Clete, old friend, why did you throw it in?

They were both smiling so broadly they might have been at a party. I smelled beer on Dixie 's breath. I sat down at the table, and the deputy locked a barred door behind me and sat on a chair outside.

"You made your bail all right, huh, Dixie?" I said.

He wore a maroon shirt hanging outside his gray slacks, and one foot was bandaged and covered with two athletic socks. His stomach made a thick roll against the bottom of his shirt.

"Better than that, Dave. They cut me loose."

"They did what?"

"I'm out of it. Free and clear. They dropped the possessions charge." He was looking at the expression on my face.

"They lost interest," Clete said.

"Oh? How's that?"

"Come on, Dave. Lighten up. You know how it works," Clete said.

"No, I think my education is ongoing here."

"We already have a firm on retainer in New Orleans, and I hired the best in Lafayette. You know these local guys aren't going to get tied up in court for months over a chickenshit holding bust."

"Who's this 'we' you're talking about? What the hell are you doing with Dixie Lee?" I said.

"He's got a friend. I work for the friend. The friend doesn't like to see Dixie Lee suffering a lot of bullshit he doesn't deserve. You don't deserve it, either, Dave."

"You work for this character Dio?"

"He's not such a bad guy. Look, there's not a lot of jobs around for a cop who had to blow the country, uh, with a few loose ends lying around."

"How'd you get out of it? I thought there was still a warrant on you."

"You've never learned, partner. First, they didn't have dog-doo to go on. Second, and this is what you don't understand, nobody cares about a guy like that. The best part of that guy ran down his daddy's leg. He met a bad fate. He should have met it earlier. The world goes on."

"Do you know what he's talking about?" I said to Dixie Lee.

"It's his business," he said quietly, and took a cigarette out of his pocket so that his eyes avoided mine. "Forget the past, Dave. It's a decaying memory. That's what you used to tell me, right? Great fucking line. Let's look at the problem we got now, namely, getting your butt out of here. I hear they've got you in a special place with the lovelies."

I didn't answer. Both of them looked at my face, then Dixie 's eyes wandered around the room.

"Come on, Streak, be my mellow man for a few minutes," Clete said.

When Dixie Lee's eyes lighted on mine again, I said, "To tell you the truth, Dixie, I feel like killing you."

"So he feels bad. What the fuck's he supposed to do? Go to prison?" Clete said.

"Look, I was coming here on my own, anyway, but as soon as I got him kicked loose he told me we got to get your ass out, too. That's a fact."

"You got the right to be mad," Dixie Lee said to me.

"I got a way of pissing in the soup, and then everybody's got to drink out of it. I just didn't know you were going to"

"What?" I said.

"Hell, I don't know. Whatever it was you did in that motel room. Lord, Dave, I heard a cop say they stuck Vidrine's guts back in his stomach with a trowel."

"That was Mapes's work, not mine." could see the amusement in Clete's face.

"Sorry," he said. Then he laughed.

"But let's face it. I remember a couple of occasions when you really decorated the walls."

"This wasn't one of them."

"Whatever you say. Who cares anyway? The guy was a bucket of shit," Clete said.

"Let's talk about getting you out of the zoo."

"Wait a minute. You knew Vidrine?"

" Montana 's a small community in a lot of ways. You'd like it there. I rent a place from Sally Dee right on Flathead Lake."

"You used to hate those guys, Clete."

"Yeah… well," he said, and sucked his teeth.

"The CIA deals dope, guys in the White House run guns. You used to say it yourself- we keep the lowlifes around so we can have a dartboard we can hit."

"Where'd you hook up with this guy?"

"Sal?" He scraped a piece of paint on the table with his fingernail.

"I've got a brother-in-law who's connected in Galveston. He got me a job dealing blackjack in one of Sal's places in Vegas. After a month they moved me up into house security. Most of the rent-a-cops in Vegas have chewing gum for brains. It's like running for president against Harpo Marx. In six months I was in charge of security for the whole casino. Now I do whatever needs doing Vegas, Tahoe, Flathead." He looked up at me.

"It beats cleaning up puke in a John, which is what I was doing in a dump over in Algiers. Look, you want out of here?"

"Hell, no, Clete. The ambience really grows on you."

"I can do it in twenty minutes."

"You're going to put up fifteen thousand?"

"I don't have to. There's a couple of bondsmen here who'd love to do a favor for Sally Dee. Why not? It doesn't cost them anything. Unless you jump the bond."

"Let him do it for you, Dave," Dixie Lee said.

"I think I'm going to have to sweat this one out."

"Why? You got to prove you're an honest man?" Clete said.

"Thanks just the same, Cletus."

"You're pissing me off. You think I'm trying to sign you up for the Mafia or something?"

"I don't know what you're trying to do. In fact, I don't understand anything you've done."

"Maybe it's because you're not listening too well."

"Maybe so."

He lit a cigarette and flipped the burnt match against the wall. He blew smoke out his nose.

"There's no strings," he said.

"Come on."

"You got my word."

"They'll boil you down to glue, Clete. Bartend in Algiers, sell debit insurance. Just get away from them."

"I thought maybe I could make up for some bad things I did to: you, partner."

"I don't hold a grudge."

"You never forget anything, Dave. You store it up in you and feed it and stoke it until it's a furnace."

"I'm changing."

"Yeah, that's why they got you locked up with the shit bags."

"What can I say?"

"Nothing," Clete said.

"Here's my cigarettes. Trade them to the gee ks for their food."

"Dave, I'd go your bond if I had the money," Dixie Lee said.

"But if I stepped on a dime right now, I could tell you if it was heads or tails."

"But the man's not hearing us," Clete said.

"Right, Dave? You're up on the high road, and the rest of us sweaty bastards have to toil our way through the flies."

He went to the door and banged the side of his fist against one of the bars.

"Open up," he said. | "I'm sorry," I said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Write me a postcard. Poison, Montana. In fact, if you get out of this dog shit, come see me. The beer's cold, you got to knock the trout back in the lake with an oar. A reasonable person might even say it's better than taking showers with queers | and child molesters. But what do I know?". | He mashed his cigarette out on the concrete floor while their deputy unlocked the door. The deputy took him and Dixie Lei downstairs in the elevator, and I sat alone in the room, waiting for| the deputy to return, my back bent over, my forearms propped loosely on my thighs, my eyes staring at the tiny webbed cracks in the floor.

The next day two deputies brought Jerome back from the jail ward at the charity hospital. The stitches on his forehead looked like small black butterflies laced in his skin. He stared out the windows, talked to himself, urinated on the floor of his cell. The biker and the rapist from Alabama told him the jailer had left the key to the main door in the toilet. He knelt by the bowl, staring into the water, while the other two encouraged him.

"You can't see it. It's way down in the pipe," the biker said, and grabbed himself and grinned at the other man.

Jerome's arm went into the bowl, and he worked his hand down deep in the drain, splashing water up on his shirt and face.