Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

“Your problem is your own, sir. You don't respect the class you were born into. You look into the mirror and always see what you came from.

I feel sorry for you.”

He waited, the quirt poised at his side.

“You're not worth punching out, Moleen,” I said.

I turned and walked back out into the field toward my truck, into the hot sunlight and the smell of diesel and the drift of dust from the machines that were chewing up the Bertrand plantation. My ears were ringing, my throat constricted as though someone had spit in my mouth.

I heard Moleen's saddle creak as he mounted his horse. He sawed the reins and used his spurs hard at the same time, wheeling his horse and cantering toward the survey crew.

I couldn't let it go.

I walked after him through the destroyed cane, laced my hand inside the horse's bridle, felt it try to rear against my weight. The survey crew, men whose skin was as dark as chewing tobacco, paused in their work with chaining pins and transit and metal tapes, grinning good-naturedly, unsure of what was taking place.

Moleen wasn't prepared for an audience.

“If you're planning on a trip, I hope it's with Ruthie Jean,” I said.

He tried to jerk the horse's head free. I tightened my fingers inside the leather.

“Cops don't prevent crimes, they solve them after the fact,” I said.

“In this case, I'm creating an exception. Don't take either her or Luke Fontenot for granted because they're black. The person who kills you is the one at your throat before you ever know it.”

He raised his quirt. I flung the bridle from my hand, slapped his horse, and spooked it sideways among the surveyors.

I glanced back at him before I got into my truck. He was reining and soothing his horse, turning in a circle, his skin filmed with sweat and the dust that rose around him like a vortex, his face dark with shame and embarrassment.

But it was no victory. I was convinced Moleen had sold us out,

was bringing some new form of evil into our lives, and there was nothing I could do about it.

An hour later I was in the Iberia Parish building permit office. All the applications for construction permits on Moleen's property had been filed by Jason Darbonne. The blueprints had the clean, rectangular lines that you associate with a high school drafting class; but they were also general in nature, and the interior seemed to be nothing more than a huge concrete pad, an empty shell, a question mark without function or purpose. “What's the name of the company?” I asked the engineer. “Blue Sky Electric,” he said. “What do they do?”

“They work on electrical transformers or something,” he answered. In small letters, in one corner of the blueprint, was the word incinerator.

“These plans have all the specifics of a blimp hangar,” I said. He shrugged his shoulders. “What's the problem?” he said. “I wish I knew.” Late that evening Bootsie looked out the kitchen screen into the backyard. “Clete Piircel's sitting at our picnic table,” she said.

I went out the back door. Clete sat with his back to the house, hunched over a six-pack of Budweiser, an opened can in one hand, a Lucky Strike in the other. He wore elastic-wasted white tennis shorts, flip-flops, and a starched short-sleeve print shirt. By his foot was a cardboard box with tape across the top. The sun had dropped below my neighbor's treeline, and the sugarcane field behind my house was Covered with a purple haze. “What are you doing out here?” I asked. “Figuring out how I should tell you something.” I sat down across from him. His green eyes were filled with an indolent, alcoholic shine. My foot accidentally hit the cardboard box under the table.

“You look like you made an early pit stop today,” I said.

“You remember those two gee ks I put on the bus, the brander and the child rapist? I called Nig to see if they got there all right. Guess what? The brander's back in custody. He got to the victim and beat the living shit out of her. Of course, he asks Nig to write another bond for him. Nig tells him the guy is past his envelope, the guy's a flight risk, he's going down for sure this time, and, besides, even Nig can't stomach this barf bag any longer.

”So the barf bag gets cute, tells Nig, “Write the bond, I'll give up the guy's gonna do Purcel's buddy, what's-his-face, Robicheaux.”

“Nig asks the barf bag who put him inside a whack on a cop, and the barf bag says, get this for lowlife class distinction, Patsy Dap used to piece off five-hundred-buck hits to him in the projects because Patsy thinks it's beneath him to do colored dope dealers.”

Clete drank from his beer can, looked at me over the tops of his fingers.

“Patsy's working for Johnny Carp again?” I said.

“It makes sense, mon. Patsy's a stir bug. Johnny puts Patsy back in the jar and takes you out at the same time.”

“They don't hit cops.”

“Dave, you rubbed shit in John Giacano's face in front of eve