Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

'47

”Some people believe it's better to know where the players are rather than spread them all over the community,“ I said. ”The maid told me a black woman named Ruthie Jean Fontenot brings the prostitutes to that nightclub, or whatever you want to call it.“ I looked at her, at the manic, pinched energy in her face and the bleached hair spiked on the ends, the eyes bright with either residual booze or black speed, and I didn't doubt that the Furies waited for Julia each morning inside her dresser mirror. ”I'll ask someone to look into it,“ I said. ”How kind.“

”Have I done something to offend you?“

”Of course not. You're a sweetie, Dave. I just wish I'd had a chance with you before Bootsie came along.“

”It's always good to see you, Julia.“ A few minutes later I watched through the window as she got into her yellow convertible and roared out into the traffic, her morning temporarily in place, as though reporting a crippled black woman to a rural sheriff's office had purged the earth of a great evil. I had a cup of coffee, opened my mail, and went to the lockup. Kelso was chewing on a soda straw and reading from a folder opened on his desk. At the top of a page I could see Sonny's name. ”Robicheaux, my man, work out something, get his bail reduced, go the bail yourself, let him box up worms out at your dock, he don't belong here,“ Kelso said. ”That's the way it shakes out sometimes, Kelso.“

”I got him in isolation like you as

ked, I'm even taking his food from my house to his cell. So what's he tell me? He wants to go back in main pop.“

”Bad idea.“

”He says it don't matter where I put him, his ticket's run out, he don't like small places. He wants to go back into main pop or he ain't gonna eat his food.“

”You've dealt with problem inmates before.“

”Here's the rest of it. My night man, he didn't make this cat Pogue, right, but now he says maybe he saw him around the jail earlier, maybe with some other guys. I go, “Why the fuck didn't you tell me this?” So now he says he don't remember anything, and besides that, his wife calls him in sick. I never had a hit in my jail, Robicheaux. You get this cocksucker out of here.“

I checked my weapon with Kelso, and a uniformed guard pulled the levers on a sliding barred door that gave onto a corridor of individual cells.

The guard walked me past three empty cells to the last one on the row and let me in.

Sonny sat on the edge of his bunk in his skivvies, one bare foot pulled up on the thin mattress. His body looked hard and white, the scars on his rib cage and chest like a network of dried purple lesions.

I lowered the bunk from the opposite wall on its chain and sat down.

”You want to square with me?“ I said.

”If you're here for absolution, I don't have the right collar for it,“

he said.

”Who says I need it?“

”You work for the Man, Dave. You know how things really are, but you still work for the Man.“

”I'm going to be hard on you, Sonny. I think that girl in St.

Martinville is dead because of you, so how about getting your nose out of the air for a while?“

He put both his feet on the concrete floor and picked up an apple from a paper plate that contained two uneaten sandwiches and a scoop of potato salad.

”You want it? Kelso brought it from his house,“ he said.

”You're really going on a hunger strike?“

He shrugged, let his eyes rove over the graffiti on the walls, looked at a cross somebody had scorched on the ceiling with a cigarette lighter. ”You're not a bad guy, Streak,“ he said.

”Help us. Maybe I can get you some slack.“

”Hey, how about some prune-o? The sweep-up slipped me some.“

He looked at the expression on my face. ”I got nothing I can help you with. That's what you don't hear.“

”What's in the notebook?“