Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

”I don't blame you. Who bled all over those bandages?“

Her mouth was painted with purple lipstick. She pursed her lips into a. large, thick button and hummed to herself. ”Here's a red quarter.

Can you put it in the jukebox for me?“ she said. ”It got fingernail polish on it so the jukebox man don't keep it when he picks up the coins.“

I opened my badge holder on the bar.

”Do you mind if I look in your trailers?“ I said.

”I thought I had me a new boyfriend. But you just being on the job, ain't you?“

”I think there might be an injured man back there. So that gives me the right to go in those trailers. You want to help me?“

She pressed her fingertip on a potato chip crumb on the bar, looked at it, and flicked it away.

”I give away my heart and a man wipe his feet on it every time,“ she said.

I went back outside. The windows in both trailers were open, the curtains blowing in the breeze, but the doors were padlocked. When I reentered the bar the woman was talking on the pay phone in back. She finished her conversation, her back to me, and hung up.

”Had to find me a new man,“ she said.

”Can I have the key?“

”Sure. Why you ain't ax? You know how to put it in? Cain't every man always get it in by his self

I unlocked and went inside the first trailer. It stunk of insecticide and moist garbage; roaches as fat as my thumb raced across the cracked linoleum. In the center of the floor was a double cot with a rubber air mattress on it and a tangled sheet spotted with gray stains. The small tin sink was full of empty beer cans, the drain stoppered with cigarette butts.

The second trailer was a different matter. The floor was mopped, the tiny bathroom and shower stall clean, the two trash cans empty. In the icebox was a gallon bottle of orange juice, a box of jelly doughnuts, a package of ground chuck steak. The sheets and pillowcases had been stripped from the mattress on the bed. I grabbed the mattress by one end and rolled it upside down on the springs. In the center of the rayon cover was a brown stain the size of a pie plate that looked like the source had pooled and soaked deep into the fabric.

I opened my Swiss Army knife and grooved a line of crusted flakes onto the blade and wiped them inside a Ziploc bag. I locked the i o o trailer and started to get in my truck, then changed my mind and went back inside the bar. The woman was mopping out the women's rest room, her stomach swinging under her sweater.

“He was a tall white man with a face full of wrinkles,” I said. “He probably doesn't like black people much, but he had at least one nine-millimeter round in him and wasn't going to argue when Sweet Pea drove him out here. How am I doing so far?”

“It ain't my bid ness baby.”

“What's your name?”

“Glo. You treat me right, I light up. I light up your whole life.”

“I don't think you mean harm to anyone, Glo. But that man, the one with the wrinkles in his face, like old wallpaper full of cracks, he's a special kind of guy, he thinks up things to do to people, anybody, you, me, maybe even some Catholic nuns, I was told he threw two of them from a helicopter at a high altitude. Was the man in the trailer that kind of guy?”

She propped the head of the mop in a bucket of dirty water and worked her Lucky Strikes out of her shorts. Her right eye looked bulbous and watery as she held the Zippo's flame to the cigarette. She exhaled, pressed the back of her wrist to her eye socket, then cleared her throat and spat something brown into the wastebasket.

She tilted her chin up at me, her face unmasked, suddenly real, for the first time. “That's the troot, what you saying about this guy?”

“As far as I know.”

“I'm locking up now, sugar, gotta take my little boy to the doctor today. There's a lot of grip going around.”

“Here my business card, Glo.”

But she walked away from me, her arms stiff at her sides, her hands extended at right angles, as though she were floating on currents of air, her mouth gathered into a silent pucker like a purple rose.

I drove across the cattle guard under the arched and wisteria-covered iron trellis at the entrance to the Bertrand plantation, down the dirt road to Ruthie Jean Fontenot's small white frame house, where I parked in the yard. The sun had gone behind a cloud, blanketing i o i the fields with shadow, and the breeze felt moist and warm blowing across the tops of the cane.

Ruthie Jean opened her door on a night chain.

“What you want?” she said.