Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“Where?” I said.

“There’s a bar and restaurant in Missoula, the Pink Zebra, right off Higgins by the river. It’s in an alley, but it’s a class place. Nine

o’clock.”

“I’ll think it over.”

“Listen, man—”

I hung up on him.

Later, I put the .45 back under the seat of the truck, dropped Alafair off at the baby-sitter’s, then drove to the Pink Zebra downtown. It was located in a brick-paved alley that had been refurbished into a pedestrian walkway of small cafés and shops and bars that offered philodendron and brass elegance more than alcohol.

I went inside and walked past the espresso machines and a row of booths that had copper champagne buckets affixed to the outside. The brick walls and the ceiling were hung with gleaming kettles and pots of ivy and fern, and in the back was a small private dining room, where I saw Sally Dio at a table with two men whom I hadn’t seen before. But they came out of the same cookie cutter as some I had known in New Orleans. They were both around thirty, heavier than they should have been for their age, their tropical shirts worn outside their gray slacks, their necks hung with gold chains and religious medals, their pointed black shoes shined to the gloss of patent leather, their eyes as dead and level and devoid of emotion as someone staring into an empty closet.

I stopped at the door, and one of them stood up and approached me.

“If you’ll step inside, Mr. Robicheaux, I need to make sure you’re not carrying nothing that nobody wants here,” he said.

“I don’t think we’ll do that,” I said.

“It’s a courtesy we ask of people. It’s not meant to insult nobody,” he said.

“Not tonight, podna.”

“Because everybody’s supposed to feel comfortable,” he said. “That way you have your drink, you talk, you’re a guest, there ain’t any tensions.”

“What’s it going to be, Sal?” I said.

He shook his head negatively at the man next to me, and the man stepped back as though his body were attached to a string.

Sal wore a cream-colored suit, black suspenders, and an open-necked purple sport shirt with white polka dots. His ducktails were combed back on the nape of his neck, and he smoked a cigarette without taking his hand from his mouth. He looked at me steadily out of his blade-face, his stare so intense that the bottom rim of his right eye twitched.

“Get the waiter,” he said to the man who was standing.

“What are you having, Mr. Robicheaux?” the man said.

“Nothing.”

He motioned the waiter to the door anyway.

“Bring a bottle of something nice for Mr. Dio’s guest,” he said. “Bring Mr. Dio another Manhattan, too. You want anything else, Sal?”

Sal shook his head again, then motioned the two men out of the room. I sat down across the table from him. A half-dozen cigarette butts were in the ashtray, and ashes were smeared on the linen tablecloth. I could smell the heavy odor of nicotine on his breath. The looped scar under his right eye was tight against his skin.

“What the fuck’s going on?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“With Charlie Dodds.”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“Cut the shit. He tried to clip me last night.”

“What has that got to do with me?”

He breathed through his nose and wet his lips.