Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“Who is this, please?”

“An acquaintance who would like to talk with him.”

“You’ll have to speak to Mr. Hollister. Just a moment, please.”

Before I could stop her he was on the line.

“I need to know where Mapes is. Deposition time and all that,” I said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

There was a pause.

“Is this Robicheaux?” he asked.

“If we don’t get it from you, we’ll get it from the prosecutor’s office.”

“The only thing I’ll tell you is that I think you’re a sick and dangerous man. I don’t know how they let you out of jail, but you stay away from my people.”

“You have Academy Award potential, Hollister,” I said. But he hung up.

I worked in the bait shop, shoed Alafair’s horse, weeded the vegetable garden, cleaned the leaves out of the rain gutters and the coulee, tore down the old windmill and hauled it to the scrapyard. I tried to concentrate on getting through the day in an orderly fashion and not think about the sick feeling that hung like a vapor around my heart. But my trial was six weeks away and the clock was ticking.

Then one bright morning I was stacking cartons of red wigglers on a shelf in the bait shop and one spilled out of my hand and burst open on the countertop. The worms were thin and bright red in the dark mixture of loam and coffee grounds, and I was picking them up individually with my fingertips and dropping them back in the carton when I felt that sickness around my heart again and heard the words in my head: They’re going to do it. In five and a half weeks.

I had no defense except my own word, that of an alcoholic ex-cop with a history of violence who was currently undergoing psychotherapy. My trial wouldn’t last more than three days, then I would be locked on a wrist chain in the back of a prison van and on my way to Angola.

“What’s wrong your face, Dave?” Batist said.

I swallowed and looked at my palms. They were bright with a thin sheen of sweat.

I went up to the house, packed two suitcases, took my .45 automatic out of the dresser drawer, folded a towel around it, snapped it inside a suitcase pouch with two loaded clips and a box of hollow-points, and called the bondsman in Lafayette. I had known him for twenty-five years. His name was Butter Bean Verret; he wasn’t much taller than a fire hydrant, wore tropical suits, neckties with palm trees painted on them, rings all over his fingers, and ate butter beans and ham hocks with a spoon in the same café every day of his life.

“What’s happening, Butter Bean? I need to get off the leash,” I said.

“Where you going?”

“Montana.”

“What they got up there we ain’t got here?”

“How about it, partner?”

He was quiet a moment.

“You’re not going to let me get lonely down here, are you? You’re gonna call me, right? Every four, five days you gone, maybe.”

“You got it.”

“Dave?”

“What?”

“You done got yourself in a mess here in Lou’sana. Don’t make no mo’ mess up there, no.”

I told Batist that I was leaving him and Clarise in charge of the dock, my house and animals, that I would call him every few days.