Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

But Sonny swung wide of me and aimed with both arms stretched straight out in front of him. Then he began firing, crack, crack, crack, crack, fire leaping out of the barrel, the empty brass cartridges clinking on the road. He picked up the flashlight the man named Jack had dropped and shined it down the road. ”Look at the ground, Dave, right by that hole in the bushes,“ he said. ”I think Jack just sprung a leak.“ Then he called out into the darkness, ”Hey, Jack, how's it feel?“

”Give me the gun, Sonny.“

”Sorry, Streak .. . I'm sorry to do this to you, too .. . No, no, don't move. I'm just going to take your piece. Now, let's walk over here to the dock and hook up.“

”You're going across the line, Sonny.“

”There's just one line that counts, Dave, the one between the good guys and the shit bags He worked a pair of open handcuffs from the back pocket of his blue jeans. “Put your hands on each side of the rail. You worried about procedure? That guy I just punched a drain hole in, dig this, you heard the Falangist joke down in Taco Tico country about the Flying Nun? This isn't a shuck, either. Some of the junta fucks in Argentina wanted a couple of nuns, human rights types, turned into object lessons. The guy who threw them out of a Huey at a thousand feet was our man Jack. ”See you around, Streak. I'll make sure you get your piece back.“ Then he disappeared through the broken bushes where the wounded man had fled. I raked the chain on the cuffs against the dock railing while mosquitoes droned around my head and my eyes stung with sweat and humiliation at my own failure and ineptitude.

Chapter 10

I HAD gone down to the office Sunday morning and made my report, a mail clerk at the post office called the dispatcher and said that during the night someone had dropped an army-issue .45 automatic through a post office mail slot. The .45 had been wrapped in a paper bag with my name written on the outside. It was hot and bright at noon, with a breeze blowing out of the south, and Clete Purcel walked with me along the dirt road to the spot where Sonny and the man named Jack had entered the brush and run down the bayou's bank toward the four corners. The blood on the leaves was coated with dust from the road. ”It looks like Sonny really cored a hole in the guy. He didn't show up at a hospital?“

”Not yet.“ We walked through the brush and down to the bank. The deep imprints in the mud left by Sonny and the man named Jack were now crisscrossed with the shoe prints of the deputies who had followed Jack's blood trail to a break in the cattails where the bow of a flat-bottomed boat had been dragged onto the sand. Clete squatted down heavily, slipped a piece of cardboard under one knee, and looked back up the bank toward the dock. He wore a pair of baggy, elastic-wasted shorts with dancing zebras printed on them. He took off his porkpie hat and twirled it on his index finger. ”Did you ever see the sawed-down twelve?“ he asked. ”No.“

”You think he was carrying one?“

”I don't know, Clete.“

”But you know a guy like that was carrying a piece of some kind? Right?“ We looked at each other. ”So the question is, why didn't he try to pop Sonny with it? He could have waited for him in the dark and parked one in his brisket,“ he said. ”Because he dropped it,“ I said. Then I said, ”And why didn't anyone find it last night?“ He was spinning his hat on his finger now. His eyes were green and full of light. ”Because it fell in the water,“ he said, and lumbered to his feet. It didn't take long. Seventy feet back down the bank, where the water eddied around a sunken and rotted pirogue that was green and fuzzy with moss, we saw the barrel of the twelve-gauge glinting wetly among the reeds and the wake from a passing boat. The barrel was sawed off at the pump and impacted with sand. The stock had been shaved and shaped with a wood rasp and honed into a pistol grip. A two-foot length of bungee cord, the kind you use to strap down luggage, was looped and screwed into the butt. Clete shook the sand out of the barrel and jacked open the breech. Yellow water gushed out of the mechanism with the unfired shell. Then he jacked four more rounds out on the ground. I picked them up and they felt heavy and wet and filmed with grit in my palm. ”Our man doesn't use a sportsman's plug,“ Clete said. He looked at the shells in my hand. ”Are those pumpkin balls?“

