Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“You should have been a funeral director, Dave.”

“Clete says you own the mortgage on his house,” I said.

“I own part of a lending company that does. He thinks I’m having him evicted because of a little incident at a craps table?”

“Are you?”

“I forgot it two minutes after it was over.”

“People call you a cunt in public with regularity?”

“Wow, you know how to say it.”

“Cut him some slack, Jimmy.”

Then he surprised me. “I’ll look into it. If there’s something I can do, I will.”

“I have your word?”

“I just gave it to you.”

I forgot to mention Jimmy was a very good baseball pitcher, both in the American Legion and in college. His best pitch was the changeup, when you hold the ball in the back of your palm and leave the batter swinging at empty space.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You getting along all right? Since the accident?”

“I don’t talk about it much.”

“I understand.”

He gazed through the back window. The lawn was deep in shadow, the air tannic and cold, the ground strewn with yellow leaves spotted with black mold. The door hung open on the hutch that once housed our pet coon, Tripod, the wood floor

clean and dry and empty. “I love your place,” he said.

“Why?”

“It’s out of another era. A more innocent time.”

“Why do you pal around with a shitbag like Bobby Earl?”

“The eyes of God see no evil,” he replied.

“I’ve always envied people who know the mind of God.”

“I’ll call you by the end of business tomorrow on that mortgage situation. Can you do me a favor?”

I waited.

“This novelist who lives up the Teche on Loreauville Road, you know him?”

“Levon Broussard?” I said.

“That’s the baby. How about an introduction?”

“You need me for that?”

“I hear he’s a little eccentric and his wife got kicked off a spaceship.”