Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

"Where is she now?"

"Iberia General. Nobody's pressing charges. I think her old man already greased the owner of the bar."

"You're a good cop, Helen."

"Better get her some help. The guy who'll pay the bill won't be the one who did it to her. Too bad it works out that way, huh?"

"What do I know?" I said.

Her eyes held on mine. She had killed two perps in the line of duty. I think she took no joy in that fact. But neither did she regret what she had done nor did she grieve over the repressed anger that had rescinded any equivocation she might have had before she shot them. She winked at me and went back to her office.

* * *

SIX

WITH REGULARITY POLITICIANS TALK about what they call the war against drugs. I have the sense few of them know anything about it. But the person who suffers the attrition for the drug trade is real, with the same soft marmalade-like system of lungs and heart and viscera inherited from a fish as the rest of us.

In this case her name was Ruby Gravano and she lived in a low-rent hotel on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, between Lee Circle and Canal, not far from the French Quarter. The narrow front entrance was framed by bare lightbulbs, like the entrance to a 1920s movie theater. But quaint similarities ended there. The interior was superheated and breathless, unlighted except for the glare from the airshaft at the end of the hallways. For some reason the walls had been painted firehouse red with black trim, and now, in the semi-darkness, they had the dirty glow of a dying furnace.

Ruby Gravano sat in a stuffed chair surrounded by the litter of her life: splayed tabloid magazines, pizza cartons, used Kleenex, a coffee cup with a dead roach inside, a half-constructed model of a spaceship that had been stuck back in the box and stepped on.

Ruby Gravano's hair was long and black and made her thin face and body look fuller than they were. She wore shorts that were too big for her and exposed her underwear, and foundation on her thighs and forearms, and false fingernails and false eyelashes and a bruise like a fresh tattoo on her left cheek.

"Dave won't jam you up on this, Ruby. We just want a string that'll lead back to these two guys. They're bad dudes, not the kind you want in your life, not the kind you want other girls to get mixed up with. You can help a lot of people here," Clete said.

"We did them in a motel on Airline Highway. They had a pickup truck with a shell on it. Full of guns and camping gear and shit. They smelled like mosquito repellent. They always wore their hats. I've seen hogs eat with better table manners. They're Johns. What else you want to know?" she said.

"Why'd you think they might be cops?" I asked.

"Who else carries mug shots around?"

"Beg your pardon?" I said.

"The guy I did, he was undressing and he finds these two mug shots in his shirt pocket. So he burns them in an ashtray and that's when his friend says something about capping two brothers."

"Wait a minute. You were all in the same room?" Clete said.

"They didn't want to pay for two rooms. Besides, they wanted to trade off. Connie does splits, but I wouldn't go along. One of those creeps is sickening enough. Why don't you bug Connie about this stuff?"

"Because she blew town," Clete said.

She sniffed and wiped her nose with her wrist. "Look, I'm not feeling too good. Y'all got what you need?" she said.

"Did they use a credit card to pay for the room?" I asked.

"It's a trick pad. My manager pays the owner. Look, believe it or not, I got another life besides this shit. How about it?"

She tried to look boldly into my face, but her eyes broke and she picked up the crushed model of a spaceship from its box on the floor and held it in her lap and studied it resentfully.

"Who hit you, Ruby?" I asked.

"A guy."

"You have a kid?"

"A little boy. He's nine. I bought him this, but it got rough in here last night."

"These cops, duffers, whatever they were, they had to have names," I said.