“Are you serious?” she said.
“A former hack at Angola named Wooster told Clete he did it.”
“Told him when?”
“Tonight, just before Smiley killed him.”
“Smiley just killed someone else? In New Orleans?”
“He gets around. Call Rowena and Levon and tell them what I said.”
“You’re trying to queer the DA’s case, aren’t you.”
“All this would come up in discovery anyway. The former gunbull was going to kill Clete. Smiley saved his life.”
“I bet he loves his mother, too,” she said.
“I doubt it. Talk to you later, Alf.”
I closed the cell phone.
SHERRY PICARD AND I moved deeper into the crowd at the casino. The carpets were the color of a freshly sliced pomegranate, the gaming tables covered with lavender felt. Giant bronze replicas of palm trees looked down on the tables. Each gambling machine was outfitted with a padded leather-backed chair that gave the patron a sense of comfort and security. The ceilings were high and spacious and created the impression of a separate universe but one that allowed no view of the outside world.
Jimmy Nightingale was at the beverage tables, surrounded by hundreds of well-wishers, his security people around him but having a hard time of it.
“There’s Clete,” Sherry said.
“Where?”
“By the door.”
I stood on my toes and tried to see over the heads of the crowd. “I don’t see him.”
“I’m almost sure it was him. He’s gone now.”
I pushed my way through the crowd. Many of them were drunk or on the edge of drunk. Over the heads I could see Bobby Earl with Nightingale. Somebody clamped me on the shoulder. “Robicheaux! You back on the hooch? Son of a bitch, I thought you were on the side of the tree huggers. You’re one of us, you old bastard.”
He was a big, sweaty, red-faced man whose skin oozed grease and whose rumpled suit smelled like a locker room. He threw a meaty arm over me, a well of stink rising from his armpit. I had no idea who he was. “Goddamn it, son, it’s good to see you. This November we’re gonna kick some ass. Who’s this lady with you?”
Sherry opened her badge in his face. “On the job. Beat feet, fatso.”
“What was that?” he said, releasing me. “What’d you call me?”
She pushed him in the chest. “You heard me.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said. “You can’t push people around like that.”
I was still forty feet from Nightingale. I felt like I was sinking in wet concrete.
“Somebody call security!” the fat man said. “There’s a crazy woman here.”
I thought I saw Clete on the edge of the crowd. I changed direction and headed toward him. I popped out on the back edge of the crowd and saw the men’s room door open and smoke billow out. Clete was nowhere in sight. A short man in a panama hat and oversize white slacks and two-tone shoes and a dark blue shirt with bananas printed on it, worn outside the belt, was walking from the restroom through the banks of gambling machines and the throng that had come through a side entrance and was headed for the free booze and food.
“Smiley!” I shouted.
He did not turn around or change his stride. I went after him. A band up on a platform broke into “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
* * *