Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

"Crown's an innocent man. I think Ely Dixon was assassinated by a couple of Mississippi Klansmen. Maybe one of them was a Mississippi highway patrolman."

"You ought to tell this to the FBI."

"I got this from the FBI. I have testimony from two ex-field-agents."

"It seems the big word in this kind of instance is always 'ex,' Mr. Felton," I said.

He coughed out a laugh. "You're a hard-nose sonofabitch, aren't you?" he said.

I stood erect in the boat where I'd been bailing, poured the water out of the can into the bayou, idly flicked the last drops onto the boat's bow.

"I don't particularly care what you think of me, sir, but I'd appreciate your not using profanity around my home," I said.

He looked off into the distance, suppressing a smile, watching a blue heron lift from an inlet and disappear into the fog.

"We had a writer murdered in the Quarter," he said. "The guy was a little weird, but he didn't deserve to get killed. That's not an unreasonable position for me to take, is it?"

"I'll be at the sheriff's department by eight. If you want to give us some information, you're welcome to come in."

"Sabelle told me you were an intelligent man. Who do you think broke the big stories of our time? My Lai, Watergate, CIA dope smuggling, Reagan's gun deals in Nicaragua? It was always the media, not the government, not the cops. Why not lose the 'plain folks' attitude?"

I stepped out of the boat into the shallows and felt the coldness through my rubber boots. I set the bailing can down on the ramp, wrapped the bow chain in my palm and snugged the boat's keel against the waving moss at the base of the concrete pad, and cleared an obstruction from my throat.

He slipped his glasses off his face, dropped them loosely in the pocket of his baggy shirt, smiling all the while.

"Thanks for coming by," I said.

I walked up the ramp, then climbed the set of side stairs onto the dock. I saw him walk toward his car and shake his head at Sabelle.

A moment later she came quickly down the dock toward me. She wore old jeans, a flannel shirt, pink tennis shoes, and walked splayfooted like a teenage girl.

"I look like hell. He came by my place at five this morning," she said.

"You look good, Sabelle. You always do," I said.

"They've moved Daddy into a cellhouse full of blacks."

"That doesn't sound right. He can request isolation."

"He'll die before he'll let anybody think he's scared. In the meantime they steal his cigarettes, spit in his food, throw pig shit in his hair, and nobody does anything about it." Her eyes began to film.

"I'll call this gunbull I know."

"They're going to kill him, Dave. I know it. It's a matter of time."

Out on the road, Lonnie Felton waited behind the steering wheel of his Lincoln.

"Don't let this guy Felton use you," I said.

"Use me? Who else cares about us?" Even with makeup, her face looked stark, as shiny as ceramic, in the lacy veil of sunlight through the cypress trees. She turned and walked back up the dock, her pink underwear winking through a small thread-worn hole in the rump of her jeans.

The sheriff was turned sideways in his swivel chair, his bifocals mounted on his nose, twisting strips of pink and white crepe paper into the shape of camellias. On his windowsill was a row of potted plants, which he watered daily from a hand-painted teakettle. He looked like an aging greengrocer more than a law officer, and in fact had run a dry cleaning business before his election to office, but he had been humble enough to listen to advice, and over the years we had all come to respect his judgment and integrity.

Only one door in his life had remained closed to us, his time with the First Marine Division at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, until last year, when he suffered a heart attack and told me from a bed in Iberia General, his breath as stale as withered flowers, of bugles echoing off frozen hills and wounds that looked like roses frozen in snow.

I sat down across from him. His desk blotter was covered with crepe paper camellias.

"I volunteered to help decorate the stage for my granddaughter's school play. You any good at this?" he said.