Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'Your friend, the black man, Batist Perry, they're sticking it to him. Nate Baxter held some information back from you.'

'Alafair, how about telling Bootsie we'll go to Mulate's for supper tonight?'

She made an exasperated face, climbed down from the stool, unhitched Tripod, her three-legged pet raccoon, from his chain by the door, and

went up the dock toward the house with Tripod looking back at me over her shoulder.

'The murdered man had his heart cut out,' Lucinda Bergeron said. 'But so did three other homicide victims in the last four months. Even one who was pitched off a roof. He didn't tell you that, did he?'

'No, he didn't.'

'The press doesn't know about it, either. The city's trying to sit on it so they don't scare all the tourists out of town. Baxter thinks it's Satanists. Your friend just happened to stumble into the middle of the investigation.'

'Satanists?'

'You don't buy it?'

'It seems they always turn out to be meltdowns who end up on right-wing religious shows. Maybe it's just coincidence.'

'If I were you, I'd start proving my friend was nowhere near New Orleans when those other homicides were committed. I've got to sit down. I think I'm going to be sick again.'

I came around from behind the counter and walked her to a chair and table. Her back felt like iron under my hands. She took her revolver out of her back pocket, clunked it on the table, and leaned forward with her forearms propped on her thighs. Her hair was thick and white on the ends, her neck oily with sweat. Two white fishermen whom I didn't know started through the door, then turned and went back outside.

'I'll be right with y'all,' I called through the screen.

'Like hell you will,' I heard one of them say as they walked back toward their cars.

'I'll drive you back to New Orleans. I think maybe you've got a bad case of stomach flu,' I said to Lucinda.

'Just fill my gas can for me. I'll be all right in a little bit.' She took a crumpled five-dollar bill from her Levi's and put it on the tabletop.

'I have to go back for my truck, anyway. It's at a dock down by Barataria Bay. Let's don't argue about it.'

But she wasn't capable of arguing about anything. Her breath was rife with bile, her elongated turquoise eyes rheumy and listless, the back of her white T-shirt glued against her black skin. When I patted her on the shoulder, I could feel the bone like coat hanger wire against the cloth. I could only guess at what it had been like for her at the NOPD training academy when a peckerwood drill instructor decided to turn up the butane.

I carried the gas can down to her Toyota, got it started, filled the tank up at the dock, and drove her to New Orleans. She lived right off Magazine in a one-story white frame house with a green roof, a small yard, and a gallery that was hung with potted plants and overgrown with purple trumpet vine. Around the corner, on Magazine, was a two-story bar with a colonnade and neon Dixie beer signs in the windows; you could hear the jukebox roaring through the open front door.

'I should drive you out to the boatyard,' she said.

'I can take a cab.'

She saw my eyes look up and down her street and linger on the intersection.

'You know this neighborhood?'

'Sure. I worked it when I was a patrolman. Years ago that bar on the corner was a hot-pillow joint.'

'I know. My auntie used to hook there. It's a shooting gallery now,' she said, and walked inside to call me a cab.

Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought.

It was late evening after I picked up my truck down in Barataria and drove back into the city. I called Clete at his apartment in the Quarter.

'Hey, noble mon,' he said. 'I called you at your house this afternoon.'

'What's up?'

'Oh, it probably doesn't amount to much. What are you doing back in the Big Sleazy, mon?'