The Neon Rain (Dave Robicheaux 1)

I couldn't let go of those ten seconds between the time the gatekeeper pulled the automatic out of the door pouch and the moment when the .45 roared upward in my hand and Segura's head exploded all over the inside of the car. I'm convinced that, unlike most of the hapless and pathetic people whom we usually dealt with, he was truly an evil man, but anyone who has ever fired a weapon at another human being knows the terrible adrenaline-fed sense of omnipotence and arrogance that you feel at that moment and the secret pleasure you take in the opportunity being provided you. I had done it in Vietnam; I had done it twice before as a police officer, and I knew that simian creature we descend from was alive and well in my breast.

I was also bothered by Sam Fitzpatrick and his admonition to me about my religion and my humanity. I wanted to dismiss him. He was a kid, an idealist, a federal hotdog who probably broke a lot of bureau rules and w

ould eventually blow out his doors. If he hadn't become a Treasury agent, he would probably be pouring chicken blood on draft files. A half-dozen like him could have a whole city in flames.

But I couldn't get rid of him. I liked him and he had gotten to my pride.

I genuinely tried to enjoy myself that night. The people at the lawn party came from another world than mine, but they were pleasant and friendly and went out of their way to be courteous to me. Annie was a fine girl, too. When she saw my expression wandering away from the conversation, she would touch the back of my hand with hers and smile at me with her eyes. But it wasn't any good. I gave it up, made an excuse about having to go to work in the morning, and drove her home. On her porch I saw the faint look of hurt in her face when I said I couldn't come in.

"Do you like to be alone, Dave?" she asked.

"No. It's not a good life."

"Another time, huh?"

"Yes. I'm sorry about tonight. I'll call tomorrow."

She smiled and then she was gone, and I drove home more depressed than I had been in years.

Why? Because the truth was that I wanted to drink. And I don't mean I wanted to ease back into it, either, with casual Manhattans sipped at a mahogany and brass-rail bar with red leather booths and rows of gleaming glasses stacked in front of a long wall mirror. I wanted busthead boilermakers of Jack Daniel's and draft beer, vodka on the rocks, Beam straight up with water on the side, raw tequila that left you breathless and boiling in your own juices. And I wanted it all in a rundown Decatur or Magazine Street saloon where I didn't have to hold myself accountable for anything and where my gargoyle image in the mirror would be simply another drunken curiosity like the neon-lit rain striking against the window.

After four years of sobriety I once again wanted to fill my mind with spiders and crawling slugs and snakes that grew corpulent off the pieces of my life that I would slay daily. I blamed it on the killing of Julio Segura. I decided my temptation for alcohol and self-destruction was maybe even an indication that my humanity was still intact. I said the rosary that night and did not fall asleep until the sky went gray with the false dawn.

That afternoon I still had Sam Fitzpatrick on my mind. I called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and was told by the Assistant Special Agent in Charge that Fitzpatrick was not in.

"Who is this, please?" he asked.

I told him my name and who I was.

"Are you calling from your office?"

I said I was.

"I'll call you there in two minutes," he said, and hung up.

Sure enough, the phone rang a minute and a half later. They were a very careful bunch down at the Federal Building.

"We're worried about him. He hasn't checked in and he's not at his motel," he said. "Are you the guy who smoked Segura?"

"Yes."

"Bad day at Black Rock, huh?" he said, and laughed.

"Do all you guys have the same sense of humor?"

"We've got an agent out of the nest, Lieutenant. Do you have something we ought to know?"

"He was going to see a Mexican girl, a nude dancer out by the airport. She told him she could turn a couple of Segura's people."

"We already know about her. What else?"

"That's it."

"Stay in touch. Drop by and have coffee sometime. We need a better liaison with you people. By the way, Lieutenant, Agent Fitzpatrick has a way of wandering beyond some of our parameters. That doesn't mean that some local authorities should reciprocate by wandering themselves into a federal jurisdiction. You get the picture, don't you?"

There was a pause, then the receiver went dead.

Late that afternoon I went to the Mexican girl's apartment building out in Metairie. No one was home, and the apartment manager said she had not seen the girl, whose name was Gail Lopez, or her daughter in a couple of days. I stuck a small piece of Scotch tape between the bottom of the door and the doorjamb, and drove out to the strip bar by the airport in the fading twilight.