The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

Two white men came through the front door and sat in the corner. Clete recognized one, a deputy sheriff out of uniform. What was the name? Axel Dickwad or something? Both were looking in Clete’s direction.

“That’s heat over there,” Clete said to Travis. “They jamming you?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Travis said. “Just bought a new car. Wanted to take this lady for a ride.”

“A ride, all right,” said the woman sitting next to him. Even though it was summer, she wore a short navy blue coat with big brass buttons, maybe because of the air-conditioning blowing on her neck. “This boy in the AB but that don’t mean he don’t like blackberries and cream.”

The two men in the corner had not ordered. The shorter one lit a cigarette, the flame flaring on his features. His nostrils were thick with hair.

“I think they’re dogging you, Travis,” Clete said.

“Only guy dogging me is you.”

“Glad you said that.” Clete slapped him hard on the back. A whoosh of BO welled out of his shirt. “Keep fighting the good fight.”

Clete went back to his shot glass of Jack and half glass of flat beer. Up on a stage a female guitarist in a purple dress sprinkled with sequins was seated on a high stool, a solitary spotlight trained on her hands and electric guitar. Her hair was jet-black, her lips covered with gloss, her nails arterial red. A scar as thick as a night crawler circumscribed half of her neck. She went into a song Clete had never heard a woman sing: I have a hard time missing you, baby, when my gun is in yo’ mouth.

Clete poured his shot glass into his beer and drank it to the bottom. He felt the hit spread through his stomach and loins and chest like an old friend putting a log on the fire. Two or three more, and his liver would go operatic. He looked at the singer’s mouth, the shine on her breasts, the way her nails seemed to click up and down on the frets. Rain was hitting on a window in back. He could almost smell an odor that was like the smell of a field mortuary in a tropical country, but he didn’t know why. You’re zoned, tha

t’s all, he told himself. Slow it down.

He went into the restroom and unzipped and propped himself on one arm above the urinal and let go. Someone came through the door and let it slam on the spring. A shadow joined his on the wall.

“Mr. White Trash is in trouble.”

He turned around and looked into the face of the black woman Travis had tried to pick up. He zipped up and washed his hands in the sink.

“You deaf?” she said.

“If you haven’t noticed, this is the men’s room.”

“They about to take him off somewhere. When they get finished wit’ him, he won’t know his name.”

Clete dried his hands. “What’s it to you?”

“Axel Devereaux stuffed a dirty sock in my brother’s mout’ at the jail and almost choked him to deat’.”

Clete wadded up the paper towel and arced it at the trash can. It bounced onto the rim and fell on the floor. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

He went back to the bar and ordered a double shot and a longneck, ice-cold and ready to go down as hard as brass. The singer was smoking a cigarette on the stool, blowing the smoke in an upward stream. Her eyes seemed to fasten on his. He saw her lips move, as though she were whispering. He looked around the room. The wood trim was painted red. The lights above the back counter were red, too, although he had never noticed before. He wiped at his mouth, momentarily unsure where he was.

“Can you turn the air conditioner down?” he asked the bartender. “I think I’m getting a chill.”

The bartender’s head resembled a brown bowling ball that was too small for his shoulders. He dried a glass, not looking up.

“Do I need to use sign language?” Clete said.

“There’s bars down the bayou,” the bartender said.

“I asked you a question. The place is an icebox. Or maybe my malaria is kicking in.”

“Life’s a skull-fuck, then you die.”

“You learn that in a Buddhist monastery?”

The bartender didn’t answer. Clete tipped the shot glass to his lips, then did it a second time and drained it, chasing it with half the longneck. He took out his wallet. The bills in it seemed to go in and out of focus. His stomach was roiling. He knew the signs. Somewhere down in the basement, the cannon on the Zippo track had fired to life, arcing a flame into a straw hooch, the slick hovering overhead, people from the ville splashing into a rice paddy.

“We’re square,” the bartender said.