Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“What?” Boggs said. He was leaning forward on the seat, looking out the side window.

“You didn’t like Florida? You had to come all the way over here to kill somebody?” Lester said. When he smiled, the edge of his mouth looked like putty.

“What do you care?” Boggs asked him.

“I was just curious.”

Boggs was silent. His face looked strained, and he shifted his buttocks back and forth on the seat.

“How much did they pay you to do that bar owner?” Lester said.

“Nothing,” Boggs said.

“Just doing somebody a favor?” Lester continued.

“I said ‘nothing’ because I didn’t kill that guy. Look, I don’t want to be rude, we got a long trip together, but I’m feeling a lot of discomfort back here.”

“We’ll get you some Pepto Bismol or something up on the Interstate,” Lester said.

“I’d appreciate that, man,” Boggs said.

We went around a curve through open pasture. Tee Beau was sleeping with his head on his chest. I could hear frogs croaking in the ditches.

“What a July Fourth,” Lester said.

I stared out the window at the soaked fields. I didn’t want to listen to any more of Lester’s negative comments, nor tell him what was really on my mind, namely, that he was the most depressing person I had ever worked with.

“I tell you, Dave, I never thought I’d have an assignment with a cop who’d been up on a murder beef himself,” he said, yawning and widening his eyes.

“Oh?”

“You don’t like to talk about it?”

“I don’t care one way or the other.”

“If it’s a sore spot, I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“It’s not a sore spot.”

“You’re kind of a touchy guy sometimes.”

The rain struck my face, and I rolled the window up again. I could see cows clumped together among the trees, a solitary, dark farmhouse set back in a sugarcane field, and up ahead an old filling station that had been there since the 1930s. The outside bay was lighted, and the rain was blowing off the eaves into the lig

ht.

“I got something bad happening inside me,” Boggs said. “Like glass turning around.”

He was leaned forward on the seat in his chains, biting his lip, breathing rapidly through his nose. Lester looked at him, behind the mesh screen, in the rearview mirror. “We’ll get you the Pepto. You’ll feel a lot better.”

“I can’t wait. I’m going to mess my pants.”

Lester looked over at me.

“I mean it, I can’t hold it, you guys. It ain’t my fault,” Boggs said.

Lester craned his head around, and his foot went off the gas. Then he looked over at me again. I shook my head negatively.

“I don’t want the guy smelling like shit all the way up to Angola,” Lester said.