Pegasus Descending (Dave Robicheaux 15)

“If you were an innocent man, why’d you run?”

“Because I’m Whitey Bruxal’s son. Because I don’t like being a backseat hump for every cop in South Louisiana.”

His cheeks were pooled with color in the warm gloom of the shed, and for just a moment he reminded me of his dead friend Tony. I could hear the wind coursing in the pasture, feel the mare shift her weight under my hand.

“You killed Tony, though, didn’t you? You knew sooner or later he was going to dime you with the D.A. Maybe he came on to you and you got disgusted with his weakness and cloying dependence and decided to do both of you a favor and blow out his wick.”

“You got part of it right. He started crying and tried to grab my package. I told him he turned my stomach and he could deal with Monarch Little on his own. If I’d stayed with him, maybe he’d still be alive,” he said. “Believe it or not, that doesn’t let me sleep too good sometimes.”

What do you believe when you have conversations with people for whom the presence of evil is a given and simply a matter of degree in their daily lives? Do you just walk away from their words or let them invade your own frame of reference? How do you play chess with the devil?

You don’t.

“I advise you to come into the department with your lawyer and make a formal statement about the circumstances surrounding Yvonne Darbonne’s death,” I said. “With luck and a little juice, you’ll probably skate.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, clipping a rope onto the horse’s hackamore. “I’m the least of your worries, Mr. Robicheaux. You got no idea what my father and Lefty Raguza are capable of. My father beat up his wife and son because he lost his money. Think what he might do to somebody else’s family.”

“Say that last part again?”

He walked the mare into the barn, his T-shirt gray and glued with moisture against his back. I grabbed him by the arm and turned him around. “Did you hear me?” I said.

He pulled up his T-shirt, exposing a burn scar on his stomach. It was V-shaped, welted, the color of a tire patch.

“I was five years old,” he said. “He said he dropped the iron, that it was an accident. He told me he was sorry. I think he meant it. That’s just the way he’s wired. Now give me some peace.”

BETSY MOSSBACHER called me at the office five minutes after I walked in. “Do you know where the Klein woman is?” she said.

“Out of jail,” I said.

“I know that. She slipped the surveillance on her.”

“Is this related to Whitey Bruxal’s problems over a money transfer from the Islands?”

“You better believe it. Somebody rolled thirteen million dollars out of his accounts in the Caymans into a half-dozen banks in Jersey and Florida, all of them in the name of Whitey Bruxal or businesses he owns. In the meantime, an anonymous caller had already alerted the IRS the money was on its way. All that thirteen million is undeclared income.”

“Trish’s friends impersonated gas company employees and retrieved Whitey’s account numbers from his computer,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“That’s my guess. All they needed were the nine-digit numbers to do the transfers. It gets better, though. While Trish Klein and her friends were sending signals that they were about to pull a big score on Whitey’s businesses, he was funneling his cash flow into the Caymans. During the last two weeks he parked another two million over there. This is the slickest sting I ever saw. They’ve ruined the guy and they used the government to do it.”

She laughed into the receiver.

“Can I get a job with you guys?” I asked.

“In your dreams,” she said.

BUT THE HUMOROUS MOMENT with Betsy Mossbacher soon gave way to the realities of my own departmental situation and the political ambitions of Lonnie Marceaux. Just before quitting time, he called Helen’s office and said he wanted to see both of us at 8 a.m. the next day. He refused to discuss the content of the meeting so we would be kept wondering or perhaps, even better, apprehensive and anxiety-ridden until the next morning. When Helen pressed him, he replied, “Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll all have a better perspective tomorrow.”

He was in fine spirits when we showed up, tilting back in his chair, his fingers crisscrossed in a pyramid, his carefully clipped hair gleaming with brilliantine. “How is everyone this morning?” He beamed.

“What’s up, Lonnie?” Helen said.

“It’s time to move forward, much more aggressively than we have been,” he said as soon as we were seated.

“Move forward with what?” Helen said.

“An arrest in the homicide of Bello Lujan,” he said.

“Arrest whom?” I said.