“My enterprises tend to be cash-only. I made a mistake giving marked bills to a hooker. I was treating some businessmen. There’s nothing illegal in what I was doing.”
“Solicitation is not illegal?”
“I gave her money to be an escort. Her and maybe some of her friends. Both white and black ladies. It wasn’t a big deal. It’s part of the business. Where you been?”
“That remark you made about my mother? I let it pass because you’re dealing with an individual who is a big deal. I think you know it, too.”
“I got to piss. Get yourself a beer out of the refrigerator.”
He went into a hallway bathroom and closed the door. I heard him flush the toilet but heard no water run from the faucet. He came back in the kitchen and upended his beer bottle, the foam bubbling inside the neck. I heard a metallic clanking sound out in the dark. He stared at the screen door. “What’s he doing out there?”
I didn’t have a chance to reply. Clete came through the door with an aluminum boat paddle and slammed it across Bottoms’s head, knocking him sideways out of the chair.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Go see what’s in that barn,” Clete said. “There’s one dog dead in the straw. The others got sores all over them. The stink is awful. Get up, Jess.”
“No,” Bottoms said, holding his face.
Clete lifted Bottoms to his feet, then drove his head into the counter and beat it on the rim of the sink. Bottoms fell in a heap on the floor, his eyes crossed, his forehead laid open.
“Ease up, Clete,” I said.
“Stay out of it, Dave.”
Clete picked up the beer bottle and shoved it in the garbage disposal and flipped on the switch. The glass clanked and splintered and screeched and rumbled through the drainpipe. Clete hauled up Bottoms by his belt and wrapped one of his suspender straps around the faucet, then shoved Bottoms’s right hand into the disposal unit and rested his thumb on the wall switch. “Try taking out your big boy without fingers, Jess. Where’d the marked money come from?”
“A robbery,” Bottoms said, his face the color and texture of someone slipping into shock.
“Not good enough, Jess,” Clete said.
“The strap’s around my throat. I cain’t breathe.”
“Try.”
Bottoms was crying. I rested my hand on Clete’s shoulder. “It’s not worth it,” I said.
“Back off, Streak.”
“I will not,” I said, easing myself between him and Bottoms. I slipped the suspender strap from the faucet and lowered Bottoms to the floor.
“Don’t mess this up,” Clete said.
I squatted down next to Bottoms. “Jess is going to help us. We’re also going to have the Humane Society out here. Right, Jess? Are we on the same wavelength?”
But he couldn’t answer. He had obviously suffered a concussion or maybe a skull fracture.
“Take your time, partner,” I said. “Look on the bright side.”
He coughed and spat in a handkerchief, then wiped his face with it. “The guy who did the robbery gave it to a whore. To give her a better life or some bullshit. I took it from the whore and gave some of it to Dautrieve. The guy came in my yard and said I either get every dollar back and give it to him or I’m going somewhere I cain’t imagine. But that bitch Dautrieve had already spent some of it.”
“What did the guy look like?”
“He was wearing a hood. I couldn’t see his face. Except for his eyes. They looked like slits.”
I glanced at Clete. “Richetti,” he said.
“Who’s Richetti?” Bottoms said.