Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

The accent didn’t go with the name or the man. It was hillbilly, nasal, southern mountains, a bobby pin twanging in your ear.

“I’m closing up for the day and we’re about to go to a crawfish boil in the park,” I said.

“This won’t take long. I talked with the sheriff in New Iberia and he said you could probably help me out. You used to be a deputy in his department, didn’t you?”

“For a little while.”

His face was seamed and coarse, the eyes slightly red around the rims. He flexed his mouth in a peculiar way when he talked, and it caused the muscles to jump in his neck, as though they were attached to a string.

“Before that you were on the force in New Orleans a long time? A lieutenant in homicide?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be,” he said, and looked at the red sun through the cypress trees and the empty boats tied to the dock.

My experience with federal agents of any kind has always been the same. They take a long time to get to it.

“Could I rent a boat from you? Or maybe could you go with me and show me some of these canals that lead into Vermilion Bay?” he asked. His thinning dark hair was cut GI, and he brushed his fingers back through it and widened his eyes and looked around again.

“I’ll rent you a boat in the morning. But you’ll have to go out by yourself. What is it exactly I can help you with, Mr. Nygurski?”

“I’m just messing around, really.” He flexed his mouth again. “I heard some guys were off-loading some bales down around Vermilion Bay. I just like to check out the geography sometimes.”

“Are you out of New Orleans?”

“No, no, this is my first trip down here. It’s nice country. I’ve got to try some of this crawfish while I’m here.”

“Wait a minute. I’m not following you. You’re interested in some dope smugglers operating around Vermilion Bay but you’re from somewhere else?”

“It’s just an idle interest. I think they might be the same guys I was after a few years ago in Florida. They were unloading a cigarette boat at night outside of Fort Myers, and some neckers out in the dunes stumbled right into the middle of the operation. These guys killed all four of them. The girls were both nineteen. It’s not my case anymore, though.”

The twang, the high-pitched voice, just would not go with the subject matter nor the short, thick-bodied dark man who I now noticed was slew-footed and walked a bit sideways like a crab.

“So you’re out of Florida?” I said.

“No, no, you got me all wrong. I’m out of Great Falls, Montana, now, and I wanted to talk with you about—”

I shook my head.

“Dixie Lee Pugh,” I said.

We walked up the dock, across the dirt road and through the shadows of the pecan trees in my front yard. When I asked him how he had connected me with Dixie Lee, he said that one of his people had written down my tag number the morning I had met Dixie in the café outside Baton Rouge. But I also guessed that the DEA had a tap on his motel phone. I went inside the house, brought out two cold cans of Dr Pepper, and we sat on the porch steps. Through the trunks of the pecan trees I could see the shadows lengthening on the bayou.

“I don’t mean any disrespect toward your investigation, Mr. Nygurski, but I don’t think he’s a major drug dealer. I think y’all are firing in the well.”

“Why?”

“I believe he has a conscience. He might be a user, but that doesn’t mean he’s dealing.”

“You want to tell me why he came out to see you?”

“He’s in some trouble. But it doesn’t have anything to do with drugs, and he’ll have to be the one to tell you about it.”

“Did he tell you he celled with Sal the Duck in Huntsville?”

“With who?”

“Sal the Duck. Also known as Sally Dio or Sally Dee. You think that’s funny?”