Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'You gonna open up?'

'No.'

'You're starting to piss me off, Art.'

'What can I say? Wait in your truck, I'll send you guys out some drinks and sandwiches. Give me a break, all right?'

He walked back toward the house. The swimmers were leaving the screened-in pool for a shady area in the trees, set with lawn chairs, a drinks table, and a smoking barbecue pit. The skin flexed around the corners of Clete's eyes.

'You still got your binoculars?' he asked.

'In the glove compartment.'

He went to the truck and returned to the gate. He focused my pair of World War II Japanese field glasses through the steel bars and studied the people in the shade.

'Check it out, mon,' he said, handing me the glasses.

One woman lay on a reclining chair with a newspaper over her face. A second, older, heavyset and big-breasted, her skin tanned almost the color of mahogany, stood on the lawn with her feet spread wide, touching each toe with a cross-handed motion, her ash blond hair cascading back and forth across her shoulders. A third woman, with dyed red hair, who could not have been over twenty or twenty-one, was bent forward over a pocket mirror, a short soda straw held to one nostril, the other nostril pinched shut with a forefinger. Seated on each side of her was a thick-bodied, sun-browned, middle-aged man with a neon bikini wrapped wetly around the genitals, the back and chest streaked with wisps of black and gray hair. The face of one man was flecked with fine patterns of scab tissue, as though he had walked through a reddish brown skein of cobweb.

'When did Tommy Blue Eyes hook up with the Caluccis?' Clete said. 'They always hated each other.'

'Business is business.'

'Yeah, but the micks always looked down on the greaseballs. They didn't socialize with them.' He took the glasses out of my hand and looked again through the bars. 'If you think Bobo and Max are geeks, check out the cat flopping steaks on the grill.'

A man who must have been six and one half feet tall had come out of the side entrance to the house with a tray of meat. He had a flat Indian face, a cheerless mouth, and wide-set, muddy eyes that didn't squint or blink in the smoke rising from the pit. His hair was jet black and freshly barbered and looked like a close-cropped wig glued on brownish red stone.

'All the guy needs are electrodes inset in his temples,' Clete said.

'I don't think this is going anywhere,' I said. 'I probably should head back to New Iberia.'

His green eyes roamed over my face. 'You don't think Bootsie can handle it?' he asked.

'How do I know, Clete? He humiliated her, he put his tongue in her mouth, he left bruises on her kidney like he'd taken a pair of pliers to her.'

He nodded and didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, 'That blonde doing the aerobics is Tommy's regular punch when his old lady's out of town. No, she's more than that, he got a real Jones for her. Believe me, Tommy and that clunk of radiator hose he's got for a schlong aren't far away. Dave, look at me. You got my word, I'm going to dig this guy Buchalter out of the woodwork. If you're not around, I'll give you a Polaroid, then you can burn it.'

He continued to stare into my face, then he said, 'You're troubling me, noble mon.'

'What's the problem?'

'You look wired to the eyes, that's the problem.'

'So what?'

'You have a way of throwing major monkey shit through the window fan, that's what.'

'I do?'

'Go down to the corner and call Bootsie. Then we'll give it another hour. If Tommy's not back by then, we'll hang it up.'

We waited in the truck for another hour, but Tommy Lonighan didn't return. The metal of my dashboard burned my hands when I touched it, and the air smelled of salt and dead water beetles in the rain gutters. I started the engine.

'Wait a minute. They're coming out. Let's not waste an opportunity, mon,' Clete said.

The electronic piked gate opened automatically, and the Calucci brothers, in a light blue Cadillac convertible, with the two younger women in the backseat, drove out of the shade into the sunlight. I started-to block their exit with the truck, but it was unnecessary. Max Calucci, the driver, and one of the women in back were arguing furiously. Max stepped hard on the brakes, jolting everyone in the car forward, turned in his leather seat, and began jabbing his finger at the woman. The woman, the one who had been doing lines through a soda straw earlier, climbed out of the backseat in her shorts and spiked heels, raking a long, paint-curling scratch down the side of the Cadillac.

Max got out of the car and struck the woman full across the mouth with the flat of his hand. He hit her so hard that a barrette flew from her lacquered red hair. Then he slapped her across the ear. She pressed her palms into her face and began to weep.