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

"I don't know."

"Why don't you forget the forensic bullshit and concentrate on what your nose tells you?"

"What's that?"

"This isn't the work of some lone fuckhead running around. It has the smell of the greaseballs all over it. One smart greaseball in particular."

"You think this is Julie's style?"

"I worked two years on a task force that tried to get an indictment on the Bone. When he gets rid of a personal enemy, he puts a meat hook up the guy's rectum. If he wants a cop or a judge or a labor official out of the way, he does it long distance, with a whole collection of lowlifes between him and the target."

"That sounds like our man, all right."

"Can I give you some advice?"

"Go ahead."

"If Balboni is behind this, don't waste your time trying to make a case against him. It doesn't work. The guy's been oiling jurors and judges and scaring the shit out of witnesses for twenty years. You wait for the right moment, the right situation, and you smoke him."

"I'll see you, Lou. Thanks for your help."

"All right, excuse me. Who wants to talk about popping a cap on a guy like Balboni? Amber Martinez probably did herself. Take it easy, Dave."

At six the next morning I took a cup of coffee and the newspaper out on the gallery and sat down on the steps. The air was cool and blue with shadow under the trees and the air smelled of blooming four o'clocks and the pecan husks that had moldered into the damp earth.

While I read the paper I could hear boats leaving my dock and fishermen's voices out on the water. Then I heard someone walking up the incline through the leaves, and I lowered the newspaper and saw Mikey Goldman striding toward me like a man in pursuit of an argument.

He wore shined black loafers with tassels on them, a pink polo shirt that hung out of his gray slacks, and a thick gold watch that gleamed like soft butter on his wrist. His mouth was a tight seam, down-turned at the corners, his jaw hooked forward, his strange, pale, bulging eyes flicking back and forth across the front of my house.

"I want a word with you," he said.

"How are you today, Mr. Goldman," I said.

"It's 6 a.m., I'm at your house instead of at work; I got four hours' sleep last night. Guess."

"Do I have something to do with your problem?"

"Yeah, you do. You keep showing up in the middle of my problem. Why is that, Mr. Robicheaux?"

"I don't have any idea."

"I do. It's because Elrod had got some kind of hard-on for you and it's about to fuck my picture in a major way."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't use that kind of language around my home."

"You got a problem with language? That's the kind of stuff that's on your mind? What's wrong with you people down here? The mosquitoes pass around clap of the brain or something?"

"What is it you want, sir?"

"He asks me what I want?" he said, looking around in the shadows as though there were other listeners there. "Elrod doesn't like to see you get taken over the hurdles. Frankly I don't either. Maybe for other reasons. Namely nobody carries my load, nobody takes heat for me, you understand what I'm saying?"

"No."

He cleared something from a nostril with his thumb and forefinger.

"What is it with you, you put your head in a bucket of wet cement every morning?" he asked.

"Can I be frank, too, Mr. Goldman?"