“And you’re set on guns? No drugs? Drugs is awful light and guns is awful heavy.”
Hooke had been arguing this point with himself for months, so he was glad for a chance to lay it out for someone who wouldn’t be blabbing it in the bar later on.
“Listen close, Willard,” he said. “I’m about to set down our entire philosophy. Heroin sales are down, right? Cocaine is cheap and every asshole with legs is trafficking it now. All the gangs. The Mexicans won’t need us soon; they got their own people on this side of the border. The Albanians, Russians, Puerto Ricans, Irish—even the Canadians have gangs now. The Bacon Brothers—can you believe that name, Willard? So pretty soon nobody will need Ivory’s drugs pipeline. Every thug with a backpack will become a mule. That ship has sailed, even if Ivory don’t yet know it.”
“The goddamn pipeline is useless?” swore Willard. “What the hell are we taking it over for?”
“The pipeline ain’t useless,” Hooke corrected him. “A pipeline is always useful. Even the product is useful right now. But we gotta diversify.”
Willard played his part in the discussion by asking, “Yeah, but diversify into what?”
“Diversify into the famous Second Amendment,” said Hooke, saluting. “The right to bear arms.”
“We already got that right.”
“Some states more than others,” said Hooke. “California ain’t so lenient. New York makes it near to impossible to secure a permit. New Jersey, Connecticut, even Hawaii. All these red-blooded Americans are crying out for guns. And if there is one thing I know, Willard . . .”
Carnahan completed the thought. “It’s guns,” he said.
“Exactly. You buy low in Louisiana and sell high in California. That’s how the world works. Believe me, the NRA won’t hold out forever against the libs. And the best thing is, we keep it all on the mainland. No South American hotheads needed.”
“I get it now,” said Carnahan. “We’re a domestic operation.”
Hooke snapped his fingers. “A domestic operation. Go America.”
“You got it all figured, Constable,” said Willard. “Ain’t no way this can miss.”
And then Hooke reached one hand into the pocket of his windbreaker, and the temperature dropped.
SQUIB WAS ALL set up now, lying there proud as punch in the swamp gunk with his camera trained on Hooke and Carnahan. Looked like the buddy-buddy part of the evening was over. Wasn’t so much laughing and knee-slapping going on now.
“Here’s the problem, Willard,” Hooke was saying. “That beatdown you handed out in New Orleans.”
Carnahan laughed, and Squib saw his teeth glowed black in the camera’s night-vision mode. “Fuck that kid, Regence. That shit he sold me weren’t no shit. You hear me? Goddamn baby ass-powder. Fucked my sinuses up for a week. Hell, they still fucked up. Every morning I’m waking up, I can’t hardly breathe. That ain’t no way to do business.”
Hooke seemed to grow a little larger, like he was letting the real Regence out. “Thing is, son, that kid you whupped? You messed up his brain, so they pulled the plug. His momma had to sign off on that. Can you imagine?”
Carnahan used both hands to tease his hair into vertical spikes. “That’s a shame, Regence. A damn shame. But that kid was all about the product, telling me how gen-u-ine it was, all that shit. You can’t stiff customers and expect no payback.”
Hooke draped an arm around Carnahan’s shoulders: a bear hugging a deer. Usually the deer has the sense to know it’s on the menu, but Willard Carnahan must have been thinking himself indispensable.
“I shouldn’t even be paying for blow,” said Willard, all unawares, “with all the shit I run upriver for you. But I found myself in a party mood, ya know, so I dipped into my own goddamn pocket for some hard-earned. And what does that asshole do? Sells me fake shit. Me! The fucking coke pilot.”
“You got a point,” said Hooke, and he did this little upside-down thing with his mouth like he was actually considering Carnahan’s argument. “But see, the kid was Ivory’s nephew. Trying to prove himself. Wasn’t supposed to be on that corner. Young Vincent was supposed to be hitting the books.”
This was a lot of information, and specific, too, like Hooke had gotten it from the horse’s mouth.
“I . . . Ivory. F-fucking Ivory?” said Carnahan, stumbling over his words. “I didn’t have that knowledge, Constable. How could I know that? Ivory? He was just some Italian punk on a corner pushing baby powder, far as I was concerned. I got some credit with Ivory, don’t I?”
Hooke’s fingers clamped onto Carnahan’s shoulder. “Shit, boy. You used up the entirety of your credit, and half of mine, too.”
Squib was barely more than a kid, but he could see what was coming. This was way more leverage than he wanted. This here was the kind of information a guy volunteered to get lobotomized right out of his own head just to be certain he couldn’t testify to it.
“I’m the pilot, Constable,” said Willard. “There ain’t nobody can navigate the swamp like me. I ain’t lost a single package since we opened the pipeline. Not a goddamn gram.”
“That is true, son,” acknowledged Hooke, actual pain on his features. “So now you got me discomfited, too, because of how I got to train up a replacement.”
Willard had one more argument in his bank. “But we got plans, Regence. We’re partners.”
Regence sighed. “We was, right enough,” he said. “Until you fucked up Ivory’s nephew. I ain’t ready for heat yet. My plans ain’t been stress-tested.”
A fine mist of reality settled on the situation, and the hope drained out of Carnahan. He slumped in Hooke’s grasp like a punctured balloon man, and it looked like he might collapse on the spot, but the constable propped him up.
“Now, come on, son,” said Regence. “We all got to pay the piper.” At which point Hooke whistled a few bars of the reveille. “Get it, son? In your particular case, I’m the piper.”
Flat on his belly in the swamp mud, with crawfish and God knows what else nipping at his shoelaces, Squib had himself a Road to Damascus moment. It wasn’t God-related—Squib had little time for God or his boys. No, Squib’s epiphany was corporeal, vis-à-vis his own mortality. The boy was no fool. He knew in theory that he was gonna die at some distant time in the future. But to Squib, like most kids, that’s all it was: a theory. Also, Squib had half a notion that by the time his number was up, the whole death problem would’ve been solved by scientists.
But right there on the banks of a sluggish bayou, with the silver-dollar moon throwing shine on a dead man walking and the man about to kill him, Squib felt the yawning vacuum of his own mortality open right above him, and he knew with utter certainty that if he gave himself away, Regence Hooke would end him without even breaking a sweat.
“Aw, Constable,” said Carnahan, “we’s partners, ain’t we? Must be something can be worked out.”
“Not a damn thing,” said Regence Hooke, and he tipped his cap like a good old boy. “Now, listen. I got this single mom back in Petit Bateau waiting for me to crank her open, so I need to finish up here. You understand, right?”