The unshaved man with black hair nodded and continued to write on his notepad. “You from Lou’sana? I’m from down south myself. Miss’sippi. You been to Miss’sippi, haven’t you?” he said.
When Clete didn’t reply, the passenger said, “New Orleans flat-ass got ripped off the map, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, the F-word in Louisiana these days is FEMA,” Clete said.
“You got a lot less Afro-Americans to worry about, though,” the passenger said. He rolled the racial designation on his tongue.
“What is this?” Clete said.
“You’re on posted land, is what this is,” the driver said.
“I didn’t see any sign to that effect,” Clete said.
The passenger went to the truck and lifted a microphone off the dash and began speaking into it.
“You guys are running my tag?” Clete said.
“You don’t remember me?” the driver said.
“No.”
“It’ll come to you. Think back about seventeen years or so.”
“Tell you what, I’ll pack up my gear and clear out, and we’ll call it even,” Clete said.
“We’ll see,” the driver said.
“We’ll see?” Clete said.
The driver shrugged, still grinning.
The passenger finished his call on the radio. “His name is Clete Purcel. He’s a PI out of New Orleans,” he said. “There’s a pair of binoculars on the seat of his convertible.”
“You been spying on us, Mr. Purcel?” the driver said.
“I’ve got no idea who you are.”
“You’re not working for the bunny huggers?” the driver said.
“We’re done here, bub.”
“We need to look inside your vehicle, Mr. Purcel,” the driver said.
“Are you serious?” Clete said.
“You’re on the Wellstone Ranch,” the driver said. “We can have you arrested for trespassing, or you can let us do our job and look in your car. You didn’t have situations like this when you worked security at Tahoe?”
Clete blinked, then pointed his finger. “You were a driver for Sally Dio.”
“I was a driver for the car service he used. Too bad he got splattered in that plane accident.”
“Yeah, a great national tragedy. I heard they flew the flag at half-mast for two minutes in Palermo,” Clete said. He glanced at the black-haired man, who had just retrieved a tool from the truck and was walking back toward Clete’s Caddy with it. “Tell your man there if he sticks that Slim Jim in my door, I’m going to jam it up his cheeks.”
“Whoa, Quince,” the driver said. “We’re going to accept Mr. Purcel’s word. He’ll clean up his camp and be gone—” He paused and looked thoughtfully at Clete. “What, five or ten minutes, Mr. Purcel?”
Clete cleared an obstruction in his windpipe. He poured his coffee on his fire. “Yeah, I can do that,” he said.
“So, see you around,” the driver said.