Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

”He thought that was real funny. He says, “Tommy Carrol did more than sell khaki underwear. He was mixed up with Noriega and some dope operations in Panama. After the ME dug him out of the ashes and opened him up, he found a nine-millimeter slug in what was left of his brain.”

“I knew what was coming but I go, ”So?“

”He says, “I want to see if we got a match with the rounds from Marsallus's Smith & Wesson. Y'all still have those in your evidence locker, don't you?”

“I say, Sure, no problem, glad to do it. But guess who the department just hired to catalog evidence? Kelso's little brother threw them out.

”I called the comedian back and told him he was out of luck, then asked why he thought Marsallus could be involved. It was strange, he was quiet a long time, then he said, “I guess I'd like to believe Sonny's not dead. I met him years ago in Guatemala City. He was a good guy.”

“

”He's heard something,“ I said. ”Those ex-military guys believe Sonny's still out there.“ I told her about my encounter with Emile Pogue by the drawbridge.

”Why do they want the Bertrand plantation?“ she said.

”One day the country is going to bottom out and get rid of the dope trade. The smart ones are putting their money somewhere else.“

”In what?“

”You got me,“ I said.

”Come back with the department.“

”The sheriff's the man.“

She grinned and didn't reply.

”What's that mean?“ I said.

”He needs you. With guys like Rufus and Kelso and his brother on the payroll, give me a break. Stop thinking with your penis, Dave.“ She put a spoonful of cereal and milk in her mouth.

That evening I drove past Spanish Lake and bought a Dr. Pepper at a convenience store by the four corners in Cade and drank it in the cab of my truck. It had rained hard that afternoon, and the air was bright and clear and the sugarcane on the Bertrand acreage rippled in the wind like prairie grass.

I was convinced this was where the story would end, one way or another, just as it had started here when Jean Lafitte and his blackbird-ers had sailed up Bayou Teche under a veiled moon with their cargo of human grief.

Moleen didn't see it. His kind seldom did. They hanged Nat Turner and tanned his skin for wallets, and used their educations to feign a pragmatic cynicism and float above the hot toil of the poor whose fate they saw as unrelated to their own lives. The consequence was they passed down their conceit and arrogance like genetic heirlooms.

I wondered what it would be like to step through a window in time, into another era, into an age of belief, and march alongside Granny Lee's boys, most of them barefoot and emaciated as scarecrows, so devoted to their concept of honor and their bonnie blue flag they deliberately chose not to foresee the moment when their lives would be scattered by grapeshot like wildflowers blown from their stems.

As I finished my cold drink, I looked again at the red-tinged light on the fields and wondered if history might not be waiting to have its way with all of us.

Chapter 28

INMOST PEOPLE THINK it's a. romantic and intriguing business. The imagination calls to mind the wonderful radio shows of the forties, featuring private investigators who were as gallant as their female clients were beautiful and cunning. The reality is otherwise. When I went into the office Monday morning Clete was talking to two men in their twenties who were slumped forward in their metal chairs, tipping their cigarette ashes on the floor, looking at their watches, at the secretary, at the door. One of them had three slender blue teardrops tattooed by the corner of his eye; the second man was blade-faced, his skin the color and texture of the rind on a smoked ham. ”So you guys got your bus tickets, your money for lunch, all the paperwork in case anybody stops you,“ Clete said, his voice neutral, his eyes empty. ”But y'all check in with Nig soon as you arrive in New Orleans. We're clear on that, right?“

”What if Nig ain't in?“ the man with the teardrops said. ”He's in,“ Clete said. ”What if he ain't?“

”Let me try it another way,“ Clete said. He popped a crick out of his neck, laced his fingers on his desk blotter, stared through the 2 64 front window rather than address his listener. ”You're probably going to skate, even though you raped a two-year-old girl. Primarily because the child is too young to testify and the mother, who is your girlfriend, was too wiped out on acid to remember what happened. But the big factor here is Nig wrote your bond because you're willing to dime your brother, who skipped his court appearance and hung Nig out to dry for a hundred large. “What does that all mean to a mainline con and graduate of Camp J like yourself? It means we don't have bars on the windows anymore.

It also means you report in to Nig, you stay at the flop he's got rented for you, or I hunt your skinny, worthless ass down with a baseball bat.” Clete opened his palm, held it out in the air. “Are we're connecting here?” The man with the teardrops studied his shoes, worked an incisor tooth against his lip, his eyes slitted with private thoughts. “How about you, Troyce? Are you squared away on this?”

Clete said to the second man. “Sure.” He drew in on his cigarette, and you could hear the fire gather heat and crawl up the dry paper. “If the woman you branded stands up, Nig will continue your bond on the appeal. But you got to get UA-ed every day. Don't come back to the halfway house with dirty urine, you okay with that, Troyce?” Clete said. “She's not gonna stand up.”

“You boys need to catch your bus, check out the countryside between here and New Orleans,” Clete said. The blade-faced man rose from his chair, offered his hand to Clete. Clete took it, looked at nothing when he shook it. Later, he went into the lavatory and came back out, drying his hands hard with a paper towel, his breath loud in his nose. He wadded up the towel and flipped it sideways toward the wastebasket, the unshaved back of his neck stippled with roses, as swollen against his collar as a fireplug. An hour later I was walking toward my truck when Helen Soileau angled her cruiser out of the traffic and pulled to the curb. She leaned over and popped

open the passenger door.

“Get in,” she said. “What's wrong?”