A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

"Then I put it back."

"I see."

"I followed him out to the Airline Highway. To a boxing place. No, it ain't that. They put on gloves, but they kick with they feet, too. What they call that?"

"Full-contact karate."

"I looked inside, me. Phew, it stink in there. Jimmie Lee Boggs in long sweatpants kicking at some man in the ring. His skin white and hard, shining with sweat. I got to swallow when I look at him, Mr. Dave. That man make me that afraid."

"You did fine, Tee Beau. But I want to ask something of you. You leave Jimmie Lee Boggs for other people. Don't have anything more to do with this."

"You gonna get me a new trial?"

"I'll try. But we have to do it a step at a time, partner."

His hands were folded in his lap, and he was bent forward on the bench. His small face looked like a squirrel's with sunglasses on it. Wiry rings of hair grew across the back of his neck.

"I got bad dreams at night. 'Bout the Red Hat, 'bout they be strapping me down in that chair with that black hood on my face," he said.

"You killed Hipolyte Broussard, though, didn't you, Tee Beau?"

His breath clicked in his throat.

"I done part of it. But the part I done was an accident. I swear it, 'fore God, Mr. Dave. Hipolyte kept cussing me, tole me all the bad things he gonna do to me, do to Dorothea, tole me I got jelly in my ears, me, that I cain't do nothing right, that I better stomp on the brake when he say, take my foot off when he say. He under there clanking and banging and calling me mo' names, saying 'Stomp now, stomp now.'

"So that what I done. I close my eyes and hit on that brake, and I hit on it and hit on it and pretend it be Hipolyte's face, that I smashing it like a big eggshell, me. Then I feel the bus rock and that jack break like a stick, and I know Hipolyte under the wheel now, I hear him screaming and flopping around in the mud. But I scared, Mr. Dave, I be running, run past the shed, down the road past Hipolyte's house, down past the cane field. When I turn round he look like a turtle on its back, caught under that big iron wheel. But I keep on going, I run plumb back to Gran'maman's house, she be shucking crawfish, say, 'You go wash, Tee Beau, put on your clean clothes, you, sit down with your gran'maman and don't tell them policemens nothing, you.'"

"Why was Hipolyte always deviling you?" I said.

He didn't answer.

"What it because he wanted you to pimp for him? Or make Dorothea get on the bus when he drove the girls out to the camp?"

"Yes suh."

"But Dorothea said Gros Mama Goula wouldn't let men bother her."

"Yes suh, that's right."

"That Hipolyte was afraid of Gros Mama, that she could put a gris-gris on him."

"Yes suh."

"Then Dorothea was safe, really?"

"What you saying, Mr. Dave?"

"Dorothea wasn't your main problem with Hipolyte."

He looked out at the shadows of the palm fronds on the pavement.

"It was something else," I said. "Maybe not just the pimping. Maybe something even worse than that, Tee Beau."

I could not see his eyes behind the dark glasses, but I saw him swallow.

"What was it?" I said.

"For why you want to study on that?" he said. "It gonna get me a new trial? It gonna make all them white people believe I ain't knock that bus on top of Hipolyte, I ain't stuff a dirty rag down his mouth? I ain't talking about it no mo', Mr. Dave."