Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"My son thinks you're trying to extract information from my daughter about our family. Is that your purpose, Mr. Robicheaux, besides looking out for your friend's interests?"

His tone had become pointed, slightly heated, and I saw the dog raise its head, a string of slobber hanging from the side of its mouth. The dog was heavily muscled, its hair coarse, the same black, shiny color as Chalons's, with tan markings around its rump and ears. Chalons snapped his fingers and the dog got down flat on the ground and rested its head on its paws.

"There's a hit man in New Orleans by the name of Jericho Johnny Wineburger," I said. "His specialty is one in the mouth, one in the forehead, and one in the ear. He once told me, 'When I pop 'em, I shut all their motors down. Forget life support. They're cold meat when they bounce off the pavement.' That's the guy a cop by the name of Billy Joe Pitts was trying to sic on my friend Clete Purcel."

I could see the offensive nature of my language and its implication climb into his face. He studied the bayou and a powerboat splitting a long yellow trough down its center. Then he bent over and unsnapped the leash from the dog's collar.

Involuntarily I stepped back and rested my palm on the butt of my holstered .45, my heart beating. But Chalons only patted his dog on its head and said, "Go to the house, Heidi."

I watched the dog bound up the grassy slope, then I looked back at Chalons's face. There were long vertical lines in it, the mouth downturned at the corners, as though he had never learned to smile. I took my hand from my weapon, feeling strangely disappointed that he had not forced the moment. I could not begin to guess at the thoughts that went on behind the black light in his eyes.

Then, as though he had read my mind, he said, "Please leave my family alone, Mr. Robicheaux. We've done you no harm."

I went directly from work to New Orleans, driving the four-lane through Morgan City and Des Allemands. I hit rain on the bridge over the Mississippi River, then a full-blown electrical storm as I turned off Interstate 10 and headed up St. Charles Avenue toward the old Irish Channel.

Jericho Johnny Wineburger owned a saloon on a side street between Magazine and Tchoupitoulas, and claimed to have been out of the life for a least a decade. But he had at least a thirty-year history of killing people, and supposedly, with another button man, had taken out Bugsy Siegel's cousin with a shotgun on a train roaring through West Palm Beach. Clete believed Jericho Johnny had turned down the contract on Clete's life either out of fear of Clete or respect for the fact they both grew up in the Irish Channel.

I doubted either possibility. Jericho Johnny had ice water in his veins and I suspect was capable of killing his victim and eating a sandwich while he did it.

The air was cold and smelled of ozone. The streets were flooded, and thunder was booming over the Gulf when I parked in front of his saloon and ran for the colonnade. The only customers in the saloon were some kids shooting pool in back and a white woman in a house robe who slept with her face on her hands at a table. Jericho Johnny stood behind the bar drying glasses while he watched a professional wrestling match on TV. He looked at me and slid a toothpick into the corner of his mouth. "This about Purcel?" he asked.

His words came out in an accentuated whisper, as though they were filtered through wet grit. Some said his vocal cords were impaired when he was a child and he accidentally drank rug cleaner. But I think the story was romantic in origin. I think Jericho Johnny came out of a different gene pool than the rest of us.

"I need the name of the cop who wanted you to clip Clete," I said.

I thought he might give me a bad time, but he didn't. He looked at the backs of his nails. "Pitts," he said.

"But you told him to get lost?" I said.

"In so many words, yeah, I did. You still on the wagon?"

"Why?" I asked.

" 'Cause I'll stand you a beer and a shot if you're not. Otherwise, I'll offer you a cup of coffee. Take the two-by-four out of your ass, Robicheaux."

His accent could have been mistaken for Flatbush or South Boston. He had worked on the docks when he was a kid, and he had silver hair, short, powerful forearms wrapped with tattoos, and a face that could have been called handsome except for the thinness in his lips. He poured me a demitasse of black coffee and placed it on a small saucer with a cube of sugar and a tiny spoon. He saw me look at the woman who was sleeping with her face on her hands. "She lives up the street. She's scared of lightning and can't sleep during an electrical storm, so she comes down here," he said.

"You didn't piece off the work?" I asked.

"I never pieced off a job in my life," he replied.

"Why'd you tell Nig Rosewater about it?"

"I didn't. This cop, this guy Pitts, he went to two or three people in the business about Purcel. I was just one of them. That's how Nig heard about it. I own a saloon today. I live in a nice house out back. I been out of the life a long time now."

"You think somebody else took the contract?"

"Maybe."

"Who?"

"Don't know."

A phone rang in back and he went to answer it. The rain and lightning had quit, and the street was dark and in the light from the saloon I could see the fronds of a banana tree flapping against a side window. The woman who had been sleeping at the table woke up and looked around, as though unsure of where she was. "I want to go home," she said.

"Where do you live?" I asked.

"Down the block, next to the grocery store," she replied.