Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“Sometimes you don’t make no sense, Dave.”

“I’ve got to have a talk with your teacher,” I said.

On Monday morning I started to call my lawyer, then decided I didn’t need higher phone bills or more depressing news. If he had gotten a continuance, he would have called me, and anything else he might have to say would be largely irrelevant. I walked Alafair to school, then ate a bowl of Grape-Nuts at the kitchen table and tried to think, as I had all day Sunday, of a reasonable plan to push Harry Mapes and Sally Dio to the wall. But I was quickly running out of options. I would never be able to find the bodies of the dead Indians, much less prove that they were killed by Harry Mapes and Dalton Vidrine. I wondered how I had ever thought I could solve my legal problems by myself, anyway. I wasn’t a cop; I had no authority, access to police information, power of warrant, arrest, or interrogation. Most motion pictures portray private investigators as chivalric outsiders who solve crimes that mystify the bumbling flatfeet of officialdom. The reality is that most PIs are former jocks, barroom bouncers, and fired or resigned cops who would cut off their fingers to still have their civil service ratings. Their licenses gave them about as much legal authority as a postman.

I could go back on the eastern slope of the Divide and start checking

oil leases in county courthouses. Maybe somehow I would tie Dio into Harry Mapes and Star Drilling Company and the Indians, but even if the connection existed, how would that help my defense on the murder charge in Louisiana? And who had killed Darlene and why? My thoughts became like dogs snapping at each other.

I was distracted by the sound of somebody walking between my house and the neighbor’s. I got up from the table and looked through the bedroom door and out the screen window. In the leafy shade I saw a thick-bodied blond man in a yellow hard hat and a denim shirt with cutoff sleeves disappear through some bushes into the backyard. A tool belt clinked on his side. I walked quickly to the back door and saw him standing in the sunlight, in the middle of the lawn, staring up at the telephone pole with his hands on his hips. His biceps were big and red with sunburn.

“Could I help you?” I said.

“Telephone company. There’s trouble on the line.”

I nodded and didn’t reply. He continued to stare up at the pole, then he glanced back at me again.

“Did you use your phone this morning?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did it ring and just stop?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s no big thing. I got to get up on your pole, and then maybe I’ll have to use your phone in a little bit. We’ll get it fixed, though.” He grinned at me, then walked out into the alley and behind the garage where I couldn’t see him.

I went into the hallway, picked up the telephone, and listened to the dial tone. Then I dialed the operator. When she answered, I hung up. I looked out the back door again and couldn’t see the repairman. I sat back down at the kitchen table and continued eating from my cereal bowl.

Something bothered me about the man, but I couldn’t think what it was. Maybe I’m just wired, I thought. Or maybe I wanted the dragons to come finally into my own yard. No, that wasn’t it. There was something wrong in the picture, something that was missing or that didn’t fit. I went to the front of the house and stepped out on the porch. There was no telephone truck parked on the street. Four houses down a short man in a cloth cap with two canvas sacks cross-strung on his chest was putting handbills with rubber bands on people’s doors. The bags were full and heavy, and there were sweat marks on his T-shirt.

I returned to the kitchen and thought I heard somebody between the houses again. I looked out the screen door, but the backyard was empty and the repairman was nowhere in sight. Then two doves settled on the telephone wire, and I glanced at the pole for the first time. The lowest iron climbing spikes were set in the wood some fifteen feet above the ground so children could not get up on the pole.

That’s it, I thought. He didn’t have climbing spurs strapped onto his boots and ankles, and he didn’t wear a safety belt. I went back into the hallway and picked up the telephone receiver. It was dead.

I took the .45 out of the drawer of the nightstand next to my bed. It felt cold and heavy in my hand. I pulled back the receiver, eased a hollow-point round into the chamber, and reset the hammer. It was quiet outside, and the bushes next to the bedroom windows made deep shadows on the screens. I went to the front door just as the handbill carrier was stepping up on the porch. I stuck the .45 inside the back of my trousers and went outside.

“Listen, go to the little grocery on the corner, dial the operator, and ask for the police,” I said. “All you have to say is ‘Assault in progress at 778 Front Street.’ Can you do that for me, podna?”

“What?” He was middle-aged, but his stiff, straw-colored hair sticking out from under his cap and his clear blue eyes gave him a childlike appearance.

“I’ve got some trouble here. I need some help. I’ll give you five dollars after the cops get here. Look, just tell the operator you need the cops out here and give them this number—” I pointed to the tin numerals on the screen door. Then I took out my pocketknife, pried the set of attached numbers loose from the wood, and handed it to him. “Just read the numbers into the phone. Seven-seventy-eight Front Street. Then say ‘Emergency.’ Okay, podna?”

“What’s going on?” His face looked confused and frightened.

“I’ll fill you in later.”

“Just dial O?” A drop of sweat ran out of his cloth cap.

“You got it.”

He started off the porch, the heavy canvas sacks swinging from his sides.

“Leave your sacks here. Okay?” I said.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be right back with the cops.”

He headed down the street, the metal house numbers in his hand. I watched him go inside the little yellow-brick grocery store on the corner, then I headed around the side of the house, through the shrubs and shadows toward the backyard. I could see my telephone box, partly obscured by hedge under the bathroom window, and I was sure that the wires on it had been cut; but before I could look I saw the repairman walk across the sunny lawn toward my back door.