Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“This is the secretary at the DEA in Great Falls. Special Agent Nygurski called a message in from his car and asked me to relay it to you.”

“Yes?”

“He said, ‘They found the weapon. Mapes is in custody. Call in a couple of days if you want ballistic results. But he’s not going to fly on this one. Enjoy your trip back to Louisiana.’ Did you get that, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Did you want to leave a message?”

“Tell him Playgirl magazine wants him on a centerfold.”

She laughed out loud.

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

“Tell him I said thank you.”

Five minutes later Alafair came through the front door with her lunch box.

“How’d you like to head home day after tomorrow?” I said.

Her grin was enormous.

We cooked out in the backyard that evening and had Tess Regan over, then Alafair and I climbed the switchback trail to the concrete M on the mountain behind the university. The whole valley was covered with a soft red glow. The wind was cold at that altitude, even though we were sweating inside our clothes, and rain and dust were blowing up through the Bitterroot Valley. Then the wind began to blow harder through the Hellgate, flattening the lupine and whipping grains of dirt against our skin. Overhead a U.S. Forest Service fire-retardant bomber came in low over the mountains and turned toward the smoke jumpers’ school west of town, its four propellers spinning with silver light in the sun’s afterglow.

The thought that had kept bothering me all afternoon, that I had tried to push into a closed compartment in the back of my mind, came back like a grinning jester who was determined to extend the ball game into extra innings.

When we got home I unlocked Clete’s jeep and picked up the soiled pillowcase that was on the floorboard. I turned it inside out and felt the residue of dry sand along the seams. Then I called Sally Dio’s number at the lake. It was disconnected. I had reserved the next day for packing, shutting off the utilities, greasing the truck, making sandwiches for our trip home, and having a talk with Tess Regan about geographic alternatives. But Sally Dee was to have one more turn in my life.

“What time are you going in to work?” I said to Dixie Lee at breakfast the next morning.

“I ain’t. The boss man said he don’t need me today. That’s something I want to talk with you about, Dave. With you cutting out, I don’t know what kind of future I got here. Part-time forklifting ain’t what you’d call a big career move.”

“Will you watch Alafair while I go up to the lake?”

“Why you going up there?”

“I need to talk with Dio. If he’s not there, I’ll leave him a note. Then I’ll be back.”

“You’re going to do what?” He set his coffee cup down on the table and stared at me.

I drove to Polson, then headed up the east side of the lake through the cherry orchards. I could have called Dan Nygurski or the sheriff’s office, but that would have forced me to turn in Cletus, and I thought that a man with ulcers, a broken rib, a crushed hand, and stitches in his head had paid enough dues.

It was cold and bright on the lake. The wind was puckering the electric-blue surface, and the waves were hitting hard against the rocks along the shore. I parked in front of the Dios’ redwood house on the cliff, took off my windbreaker and left it in the truck so they could see I wasn’t carrying a weapon, and used the brass knocker on the door. There was no answer. I walked around the side of the house, past the glassed-in porch that was filled with tropical plants, and saw the elder Dio in his wheelchair on the veranda, his body and head wrapped in a hooded, striped robe. In his hand was a splayed cigar, and inside the hood I could see the goiter in his throat, his purple lips, the liquid and venomous expression in his eyes. He said something to me, but it was lost in the wind, because I was looking down the tiers of redwood steps that led to the rocks below and the short dock where Sally Dee and his two hoods had just carried armloads of suitcases and cardboard boxes. Even Sal’s set of drums was stacked on the dock.

The three of them watched me silently as I walked down the steps toward them. Then Sal knelt by a big cardboard box and began reinforcing a corner of it with adhesive tape as though I were not there. He wore a yellow jumpsuit, with the collar flipped up on his neck, and the wind had blown his long copper-colored hair in his face.

“What d’you want us to do, Sal?” one of his men said.

Sally Dee stood erect, picked up a glass of iced coffee from the dock railing, drank out of it, and looked at me with an almost amused expression.

“Nothing,” he said. “He’s just one of those guys who get on the bottom of your shoe like chewing gum.”

“I’ll just take a minute of your time, Sal,” I said. “I think somebody fucked your airplane.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”