Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

I waited a moment before I spoke. 'You can teach kids how to shoot a pistol, Boots, but you can't teach them when to leave it in a drawer and when to take it out. I vote no on this one.'

She gazed out the back screen at the birds feeding in the grass under the mimosa tree.

Then she said, 'Do you think he's coming back?'

'I don't know.'

Her eyes went deep into mine.

'If I get to him first, he'll never have the chance,' I said.

'I didn't mean that,' she said.

'I did.'

I felt her eyes follow me into the hallway. I changed into a pair of seersucker slacks, loafers, a brown sports shirt, and a white knit tie, then went back into the kitchen, leaned over Bootsie's chair, hugged her across the chest, and kissed her hair.

'Boots, real courage is when you put away all thought about your own welfare and worry about the fate of another,' I said. 'That was my wife the other night. A fuckhead like Buchalter can't touch that kind of courage.'

She stroked the side of my face with her fingers without looking up.

The phone rang on the wall above the drain board.

'I hear you're back on the clock,' a voice with a black New Orleans accent said.

'Motley?'

'Do you mind me calling you at your house?'

'No, not at all. How'd you know I was back on duty?'

'We're coordinating with your department on this guy Sitwell. Did you know he and the space-o speed freak who electrocuted himself were cell mates at Angola?'

'No.'

'They were both in a rock 'n' roll band in the Block. So if they did everything else together, maybe they both muled dope for the AB.'

'I already talked to the warden. Sitwell didn't have any politics; there're no racial beefs in his jacket. He was always a loner, a walk-in bank robber and a smash-and-grab jewel thief.'

'I think you should come to New Orleans this morning.'

'What for?'

'There's a shooting gallery up by Terpsichore and Baronne. The main man there is a bucket of shit who goes by the name of Camel Benoit. You know who I'm talking about?'

'He used to pimp down by Magazine sometimes?'

'That's the guy. We've been trying to shut down that place for six months. We bust it, we nail a couple of sixteen-year-olds with their brains running out their noses, a week later Camel's got Mexican tar all up and down Martin Luther King Drive. Except at about five this morning, when everybody was nodding out, some sonofabitch broke the door out of the jamb and pasted people all over the wall with an E-tool.'

'With an entrenching tool?'

'You heard me. Sharpened on the edges with a file. After he broke a few heads, he went after our man Camel. I would have bought tickets for that one.'

'What happened?'

'I don't know, we're still finding out.'

'Come on, Motley, you're not making sense.'