The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“What are you doing in here?”

“I come in to see my friends. What it look like?”

“The last time I saw you, you were in meltdown. Where’s your baby?”

“Ain’t nothing wrong wit’ me being here. My baby doing fine.”

“Where is she?”

“At Iberia General. She got the croup.”

“Go home, Hilary. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“It’s my life. It ain’t yours. I got the gris-gris. I’m hell-bound. Ain’t nothing can he’p me.”

“Where’d the guy go?”

“I don’t know. You look like a cop. I t’ink he saw you.”

“He knows who I am?”

“I don’t know about none of this.”

“You wait here.”

“You like all the rest. ‘Shut your mout’.’ ‘Cook my food.’ ‘Suck my dick.’ Where you going?”

Clete looked in the men’s room. A man at the urinal grinned at him. Clete went out the back door just as an SUV motored slowly out of the parking lot, the headlights on, the driver silhouetted behind the wheel. The driver turned onto the asphalt. Clete couldn’t see the tag.

He got into his Caddy and followed. The SUV stopped at the four corners and crossed the drawbridge and headed for the four-lane, never exceeding the speed limit. The windows were down. The radio was playing. Clete thought he recognized “Rock of Ages.”

• • •

HE FOLLOWED THE SUV in and out of traffic all the way to Lafayette. Twice he got close enough to confirm that the driver was the same man he’d seen talking to Hilary Bienville. The driver gave no indication that he knew he was being followed. Just outside Lafayette, the man pulled into a truck stop and got out of his vehicle and began to gas up. Clete parked behind the building with a view of the fuel island and cut the engine. He took his binoculars from the glove box and adjusted the focus on the driver’s face. He had no doubt he was looking at Hugo Tillinger.

He put his sap and cuffs in his coat pocket and pulled the .25 semi-auto from the Velcro holster strapped on his ankle.

Sorry, Mac, he thought, getting out of the Caddy. If you got to ride the needle, it’s your misfortune and none of my own.

A lopsided gas-guzzler oozing oil smoke pulled up to the pumps. The driver was a tiny gray-haired black woman who wore a colorless shift and men’s tennis shoes. A girl of eight or nine years was in the back seat. A Mississippi tag hung from the bumper by a single screw. The woman got out and stuck a credit card in the pump and struggled to pull the hose from the hook. Suddenly, the child burst from the back door and ran for the restrooms, just as a pickup truck swerved off the highway and headed for a parking slot in front of the casino.

Clete felt the wind go out of his chest. The scene freeze-framed in his head like a movie projector locking down. Within two or three seconds the girl would be impaled on the truck’s grille. The truck driver’s face was turned toward a woman in the passenger seat. The elderly black woman had dropped the hose on the concrete, spewing gasoline across her shoes. The little girl was skipping, one knee cocked, one barely touching the concrete, her mouth open, as though she were painted on air. Clete couldn’t bear to look.

Tillinger bolted from behind his vehicle and grabbed the girl under both arms and held her to his chest and leaped forward like a quarterback crashing over the line. He twisted his body so he landed on his side, taking the full hit on the concrete, never letting go of the girl.

He got to his feet and picked up the girl and handed her to the elderly woman. He smiled, brushing off her attempts to thank him, and headed for the driver of the truck. The driver turned off his lights, floored his vehicle, and roared into the darkness.

Tillinger went inside the convenience store and bought a package of Fritos and a quart of chocolate milk and ate and drank them at a small table. This was the guy Clete was going to send to the injection table?

Clete followed him to a motel rimmed with pink and green neon tubing north of Four Corners and watched him park in front of the last room in the row. Tillinger went inside and clicked on a lamp. Clete pulled his Caddy under a tree and waited five minutes. Then he got out with his .25 semi-auto and tapped lightly on the door.

“Who is it?” Tillinger said.

“Security. Someone may have tried to open your vehicle.”

Tillinger unhooked the chain and opened the door. He was barefoot and wearing boxer shorts and a clean white T-shirt. “I saw you in the club. What are you doing at my motel?”

Clete stepped inside and stiff-armed Tillinger in the chest, knocking him backward over a chair. He kicked the door shut behind him. “Don’t get up.”