Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

But Jimmie Lee Boggs was the man who caught your eye. His hair was silver, long and thin, and it hung straight back off his head like thread that had been sewn to the scalp. He had jailhouse pallor, and his eyes were elongated and spearmint green. His lips looked unnaturally red, as though they had been rouged. The curve of his neck, the profile of his head, the pink-white scalp that showed through his threadlike hair, reminded me of a mannequin’s. He wore a freshly laundered T-shirt, jeans, and ankle-high black tennis shoes without socks. A package of Lucky Strikes stuck up snugly from one of his pockets. Even though his hands were manacled to the waist chain and he had to shuffle because of the short length of chain between his ankles, you could see the lean tubes of muscle move in his stomach, roll in his arms, pulse over his collarbones when he twisted his neck to look at everyone in the room. The peculiar light in his eyes was not one you wanted to get lost in.

The jailer opened a file cabinet drawer and took out two large grocery bags that were folded and stapled neatly across the top. The name “Boggs” was written on one, “Latiolais” on the other.

“Here’s their stuff,” he said, and handed the bags to me. “If y’all want to stay up there tonight, you can get a per diem.”

“Lookit what you send up there, you,” Tante Lemon said. “Ain’t you shamed? You put that little boy in chains, you pretend he like that other one, ’cause you conscience be bothering y’all at night.”

“I had that boy in my jail eight months, Tante Lemon, long before he got in this trouble,” the jailer said. “So don’t be letting on like Tee Beau never done anything wrong.”

“For taking from Mr. Dore junkyard. For giving his gran’maman an old window fan ain’t nobody want. That’s why y’all had him in y’all’s jail.”

“He stole Mr. Dore’s car,” the jailer said.

“That’s what he say,” Tante Lemon said.

“I hope I don’t have to pay rent here tonight,” Lester said, and brushed cigarette ashes off his slacks by flipping his nails against the cloth.

Then Tante Lemon started to cry. Her eyes closed, and tears squeezed out of the lids as though she were sightless; her mouth trembled and jerked without shame.

“Good God,” said Lester.

“Gran’maman, I be writing,” Tee Beau said. “I be sending letters like I right down the street.”

“I got to go to the bathroom,” said Jimmie Lee Boggs.

“Shut up,” the jailer told him.

“That boy innocent, Mr. Dave,” she said. “You know what they gonna do. T’connais, you. He goin’ to the Red Hat.”

“Y’all get out of here. I’ll see she’s all right,” the jailer said.

“Fuck, yes,” Lester said.

We went out into the dark, into the rain and the lightning that leapt across the southern sky, and locked Jimmie Lee Boggs and Tee Beau into the back of the car behind the wire-mesh screen. Then I unlocked the trunk and threw the two paper bags containing their belongings inside. At the back of the trunk, fastened to the floor with elastic rope, were a .30-06 scoped rifle in a zippered case and a twelve-gauge pump shotgun with a pistol stock. I got in the passenger’s side, and we drove out of town on the back road that led through St. Martinville to Interstate 10, Baton Rouge, and Angola Pen.

The spreading oaks along the two-lane road were black and dripping with water. The rain had slackened, and when I rolled my window partly down I could smell the sugarcane and the wet earth in the fields. The ditches on both sides of the road were high with rainwater.

“I got to use the can,” Jimmie Lee Boggs said.

Neither Lester nor I answered.

“I ain’t kidding you, I gotta go,” he repeated.

“You should have gone back there,” I said.

“I asked. He told me to shut up.”

“You’ll have to hold it,” I said.

“What’d you come back to this stuff for?” Lester said.

“I’m into some serious debt,” I said.

“How bad?”

“Enough to lose my house and boat business.”

“I’m going to get out one of these days. Buy me a place in Key Largo. Then somebody else can haul the freight. Hey, Boggs, didn’t the mob have enough work for you in Florida?”