Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

Keep your eye on this one, I thought.

Karyn leaned forward and started her car engine, wetting her mouth as she might a ripe cherry.

Helen Soileau walked into my office that afternoon, anger in her eyes.

"Pick up on my extension," she said.

"What's going on?"

"Mingo Bloomberg. Wally put him through to me by mistake."

I punched the lighted button and placed the receiver to my ear. "Where are you, Mingo?" I said.

"You got Short Boy Jerry to jam me up," he said.

"Wrong."

"Don't tell me that. The bondsman pulled my bail. I got that material witness beef in my face again." A streetcar clanged in the background, vibrated and squealed on the tracks.

"What do you want?" I said.

"Something to come in."

"Sorry."

"I don't like being made everybody's fuck."

"You let that girl drown. You're calling the wrong people for sympathy."

"She wanted some ribs. I went inside this colored joint in St. Martinville. I come back out and the car's gone."

I could hear him breathing in the silence.

"I delivered money to Buford LaRose's house," he said.

"How much?"

"How do I know? It was locked in a satchel. It was heavy, like it was full of phone books."

"If that's all you're offering, you're up Shit's Creek."

"The guy gonna be governor is taking juice from Jerry Ace, that don't make your berries tingle?"

"We don't monitor campaign contributions, Mingo. Call us when you're serious. Right now I'm busy," I said. I eased the receiver down in the cradle and looked at Helen, who was sitting with one haunch on the corner of my desk.

"You going to leave him out there?" she said.

"It's us or City Prison in New Orleans. I think he'll turn himself in to us, then try to get to our witnesses."

"I hope so. Yes, indeedy."

"What'd he say to you?"

"Oh, he and I will have a talk about it sometime." She opened a book that was on my desk. "Why you reading Greek mythology?"

"That fellow Clay Mason compared the LaRoses to Orpheus and Eurydice . . . They're characters out of Greek legend," I said. She flipped through several pages in the book, then looked at me again.

"Orpheus went down into the Underworld to free his dead wife. But he couldn't pull it off. Hades got both of them."