Creole Belle by James Lee Burke Page A

morning to night. You never get enough of it, you don’t give five cents of it away, and youdon’t tip in restaurants unless you can make a production out of it. For you guys, greed is a virtue. But there hasn’t been one peep out of you about the money you say I owe you. Are you hooked up with some kind of new action in the city? Something besides smash-and-grab scores on old people?”
    “Maybe I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. You want Grimes, I’ll give you Grimes.”
    “I didn’t think AB guys did that.”
    “So I’m making an exception. Grimes deserves anything that happens to him. Also, I’m tearing up your marker.”
    “You already missed your opportunity. I’ll find Grimes on my own. If I discover you told him to hurt Miss Alice, I’m going to cancel your whole ticket. In the meantime, you might start thinking about giving back your ink.”
    “Say again?”
    Clete Purcel pulled a small recorder from his pants pocket and rewound it until he isolated the moment when Bix had said he was making an exception to the code of the Aryan Brotherhood and was willing to rat out Waylon Grimes. “By tomorrow this will be on several Aryan-supremacist message boards.”
    “You can’t do that, man.”
    “Get on the Internet in the morning. You’re going to be a celebrity. Maybe I can get some pics from your jacket and post them on there.” Clete Purcel got in the Caddy and turned the ignition, an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth. “Look, go to a psychiatrist. Get some help. Getting over on you is like cruelty to animals. It’s really depressing.”
    “Don’t talk to me like that, man. Hey, come back here. Come on, Purcel, we always got along. Hey, man, you don’t know what you’re doing. We’re old school, right?”
    I T WAS ALMOST ten P.M . when Clete called me at the house. “I creeped Bix Golightly’s crib. His toilet seat is inlaid with silver dollars. His interior decorator must do the decor for cathouses.”
    “You broke into Golightly’s apartment?”
    “I got into his phone records and listened to all the messages on his machine. I also got into his computer. He’s a degenerate gambler. He must have half a dozen bookies and shylocks after him. That’s why he was trying to squeeze me. I think he’s been trying to fence some stolen paintings, too. Or forgeries. He had written some e-mails about an Italian painter. What does a guy like Golightly know about art?”
    “Where are you now?”
    “Over in Algiers. Golightly is parked by an old brick apartment building. I think that’s where Grimes is holed up.”
    “Get out of there.”
    “No, I’m going to take the pair of them down.”
    “That’s really dumb, Clete.”
    “So is letting one of them pour scalding water on my secretary.”
    “Why’d you call me?”
    “In case it doesn’t go right, I want you to know what happened. This is what I think is going on. Golightly is working for somebody he’s afraid of. He and Frankie Giacano got ahold of my marker and decided to score a few easy bucks, then somebody else came down on their case. Now Golightly is sweating marbles on several fronts. The old-time Giacanos always behaved like family men and lived in the suburbs and didn’t draw attention to themselves. Golightly and Frankie and Grimes broke the rule.”
    “Are you carrying a drop?”
    “I always carry one.”
    “Don’t do what you’re thinking.”
    “I don’t let myself know what I’m thinking. So how can I do what I’m thinking if I don’t know what I’m thinking? Lighten up, big mon.”
    Try arguing with a mind-set like that.
    C LETE FOLDED HIS cell phone and set it on the passenger seat of the Caddy. He was parked behind a truck on a tree-lined street in an old residential neighborhood of Algiers that had gone to seed and been rezoned for commercial development. Across the Mississippi, he could see the lights of the French Quarter and the black outline ofthe docks on the Algiers side and a greasy shine on the