Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me a racial name," I said.

"Y'all open the cooler. I'll be along," he said to his friends. He watched them drift in a cluster down the dock toward the van.

"Here's what it is," he said. "That cracker Cramer, yeah, you got it, white dude from Homicide, smells like deodorant, is down at my pool hall, axing if I know why Jerry the Glide was in the neighborhood when somebody broke all his sticks."

Not bad, Cramer, I thought.

"Then your friend, Purcel, hears from this pipehead street chicken Mookie Zerrang's got permission to burn his kite, so he blames me. I ain't got time for this, Jack."

"Why was Jerry Joe in your neighborhood?"

"It ain't my neighborhood, I got a bidness there. I don't go in there at night, either." He brushed the sack of fish guts off the dock with his shoe and watched it float away in the current. "Why you got to put your hand in this shit, man?"

"You know how it is, a guy's got to do something for kicks."

"I hear it's 'cause you was fucking some prime cut married to the wrong dude. That's your choice, man, but I don't like you using my brother to do whatever you doing. Give my fish to the old man in there," he said, and started to walk away.

I walked after him and touched his back with the ball of my finger. I could feel his wingbone through the cloth of

his shirt, see the dark grain of his whiskers along the edge of his jaw, smell the faint odor of sweat and talcum in his skin.

"Don't use profanity around my home, please," I said.

"You worried about language round your home? Man put a bullet in mine and killed my brother. That's the difference between us. Don't let it be lost on you, Chuck."

He got in the front passenger's seat of the van, slid a metal sheath over the knife blade attached to his stump, then unscrewed the blade and drank from a bottle of Carta Blanca, his throat working smoothly until the bottle was empty. The bottle made a dull, tinkling sound when it landed in the weeds by the roadside.

The next day I got the warrant to search the grounds of the LaRose plantation. Helen Soileau parked the cruiser in the driveway, and I got out and knocked on the front door.

Karyn was barefoot and wore only a pair of shorts and a halter, with a thick towel around her neck, when she opened the door. In the soft afternoon light her tan took on the dark tint of burnt honey. The momentary surprise went out of her face, and she leaned an arm against the doorjamb and brushed back her hair with her fingers.

"What are we here for today?" she said.

"Here's the warrant. We'll be looking at some things back on the bayou."

"How did you—" she began, then stopped.

"All I had to do was tell the judge the state police warned me off y'all's property. He seemed upset about people intruding on his jurisdiction."

"Then you should scurry on with your little errand, whatever in God's name it is."

"Does Jerry Joe's death bother you at all?"

Her mouth grew small with anger.

"There're days when I wish I was a man, Dave. I'd honestly love to beat the living shit out of you." The door clicked shut.

Helen and I walked through the coolness of the porte cochere into the backyard. The camellias were in bloom and the backyard was filled with a smoky gold light. I could see Karyn inside the glassed-in rear corner of the house, touching her toes in a crisscross motion, her thighs spread, the back of her neck slick with a necklace of sweat.

"You ever read anything about the Roman Coliseum? When gladiators fought on lakes of burning oil, that kind of stuff?" Helen said.

"Yeah, I guess."

"I have a feeling Karyn LaRose was in the audience."

We walked past the stables and through the hardwoods to the sloping bank of the Teche. A heavyset black state trooper sat in a folding chair, back among the trees, eating cracklings from a jar. His scoped rifle was propped against a pine trunk. He glanced at my badge holder hanging from my coat pocket and nodded.

"Crown hasn't tried to get through your perimeter, huh?" I said, and smiled.