Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"Raphael Chalons came to my house yesterday and tried to put me on his payroll," I said.

"That's interesting," she said, looking at the tops of her nails.

"One other item. Molly Boyle and I got married Saturday night."

Her elbow was propped on her desk. She rested her chin on her knuckles, her face softening. She seemed to think a long time before she spoke. "You did it."

"Did what?"

"Figured out a way to marry your own church. No, don't say anything. Just quietly disappear. Bwana say 'bye' now."

Jimmie's resourcefulness rarely let him down. His friendship with police officers, private investigators, and people in the life extended from Key Biscayne, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas, which was the long, sickle-shaped rim of America's sexual playground long before the invention of Vegas or Atlantic City. Three hours after his flight had arrived in Miami, he obtained the home address of the man who now called himself Lou Coyne. He also obtained the name of his wife, a woman who called herself Connie Coyne and who liv

ed three houses down from her husband on a canal in Miami Beach.

Jimmie stayed that night in a hotel that fronted the ocean. In the morning, he dressed in a linen suit and lavender silk shirt, had his shoes shined in the hotel lobby, then took a cab to a two-story white stucco house, one with a faded red tile roof, scrolled iron balconies, heavy, brass-ringed oak doors, and gated walls that towered over the grounds. Each house on the street was similar in ambiance, a fortress unto itself, the name of its security service prominently displayed. But even though it was Saturday, there were no people on this dead-end street, no sounds of children playing on a ficus-shaded lawn.

A Hispanic gardener came to the gate after Jimmie pushed the buzzer. The St. Augustine grass was closely clipped and thick, the bluish-green of a Caribbean lagoon. The flower beds bloomed with every tropical plant imaginable, and royal palms touched the eaves of the second story. Off to one side of the yard Jimmie could see a lime-colored swimming pool coated with leaves, the cracked dome of a 1950s underground atomic-bomb shelter protruding from the sod, like the top of a giant toadstool, and a boat dock that offered a sweeping view of the ocean.

"Is Ms. Coyne at home?" Jimmie asked.

"Si,"the gardener replied.

"Would you tell her Jimmie Robicheaux would like to speak to her?"

"Si," the gardener replied, staring into Jimmie's face.

"Would you go get her, please?"

"Si," the gardener replied, obviously not comprehending a word.

"Quien es?" a woman said from inside the fronds of a giant philodendron, where she was pulling weeds on her knees and dropping them in a bucket.

"My name is Jimmie Robicheaux, Ms. Coyne. I'm looking for an old friend and thought you might be able to help me," Jimmie said.

The woman stood up, brushing grains of dirt off a pair of cotton work gloves. She was slender, her hair a silvery-red. She wore a straw hat on the back of her head and a halter and Capri pants, and her shoulders were sprinkled with freckles. She walked to the gate, her eyes examining Jimmie's face.

"How can I help you, Mr. Robicheaux?" she said.

But the formality of her speech couldn't hide her regional inflection, nor disguise the fact she had correctly pronounced Jimmie's last name, after hearing it only once, which most people outside Louisiana are not able to do easily.

"Ida Durbin is the name of the lady I need to find," he said.

She looked at her watch and rubbed the glass with her thumb, more as an idle distraction from her own thoughts than as an effort to know the time.

"How's your friend, the private investigator?" she said.

"Clete Purcel? He's doing all right. I think he'd like to have a talk with your husband, though."

She stepped near the gate and closed her hand around one of the twisted iron spikes inside the grillework. "And yourself? You been doin' okay, Jimmie?"

"Life's a breeze. How's it with you, Ida?"

She reached into the bugle vine growing on the wall and pushed a button, buzzing the gate open. "Come on in, sailor, and let me tell you a story of hearts and flowers," she said.

chapter TWENTY-TWO

On the morning they had planned to leave Galveston and start a new life in Mexico, Ida had asked Jimmie to drop her off at the bus depot so she could buy a few items downtown for the trip while he returned our Ford convertible to me and packed his clothes at the motel. She stored her suitcase in a coin locker, bought a pair of shoes and a kerchief and a small box of hard candy up the street, drank a lime Coke at a soda fountain, then retrieved her suitcase from the locker and took a seat in the whites-only section of the waiting room. The bus to Monterrey was due in twenty minutes.