Pegasus Descending (Dave Robicheaux 15)

“She worked at Victor’s Cafeteria. I’d see her there and maybe around town some.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“The day before she died. We had some ice cream in the park.”

“You have any idea why she’d want to kill herself?”

“No, sir.”

“None?”

“No, sir.”

“I think you knew her better than you’re letting on,” I said.

His eyes were starting to film.

“Hey, you answer his questions!” Bello said.

“We went out. We slept together,” Tony said.

“Why’d you try to lie to me?” I asked.

The nylon windscreens on the court puffed in the breeze and creaked against their tethers. The color in the boy’s cheeks had the broken shape of flame.

“You knock that off, Dave. He’s cooperating, here,” Bello said.

“You need to leave us alone, Bello,” I said.

“Fuck you. This is my home. You don’t come in here pushing people around,” Bello replied.

There was nothing for it. Bello was obviously a suffocating, controlling presence in his son’s life, and I knew that without a warrant I would get no more information out of either one of them. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, give me a call, will you?” I said to Tony, handing him my business card.

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“Yes, sir, I will,” he said.

I walked back to my truck, with Bello at my side, his eyes stripping the skin off my face. “You trying to make trouble here, Dave? You got an old beef with me about something?” he said.

“No,” I said, opening the door to my truck.

“Then what?”

I didn’t answer and started to get behind the wheel. Bello’s hand sank into my arm. “You don’t demean my family and blow me off,” he said.

“A young woman is dead. Your son tried to conceal information about his relationship with her. Now, you take your hand off me.”

“He’s just a kid.”

“Not anymore,” I replied.

He stared at me, his face twitching, his lips seeming to form words that had no sound.

CLETE PURCEL, my old partner from NOPD Homicide, was not in a good mood that night. In fact, he had not been in a good mood all week, ever since a pipehead check writer and bail skip by the name of Frogman Andrepont had thrown a television set through his brother-in-law’s picture-glass window onto the front lawn, then escaped across the roof while Clete ran from the backyard to the front of the house.

Clete had opened up his own P.I. and bail bond office on Main in New Iberia, but he still chased down bail skips for his former employers Wee Willie Bimstine and Nig Rosewater in New Orleans. So after Frogman missed his court appearance, Clete flushed him out of his brother-in-law’s house, only to lose him in Henderson Swamp, where Clete blew out a tire highballing down the top of the levee and was almost eaten alive by mosquitoes.

But as a man on the run, Frogman had two disadvantages: His face looked exactly like a frog’s, including the eye bags, distended throat, and even the reptilian skin; secondly, he was a degenerate gambler as well as a crack addict. In Frogman’s case, this meant Louisiana’s newest twenty-four-hour casino and all-purpose neon-lit hog trough was as close to paradise as the earth gets.