Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“I’m trying to be subtle here. I didn’t want this investigation, or at least not one that would cause a colleague problems. Tell Dave I think he was probably out at the Dartez place to talk about the accident, and he had occasion to put his hands on the driver’s window of the pickup.”

“How long have you been doing homicide investigations?”

“It’s not my area. I worked vice and narcotics at Miami-Dade. I was undercover in Liberty City.”

“Liberty City is all black.”

“I figured that out when they started throwing spears at me from the fire escapes.” There was a beat. “Oops. My bad.”

“Come back later, okay?” she said.

“If you work the inner city, you have to develop a sense of humor. Ask Purcel. I heard he had a way of dipping into the culture. What a character.” He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter, the smoke rising out of his cupped hand.

“Could you not do that, please?”

“You don’t let people smoke on your property?” he said.

She tried to crinkle her eyes but couldn’t. There was a bilious taste in her mouth that made her want to spit. He flipped his cigarette sparking into a camellia bush and rotated his head as though he had a stiff neck.

“It’s good you’re raking up all the leaves,” he said. “When they get into the bayou, the biodegradation uses up the oxygen and kills the fish.”

“Yep, that’s what it does,” she said. She propped the rake on the ground, her left hand on the shaft. She saw him use the opportunity to glance at her ring finger.

“There’s a lot of this area I still haven’t seen,” he said. “One day I’d like somebody to show me around. I could do the same for them in New Orleans, show them all the things nobody knows about, including where all the skeletons are hid. In the old days, the Mob dumped jackrollers in Lake Pontchartrain because they were bad for tourism. Cops would throw them out of a car at high speed by the Huey Long Bridge. They got things done back then. That was before your time.”

“I don’t think you’re looking for exculpatory evidence about Dave,” she said. “I don’t think you’re a friend. I think you have a lean and hungry look.”

“If there’s something I haven’t done to help your stepfather, tell me what it is, little lady, and I’ll get on it.”

“He’s not my stepfather, he’s my father. Call me ‘little lady’ again and see what happens.”

He sucked in his breath, smiling wetly, as though acknowledging his indiscretion. “I don’t choose my words very well. That’s probably why I’ve remained a single man.”

“I’d better finish my work. I’ll give Dave your message.”

He snapped his fingers. “Sorry, I forgot to ask you something.”

She waited.

“Call it deep background,” he said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the case itself. How many times did Dave have to bust a cap on a guy or break his spokes, particularly in a close-quarter situation? Like when he was arresting a guy or the guy got in his face and he lost it? I never met an old-school cop yet who took shit off mutts and pervs. Can you give me a ballpark number?”

IN THE LIFE, Clete was known as con-wise, even though he had never been a convict. The term in the criminal subculture is laudatory and indicates a level of knowledge and experience that cannot be acquired in a library. You also have to pay dues. A “solid” or stand-up con stacks his own time, does it straight up without early release, work furloughs, conjugal privileges, or snitching off fellow inmates for favorable treatment. It’s not easy. Ask anyone who’s stood on the oil barrel in Huntsville or chopped cotton inside the system in Arkansas or been thrown into a lockdown unit full of wolves.

Clete went his own way, didn’t impose it on others, and asked the same respect. He would not only lay down his life for a friend; he would paint the walls with his friend’s enemies. He grew up in the old Irish Channel and palled around with guys like Tony Cardo, who was probably the most intelligent and dangerous and successful old-school gangster New Orleans ever produced. When they were kids, Clete and Tony found a box of human arms outside the incinerator by the Tulane medical school, and hung them from the straps of the St. Claude streetcar just as all the employees from the cigar factory were boarding; one passenger leaped from the window and crashed on top of a sno’ball cart. Except for Tony, Clete’s old-time buds went to the can or the chair, and Clete went to Vietnam and came back with the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and two Hearts, and cruised right back into the Big Sleazy without giving any of it a second thought.

I drove to his cottage at the motor court Thursday afternoon. He was standing amid the trees grilling a two-inch-thick steak, flipping it with a fork. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a porkpie hat tilted on his brow and a pair of dark blue rayon workout pants that covered his shoelaces. “Big mon. I was just fixing to ask you and Alafair over.”

“How you doin’?” I said.

“Not bad.”

When Clete was equivocal, you tended to glance at the sky for thunderclouds, dust rising out of the fields, a splinter of lightning on the horizon.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Have a seat.”

I sat down at a picnic table made of green planks and covered with bird droppings and needles from a slash pine.