The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“You have made me very mad.”

“Look, anything you want,” Jerry Gee said.

“I want you in your car,” Smiley said, gritting his teeth.

“We still got the broads inside,” Jerry Gee said. “We got liquor. You want a drink? We can talk this out.”

Smiley lifted the tip of the wand.

“Okay, you got it, man,” Jerry Gee said. “What we did earlier today was all business. We take orders just like you. It wasn’t personal. Okay, okay, okay. We’re getting in the car. We’ll drive somewhere. Right?”

“Get in both on the same side, passenger door,” Smiley said.

“Sure,” Marco said. “Remember what I told you? You’re a righteous dude. It was me said that.”

“You told me to act like a man. I don’t look like a man?”

“You’re a good guy,” Marco said. “I was telling Jerry that. I was telling the girls. Come on, you can meet them. They’re good girls.”

“Get in the car and leave the doors open. Then start the engine.”

“Sure,” Marco said. “Don’t point that thing. This isn’t happening here. You’re having some fun. I can understand that. Take it easy.”

“I’ll count backward from three,” Smiley said.

“Okay, we’re on it,” Marco said. “We all work for the same guys. We got to keep that in mind.”

“Three,” Smiley said.

“I hear you,” Marco said. He worked his way across the seat, followed by Jerry Gee. Both of them stared at Smiley, waiting for approval, unable to look directly at the wand of the flamethrower.

“Roll down the windows,” Smiley said.

“All four? What are we doing here?”

Smiley didn’t reply.

“Okay, we’re on it,” Jerry Gee said, fumbling at a window button. “You want your recorder back? It’s in the glove box.”

The faces of the men looked like colorless prunes twisted out of shape. Their eyes were filled with a level of helplessness they probably had never experienced.

“Close the doors. Don’t touch the gearshift,” Smiley said.

The men eased the doors shut. Jerry Gee lifted his eyes to Smiley. “Please, man. I got a family. I ain’t a bad—”

Smiley stepped backward into the darkness, ten feet, twenty feet, almost thirty feet. The wind was cool, out of the south, smelling of salt and rain. He tightened his finger inside the trigger guard. The stream of flame arced through the Buick’s window and turned the interior into a firestorm, curling over the roof, blowing the windshield onto the hood. When he released the trigger, the dashboard was bubbling, and Marco and Jerry Gee sat amid the receding flames like shriveled mannequins powdered with white ash.

The thick-bodied woman opened the door of her room and stared in disbelief.

“Run,” Smiley said.

“Sir?”

“It might explode. Get the other bad woman and run. You have been very bad. Don’t do these kinds of things anymore.”

“I won’t.”

“My friends call me Smiley. You can call me Smiley, too. What’s your name?”