Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

"No."

"I think he's got the contract on Breeze. Except he's supposed to be dead."

"Then you've got something to work on. In the meantime, we'll handle things here. Thanks for dropping by," the man who had uncuffed Cool Breeze said.

He was olive-skinned, his dark blond hair cut short, his opaque demeanor one that allowed him to be arrogant without ever being accountable.

Helen stepped toward him, her feet slightly spread.

"Reality check, you pompous fuck, this is our jurisdiction. We go where we want. You try to run us off an investigation, you're going to be picking up the soap in our jail tonight," she said.

"She's the one busted up Boxleiter," the other male agent said, his elbow hooked over the top of the driver's door, a smile at the edge of his mouth.

"Yes?" she said.

"Impressive… Mean shit," he said.

"We're gone," Adrien Glazier said.

"Run this guy Scruggs. He was a gun bull at Angola. Maybe he's hooked up with the Dixie Mafia," I said.

"A dead man? Right," she said, then got in her car with her two colleagues and drove away.

Helen stared after them, her hands on her hips.

"Broussard's the bait tied down under the tree stand, isn't he?" she said.

"That's the way I'd read it," I said.

Cool Breeze watched us from the swing on the gallery. His brogans were caked with mud and he spun a cloth cap on the tip of his index finger.

I sat down on the wood steps and looked out at the street.

"Where's Mout'?" I asked.

"Staying at his sister's."

"You're playing other people's game," I said.

"They gonna know when I'm in town."

"Bad way to think, podna."

I heard the swing creak behind me, then his brogans scuffing the boards under him as the swing moved back and forth. A young woman carrying a bag of groceries walked past the house and the sound of the swing stopped.

"My dead wife Ida, I hear her in my sleep sometimes. Talking to me from under the water, wit' that icy chain wrapped round her. I want to lift her up, out of the silt, pick the ice out of her mout' and eyes. But the chain just too heavy, I pull and pull and my arms is like lead, and all the time they ain't no air getting down to her. You ever have a dream like that?" he said.

I turned and looked at him, my ears ringing, my face suddenly cold.

"I t'ought so. You blame me for what I do?" he said.

THAT AFTERNOON I MADE telephone calls to Juarez, Mexico, and to the sheriffs departments in three counties along the Tex-Mex border. No one had any information about Harpo Scruggs or his death. Then an FBI agent in El Paso referred me to a retired Texas Ranger by the name of Lester Cobb. His accent was deep down in his breathing passages, like heated air breaking through the top of oatmeal.

"You knew him?" I said into the receiver.

"At a distance. Which was as close as I wanted to get."

"Why's that?"