Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“Yeah, I can see that. But that’s all right. I ain’t sensitive. It all bounces off me.”

“I probably won’t be home until late this evening,” I said. “Can you fix her supper?”

“Show me a little trust, son. I’d be grateful for it.”

I drove back across town and parked on a side street behind the Heidelhaus so I could see the yellow Mercury. It was a long wait, but at eight o’clock she came out of the restaurant, walked to her car with her purse on her arm, started the engine, and drove south into the Bitterroot Valley.

I followed her twenty-five miles along the river. The light was still good in the valley, and I could see her car well from several hundred yards away, even though other cars were between us; but then she turned onto a dirt road and headed across pastureland toward the foot of the mountains. I pulled to the shoulder of the highway, got out with my field glasses, and watched the plume of white dust grow smaller in the distance, then disappear altogether.

I drove down the dirt road into the purple shadows that were spreading from the mountains’ rim, crossed a wide creek that was lined with cottonwoods, passed a rotted and roofless log house with deer grazing nearby, then started to climb up on a plateau that fronted a deep canyon in the mountains. The dust from her Mercury still hung over the rock fence that bordered the property where she had turned in. The house was new, made of peeled and lacquered logs that had a yellow glaze to them, with a railed porch, a peaked shingle roof, and boxes of petunias and geraniums in the windows. But her car was the only one there.

I drove on past the house to the canyon, where there was a Forest Service parking area, and watched the house for a half hour through my field glasses. She fed a black Labrador on the back steps, she took some wash off the line, she carried a carton of mason jars out of the shed back into the house, but there was no sign of Harry Mapes.

I went back home and found Alafair asleep and Dixie Lee putting a new set of strings on his sunburst Martin.

I didn’t have to call Dan Nygurski again. He called me at five minutes after eight the next morning.

“You beat me to it,” I said. “I tried to catch you at home yesterday.”

“About Sally Dio.”

“That’s right.”

“About your phone conversation with him.”

“That’s right. So he did use the pay phone down the road from his house?”

“Yeah, he sure did. In fact, he was using it several times a day. Calls to Vegas, Tahoe, LA, Galveston. Notice I’m using the past tense here.”

I squinted my eyes closed and pressed my forefinger and thumb against my temples.

“I’ve sympathized with you, I’ve tried to help you,” he said. “I took you into my confidence. I just had a conference call with a couple of federal agents who are very angry right now. My explanations to them didn’t seem to make them feel any better.”

“Dan—”

“No, you got to talk yesterday. It’s my turn now. You blew a federal wiretap. You know how long it took us to set that up?”

“Listen to what you’ve got on that tape. Solicitation to commit murder. He stepped in his own shit.”

“You remember when I told you that Sal is not Bugsy Siegel? I meant it. He did time for stolen credit cards. He’s a midlevel guy. But he’s connected with some big people in Nevada. They’re smart, he’s not. He makes mistakes they don’t. When he falls, we want a whole busload to go up the road with him. Are you starting to get the big picture now?”

“All right, I screwed it up.”

“That doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that I think you knew better.”

“He walked into it. I let it happen. I’m sorry it’s causing you problems.”

“No, you wanted to make sure he thought he was tapped. That way he wasn’t about to try to whack you again.”

“What would you do?”

“I would have stayed away from him to begin with.”

“That’s a dishonest answer. What would you do if a guy like Dio was trying to whack you out, maybe you and your daughter both?”

I could hear the long-distance hum of the wires in the receiver.

“Did that Missoula detective get ahold of you?” he asked.