Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

"You milked through the fence too many times, hon. I hope they were worth it," she replied.

"It's over. You got my word . . . Come out of the water and talk. We can go have breakfast somewhere."

"Bye, Dock."

"We're a team, Seph. Ain't nothing going to separate us. Believe it when I say it."

"I hate to tell you this but you're a disappearing memory. I've got to practice my backstroke now . . . Keep your eyes somewhere else, Dock . . . You don't own the geography anymore."

We heard her body weight push off from the side of the pool and her arms dipping rhythmically into the water.

"Let's 'front both of them," Clete said, and started to get out of the truck.

"No, that'll just get No Duh into it deeper."

"Where's your head, Dave? That guy wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. The object is to flush Mookie Zerrang out in the open and then take him off at the neck."

"We have to wait, Cletus."

I saw the frustration and anger in his face. I put my hand on his shoulder. It was as hard as a cured ham. When he didn't speak, I took my hand away.

"I appreciate your coming with me," I said.

"Oh hell yeah, this is great stuff. You know why I was a New Orleans cop? Because we could break all the rules and get away with it. This town's problems aren't going to end until we run all these fuckers back under the sewer grates where they belong."

"I think Persephone got to you, partner," I said.

"You're right. I should have been a criminal. It's a simpler life."

For a half hour Dock and two workmen carried out his office furniture, his computer, his files, and a huge glass bottle, the kind mounted on water coolers, filled with an amber-tinted liquid and the embalmed body of a bobcat. The bobcat's paws were pressed against the glass, as though it were drowning.

Then the three of them drove away without the limo. Clete and I got out of the truck and walked to the gate. Through the grillwork and the banana fronds I could see steam rising off the turquoise surface of the pool and hear her feet kicking steadily with her long stroke.

"It's Dave Robicheaux. How about opening up, Persephone?" I said.

"Dream on," she replied from inside the steam.

"You stole a test for Karyn LaRose and got expelled from college. Why let her take you down again?"

"Excuse me?"

"Try this as a fantasy, Seph. You and all your friends are on an airliner with Karyn and Buford LaRose. Karyn and Buford are at the controls. The plane is on fire. There are only two parachutes on board . . . Who's going to end up with the parachutes?"

I could hear her treading water in the stillness, then rising from the pool at the far end.

She appeared at the gate in a white robe and sandals, a towel wrapped around her hair. She unlocked the gate and pulled it back on its hinges, then turned and walked to an iron table without speaking, the long, tapered lines of her body molded against the cloth of her robe.

She combed her hair back with her towel, her face regal, at an angle to us, seemingly indifferent to our presence.

"What's on your mind?" she s

aid. Her voice was throaty, her cheeks pale and slightly sunken, her mouth the same shade as the red morning glories that cascaded down the wall behind her.

Clete kept staring at her.

"Has he been fed?" she asked.

"You got to pardon me. I was thinking you look like Cher, the movie actress. You even have a tattoo," he said.