A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

"That white trash mess with Gros Mama, snakes be crawling out his grave."

I heard the screen open on the spring; then the inside door raked back on the buckled linoleum floor, and the black woman in the purple dress with the scrolled blue tattoos on the tops of her breasts stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip, a flowered kerchief curled in her fingers.

"You taking up too much of people's time," she said. "You got jelly roll oh your mind, or you think bothering my womens gonna clean that man outta your head?"

"What?" I said.

She told the woman on the bed to dress and get up to the juke and help wait tables. She picked up the ashtray with the roach in it and threw it outside into the darkness.

"Wait a minute, what did you say?" I said.

She ignored me.

"And tell that drunk nigger giving Al trouble when I be back up there his skinny ass better be gone," she said to the other woman, who buttoned her jeans, pulled on her blouse, and went out the door.

Gros Mama Goula's face was big and hard-boned, like a man's, her eyes deep-set and dark, so that they had a cavernous quality under the broad forehead and thick brows. I had heard stories about her from other Negroes, the juju woman who could blow the fire out of a burn; stop bleeding by pressing her palm against a wound; charm worms out of a child's stomach; cause a witch to invade the marriage bed, straddle the husband, and fornicate with him until his eyes crossed and he would remain forever discontent with his wife.

"What did you say?" I repeated.

"Po-licemens after jelly roll just like everybody else. You want it, you come ax me first, don't be bothering my womens. That ain't what on your mind, though. You got Jimmie Lee Boggs crawling round in your head. Jelly roll ain't gonna get him out you. He lying there, waiting."

"Is this supposed to impress me?"

She opened a cabinet over the stove, took out a jelly glass and a pint bottle of rum, poured herself three fingers, sat down at a small breakfast table, and lit a cigarette. She drank down the rum, inhaled from the cigarette, blew smoke out over her hand, and studied her knuckles as though I were not there.

"What you want?" she said.

"For openers take a break on the traiteur routine."

"What you mean?"

"You talked with Dorothea. You knew I was looking for Boggs. You'd seen my picture in the newspaper, or you figured out I was one of the men he shot."

"Think what you want. I ain't got the problem."

"What I think is you're operating a place of prostitution."

She smoked and flicked her ashes and waited for me to go on.

"I don't bother you?" I said.

"You want to carry me up to the jail, that's your bidness. They's people pay my bond make sure I stay open."

"Was Jimmie Lee Boggs cutting into Hipolyte's and your action?"

"Darlin', they ain't nobody cutting into my action."

"I don't believe you, Gros Mama. There's not a hot-pillow house in South Louisiana that doesn't have to piece off its action to New Orleans."

She poured rum into her glass again, then as an afterthought looked at me and pointed her finger at the bottle.

"No thanks," I said.

She screwed the top slowly onto the bottle.

"Lookie here," she said. "You don't care 'bout them dagos in New Orleans, 'bout what some niggers be doing down here on Saturday night. You want that man 'cause he hurt you, 'cause he walking round in your sleep at night. You wake up tired in the morning, cain't open and close your hands on the side the bed. You dragging a big chain all day long. Food don't taste no good, women's just something for other mens. You can tell the whole round world I lying, but me and you knows better."

I stared at her woodenly. She continued to smoke idly.