In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead (Dave Robicheaux 6)

"Take the hint, Cholo. Our detective isn't a conversationalist," the woman said, without removing her eyes from her cards. She clacked her lacquered nails on the glass tabletop, and her lips made a dry, sucking sound when she puffed on her cigarette.

"You working on that murder case? The one about that girl?" he said.

"How'd you know about that?"

His eyes clicked sideways.

"It was in the newspaper," he said. "Julie and me was talking about it this morning. Something like that's disgusting. You got a fucking maniac on the loose around here. Somebody ought to take him to a hospital and kill him."

Baby Feet emerged resplendent from the sliding glass door of his room. He wore a white suit with gray pin stripes, a purple shirt scrolled with gray flowers, a half-dozen gold chains and medallions around his talcumed neck, tasseled loafers that seemed as small on his feet as ballet slippers.

"You look beautiful, Julie," Cholo said.

"Fucking A," Baby Feet said, lighting the cigarette in the corner of his mouth with a tiny gold lighter.

"Can I go with y'all?" Cholo asked.

"Keep an eye on things here for me."

"Hey, you told me last night I could go."

"I need you to take my calls."

"Margot don't know how to pick up a phone anymore?" Cholo said.

"My meter's running, Julie," I said.

"We're going out to dinner tonight with some interesting people," Baby Feet said to Cholo. "You'll enjoy it. Be patient."

"They're quite excited about the possibility of meeting you. They called and said that, Cholo," the woman said.

"Margot, why is it you got calluses on your back? Somebody been putting starch in your sheets or something?" Cholo said.

I started walking toward my truck. The sunlight off the cement by the poolside was blinding. Baby Feet caught up with me. One of his other women dove off the board and splashed water and the smell of chlorine and suntan oil across my back.

"Hey, I live in a fucking menagerie," Baby Feet said as we went out onto the street. "Don't go walking off from me with your nose bent out of joint. Did I ever treat you with a lack of respect?"

I got in the truck.

"Where we going, Feet?" I said.

"Out by Spanish Lake. Look, I want you to take a message back to the man you work for. I'm not the source of any problems you got around here. The coke you got in this parish has been stepped on so many times it's baby powder. If it was coming from some people I've been associated with in New Orleans, and I'm talking about past associations, you understand, it'd go from your nose to your brain like liquid Drano."

I headed out toward the old two-lane highway that led to the little settlement of Burke and the lake where Spanish colonists had tried to establish plantations in the eighteenth century and had given Iberia Parish its name.

"I don't work narcotics, Julie, and I'm not good at passing on bullshit, either. My main concern right now is the girl we found south of town."

"Oh, yeah? What girl's that?"

"The murdered girl, Cherry LeBlanc."

"I don't guess I heard about it."

I turned and looked at him. He gazed idly out the window at the passing oak trees on the edge of town and a roadside watermelon and strawberry stand.

"You don't read the local papers?" I said.

"I been busy. You saying I talk bullshit, Dave?"