“That would do it,” Clete said.
“Killing someone? I don’t believe that.”
“When are you going to wake up about that guy?” Clete said. He went to the icebox and took out a quart bottle of beer and began chugging it, then paused. “Excuse me for doing this in front of you, but it’s my feeding time. Plus, I can’t stand listening to you protect a silver spoon con man like Nightingale.”
“I’d like to talk with Kevin Penny,” I said. “Where’s he in custody?”
“He isn’t. The guy he cut across the face decided he doesn’t remember who mutilated him. Penny lives in a shithole south of Jennings.”
I took a Dr Pepper out of the icebox and sipped it while Clete finished his beer. Outside, I heard raindrops as fat as nickels clicking on the canvas top of Clete’s Caddy.
* * *
IT WAS STILL raining when Clete and I got off I-10 at Jennings and drove south to an Airstream trailer perched on blocks by a pond dark with sediment and coated with floating milk cartons and raw garbage. A dirt bike was parked in an open-sided shed. Clete cut the lights and took his .38 white-handled snub-nose from his shoulder holster and put it under the seat, then removed a sap and a pair of brass knuckles from the glove box and slipped them into his slacks.
“Leave your piece,” he said.
“Why?”
“If it goes down and Penny gets his hand on a gun, he’ll kill everybody in the room. When we have time, I’ll show you a video of what he did to three black guys on the yard at Quentin.”
“He’s not your ordinary pimp?”
“Penny is not your ordinary anything.”
Clete knocked on the door. I was wearing a raincoat and a rain hat pulled down on my eyes. A man with a complexion like mold on a lamp shade opened it. His expression seemed to shape and reshape itself as though he couldn’t make up his mind about what he was seeing. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, his cargo pants buttoned under the navel. The inside of the trailer was a wreck.
“What do you want?”
“A few minutes, Kev,” Clete said. “This is my friend Dave Robicheaux.”
His eyes seemed to burn into my face. Then his expression lightened. “You a cop?”
“Why do you think that?” I said.
“They walk like their underwear is too tight or they got a suppository up their ass.”
“I treated you righteous, Kev,” Clete said. “Lose the hostility.”
“So what do you want?”
“Jimmy Nightingale’s cousin says she fired you. I didn’t think that was right. She also said you were a yardman. That didn’t ring right, either. Help me out here.”
His eyes went from Clete to me and then to Clete again. “That bitch said that?”
“You got it.”
“Come in.”
He closed the door behind us. “Sit down.”
A half-eaten pizza lay in a delivery box on a breakfast table. A television set rested in the sink. A bed against the wall was layered with skin magazines. I tried to keep my expression neutral.
“Why you looking at me?” he said.
“Clete showed me your sheet,” I said. “You were in three mainline joints. But you don’t have any tats.”
“Pencil dicks need tats. Want to find the biggest sissy on the yard? Check the guy with sleeves. What’d that bitch say?”