"Sorry, Streak, not just yet," he said.

"Get the tape off your mouth and dangle loose a minute while we talk to Charlie here." He picked up the canvas sack by the bottom and shook it out on the floor. The Instamatic, a roll of pipe tape, and a.22 revolver clattered on the linoleum among the scatter of handbills.

"Sal wanted some pictures for his scrapbook, huh? And it looks like we got a Ruger with a magnum cylinder. Streak, we're looking at your genuine, all-American psychopath here. I got a friend at Vegas PD to pull Charlie's sheet for me."

I had the tape worked loose from my mouth now. I sat up as best I could under the lip of the sink and pinched the skin around my mouth. It was stiff and dead to the touch. I could feel a swollen ridge through my hairline and down my forehead.

"What are you doing, Clete?" I said. My words sounded strange and outside of myself.

"Meet Charlie Dodds. Vegas says he's been tied to five syndicate hits they know about, and maybe he iced a guy on the yard at Quentin. His finest hour was whacking out a federal witness, though. The guy's fourteen-year-old daughter walked in on it, so Charlie took her out, too."

"Give me the key," I said.

"Be mellow, Dave." He had put the.22 in one of the big pockets of his Budweiser shorts. He started to lean over the man on the floor.

"Call the locals, Clete."

He straightened up and looked at me as he would at a lunatic.

"You think you or I can keep this guy in jail? What's the matter with you?" he said.

"He'd be out on bond in three hours, even if these hicks would file charges. No matter how you cut it, he'd be back doing lines with the corn holers before the five o'clock news. I'll tell you something else, too, Dave. The mortician told me a tear was sealed inside Darlene's eye, he couldn't clean it out. You know what she must have gone through before she died?"

His jaw flexed, the skin of his face tightened, the scar that ran through his eyebrow and across his nose reddened, and he kicked the man on the floor hard in the rectum. He kicked him in the same place again, then leaned over him and whipped the barrel of the.38 across the back of his head. Then he said "Fuck" as though an insatiable rage had released itself in him, put his revolver in his other deep pocket, hoisted the man to his feet by his belt, as if he were made of rags and sticks, threw him against the wall and drove his huge fist into his face.

Then Clete held him erect by the throat, hit him again and again, until his knuckles were shiny and red and the man's eyes were crossed and a bloody string of saliva hung from his mouth.

"For God's sakes, cut it out, Clete!" I said.

"The guy's all we've got. Use your head, man."

"Bullshit. Charlie's no sissy. Our man here is a stand-up con." And with that, he wrapped his hand around the back of the man's neck, ran him across the room, and smashed his head down on the side of the stove. I saw the skin split above the eye; then Clete threw him to the floor. The man's eyes had rolled, and his straw-colored hair was matted with sweat.

Clete stuck his wrist down at my face.

"Feel my pulse," he said.

"I'm calm, I'm copacetic, I'm fucking in control of my emotions. I don't have a hard-on. I'm extremely tranquil. I saved your fucking ass this morning. How about a little gratitude for a change?"

"You unlock me, Clete, or I'm going to square this. I swear it."

"You'll never change, Streak. You're unteachable."

Clete picked up the roll of pipe tape and the survival knife from the floor and knelt next to the unconscious man. He ripped off a ten-inch length of tape, sliced through it with the knife, and wrapped the man's mouth. Then he pulled his arms behind him, wrapped each wrist individually, made a thick figure eight between both wrists, and sliced the tape again. The knife was honed as sharp as a barber's razor. He wrapped the man's ankles just as he had done the wrists.

"I don't know what your plan is, but I think it's a bad one," I said.

"I'm not the one up on a murder charge in Louisiana. I'm not the guy cuffed to a drainpipe. I don't have a knot on my head. Maybe I do something right once in a while. Try some humility along with the gratitude."

He went into the front of the house, and I heard him pushing furniture around, tumbling a chair or a table to the floor. A moment later he came back into the kitchen, dragging my living room rug behind him. His face was flushed, and sweat ran out of the band of his porkpie hat. He ripped off his windbreaker and used it to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. The powder-blue sleeves were flecked with blood.

"Sorry to fuck up your house. See if you can write it off on the IRS as part of Neighborhood Watch," he said.

He kicked the rug out flat on the floor and began rolling the man up in it.

"Clete, we can bring Dio down with this guy."

But he wasn't listening. He breathed hard while he worked, and there was a mean bead in his eye.

"You got out of that murder beef in New Orleans. You want them to stick you with another one?" I said.

Again he didn't answer. He went out the back door, then I heard his jeep grinding in reverse across the lawn to the steps. Clete came back into the kitchen, unhooked the spring from the screen door, lifted up the man inside the rolled rug, and dragged him outside to the jeep. When he came back inside his face was dusty from the rug and running with sweat and his big chest heaved up and down for air. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it from a book of matches, and flipped the burnt match out through the open screen into the sunlight.

"You got a hacksaw?" he said.

"In my toolbox. Behind the driver's seat."

He went back outside, and I heard him clattering around in my truck. Then he walked back up the wood steps with the saw hanging from his hand.

"You can cut through the chain in about fifteen minutes," he said.

"If you want to call the locals then, ask yourself how much of this they'll believe. Also ask yourself how much trouble you want over a shit bag like that guy out there."

"What are you going to do with him?"

"It's up to him. Are you really worried about a guy who'd kill a fourteen-year-old girl? The guy's a genetic accident." He pulled up a chair, sat down, and leaned toward me while he puffed on his cigarette and tried to get his breath back at the same time.

"Did you ever think about it this way, Streak? You know how the real' world works, just like I do. But half the time you act like you don't. But it lets you feel good around guys like me. What do your AA pals call it 'drinking down'?"

"That's not the way it is, Cletus."

"Why'd you keep partnering with me at the First District after you saw me bend a couple of guys out of shape?" He grinned at me.

"Maybe because I'd do the things you really wanted to. Just maybe. Think about it."

"Don't kill this guy."

"Hey, I got to be on the road. You want anything before I split? A glass of water or something?" He put the hacksaw in my hand.

"It's never too late to turn it around."

"That's solid gold, Dave. I wonder if ole Charlie out there thinks of something like that while he's doing a job on somebody. Man, that's fucking noble. I got to remember that."

He hooked the spring on the screen door again, worked it back and forth a couple of times, then looked at me and said, "After you cut through the chain, the cuff key's there on the table. You want to take down Sal and that other fart that framed you in Louisiana, get real or buy yourself some Mouseketeer ears. In an hour I'll have Charlie's life story. You want in on it, call me at the Eastgate Lounge at six o'clock."

Then he was gone.