Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

The call came at noon.

“Why’d you do that out there in that glade? I mean, walk into all that shooting and cut me loose?” he said.

“It’s none of your business why I do anything,” I replied.

“I never saw anybody do anything like that.”

“You’re an escaped felon. I’m a police officer. Don’t get the wrong idea, Johnny.”

“I called to say thank you. You don’t want my thanks, it’s on you. But we got a mutual interest, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“No, we don’t. Get that out of your head. You come around here again and you’re going to be back in custody.”

“You want the guys who killed your mother. That’s the word on the street. You think they’re the same guys who’re trying to pop me.”

While he was talking I was waving my hand at Helen Soileau out in the hall, pointing at the phone so she would start a trace on the call.

“I met Jimmy Figorelli when I first got to New Orleans. He said if I wanted some work, I should rent a post office box and leave the box number for somebody named M.G. at a café across from the open-air market on Decatur. I wrote the box number down on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope and wrote M.G. on the outside and gave it to a black lady behind the register at the café. When I was going out, she said, ‘Maggie only eats here on the weekend. I’ll give it to her then, okay?’ ”

“I’m writing all this down. You’ve got to go slower,” I said.

“Good try.”

Change the subject, I thought.

“What was the front money?” I asked.

“I didn’t say I got any front money. Sir, I didn’t say anything that indicates I committed a crime.”

“Did you burn the car to make us think you’d blown the state?”

“I started thinking about those cops leaving me chained up while a sniper tried to cut all my motors. That’s what they call it. They use a hollow point or a steel-claw bullet to core a plug out of your head. If the target is armed, his motors shut down and all his muscles die … Anyway, their car got burned. They can buy a new one … Say, forget about waving to that woman cop to trace this call. I’m on a cell phone.”

He broke the connection.

I dropped the receiver on the desk blotter and went to the window.

The parking lot was full of cars and noon-hour traffic was backed up on the streets from a passing freight train. Then the caboose of the train clicked down the track, the red-and-white-striped mechanical guard rose into the air, and the traffic flowed out of the side streets and the parking lot, the white sun reflecting blindingly off the windows like the swimming, mismatched eyes of the mythological Argus.

I went into Helen’s office.

“He was outside?” she said.

“He had to be.”

“He knows the drill. He was guessing. Every one of these morons wants us to think he’s a criminal genius.”

“He knew I waved to a ‘woman cop.’ ”

“You put out an APB?”

“Yeah. No luck.”

She put a stick of gum in her mouth and chewed it while she read the notes on my legal pad. Her hair was bright yellow and waved and molded into place with chemical spray.

“The go-between on the hit is somebody with the initials M.G.?” she said.

“First name Maggie,” I said.