The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke Page A

three. At first she didn’t remember who I was, then she told me to go around to the back door. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. When I got into the backyard I saw the maid handing out ice cream to all these raggedy little colored kids that belonged to the yardmen around the neighborhood.
    “This lady had a greenhouse back there. I came back that night with a box full of rocks and broke damn near every pane in it. She got it repaired and three weeks later I came back and broke them again. When my pop figured out I’d done it, he whipped me with a switch till blood ran down my legs.”
    Clete turned onto Julio Segura’s street, which was filled with trees and blooming shrubs.
    “You ever get that mad when you were a kid?” he asked.
    “I don’t remember.”
    “You told me once you and your brother had some rough times.”
    “Who cares, Clete? It’s yesterday’s ball game.”
    “So I know that. What’s the big deal?” he said.
    “You’ve got a rusty nail sideways in your head. Let it go, quit feeding it.”
    “You get a little personal sometimes, Streak.”
    “There he goes! Hit it!” I said.
    Julio Segura’s lavender Cadillac had just bounced out through his front gate onto the street. A dwarf was driving, and a blond woman sat in the front passenger’s seat. Segura and another man were in back. Cletus floored the accelerator until we were abreast of them. The dwarf’s face was frightened behind the glass, and he kept driving.
    I held my badge out at him. He put his foot on the brake, both of his hands on the steering wheel, his chin pointed upward under his purple chauffeur’s cap, and scraped the front tire in a long black line against the curb.
    “How do you want to play it?” Clete asked before we got out of the car.
    “We run up the black flag,” I said.
    Clete had stopped our own car in front of the Cadillac, and we walked back on opposite sides of it. I tapped on the passenger’s window and on Segura’s back window for them to roll down the glass. Later I was to go over this scene again and again in my mind, as well as the careless remark I’d made to Clete about the black flag, and wonder at how differently that afternoon might have turned out if I had approached the driver’s side of the Cadillac or if I had kept my own counsel.
    Clete reached down into the ignition, pulled the keys, and threw them into a hedge. The dwarf was petrified with fear. His little hands gripped the wheel and his jug head swiveled back and forth between Clete and the back seat.
    “You don’t have a blowgun hidden in your shorts, do you?” Clete said to him, then sniffed the air inside the Cadillac. “My, my, what is that aroma I smell? Colombian coffee? Or maybe we’ve been toking on a little muta on our way to the golf course?”
    The air was heavy with the smell of marijuana. The blond woman’s face looked sick. I saw the cigarette lighter from the dash lying on the floor, and I suspected she’d been snorting the roach off the lighter and had eaten it when we’d pulled them over. She had a nice figure and was dressed in white shorts and heels and a low blouse, but her hair was lacquered with so much hair spray that it looked like wire, and her face was layered with cosmetics to cover the deep pockmarks in her complexion.
    I opened the door for her. “Walk on back home,” I said.
    “They lock the gate,” she said.
    “Then do the best thing you’ve done in years and keep on walking,” I said.
    “I don’t know what to do, Julio,” she said to the backseat.
    “Do what I tell you, hon. Your Latino gumball is going to take a big fall today,” I said.
    Her eyes shifted nervously and she bit her lips, then she picked up her purse, eased past me, and clicked hurriedly down the sidewalk.
    I leaned down in Segura’s window. He and the gatekeeper whom Clete had hit in the stomach the other day sat behind a fold-out bar with vodka drinks in their hands. Rubber bands held the napkins around