Purple Cane Road

"None of your damn business, Streak."

We stood there like that, in the heat of the afternoon, the shadows of the huge white courthouse falling on the lawn behind us. Then Clete's face relented and his eyes went away from me and came back again.

"I took her for a drive because I like her. We're going to di

"I want to talk to you in private."

"Yeah, anytime I can be useful. Thanks for the hospitality," he said, and got back into the Cadillac and drove away. Passion smiled at me, brushing her hair out of one eye with the ends of her fingers.

Clete came into the bait shop when I was closing up that night. He opened a bottle of Dixie beer and drank it at the counter. I sat down next to him with a Dr Pepper. "I'm sorry about today. I just worry about you sometimes, Cletus," I said.

"You think I'm over-the-hill for Passion?"

"You carried me down a fire escape with two bullets in your back. I don't like to see you get hurt."

"She makes me feel young. What's wrong in that?"

I cupped my hand on the back of his neck. The baked scales on his skin were as stiff as blistered paint. "Nothing's wrong with it," I said.

"So why did you want to talk in private?"

"We think the Zipper Clum shooter is a Kentucky product by way of Michigan. His real name is Joh

"Same guy who was going to do Little Face?"

"That's the way I see it."

"The jigger said Remeta didn't have a sheet."

"You ever know a gumball yet who had the whole story right?"

"So Remeta blew off the hit and now he's in the shit-house with whoever gave him the contract. Is that what you were going to tell me?"

"That's about it."

He gri

"Who's the best source for cold pieces around New Orleans?" I asked.

"It used to be Tommy Carrol, till somebody flushed his grits for him. Right now?" He scratched his hairline and thought. "You ever hear of the Eighteenth Street gang in Los Angeles? They're here, kind of like sewer growth metastasizing across the country. I never thought I'd miss the greaseballs."

I DROVE DOWN East Main at sunrise the next day, under the arched canopy of live oaks that lined the street, and picked Clete up at the apartment he had rented downtown. The moon was still up, the air heavy with the smell of night-blooming flowers and wet trees and bamboo and water that has seeped deep into the soil and settled permanently around stone and brickwork.

But three hours later Clete and I were in a rural area north of New Orleans that in terms of toxicity probably has no environmental equivalent in the country. The petrochemical plants on the edge of the wetlands bleed their wastes into the drainages and woods, systemically killing all life in them, layering the soil with a viscous, congealed substance that resembles putty veined with every color in the rainbow.

The man we were looking for, Garfield Jefferson, lived at the end of a row of tin-roofed shotgun shacks left over from the days of corporate plantations. The rain ditch in front was blown with Styrofoam litter, the yard heaped with upholstered furniture.

"This guy's a gun dealer?" I said.

"He creates free-fire zones for other people to live in and keeps a low profile in Shitsville. Don't be deceived by his smile, either. He's a mainline grad of Pelican Bay," Clete said.

Garfield Jefferson's skin was so black it gave off a purple sheen, at least inside the colorless gloom of his tiny living room, where he sat on a stuffed couch, legs spread, and gri

"I'm not following y'all. You say you a cop from New Iberia and some dude give you my name?" he said.

"Joh

"This is all new to me, man. How come the guy is telling you this, anyway? He just ru

"Because he fucked up a hit for the wrong people and he knows his ass is hanging over the fire. So he wants to cut a deal, and that means he gives up a few nickel-and-dime pus heads like yourself as an act of good faith," Clete said.

Jefferson looked out the window, gri

"A turned-around cap in Louisiana mean a guy don't do drugs. You white folks ain't caught on to that. You see a nigger with his hat on backwards, you think 'Mean-ass motherfucker, go

Clete stood up from his chair and remained standing on the corner of Jefferson 's vision. He picked up a ceramic lamp, the only bright object in the room, and examined the motel logo on the bottom of it.

"You got a heavy jacket, huh?" I said.

"Eighteen Streeters always get Pelican Bay. Twenty-three-hour lockdown. But I'm through with all that. I come back here to be with the home folks," Jefferson said.

Clete smashed the lamp across the side of Jefferson 's head. Pieces of ceramic showered on the couch and in Jefferson 's lap. For a moment his face was dazed, his eyes out of focus, then the corners of his mouth stretched upward on wires again.

"See, when people got a weight problem, they go around pissed off all the time, big hard-on 'cause they fat and ugly and don't want no full-length mirrors in their bathrooms," Jefferson said.

"You think you're fu

"Clete," I said softly.

"Butt out of this, Streak." Then he said to Jefferson, "You remember those three elementary kids got shot at the playground off Esplanade? The word is you sold the Uzi to the shooter. You got something to say about that, smart-ass?"

"Free enterprise, motherfucker," Jefferson said, evenly, gri

Clete knotted Jefferson's T-shirt with his left hand and drove his right fist into Jefferson 's face, then pulled him from the couch and threw him to the floor. When Jefferson started to raise himself on his arms, Clete crashed the sole of his shoe into his jaw.

"It looks like you just spit some teeth there, Garfield," Clete said.

"Get away from him, Clete," I said.

"No problem. Sorry I lost it with this outstanding Afro-American. Do you hear that, Garfield? I'll come back later sometime and apologize again when we're alone."

"I mean it, Clete. Wait for me in the truck."

Clete went out into the yard and let the screen slam behind him. He looked back at me, his face still dark, an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth. I helped Jefferson back onto the couch and found a towel in the bathroom and put it in his hand.

"I'm sorry that happened," I said.

"You the good guy in the act, huh?" he replied.

"It's no act, partner. Clete will tear you up."

Jefferson pushed the towel tight against his mouth and coughed on his own blood, then looked up at me, this time without the grin, his eyes lackluster with the banal nature of the world in which he lived.