”Yeah, you don't see them anymore.“

”He probably loads his own rounds. This guy's got the smell of a mechanic, Streak.“ He peeled a stick of gum with one hand and put it in his mouth, his eyes thoughtful. ”I hate to say this, but maybe dick-brain saved your life.“ Down by the dock a teenage kid was holding up a stringer of perch for a friend to see. He wore a bright-chrome-plated watchband on his wrist. ”You don't think this guy's a button man, he's mobbed-up?“ Clete asked. ”I was thinking about Sonny .. . the handcuffs .. . the way he took me down.“ Clete blew into the open breech of the shotgun, closed it, and snapped the firing pin on the empty chamber. He studied my face. ”Listen, Sonny's a walking hand-job. Stop thinking what you're thinking,“ he said. ”Then why are you thinking the same thing?“

”I'm not. A guy like Sonny isn't born, he's defecated into the world. I should have stuffed him down a toilet with a plumber's helper a long time ago.“

”I've seen federal agents with the same kind of cuffs.“

”This guy's no cop. You buy into his re bop and he'll piss in your shoe,“ he said, and put the shotgun hard into my hands. Clete ate lunch with us, then I went down to the bait shop and picked up a Styrofoam cooler that I had filled with ice Friday afternoon. The corner of a black garbage bag protruded from under the lid. I walked back up the incline through the shade and set the cooler in the bed of my truck. Clete was picking up pecans from under the trees and cracking them in his hands. ”You want to take a ride to Breaux Bridge?“ I asked. ”I thought we were going fishing,“ he said. ”I hear Sweet Pea Chaisson has rented a place out by the old seminary.“

He smiled broadly. We took the four-lane into

Lafayette, then drove down the road toward Breaux Bridge, past Holy Rosary, the old Negro Catholic school, a graveyard with tombs above the ground, the Carmelite convent, and the seminary. Sweet Pea's rented house was a flat-roofed yellow brick building shielded by a hedge of dying azalea bushes. The lot next door was filled with old building materials and pieces of iron that were threaded with weeds and crisscrossed with morning glory vines. No one was home. An elderly black man was cleaning up dog feces in the yard with a shovel. ”He taken the ladies to the restaurant down on Cameron in Lafayette, down by the fo' corners,“ he said. ”Which restaurant?“ I said. ”The one got smoke comin' out the back.“

”It's a barbecue place?“ I said. ”The man own it always burning garbage out there. You'll smell it befo' you see it.“ We drove down Cameron through the black district in Lafayette. Up ahead was an area known as Four Corners, where no number of vice arrests ever seemed to get the hookers off of the sidewalks and out of the motels. ”There's his Caddy,“ Clete said, and pointed out the window. ”Check this place, will you? His broads must have rubber stomach liners.“ I parked in a dirt lot next to a wood frame building with paint that had blistered and curled into shapes like blown chicken feathers and with a desiccated privy and smoking incinerator in back. ”We're not only off your turf, big mon, we're in the heart of black town. You feel comfortable with this?“ Clete said when we were outside the truck. ”The locals don't mind,“ I said. ”You checked in with them?“

”Not really.“ He looked at me. ”Sweet Pea's a pro. It's not a big deal,“

I said. I reached inside the Styrofoam cooler and pulled the vinyl garbage bag out. It swung heavily from my hand, dripping ice and water. ”What are you doing?“ Clete said.

”I think Sweet Pea helped set up Helen Soileau.“

”The muff-diver? That's the one who had her animals killed?“

”Give her a break, Clete.“

”Excuse me. I mean the lady who thinks I'm spit on the sidewalk.

What's in the bag?“

”Don't worry about it.“

”I guess I asked for this.“ He spit his gum out with a thropping sound.

We went through the door. It was a cheerless place where you could stay on the downside of a drunk without making comparisons. The interior was dark, the floor covered with linoleum, the green walls lined with pale rectangles where pictures had once hung. People whose race would be hard to define were at the bar, in the booths, and at the pool table. They all looked expectantly at the glare of light from the opening front door, as though an interesting moment might be imminent in their lives.

”Man, that Sweet Pea can pick 'em, can't he? I wonder if they charge extra for the roaches in the mashed potatoes,“ Clete said.