Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)
Page 40
His webbed, birdlike eyes focused earnestly on my face. ”I had nothing to do with damaging your car. Stay away from me, Sweet Pea,“ I said.
He pressed the few stands of hair on his head flat with the palm of his hand and squinted at me as though he were looking through a dense haze, his mouth flexing in disbelief. Darbonne put his hand on Sweet Pea's arm. ”Is that a threat, sir?“ he asked. ”No, it's just a request.“
”If you didn't do it, that fat fuck did,“ Sweet Pea said.
”I'll pass on your remarks to Purcel,“ I said.
”You're a public menace hiding behind a badge,“ Darbonne said. ”If you come near my client again, you're going to wish your name was Job.“
Two women and a man passing by turned and looked at us, then glanced away. Darbonfie and Sweet Pea walked out to a white Chrysler parked by the curb. The sun reflected hotly off the tinted back window like a cluster of gold needles. Darbonne was poised by the driver's door, waiting for an opportunity to open it in the traffic, his nostrils dilating at something in the breeze.
I walked toward him, looked across the Chrysler's roof into his surprised face.
”When I was a patrolman in New Orleans, you were a prosecutor for the United States attorney's office,“ I said.
His hand was poised in midair, his sunglasses hanging from his fingers.
”What happened to you, sir?“ I said.
He turned his face away from me and slipped his sunglasses on his nose, but not before I saw a level of injury in his eyes that I had not anticipated.
Helen Soileau sat on the corner of my desk. She wore a pair of tan slacks and a pink short-sleeve shirt.
”I took Marsallus's diary home last night and read it till two this morning,“ she said. ”He's pretty good with words.“
”Sonny's not easy to put in one shoe box,“ I said.
”Have you got all the paperwork on him?“
”Pretty much. None of it's very helpful, though. I got his family's welfare file if you want to look at it.“
”What for?“
”No reason, really.“
She picked up the folder from my blotter and began glancing through it.
”His mother was a prostitute?“ she said. ”Yeah, she died of tuberculosis when he was a kid. His father was a blind man who sharpened knives and scissors on a grinder he used to wheel up and down Villere Street.“ Helen put the folder down. ”In the diary he talks about some songwriters. He quotes a bunch of their lyrics,“ she said.
”Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie. Is Woody Guthrie related to Arlo?“
”Woody was his dad. Woody and Joe Hill wrote songs about farm migrants, the early unions, that sort of thing.“
”I don't get it,“ she said. ”What?“
”Marsallus, he's not a wise guy He doesn't think like one. The stuff in that diary, it bothers me.“
”You mean the massacres in those villages?“
”Was that really going on down there?“ she said. ”Everyone who was there tells the same story.“
”Marsallus said something about the nature of memory that I couldn't stop thinking about. “My cell partner told me today my head's like a bad neighborhood that I shouldn't go into by myself.” There was a time in my life when I was the same way. I just didn't know how to say it.“
”I see,“ I said, focusing my eyes at a point mid distance between us. She bounced her fingertips on the file folder. ”You want to go to lunch?“ I said. ”No, thanks. Say, where's the portable cluster fuck these days?“
”I beg your pardon?“
”Clete Purcel.“