The man named Klute drained the foam out of the bottle and lay the bottle flat on the bar. He spun it in a circle with one finger, then glanced at Clete. His mouth was small, his teeth tiny, spaced apart. “You’re not gonna do something silly, are you?”
“Dave and I are going to eat, then we’re leaving. I shouldn’t have been preaching about weed and such. I’ve got addiction issues myself. I just don’t like to see you screwing up these kids, because if there’s any product in this room, you brought it here.”
“Hang around and see what they’re doing later,” said the man playing with the bottle. “Ever hear of a Crisco party?”
“I think you’re full of it, Jack,” Clete said.
“You’re a familiar kind of guy,” the man said. “You did something in ’Nam you can’t forgive yourself for, so you go around playing the good guy and sucking up to any titty-baby bunch of knee-jerk liberals that’ll let you clean their toilets.”
Clete’s eyes were green marbles, devoid of expression, as though he had floated away into a serene environment no one else could see. He seemed to gaze out the window like a man about to fall asleep. He blinked and rested one hand on top of the bar. He picked up his cigarette lighter and dropped it into his pocket. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes had flattened and turned into tiny green threads, the skin white and as smooth as clay. He pursed his lips and breathed slowly through his nose, then smiled at the two men.
The man named Klute seemed bewitched by Clete’s tranquility and appeared to have no idea what was occurring. Clete fitted his hand around the man’s neck and drove his face into the oak bib of the bar, smashing it again and again into the wood. Then he elbowed the other man in the face, kicked his feet out from under him, and proceeded to stomp both men into pulp, coating the brass rail, balancing himself with one hand, breaking bone or teeth or cartilage or anything he could find with the flat of his shoe.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to pull him back. I could smell the heat and funk and rage and trapped beer-sweat in his clothes, see the acne scars and flame on the back of his neck, the grease in his pores, the moisture glistening on the tips of his little-boy haircut, and I knew there was no way I could restrain him, any more than I could save a drowning man who would take down his rescuer if necessary.
Then he went to one knee, fumbling his wallet from his back pocket, spilling the contents, digging out the photo of the Jewish woman and her three children on their way to the gas chamber, sticking it in the unrecognizable faces of the two mercenaries. “See that?” he said. “Look at it! That’s what you’re responsible for. I’d shove this down your mouths, but you’re not worthy to touch these people’s picture.”
He stood up, steadying himself on the bar, and wiped the picture on his shirt and folded it carefully and put it in his shirt pocket. A rivulet of blood slid from the bandaged knife wound in his left arm. The people in the room had become statues, unable to speak, avoiding eye contact with us or each other. Isolde held her hands over her mouth. The only person who reacted was Johnny Shondell. He laid his Gibson on a couch and picked up a bar towel and knelt by the two men on the floor, then looked up at Clete and me. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “What’d these guys do? Mr. Clete, this isn’t you.” He paused. “Is it?”
I gathered up the contents of Clete’s wallet, and the two of us walked outside and left the door open behind us, the rain sweeping inside, the wind shredding the palm trees. In seconds our clothes were drenched, and Clete’s Panama hat was torn off his head and flying end over end down the beach, where it was sucked into the surf. Clete stared at it blankly, his swollen, blood-streaked fists hanging at his sides, seemingly bewildered by the storm taking place around him.
Chapter Eight
COPS FROM BOTH Mississippi and New Iberia were at my house the next day. I denied any knowledge of Clete’s whereabouts. I didn’t have to lie, either. I had told Clete to get lost and not tell me where. A Mississippi plainclothes told me the man who took the worst hits looked like a volleyball wrapped with barbed wire.
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Does he have a sheet?”
“He was up on a rape charge in the army. The nurse was afraid to testify.”
“How about the other guy?”
“Pretty much a wannabe. A couple of domestic-abuse charges. He went to a phony merc school in the Everglades.”
We were standing in my front yard, the trees aglow with red and gold leaves. “Anything else?” I said.
“I grew up in Mississippi. My father was in the Klan. He was uneducated and poor and thought they could offer him a better life.”
I kept my face empty and gazed at some children riding their bicycles over the concrete sidewalk that was cracked and peaked by the huge oak roots in front of my house.
“My father was at the liberation of Dachau,” the plainclothes said. “When he came back home, he burned his robes in the backyard. You know where I’d like to be in weather like this?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Palm Beach. I hear the kingfish are running night and day. A couple of weeks in a place like that and a man could forget all his troubles.”
Four days later, Clete called me on my cell phone. “Where are you?” I said.
“Down by Cocodrie. Anybody been around?”
“What do you think?”
“How bad is it going to be?”
“Just stay off the radar awhile,” I said.
“I checked out the guy with the house in Bay St. Louis. His name is Eddy Firpo. He screws every musician he gets his hands on.”
“Forget about Eddy Firpo. Just stay out of town. Here as well as New Orleans.”