“You just going to stand there?” he said.
“You’re not hard to read, Spade.”
“Have a drink. I’ll put it on my tab. I’ll drive you home. You and your daughter quit your bullshit.”
“You didn’t make your case on the Dartez homicide. So you thought you’d go all in.”
“I can’t take this,” he said to no one. He slipped a credit card from his wallet and dropped it onto the bar. “I’m heading out, hon,” he said to Babette. “I’ll pick you up at closing time.”
Babette picked up the card, her face coloring.
“Look at me, Spade,” I said.
“Jeez, what does it take?” he said, turning toward me.
>
I caught him with my right, putting my shoulder and hip into it, driving my fist straight into his mouth, snapping his face sideways as though he had been dropped from a hangman’s rope. I saw blood fly against the back mirror and heard a stifled cry rise from his throat. I hooked him twice with my left hand and caught him again with my right, knocking his head against the bar as he went down.
I should have pulled the plug. But I knew I wasn’t going to. The simian that had lived in me since I was a child was back in town. A cloud that was red and black and without shape seemed to explode inside my head and destroy my vision, although I was able to see my deeds from somewhere outside my body. Labiche was on the floor and I was stomping his face, hanging on to the bar for purchase, his blood stippling my loafers. The image reminded me of the blood on the grass where T. J. Dartez had been beaten to death. A woman was screaming. Someone was on a cell phone. Labiche’s eyes were filled with terror. I kicked at his face and lost my balance. I felt the desire to kill him slip away from me, like ash dying on a dead fire.
Clete Purcel came out of nowhere and clenched me from behind and locked his hands on my chest and wrestled me out the door. We were out on the deck, the stars bright, the drawbridge at Burke Street lifting into the air. I pushed him away.
“He played you, big mon,” Clete said. “Why’d you let him do it?”
I felt like I was coming off a drunk or getting off a ship without my sea legs. “What happened?”
“Who cares? It’s done. Get in the Caddy.”
“Where are we going?”
“How about another galaxy?” he said.
We walked into the parking lot and got into the car. He started the engine. “You got it together?”
“Tell me what happened.”
He exhaled loudly. “You don’t know?”
“He put his hand on me?”
“No, he didn’t do anything. You laid him out.”
We drove down the street and over the steel grid on the drawbridge.
“I didn’t kill Dartez,” I said.
He looked at me oddly, but I didn’t try to explain.
* * *
AT SIX THE next morning, I put sardines on the spool table in the backyard for Mon Tee Coon, then showered and dressed and went to work as though nothing had happened the previous night. No one in the building treated me differently than they would have any other day. Helen seemed preoccupied with the paperwork on her desk. I made some calls to cops I knew in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. I drove to the convenience store and again interviewed the clerk who had sold Ding Dongs to the man in red tennis shoes. When I returned, my mailbox was full of messages, and at least half a dozen had been slipped under my door, all from my colleagues. Below is a sampling:
Way to go, Robicheaux.
Rip ass, big Dave.
Fucking A, Streakus.