A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

"What a July Fourth," Lester said.

I stared out the window at the soaked fields. I didn't want to listen to any more of Lester's negative comments, nor tell him what was really on my mind, namely, that he was the most depressing person I had ever worked with.

"I tell you, Dave, I never thought I'd have an assignment with a cop who'd been up on a murder beef himself," he said, yawning and widening his eyes.

"Oh?"

"You don't like to talk about it?"

"I don't care one way or the other."

"If it's a sore spot, I'm sorry I brought it up."

"It's not a sore spot."

"You're kind of a touchy guy sometimes."

The rain struck my face, and I rolled the window up again. I could see cows clumped together amon

g the trees, a solitary, dark farmhouse set back in a sugarcane field, and up ahead an old filling station that had been there since the 1930s. The outside bay was lighted, and the rain was blowing off the eaves into the light.

"I got something bad happening inside me," Boggs said. "Like glass turning around."

He was leaned forward on the seat in his chains, biting his lip, breathing rapidly through his nose. Lester looked at him, behind the mesh screen, in the rearview mirror. "We'll get you the Pepto. You'll feel a lot better."

"I can't wait. I'm going to mess my pants."

Lester looked over at me.

"I mean it, I can't hold it, you guys. It ain't my fault," Boggs said.

Lester craned his head around, and his foot went off the gas. Then he looked over at me again. I shook my head negatively.

"I don't want the guy smelling like shit all the way up to Angola," Lester said.

"When you transport a prisoner, you transport the prisoner," I said.

"They told me you were a hard-nose."

"Lester—"

"We're stopping," he said. "I'm not cleaning up some guy's diarrhea. That don't sit right with you, I'm sorry."

He pulled into the bay of the filling station. Inside the office a kid was reading a comic book behind an old desk. He put down the comic and walked outside. Lester got out of the car and opened his badge on him.

"We're with the sheriff's office," he said. "A prisoner needs to use your rest room."

"What?" the kid said.

"Can we use your rest room?"

"Yeah, sure. You want any gas?"

"No." Lester got back in the car, leaving the kid standing there, and backed the car around the side of the station, out of the light, to the men's room door.

Tee Beau was awake now, staring out into the darkness. In the headlights I could see a tree-lined coulee, with canebrakes along its banks, behind the station. Lester cut the engine, got out of the car again, unlocked the back door, and helped Boggs out into the light rain by one arm. Boggs kept breathing through his nose and letting the air out with a shudder.

"I'll unlock one hand and give you five minutes," Lester said. "You give me any more trouble, you can ride the rest of the way in the trunk."