Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

I looked out silently at the river. A Frisbee sailed by overhead.

“Too grim for you?” Clete said.

“Did he kill Darlene?”

“No, I’m convinced that’s one he didn’t do.”

“Dio, then?”

“He didn’t know. Put it in the bank, too.”

I stood up and began brushing the grass off my pants.

“You’re going to turn to stone on me, huh?” he said.

“It’s a school night. Alafair has to get home.”

“Why is it you always make me feel like anthrax, Streak?”

“You’re right about one thing today. I didn’t call the heat because I didn’t want to be part of another criminal investigation. Particularly when I was left with the problem of explaining how somebody’s blood got smeared all over my walls and stove and floor. Right now I’m going to believe that Charlie Dodds is on a flight to new opportunities in Mexico City. Beyond that, I wouldn’t count on anything, Clete.”

“I’m going to get the guy that did her. You want to sit around and bite your nails, that’s cool with me.”

I walked off toward a group of children with whom Alafair was playing tag. Then Clete called after me, in a voice that made people turn and stare, “I love you anyway, motherfucker.”

I needed some help. I had accomplished virtually nothing on my own; I had been locked up for punching out Sally Dio, had persuaded nobody of my theories, and instead had managed to convince a couple of local cops that I was a gun-wielding paranoid. That night I called Dan Nygurski at his home in Great Falls. A baby-sitter answered and said that he was at a movie with his wife, that she would take down my name and number. He returned my call just after ten, when I was drifting off to sleep with a damp towel folded across the lump on my forehead. I took the phone into the kitchen and closed the hallway door so as not to wake Alafair or Dixie Lee, who was sleeping on the living room couch.

I told him about Charlie Dodds in my house. About the slapjack across the head, the handcuffs, the Instamatic camera, the survival knife that he had started to shove into my heart. Then I told him about Clete, the working over that Dodds had taken, the rolled rug, and the trip in the jeep probably up a log road in either the Bitterroot Valley or the Blackfoot Canyon.

“You realize what you’re telling me?” Nygurski said.

“I don’t give a damn about Dodds. That’s not why I called.”

“You didn’t tell the cops any of this?”

“I’m telling you. Do with it what you want. I’ll bet nobody ever finds Dodds, though. Clete’s done this kind of thing before and gotten away with it.”

“You should have called the cops.”

“Bullshit. I’d be trying to arrange bond right now.”

“I’ll have to report this to them.”

“Go ahead. I think their interest level on a scale of one to ten will be minus eight. Look, Nygurski, there’s somebody else after me or my daughter. He was hanging around her school this morning. Maybe it’s Mapes, maybe it’s another one of Dio’s people. I need some help.”

“I think it takes a hell of a lot of nerve to ask a federal agent for help after you run around two states with a baseball bat.”

“We both want the same thing—Sally Dee doing some serious time.”

“No, you’ve got it wrong. I want to do my job. You want to write your own rules on a day-to-day basis.”

“Then you give me a solution. You pledge the safety of my daughter, you assure me that I won’t be headed for Angola Farm in about three weeks, and I won’t be a problem to you.”

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; “What kind of help do you want?”

“Can you find out if Dio might have another hit man in town?”