The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke Page A

with a ten-dollar ass and a five-cent brain. But the girl didn’t know this guy went through his own chippies like Jimmy Durante went through Kleenex. One morning after she got drunk and threw up in his pool he told the dwarf to drive her back to the parlor. What the spick didn’t figure on was ambition in a colored girl that grew up pulling sweet potatoes out of the ground with her toes.
    “Because this broad had ears and a memory like flypaper. All the time she was poking plastic straws up her nose or balling the geek, she was also getting onto some heavy shit, and I’m talking government, military shit, Lieutenant, that the geek and the other spicks are playing around with.”
    “What do you mean ‘government’?” I said.
    “I’m repeating the gossip, I don’t analyze. It don’t interest me. I think Immigration ought to take these people to a factory and turn them into bars of soap. The girl tried to put his tit through a wringer. That got her out of the parlor, all right. They took her fishing out on the bayou and let her shoot up until her eyes crossed. When she didn’t pull it off on her own, they loaded her a hotshot that blew her heart out her mouth.”
    “I appreciate the story you’ve told me, Didi, but I’d be offended if I thought you believed we were in the business of running your competition out of town.”
    “You hurt my feelings,” he answered.
    “Because we already knew just about everything you told me, except the mention about the government and the military. You’re very vague on that. I think we’re being selective here. I don’t believe that’s good for a man of your background who enjoys the respect of many people in the department.”
    “I have been candid, Lieutenant. I do not pretend to understand the meaning of everything I hear from people that sometimes lie.”
    “You’re a mature man, Didi. You shouldn’t treat me as less.”
    He blew smoke out his nose and mashed out his cigarette in his plate. His black eyes became temporarily unmasked.
    “I don’t know what he’s into. It’s not like the regular business around the city,” he said. He paused before he spoke again. “A guy said the girl was giggling about elephants before they dumped her in the water. You figure that one out.”
    A few minutes later Didi Gee picked up his check and the two hoods who waited for him at the bar, and left. The red leather upholstery he had sat on looked like it had been crushed with a wrecking ball.
    “He tips everybody in the place on his way out. Under it all he’s a bit insecure,” Jimmie said.
    “He’s a psychopath,” I said.
    “There’s worse people around.”
    “You think it’s cute to mess around with characters like that? You better give it some serious thought if you’re fronting points for him. Guys like Didi Gee don’t have fall partners. Somebody else always takes the whole jolt for them.”
    He grinned at me.
    “You’re a good brother,” he said. “But you worry too much about me. Remember, it was always me that got us out of trouble.”
    “That’s because you always got us into it.”
    “I’m not the one that almost got drowned in a bathtub last night. You threw a bucket of shit into a cage full of hyenas, bro.”
    “How’d you hear about last night?”
    “Forget about how I hear things or what I’m doing with Didi Gee. You worry about your own butt for a change, or those greasers are going to hang it out to dry.”
    “What do you think this elephant stuff is?”
    “How the hell should I know?”
    “You ever hear of a guy named Fitzpatrick?”
    “No. What about him?”
    “Nothing. Thanks for the lunch. By the way, Johnny Massina told me about you smashing up Didi’s rubber machines. The old man would have enjoyed that one.”
    “Like they say, you hear a lot of bullshit in the street, Dave.”
     
    I sat out on the deck of my houseboat that evening in the green-yellow twilight with a glass of iced tea and mint leaves, and disassembled my