"We're going down to Cypremort Point for crabs tonight. You're welcomed to go with us," I said.

He looked disappointed.

"That's all right," he said. "I thought I'd fish a little bit more today, that's all. Anyway, let's get something to eat and I'll fill you in on some stuff I found out about Joey Gouza and the white man's hope."

We drove down the street to a small caM run by a black man. Crushed beer cans littered the floor of Clete's car, and I could smell beer on his breath.

"Are things slow at your office?" I asked.

"I just felt like taking off, that's all. Hey, let's eat."

We took paper plates loaded with red beans, rice, and links of sausage to a plank table under a live-oak tree. The cafe owner didn't have a beer license, and Clete went to the trunk of his car and came back with a sweating six-pack of Jax. It was warm in the shade of the trees, and smoke from a barbecue fire floated in a blue haze through the overhead limbs.

"I did some checking on Joey's business connections around town," Clete said. "I'm talking about his legitimate businesses-a linen service, a movie house up on Prytania, a bunch of dago restaurants, places where he launders his drug money for the IRS. Anyway, the word is Joey and his people are putting up big gelt for Bobby Earl's U.S. Senate campaign. In other words, the greaseballs are into PACs now."

I nodded. "Yeah?"

"That's it."

"So what's new in that? It's what we thought all along."

You're reading it wrong, noble mon."

"How's that?"

"If Joey Meatballs was piecing off his drug action to Bobby Earl, he wouldn't have to give him money through a bunch of PACs. He'd already own the guy."

"Maybe that's the way he launders Earl's cut."

"They don't do it that way, Streak. They give the guy something he can't resist, they bring him in on one of their deals, their shylocks lend him money, they set him up with some hot-ass broad on video tape. But they don't go into the drug business with the guy, then create a lot of public records to show everybody they got the guy's tallywacker tied around their neighborhood fireplug."

"You drove all the way to New Iberia to tell me Bobby Earl is clean?"

"Oh, they know all the same people, and Joey would like to put a U.S. senator in his pocket, but there's no law against that, mon."

"Bobby Earl's dirty."

"Maybe so. I'm just telling you what I found out and what I think. The guy's a sonofabitch but so are half the politicians in Louisiana."

"I get the feeling something else is bothering you, Clete."

He ripped open another beer and lit a cigarette, his food unfinished.

"It comes with the territory. It's nothing new," he said.

"What is it?"

"I might get my PI ticket pulled."

"What for?"

He bit one of his fingernails and shrugged.

"I've had two or three beefs since I opened my office. It's my own fault," he said.

"You're always in a beef, Clete. Why is somebody giving you trouble about your ticket now?"

"That's what I asked this bozo who called me up from Baton Rouge."

"Which bozo?"

"With the state regulatory agency." His eyes moved around on my face.

"It's Bobby Earl, isn't it?" I said.

"Maybe."

"There's no 'maybe' about it."

"Anyway, they got these complaints and they're talking about a hearing before their board."

"What complaints?"

"Well, there was this button man, a real bag of shit out of Miami, a guy who whacked out two Cuban girls who were going to send this greaseball dealer up to Raiford. He jumped a two-hundred-thou bond, and word had it he was hiding out in Ascension or St. James Parish. So the bondsman in Miami calls me and tells me he'll pay me a five grand finder's fee if I can bring in this guy before the bondsman has to come up with the two hundred thou. But the only lead he can give me on the shit bag is that he's somewhere between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, he loves pink Cadillacs, smoking dope, and being a big man around lowlife broads.

"So I spend two weeks cruising these dumps along Airline Highway. Just when I'm about to give up, I see this beautiful, flamingo-pink Cadillac convertible, with Georgia plates, parked in front of this club that's got both white and mulatto broads on stage. I go inside, and the place is filled with smoke and about two hundred geeks that look like somebody beat up on them with an ugly stick. But I don't see my man. So I go back out to the parking lot and pop the door lock on the Caddy with a slim jim. The inside smells like somebody rubbed hash oil into the upholstery. In the glove compartment I find a box of rubbers, a match cover from a Fort Lauderdale bar, an ice pick, and a dozen loose.38 shells. What does that tell me? This has got to be the shit bag's car.

"Except I look all over the bar and I can't find the guy, which means he's probably wearing a disguise. Then it's three in the morning, still no shit bag, and I'm bone-tired.

So I kind of hurried things along by setting fire to the pink Caddy."

"You did what?"

"What was I supposed to do, spend the rest of the week there? I was working on spec. Anyway, the Caddy was burning beautifully in the parking lot, and the geeks came pouring out of the building to watch it, happy as pigs rolling in slop, except of course for the guy who owned the Caddy. Guess what?"

"He wasn't your guy."

"Right. He was a traveling sporting-goods salesman from Waycross. But guess what again? There, standing in the crowd, is my shit bag. In two minutes I had him in cuffs and locked to a D-ring in the back of my car. So it all worked out all right, except somebody saw me messing around the Caddy and told the cops and the firemen, and I had to come back the next day and answer some questions that made me a little bit uncomfortable. Then Nig got me into a scrape-"

"Nig?" I had finished eating and was glancing at my watch.

"Yeah, Nig Rosewater, the bondsman. I'm sorry to bore you with this stuff, Dave, but I don't get a regular paycheck. I depend upon guys like Nig to keep me afloat."

I took a breath and let him continue.

"Nig decides to go into the saloon business," Clete said.

"So he opens a bar on Magazine right next to a black neighborhood. What kind of sign does he put in his window? HAPPY HOUR 5 to 7-HAVE A SWIG WITH NIG." So the first night somebody Rings a burning trash can through the plate glass. Then they did it two more nights, even after Nig got rid of the sign. Who did it, you ask. The fucking Crips, not because they're big on civil rights but because it impresses the other punks in the neighborhood. Have you dealt with any of these guys? They knocked off a kid on Calliope, then, to make sure everybody got the message, they walked into the mortuary, in front of his family, and blew his coffin full of holes. They're a real special bunch.

"So I found out the kid who had been remodeling Nig's bar was named Ice Box. They call him that because he pushed a refrigerator on top of his grandmother. I'm not making this up. This kid could blow out your light like he was turning a page in a comic book. Anyway, I had a talk with Ice Box while I held him by his ankles off a fire escape, five stories up from the pavement. I think he's back in California these days. But his grandmother, can you dig it, with dents still in her head, filed charges against me.

"Anyway, somebody in Baton Rouge wants to cut a piece out of my butt. Like I say, I brought it on myself. I learned in the corps you don't mess with the pencil pushers. You stay invisible. You piss off some corporal in personnel and two weeks later you're humping it with an ambush patrol outside Chu Lai."

"Give me the name of the guy in Baton Rouge who's after you."

"Leave it alone. It'll probably go away."

"Bobby Earl won't."