Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

In the light from the kitchen we could see Sweet Pea and another man sitting at a large table with four women. The other man was explaining something, his forearms propped on the edge of the table, his fingers moving in the air. The women looked bored, hungover, wrapped in their own skin.

”Do you make the dude with him?“ Clete said close to my ear.

”No.“

”That's Patsy Dapolito, they call him Patsy Dap, Patsy Bones, Patsy the Baker. He's a button guy for Johnny Carp.“

The man named Patsy Dapolito wore a tie and a starched collar buttoned tightly around his neck. His face was pinched-looking, the nose thin, sharp-edged, the mouth down-turned, the teeth showing as though he were breathing through them.

”Stay out of overdrive, Dave. Dapolito's a head case Clete said quietly.

“They all are.”

“He baked another hood's bones in a wedding cake and sent it to a Teamster birthday party.”

Sweet Pea sat at the head of the table, a bib tied around his neck. The table was covered with trays of boiled crawfish and beaded pitchers of draft beer. Sweet Pea snapped the tail off a crawfish, sucked the fat out of the head, then peeled the shell off the tail. He dipped the meat into a red sauce, put it in his mouth, and never looked up.

“Y'all get yourself some plates, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said. He wore cream-colored slacks and a bolo tie and a gray silk shirt that rippled with a metallic sheen. His mouth glistened as though it were painted with lip gloss.

I took the dead coon out of the bag by its hind feet. The body was leathery and stiff, the fur wet from the ice in the cooler. I swung it across the table right into Sweet Pea's tray. Crawfish shells and juice, beer, and coleslaw exploded all over his shirt and slacks.

He stared down at his clothes, the twisted body of the coon in the middle of his tray, then at me. But Sweet Pea Chaisson didn't rattle easily. He wiped his cheek with the back of his wrist and started to speak.

“Shut up, Sweet Pea,” Clete said.

Sweet Pea smiled, his webbed eyes squeezing shut.

“What I done to deserve this?” he said. “You ruin my dinner, you trow dead animals at me, now I ain't even suppose to talk?”

I could hear the air-conditioning units humming in the windows, a solitary pool ball rolling across the linoleum floor.

“Your buddies tried to hurt a friend of mine, Sweet Pea,” I said.

He wrapped a napkin around the coon's tail, then held the coon out at arm's length and dropped it.

“You don't want nothing to eat?” he asked.

“Fuck it,” Clete said beside me, his voice low.

Then I saw the expression on the face of the man called Patsy Dap. It was a grin, as though he both appreciated and was bemused by the moment that was being created for all of us. I felt Clete's shoe nudge against mine, his fingers pull lightly on my arm.

But it was moving too fast now. “What d' we got here, the crazy person hour, flicking clowns abusing people at Sunday dinner?” Dapolito said.

“Nobody's got a beef with you, Patsy,” Clete said. “What d' you call this, creating a fucking scene, slopping food on people, who the fuck is this guy?”

“We got no problem with you, Patsy. Accept my word on that,” Clete said. “Why's he looking at me like that?” Dapolito said.

“Hey, I don't like that. Why you pinning me, man? .. . Hey .. .” My gaze drifted back to Sweet Pea. “Tell those two guys, you know who I'm talking about, not to bother my friend again. That's all I wanted to say,” I said. “Hey, I said why you fucking pinning me. You answer my ques-tidn,” Dapolito said Then his hand shot up from under the table and bit like a vise into my scrotum. I vaguely recall the screams of the women at the table and Clete locking his big arms around me and dragging me backward through a tangle of chairs. But I remember my palm curving around the handle of the pitcher, the heavy weight of it swinging in an arc, the glass exploding in strings of wet light; I remember it like red shards of memory that can rise from a drunken dream. Then Dapolito was on his knees, his face gathered in his hands, his scarlet fingers trembling as though he were weeping or hiding a shameful secret in the stunned silence of the room.

Chapter 11

YOU DO it, mon?“ Clete said outside. We were standing between my truck and Sweet Pea's Cadillac convertible. ”He dealt it.“ I wiped the sweat off my face on my sleeve and tried to breathe evenly. My heart was beating against my rib cage. So far we had heard no sirens. Some of the restaurant's customers had come out the front door but none of them wanted to enter the parking lot. ”Okay.. . this is the way I see it,“ Clete said. ”You had provocation, so you'll probably skate with the locals. Patsy Dap's another matter. We'll have to do a sit-down with Johnny Carp.“

”Forget it.“

”You just left monkey shit all over the ceiling. We're doing this one my way, Streak.“

”It's not going to happen, Clete.“