Free Purple Cane Road by James Lee Burke Page B

worked for the Giacanos and did freelance stuff in Miami when it was an open city. You remember him?” he said.
    “Vaguely.”
    “I had the wrong address last night. He agreed to show up again tonight. The guy’s a shitbag, Streak, but he’s a gold mine of information.”
    “Why’s he want to help us?”
    “He’s into Wee Willie Bimstine for four large. I got him a one-month extension with no vig.”
    “It sounds good, Cletus,” I said.
    He smiled and put a breath mint on his tongue.
     
    WE DROVE SOUTH to Morgan City as the evening cooled and the clouds over the Gulf turned a deeper red in the sunset. The man named Steve Andropolis was waiting for us in the back of a diner set on pilings by the water’s edge. A half-empty green beer bottle and a white plate filled with fried shrimp tails sat in front of him.
    The hard, rounded surfaces of his face reminded me of an old baseball. He wore a new golf cap and a bright yellow golf shirt and gray slacks and tan loafers, as though affecting the appearance of a Florida retiree, but he had big-knuckled hands, a faded blue tattoo of a nude girl on his forearm, and close-set, pig’s eyes that took the inventory of everyone in the diner.
    When Clete introduced me, I didn’t take his hand. He let his hand remain in the air a moment, then parted his lips slightly and wiped at something on the corner of his mouth.
    “I know you?” he said.
    “From a long time ago. You had a DWI and the court sent you to a twelve-step program in the Quarter. You stole two-hundred dollars from the group’s treasury.”
    Andropolis turned to Clete. “What’s the deal?” he asked.
    “There’s no problem here, Steve. We just want to know what you’ve heard about this guy who did Zipper Clum,” Clete said.
    “His name’s Johnny Remeta. He’s out of Michigan. They say he’s got a lot of talent,” Andropolis said.
    “A lot of talent?” Isaid.
    “Is there an echo in here?” Andropolis said.
    “This doesn’t fit, Steve. The guy we’re looking for is a hillbilly,” Clete said.
    “You wanted to know who was the new kid in town, I told you. He’s done hits for the greaseballs out on the coast, maybe a couple of pops in Houston. He don’t have a sheet, either,” Andropolis said.
    “Where is he?” Clete asked.
    “A guy who blows heads? He ain’t like other people. He does the whack, gets his ashes hauled, and visits Disneyland.”
    Andropolis’ eyes kept returning to my face as he spoke.
    “Why’s he looking at me like that?” he asked Clete.
    “Streaks just being attentive. Right, Dave?” Clete said, and gave me a deliberate look.
    “Right,” I said.
    “Y’all want to know anything else?” Andropolis asked.
    “I think I remember some other things about you, Steve. Weren’t you in the Witness Protection Program? What happened on that deal?” I said.
    “What do you mean ‘what happened’?”
    “You were one of the guys who gave up Didi Gee. But you’re obviously not a federally protected witness anymore.”
    “Because that tub of guts had his insides eaten out by the Big C. I heard the mortuary had to stuff his fat ass into a piano crate,” he replied.
    “You go way back with the Giacano family?” I asked.
    “Yeah, I knew Didi when he used to carry a bloodstained baseball bat in the backseat of his convertible.”
    “Ever hear about a couple of cops on a pad snuffing a woman in Lafourche Parish back in the sixties?” I asked.
    His eyes cut sideways out the window. He seemed to study the swirls of color in the sky. The sun was almost down now, and small waves from a passing tugboat rippled back over the mudflat under the diner’s pilings.
    “Yeah, I remember that. A whore?” he said.
    “Yeah, Zipper said the same thing. They killed a whore,” I said, my face expressionless, the skin tight against the bone, my hands folded one on top of the other.
    “She had something on them. That’s all I remember,” he said.
    “No names?” I said.
    “No, I