Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'Don't get sucked in, mon. Messing with Baxter is like putting your hand in a spittoon.'

I picked,up the slip of paper and put it in my pocket.

'What do I know?' he said.

I called the dock from the guesthouse and was told that the mechanic had gone home sick and my boat would not be ready until the next day. Then I called the number on the slip of paper, which turned out to be Garden District police headquarters, and was told that Lucinda Bergeron was not in. I left my name and the telephone number of the guesthouse.

Batist was sitting on the side of his bed, his big, callused, scar-flecked hands in his lap, staring out the French doors, his face full of thought.

'What's troubling you, partner?' I asked.

'That nigger out yonder in the lot.'

'That what?'

'You heard me.'

'What'd he do?'

'While you was still sleepin', I got up early and went down to the dining room for coffee. He was eatin' in there, talkin' loud with his mout' full of food, puttin' his hand on that young white girl's back each time she po'ed his coffee. Pretendin' like it's innocent, like he just a nice man don't have no bad t'oughts on his mind, no.'

'Maybe it's their business, Batist.'

'That kind of trashy nigger make it hard on the rest of us, Dave.'

He walked to the French doors, continued to stare out at the parking lot, peeled the cellophane off a cigar, and wadded the cellophane up slowly in his palm.

'He leanin' up against your truck,' he said.

'Let it go.'

'He need somebody to go upside his head.'

I knew better than to argue with Batist, and I didn't say anything more. He took off his short-sleeve blue denim shirt, hung it on the bedpost, and lathered his face with soap in front of the bathroom mirror. The muscles in his shoulders and back looked like rocks inside a leather bag. He began shaving with a pearl-handled straight-edge razor, drawing the blade cleanly down each of his jaws and under his chin.

I had known him since I was a child, when he used to fur-trap with my father on Marsh Island. He couldn't read or write, not even his own name, and had difficulty recognizing numbers and dialing a telephone. He had never been outside the state of Louisiana, had voted for the first time in 1968, and knew nothing of national or world events.. But he was one of the most honest and decent men I've known, and absolutely fearless and unflinching in an adversarial situation (my adopted daughter, Alafair, never quite got over the time she saw him reach into a flooded pirogue, pinch a three-foot moccasin behind the head, and fling it indifferently across the bayou).

He walked back to the French doors, blotting a cut on his chin with a towel, the razor still in his hand. Then he folded the razor, dropped it in the back pocket of his denims, and began buttoning on his shirt.

'What are you doing, Batist?'

'Take a look out yonder.'

A tall, thin mulatto with skin the color of a new penny was talking to a half dozen black kids by my truck. He wore striped brown pants, with a braided black belt, and a lavender short-sleeve shirt with a white tie. He grinned and jiggled, and his hands moved in the air while he talked, as though a song were working inside him.

'A man like that just like a movie star to them raggedy kids, Dave.'

'At some point they'll learn he isn't.'

'It won't be no he'p then. He's a dope dealer or a pimp, don't be tellin' me he ain't. He'll use up them young boys' lives just so he can have money for a nice car, take womens out to the racetrack, put dope up his nose… Hey, you t'ink I'm wrong? Come see.'

The mulatto man rubbed one kid on his head, the way a baseball coach might, then hooked two fingers inside the kid's belt, drew the kid close to him, and stuffed something small inside his pants. Then he cupped his hand around the nape of another kid's neck, his face beaming with goodwill and play, and shoved something down inside his pants, too.

'I be right back,' Batist said.

'Leave this guy alone, Batist. I'll call the locals and they'll send somebody out.'

'Yeah, in t'ree hours they will.'