killed a female detective. She was my lady for a while. That one won’t go away.”
“It was an accident.”
“Te
ll her that.”
Smiley’s teeth looked like rows of tiny white pearls, the gums barely holding them in place. His nostrils were slits. “In or out?”
“Out,” Clete replied, his eyes flat. He waited, his mouth dry.
“You’re making me mad,” Smiley said.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Smiley stood up from the chair. “Sometimes I do bad things when I get mad.”