Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

Chester opened the back door of a taxi and helped Birdie in. She looked up at him, a dignified church woman who had probably spent a large part of her life forgiving other people. “We can share the ride if you going near Gentilly.”

He shut the door and patted the top of her hand when she placed it on the windowsill. “I got to take care of some business that came up all of a sudden.”

“You stay out of trouble.”

“Yes, ma’am. I love you, Miss Birdie.”

The cab drove away. Chester stood among the crowd on the pavement, the arc lights burning overhead, his knees scraped from the fall. He watched the two black guys walk away and get into an old Honda in the parking lot. Chester grabbed the next taxi in line, one driven by an Arab who had turned his cab into a bead-strung mosque that smelled of burning incense and was filled with yowling sounds. “My name is Chester. What’s yours?”

“Mohammed,” the driver said.

“Do you see those two black boys?”

“I see them, sir.”

“They’re friends of mine. I want to go where they go.”

The driver turned all the way around to get a full look at his passenger. He had a beard like shaggy black rope wrapped under his nose and scrolled on his cheeks. “I have seen those two men before. They are not good young men, sir.”

“They’re bad?”

“They are very bad.”

“They shouldn’t be acting like that,” Chester said. “I’ll tell them.”

The driver started the meter and drove onto I-10, not far behind the Honda.

* * *

THEY CROSSED THE river into Algiers and continued into a neighborhood of empty buildings, alleys oozing trash, bars on windows, rap music blaring from a club, hookers strolling under the neon. Up ahead, the Honda pulled in to the gravel drive of a darkened frame house built up from the street. There were no lights inside.

“Let me out,” Chester said.

“Maybe you should let me take you somewhere else, sir,” the driver said.

“This is as far as I go. How much is the fare?”

“Twenty-eight dollars.”

Chester got out and paid the driver through the window. He added a five-dollar tip. “I like your music.”

“Thank you, sir,” the driver said. “God is good.”

Chester squinted to show that he didn’t understand.

“Be careful, sir,” the driver said. “There are evil men in the world.”

Chester watched the taxi drive away, then began wheeling his bag down the broken sidewalk toward the elevated house. Someone had turned on a light in back, and he saw a shadow move across the kitchen window. There were no streetlamps on the block. He pulled his bag between two cars whose engines had been stripped, and unlocked and unzipped his wheelie bag and removed a nickel-plated snub-nose .357 Magnum from the gun case inside the bag. He walked up the steps of the house, set down his beach bag, and rested his wheelie against the wall, then worked on a pair of thin cotton gloves. The screen and inside door were unlocked. He stepped inside and walked through the living room and into the hallway. The two black guys were eating out of cans at the

kitchen table, their cigarettes burning in an ashtray, quart bottles of beer by their elbows.

“Hi, again. My name is Chester. You hurt my knees and made fun of Miss Birdie.”

“How the fuck—” the taller guy began.

“A taxi. Some people call me Smiley. Know why?”

They stared at the revolver in his hand and shook their heads. “No,” one of them said, so frightened that his mouth did not move and Chester could not tell which one had spoken.