Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

“Robicheaux?” the voice said.

There was no mistaking the thick, whiskey-and-cigarette-seared rasp, the words that rose like ash inside a chimney.

“Yes,” I said, and swallowed something stale and bitter in my throat.

“You must have run your thumb up somebody's hole. You got eighty-sixed out of your own department?”

“What's on your mind, Pogue?”

“I think you're not a bad dude. We need local guys to make it work.

You want to piece off Purcel, it's copacetic with us.”

“Make what work? Who's us?”

“The whole fucking planet. Get with the program, ace.”

“I don't know what the program is.”

He laughed, his voice wheezing as though there were pinholes in his lungs.

“I like you, motherfucker,” he said. “I told them to cut you in. I'd rather see you front points for us than y'all's resident cunt, what's the name, Bertrand?”

“Moleen?”

“Got to get the locals humping for you. Ever light up a ville with Zippo tracks? Something about the stink of fried duck shit really gets their attention.”

The phone receiver was warm and moist against my ear. Someone slammed the screen door behind me like the crack of a rifle.

“You were one of the shooters,” I said.

“The Marsallus gig? He took out some good men. He had it coming.”

“You fucked it up.”

I heard him shift the phone in his hand, his breath fan the mouthpiece in a dry, heated exhalation.

“Fucked it up, huh?”

“The Feds didn't find a body. I think Sonny'll be back to piss on your grave,” I said.

“You listen—” A nail caught in his throat and he began again. “We busted his wheels, ace. I saw the bone buckle. That punk's down in the slime where he belongs.”

“He shows up when you don't expect him. Your buddy Jack got capped before he knew what hit him. Think about it,” I said, and hung up the receiver.

I hoped I left him with razors turning in his viscera.

20$

Chapter 22

NOON TUESDAY a city cop picked up Ruthie Jean outside a restaurant on Main Street and took her to the city jail, where she was booked for disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct. He even cuffed her, put his hand hard inside her arm before he sat her down in the back of the cruiser and threw her cane across her lap and slammed the door to indicate his sympathies to anyone watching. I heard the story from a half dozen people, all of whom told it with a sense of genteel dismay, but I suspected they were secretly pleased, as small-town people are, when the sins of another are exposed and they no longer have to be comp licit in hiding them. People at first thought she was simply drunk, then they saw the feverish shine in the eyes, like someone still staring into the flame held to a crack pipe. An elderly woman who lived by Spanish Lake recognized and tried to counsel her, shushing her, patting her shoulders, trying to turn her away from Julia Bertrand, who had just parked her red Porsche at the curb in front of the Shadows and was walking cheerfully toward the restaurant, her mental fortifications in place, her long tan riding skirt whipping against her legs. “Oh, it's all right,” she said to the other white woman. “Ruthie Jean's upset about a tenant problem Moleen had to settle on the plantation. Now, you go on about your business, Ruthie Jean, and don't be bothering people. You want me to call somebody to drive you home?”

“You put me off the plantation, Julia. When you cut the balloon loose, it goes where it wants.”

“I'd appreciate it if you didn't address me by my first name.”

“You cain't hide from your thoughts. Not when he touches you in the dark, under the sheets, his eyes shut, and you know where his hand's been on me, you know he's thinking of me and that's why he does it to you with his eyes shut, he hurries it so he doesn't have to think about who he's doing it with, about how he's making a lie for both y'all, just like he hepped make my baby and kept pretending I could have it without a husband and live on the plantation like colored folks are suppose to do, like his ancestors did to us, like there wasn't any sin on the child, 'cause the child got Bertrand blood in him.”