Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'I believe she wanted to do my wife injury, Your Honor,' I said.

'In what fashion?'

I cleared my throat, then pulled at my collar.

'Sir?' he said.

'She's tried to encourage my wife to drink excessively, Your Honor.'

'That's a rather unique statement,' he said. 'To be honest, I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it. You're telling me the presence of a nun somehow has led your wife into problems with alcohol?'

'I think humor at the expense of others is beneath the court's dignity, Your Honor,' I said.

I saw the prosecutor's eyes light with anger.

'You're badly mistaken if you think I see humor in any of this, Detective. Step back, all of you,' the judge said. When he folded his hands, his knuckles looked like white dimes. 'I don't like my courtroom used as a theater. I don't like sloppy presentations, I don't like sloppy investigative work, I don't like police officers and prosecutors trying to obtain a special consideration or privilege from the court at the defendant's expense. I hope my meaning is clear. Bail is set at three hundred dollars.'

He flicked his gavel down on a small oak block.

On the way out of the courtroom the prosecutor caught my arm.

'Don't give it a second thought, Dave. I always enjoy calling a witness who makes me look like I've got my ass on upside down. Why didn't you flip Dautrieve's tie in his face while you were at it?' he said.

I followed the woman and her attorney out to the attorney's maroon Lincoln. The day was bright and clear, and leaves were bouncing across the freshly mowed lawn.

'Don't talk to him,' the attorney said, opening his door.

'It's all right. We're old pals, really. He and I share a lot of family secrets. About the wifey and that sort of thing,' she said. She put on a pair of black sunglasses and began tying a flowered bandanna around her hair.

'You share a big common denominator with most scam artists, Marie. You're cunning but you're not smart,' I said.

'Oh, hurt me deep inside, Dave,' she said, and pursed her lips at me.

'You didn't understand what I told you in there. Buchalter is going to be charged with murdering two of his own people. Bad PR when you're leading a cause. Even his lamebrain followers read newspapers.'

She hooked her purse on her wrist, then placed her hand on her hip.

'I've got a problem. My tractor don't get no traction. Can you give me a few minutes, baby-pie?' she said.

'Marie, don't spend any more time on this man,' her attorney said.

'How about it, Dave?' she said. 'It won't hurt your relationship with the sow. I think I remember somebody cranking a whole bunch of electricity into your batteries. Wouldn't you like a little sport fuck on the side?'

I opened her car door and fitted my hand tightly around her upper arm. Her skin whitened around the edges of my fingers. Pieces of torn color floated behind my eyes, like the tongues of orange flame you see inside the smoke of an oil fire, and I heard whirring sounds in my ears, like wind blowing hard inside a conch shell. I saw the top of the attorney's body across the car's rooftop, saw his Humpty-Dumpty head and wide tie and high collar, saw his mouth opening and a fearful light breaking in his eyes.

'There's no problem, Counselor. I just want to make sure y'all don't accuse us of a lack of courtesy in Iberia Parish,' I said, and sat the woman down hard in the passenger seat. Her sunglasses fell off her nose into her lap. 'Happy motoring, Marie. It's a grand day. Stay the fuck away from my house. Next time down, it's under a black flag.'

* * *

chapter twenty-four

Late that afternoon Lieutenant Rankin of the Toronto Police Department called back and told me everything he had learned from others and the case record about the death of a robbery detective named James Mervain.

'This is what it comes down to,' he said. 'Mervain was one of those fellows whose life seemed to be going out of control—booze, a brutality charge, a wife in the sack with another cop, some suspicions that maybe he was gay—so when he got a little shrill, people dismissed what he had to say. You with me?'

'Yes.'

'He'd been working with a recruit named Kuhn or Koontz. Maybe he knew the guy off the job, too, through some kind of gay connection…'