In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead (Dave Robicheaux 6)

Get me my smokeless .41.

Stagolee tole Miz Billy,

You don't believe your man is dead,

Come down to the barroom,

See the .41 hole in his head.

That li’l judge found Stagolee guilty

And that li’l clerk wrote it down,

On a cold winter morning,

Stagolee was Angola bound.

Forty-dollar coffin,

Eighty-dollar hack,

Carried that po' man to the burying ground,

Ain't never comin' back.

Two feet away from me the bartender filled a tray with draft beers without ever looking at me. He was bald and had thick gray muttonchop sideburns that looked like they were pasted on his cheeks. Then he wiped his hands on his apron and lit a cigar.

"You sho' you in the right place?" he said.

"I'm a friend of Hogman's," I said.

"So this is where you come to see him?"

"Why not?"

"What you havin', chief?"

"A 7 Up."

He opened a bottle, placed it in front of me without a glass, and walked away. The sides of the bottle were warm and filmed with dust. Twenty minutes later Hogman had not taken a break and was still playing.

"You want another one?" the bartender said.

"Yeah, I would. How about some ice or a cold one this time?" I said.

"The gentleman wants a cold one," he said to no one in particular. Then he filled a tall glass with cracked ice and set it on the bar with another dusty bottle of 7 Up. "Why cain't y'all leave him alone? He done his time, ain't he?"

"I look like the heat?" I said.

"You are the heat, chief. You and that other one out yonder."

"What other one? What are you talking about, partner?"

"The white man that was out yonder in that blue Mercury."

I got off the stool and looked into the parking lot through the Venetian blinds and the scrolled neon tubing of a Dixie beer sign.

"I don't see any blue Merc," I said.