Free Big Kiss-Off by Day Keene Page A

been trapped and stopped talking.
    Mimi transferred her anger to Cade. “You knew! You knew all the time my Jeem was weeth some other woman, some she no-good. Who ees thees Mrs. Cain?”
    It was an effort for Cade to speak. “My wife. That is, my former wife,” he told Mimi.

8
Business Partners
    The barman in the cocktail lounge off the foyer refused to go on record. “Five feet four. One hundred and fifteen pounds. Blonde. Gray eyes. Very pretty. The right side of thirty.” He shook his head. “No, I really couldn’t say, mister. They come and go. Believe me. Good-looking blondes are thirteen to the case in here.” He picked up the glass he’d been polishing and looked at Mimi. “So are big six-footers with black hair. If they drank in here, I undoubtedly seen them. But their descriptions don’t ring no bell.”
    Mimi gnawed at her lower lip.
    Cade sipped at the rum in his glass and realized that he was hungry, that he hadn’t eaten since morning. “You serve food?”
    The barman put the polished glass on the back bar. “The best food in town, not barring Antoine’s or Arnaud’s. But only in the booths, mister. The waitress will take your order.”
    Cade carried his double rum and Mimi’s untouched brandy to one of the booths. Her eyes slitted and sullen, Mimi followed him. “You knew.”
    Cade waited for her to sit down. “I don’t know now. But I was told that they left Bay Parish together, after a fight between Moran and Tocko.”
    “Over your wife?”
    “My former wife.”
    “Your former wife then.”
    “So I was told.”
    “Tocko is the fat man who suggested the postmistress could give me Jeem’s address?”
    “That’s right.”
    “The man who was running up the levee when you put out into the river?”
    “That was Tocko.”
    “Maybe he’d just learned Jeem’s new address. Why didn’t you wait for heem?”
    “With a dead man on my boat?”
    “Even so.”
    “Then, let’s put it this way. Did you notice a man with Tocko?”
    “Yes. A man in uniform.”
    “The uniform of the U.S. Immigration Service.”
    Mimi sucked in her breath and held it for a long time. Then she exhaled slowly. “Oh, I see. Again, I have to thank you.”
    Cade debated telling her the obvious reason for Tocko turning informer and decided not to. The girl was keyed to the point of breaking. She had enough to worry her as it was. He said, “After all, a girl as pretty as you are can’t suddenly materialize in a town as small as Bay Parish, especially a point of entry into the country, without having someone wonder where she came from.”
    Her eyes still sullen, her lower lip thrust out in a pout, Mimi sat toying with her glass. Cade was glad when a bored waitress spread menus in front of them. What happened from here on he didn’t know, but that could wait until they had eaten.
    The menu was in French. He ordered for both of them, one of the meals of which he had dreamed during his two-year diet of fish heads and rice: Pompano en Papillote. Poulet Rochambeau. Fond d’Artichaut. Glacé a la Vanille, Café au Lait.
    When the waitress had gone, Mimi asked, “What are we eating, Cade?”
    Cade told her. “That’s easy … Fish baked in paper. Chicken. A salad. Ice cream and coffee.”
    Neither of them spoke again, both preoccupied with their own thoughts. The food, when it came, was good. It wasn’t as good as Antoine’s or Arnaud’s or Mamma Salvatore’s, for that matter, but it was the first meal of its kind that Cade had eaten in years and he enjoyed it.
    Mimi’s anger and disappointment seemed to spice her appetite. As the various courses were served, she ate everything on her plate with exquisite manners and Latin enthusiasm. Cade enjoyed watching her eat. Everything Mimi did, she did well. He thought of her as he’d seen her lying nude on the bunk of the forecabin and shook his head.
    “No man in his right mind.”
    Mimi licked the last of the Glacé a la Vanille from her spoon. “I beg your