CLETE KEPT A custom-made extra-long foot locker in the garret above his office. In it were a cut-down Mossberg semi-auto twelve-gauge he’d taken off a hit man in Las Vegas, a Glock, two Berettas, a .44 Magnum, a derringer a deranged prostitute had pulled on him during a vice raid, a sap and a blackjack and a baton, a slim-jim, brass knuckles, a gun that fired a bean bag, Mace, a tear gas pen, a carton of flash grenades, handcuffs, wrist and waist chains, and the most unusual drop I’d ever seen, an engraved snub-nose gold-over-silver Colt Police .32 with ivory grips that only a collector or a rich man would own.
The drop came from the safe of a mobster who operated a lodge and casino above Lake Tahoe. Because the gun was a collectible, its serial numbers, all of them intact, were obviously registered, and the discovery of the pistol at a crime scene would lead the authorities back to the mobster, long dead, and more important, to the casino culture he represented.
Tuesday afternoon, Clete showered and shaved and put on fresh sport clothes and had his hair cut and drove to the Nightingale plantation outside Franklin. He carried the drop in an ankle holster and a scoped 1903 Springfield rifle in the trunk. The azaleas were still in bloom when he turned in to the driveway, the St. Augustine grass a deep blue-green, the four-o’clocks open in the shade of the oak trees. He could feel a surge of adrenaline come alive in his chest and wrists and hands, not unlike the high of going up the Mekong in a swift boat behind twin fifty-calibers, the stern dipping and swaying in the trough.
* * *
HE DIDN’T GET far. Security came out of the carriage house, from the patio, and a state police car and a parked SUV with tinted windows. The men in suits were wearing shades. As Clete slowed the Caddy, he unstrapped the ankle holster and let it fall to the floor, then braked and lowered the window. A close-cropped man wearing shades stared into his face. “This is a security area.”
“Y’all got the nuclear codes inside?” Clete said, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
“Is there someone in particular you’re looking for?”
“Jimmy Nightingale. I’m Clete Purcel. I’m a PI out of New Orleans and New Iberia.”
“I’m afraid you’re not on our visitors list for today.”
“How about telling Mr. Nightingale I’m here, and then we’ll take it from there?”
The man at Clete’s window looked over his shoulder. “You can turn your vehicle around in front of the house. Then get back on the road, please.”
“That doesn’t sound too cool,” Clete said.
“Is that a firearm inside your jacket?”
“I’m licensed to carry.”
“You need to leave, sir.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Step out of your vehicle, please.”
With the back of his foot, Clete pushed the drop under the seat. “I’m at your service.” He got out of the Caddy and lifted his hands and smiled. He towered over most of the security personnel. “What’s next?”
“I’m going to reach inside your jacket for your piece,” the man in the suit said. “Are you comfortable with that?”
“As long as you give it back.”
The man in shades removed the snub-nose from Clete’s shoulder holster and handed it to a St. Mary’s Parish sheriff’s deputy. “Could I have your keys?”
Clete pulled the keys from the ignition and dropped them into the security man’s palm. The St. Mary deputy popped the trunk with them. “He’s got a scoped rifle and an M1 in here.”
“They’re legal,” Clete said. “I shoot at a target range. How about giving this stuff a rest?”
“Stop dancing around with this guy,” a voice in the background said.
The voice belonged to a tall man wearing western-cut pants and a tight cowboy shirt and mirror-shined, needle-nosed Tony Lamas and a straw cowboy hat with a thin black bejeweled band around the crown. His gray mustache was clipped and as stiff as a toothbrush. “Remember me?”
“No,” Clete said.
“Angola in the eighties. I herded some of the Big Stripes.”
Clete saw a hazy image in his mind, a gunbull mounted on horseback atop the Mississippi levee, silhouetted against a dull red sun, his expression lost in the shadow of his hat. A sweat-soaked black convict was mule-jerking a stump from the silt, ripping it loose in a shower of dirt.
“Wooster,” Clete said.
“Good memory.”