Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“Where?”

“Sticks Billiards. In Lafayette. We got a bad connection here?”

“I know where you live, Pookie. Smart off one more time, and I’m going to stuff you into a hamster cage.”

“I’m only axing for a little respect here.”

“I apologize. But I don’t need termites in my building or in my head. Now, what do you want?”

“I was shooting some eight ball, taking down this blimp with an ass on him like a washtub, when guess which two clowns come through the door and blow my action. To be more specific, guess which two guys announce to everybody in the place, ‘Hey, Pookie, glad to see you’re not eighty-sixed no more. Leave us the bones.’?”

“Sorry I missed this world-shaking event,” Clete said.

“Put the cork in it, Purcel. It was JuJu and Maximo. Both of them look like somebody tried to screw their heads into a fire hydrant.”

“That breaks me up.”

“Maybe it should. Because the first thing they ax is if I’ve seen you around. I told them you got an office in New Iberia. So Maximo says, ‘No, that ain’t what we axed. We don’t need nobody to tell us how to use the phone book. We’re axing where that fat shit hangs out. Where’s he get his knob polished, that kind of thing.’?”

“Somebody put you up to this?”

“I’m trying to do a favor here.”

“The last favor you did was to talk your mother out of committing suicide because she defecated you into the world.”

There was a pause. “I’ll say this once. JuJu ain’t a bad guy. The tomato picker with him has done eight or nine contract hits. The word is Tony the Nose bought your markers. If that’s true, pay him or find an igloo on the North Pole.”

“There’re no Eskimos on the North Pole.”

“You can be the first.”

The line went dead.

Clete took his .38 snub from its holster and flipped out the cylinder, rotating it idly with his thumb. What to do? Nothing. Let them come to him. There was nothing like a bullet in the center of the forehead to get your point across.

His thoughts were self-serving, and he knew it. The guy who blew out your wick was always a nasty little hornet like Maximo, a disposable psychopath who watched Saturday-morning cartoons and had a three-hundred-pound mistress whose lap he sat in for a photograph and then put the photo on the Internet.

Clete found the business card that Carolyn Ardoin had given him and dialed the cell number on it. “I thought I’d ring and let you know I’ll be checking on Homer as often as I can,” he said.

“Mr. Smith told me you bought Homer a ball and glove and bat. That was probably one of the best gifts that boy ever had.”

“I happened to see them on sale.”

“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit, Mr. Purcel.”

Clete couldn’t remember why he had called. Or maybe he did. It wasn’t easy to talk to normal women. “Is the weather pretty nice over there?”

“In Jennings?” she said.

“Yeah, it’s a couple parishes over from us. I wondered if the weather was the same.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s like yours in New Iberia.”

“It’s a swell day here.”

“Are you worried about Homer?”

“I was also wondering, you know, are you a married lady? I mean, I didn’t see you wearing a wedding ring.”