Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“Yeah. Get your butt over here. You know where the Eastgate is?”

“Yeah, but I’m bringing Alafair with me. I’ll meet you in the park across the river from the shopping center. You walk across an old railway trestle that’s been made into a footbridge.”

“And you’ll be eating ice cream cones at a picnic table. Man, how do I get in on the good life?” he said, and hung up.

I told Dixie Lee there was a cold roast, bread, and mayonnaise in the icebox, and he could fix himself sandwiches if he hadn’t eaten yet. Then Alafair and I drove across town to the ice cream place on the north bank of the Clark Fork, bought cones, and walked across the river on the footbridge to the park on the opposite side. In the past, there had been a bad fire up the sides of Hellgate Canyon, and the pines that grew down from the crest had been scorched black and then the ash and the burnt needles had been washed away by rain and the spring snowmelt so that the steep gray-pink cliffs of the canyon were exposed high above the river. The wind was up, and the leaves of the cottonwoods along the river’s edge clicked and flickered in the soft light; because the spring runoff had ended and the water was dropping each day, more and more white, moss-scaled stones were exposed in the riverbed and the main channel was turning from copper-colored to a dark green. The white water had formed into long, narrow trout riffles that fanned out behind big rocks into deep pools.

The park was full of blue spruce and Russian olive trees, and kids from the university, which was only a block away, sailed Frisbees overhead and played rag football. We sat on the mowed grass, high up on the riverbank, so we could look out over the tops of the willows and watch two men who were fishing with worms and spinning rods, throwing lead weights far out into the channel. I saw Clete walk across the bridge with a paper sack hefted in one arm. I got Alafair started on one of the swing sets and then sat back down on the bank. His knees cracked, his stomach hung over his Budweiser shorts, and he grunted hard in his chest when he sat down beside me.

“You look undressed,” I said.

“Oh.” He touched his chest and smiled. “I don’t work for Sal anymore. I don’t have to walk around with a piece all the time. Feels good, mon.”

He twisted the cap off a bottle of Great Falls.

“Dixie Lee says he didn’t know Dodds was a hit man.”

“He probably didn’t. Where’d you see Dixie Lee?”

“He’s living at my house.”

“I’ll be damned. He cut the umbilical cord? I didn’t think he had the guts. Sal doesn’t handle rejection well.”

“Dodds may have had a partner, a backup guy. Does Dio have another guy in town?”

“If he does, I don’t know about it. I know a lot of them, too. At least the ones Sal hangs with. They’re New York transplants who think the essence of big time is playing bridge by the pool with a lot of gash lying around. Hey, dig this. Sal had a bunch of them staying at his motel, and the motel manager is this little Jewish guy who used to run a book for the mob out of a pizza joint in Fort Lauderdale. Of course, the Jew can’t do enough for the dagos because they scare the shit out of him. But he’s got this kid who’s a wiseass college student at Berkeley, and the kid works for his old man as the poolside waiter during the summer. So four of the dagos are playing cards at one of the umbrella tables. And these are big, mean-looking cocksuckers, shades, wet black hair all over their stomachs, big floppers tucked in their bikinis, and they’re giving the kid a terrible time—sending food back to the kitchen, complaining the drinks taste like there’s bathroom antiseptic in them, running the kid back and forth for cigarettes and candied cherries and sun cream for the gash and anything else they think of.

“Then one guy spills ice and vodka all over the table and tells the kid to mop it up and bring him another deck of cards. The kid says, ‘Hey, I’ve been studying Italian at school this year. What does Eatta my shitta mean?’

“The old man hears it and slaps his kid’s face in front of everybody. Then he starts swallowing and sweating and apologizing to the dagos while they stare at him from behind those black shades. Finally one of them stands up, hooks his finger in the old man’s mouth, and throws him down in an iron chair. He says, ‘He don’t have manners ’cause you didn’t teach him none. So you shut up your face and don’t be talking to impress nobody. You clean this up, you bring everybody what they want, you sit over there and you don’t go nowhere till we say.’

“They made him sit out there in the sun like an organ-grinder’s monkey for four hours. Till the kid finally begged them to let the old man go back inside.

“It’s good to say Ciao, ciao, bambino to the greaseballs. The next time the United States drops an A-bomb on anyone, I think it should be Palermo.”

“Where’s Dodds?”

“You really want to know?”

“I want to know if he’s going to be back after me.”

“First you tell me why you didn’t drop the dime on me.” There was a half grin on his face as he raised the beer bottle to his mouth.

“No games, Clete.”

“Because a guy out on bond for murder doesn’t like to introduce cops to his blood-spattered kitchen. Because maybe he knows they might just take the easy route and haul his butt down to the bag. Sounds like your faith might be waning, Streak.”

“Is that guy going to be back?”

“That’s one you don’t have to worry about.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Get serious. You don’t need to know any more, Streak. Except the fact that our man didn’t like heights.”

“What?”

“Did you ever meet a psychopath yet that wasn’t scared of something? It’s what makes them cruel. Charlie didn’t like high places. At least not the one I showed him.”