None of it worked, and Clete felt foolish talking to the rain. He walked through the trees to the water’s edge, his slippers sinking in the loam. The bayou was the color of café au lait, wrinkling in the wind like shriveled skin. His hand was squeezed tight on the grips of the .38. Maybe he had imagined it all. There was no wormlike creature anywhere except in his mind, which for years had been a repository of weed and alcohol.
He walked back to the cul-de-sac and his Caddy, then saw the slim-jim stuck solidly and abandoned between the driver’s window and the door. Clete reached under the back fender and removed the magnetized metal box that held his spare key, and unlocked the passenger door and removed a small flashlight from the glove box. He went to the driver’s side and shined the light on a few footprints that seemed inconsequential, then opened the car door with the key and searched the floor.
Nothing.
He pulled the slim-jim from the window and began searching the ground. Again nothing. Or almost nothing. Just as he clicked off the light, he saw a glimmer in the grass. He clicked the light on again and stooped down and touched a small glass tube with the flashlight’s case. It was a mercury tilt switch, probably homemade.
He went back into the cottage and pulled off his pajamas and dried off with a towel and put on clean clothes and wrote a note for Homer. Then he tore up the note and sat in a stuffed chair and stared out the window until daylight, when the rain thinned into rings on the bayou and fog bumping in thick clouds amid the tree trunks. When he thought of the glass tube’s implications, his shingles flared like a nest of heated wires between his shoulder blades, and the remnants of his undigested supper spilled into his mouth.
HE PULLED IN to my driveway at seven A.M., when I was feeding Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon on top of Tripod’s hutch. I fixed a pot of coffee and took it and two tin cups out to the redwood table in the backyard and filled our cups, waiting for him to explain why he had come to my door.
Clete’s face was a complex study, particularly during times of crisis or decision. The more intense the emotion, the more silent and withdrawn he became. The pattern never changed. He breathed evenly through his nose, his green eyes fixed on a hologram no one else saw. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes flattened and turned the color of papier-mâché, his forehead turning as cool as marble, the blood settling in his cheeks because it had nowhere else to go.
“Had an early visitor this morning,” he said. “In the middle of the storm.” He hooked a finger through the handle on the cup. The coffee was black and scalding hot, a wisp rising from it like a trail of cigarette smoke. He drank from the cup a sip at a time, then swilled half of it, swallowing with no discomfort.
“What happened?” I said.
“Somebody tried to put a bomb in my car.”
“You saw somebody around your car with a bomb?”
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“I went outside before he could finish jimmying the window. He ran off.”
“How do you know he had a bomb?”
“I found a tilt switch in the grass next to the driver’s door.” He saw the confusion in my face. “It’s a glass tube that’s got mercury in it. It’s attached to the brake pedal or the accelerator. When the driver presses down on the pedal, the tube tilts and creates the electrical connection that detonates the charge.”
“You saw the guy?”
“He took off. If I hadn’t woken up, he probably would have killed me and Homer. We go down to McDonald’s in the morning for biscuits and eggs.”
“Do you have the tube?”
He nodded. “I think it’s this guy Smiley. I told him that.”
“We’ll get everything to the lab.”
“Waste of time. The guy’s a pro. One of two guys sent him.”
I knew where we were going. “You don’t know it was Smiley. Don’t start making connections.”
“He’s out-of-town talent. He’s working for Fat Tony or Jimmy Nightingale. They both have the same motivation.”
“Like what?”
“Tony thinks he’s hit the big time in Hollywood. Nightingale is about to become an international figure. They’re leaving their baggage in the depot.”
But I knew Clete’s thought processes had not reached their destination.
“It’s Nightingale,” he said. “His shit-prints are on all of this.”
“Okay, he’s the Antichrist of St. Mary Parish,” I said. “You made your point. But the evidence that he’s hired a killer isn’t there. Tony Nemo hires killers. Rich guys like Jimmy hire lawyers.”
“Jimmy?”
“Nightingale,” I said.