Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

I reached across him and touched my fingertips across the tape.

“It feels like a roll of pennies under there, don’t it?” he said. “That’s because I woke up just before some guy with a tire iron or a jack handle came down on my head. He was going to bust me right across the lamps, but I twisted away from him just before he swung. The next thing I knew I was in the water. You ever wake up drowning and on fire at the same time? That’s what it was like. There was a gas tank for the outboards under the cabin, and it must have blown and dumped the whole thing in the bayou. Burning boards was hanging off the stilts, the water was full of hot ash, steam hissing all over the fucking place. I thought I’d gone to hell, man.”

He stopped talking and his lips made a tight line. I saw water well up in his green eyes.

“Then I seen something awful. It was the girl, you remember, that redheaded waitress from the café in West Baton Rouge. She was on fire, like a big candle burning all over, hung in all them boards and burning against the sky.

“I can’t clean it out of my head, not even when they hit me with the joy juice. Maybe they hit her in the head like they done me. Maybe she was already dead. God, I hope so. I can’t stand thinking about it, man. She didn’t do nothing to anybody.”

I wiped my palms on my slacks and blew out my breath. I wanted to walk back out into the sunshine, into the windy morning, into the oak trees that were hung with moss.

“Who was the guy with the tire iron?” I said.

“One of those fuckers I work with.”

“You saw his face?”

“I didn’t have to. They knew I was going to drop the dime on them. For all the damn good it would do.”

“You told them that?”

“Sure. I got fed up with both of them. No, wait a minute. I got fed up being afraid. I was a little swacked when I stuck it in their face, but I done it just the same. Dalton Vidrine and Harry Mapes. One’s a coonass and the other’s a stump-jumper from East Texas.”

“I’m having one problem with all this. There’s some people who think you’re mixed up in dope. Up in Montana.”

His green eyes closed and opened like a bird’s.

“They’re wrong,” he said.

“—that maybe you’re mixed up with a trafficker named Dio.”

His mouth smiled slightly.

“You been talking to the DEA,” he said. “But they’re sniffing up the wrong guy’s leg.”

“You didn’t lease land for him in Montana?”

“I leased and bought a bunch of land for him. But it don’t have anything to do with dope. Sally Dee was my cell partner. Some guys were going to cut me up in the shower. Till Sally Dee told them they treat me just like they treat him. Which means they light my cigarettes, they pick in my sack when we get in thin cotton. The cat’s half crazy, man, but he saved my butt.”

“What was the land deal about, Dixie?”

“I didn’t ask. He’s not the kind of guy you ask those things to. He’s got a lot of holdings. He hires people to act as his agents. He likes me for some reason. He paid me a lot of bread. What’s the big deal?”

“As an old friend, Dixie, I’m going to ask you to save the Little Orphan Annie routine for the DEA.”

“You believe what you want.”

“What’s your bond?”

“Fifteen thou.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“They know I ain’t going anywhere. Except maybe to Angola. Dave, I ain’t giving you a shuck. I can’t take another fall, and I don’t see no way out of it.”

I looked out the window at the treetops, the way their leaves ruffled in the breeze, the whiteness of the clouds against the dome of blue sky.

“I’ll come back and visit you later,” I said. “I think maybe you have too much faith in one guy.”