Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'I just finished a bit myself. Why you twisting me? Take your shit to Will.'

'But you're the only guy around,' I said. 'Which means you're all out of luck.'

I pulled my cuffs off my belt and hooked up his wrists. He was facedown now, his eyelids fluttering against the dust and oil on the floor. The rain and the smoke from the trash barrel blew through the back door.

'What's that smell?' I said.

He bit down on his bottom lip.

I glanced around the store. The interior was cluttered with boxes of old seventy-eight records. In one corner was a glassed-in sound booth with an instrument panel and an elevated microphone inside. A mop inside a pail of dirty water was propped against a closed side door. I pulled back the slide on the .45 and eased a round into the chamber.

'I bought this in Bring Cash Alley in Saigon for twenty-

five dollars,' I said. 'No registration, completely cold, you get my drift?'

His eyes squeezed shut, then opened again. 'Don't do this to me, man. Please,' he said.

My hand was tight and sweating on the knurled grips of the .45. I looked through the front window at the rain falling in the street. In the distance a stuck car horn was blaring, a stabbing, unrelieved sound in the inner ear like fingernails on a blackboard.

I eased the hammer back into place, clicked on the safety, and slipped the .45 back into my belt holster.

'I'm a police officer,' I said. 'Do you believe me when I say that?'

'Bust me. I ain't arguing.'

'But I'm beyond my parameters here. Do you know what that means?'

His eyes were filled with confusion.

'Will Buchalter and his sister have hurt my family,' I said. 'So we're not working on conventional rules anymore. Do you believe me when I say that?'

'Yes, sir. You got no trouble from me.'

'So what's that smell?'

'I was just trying to clean up… The guy gets crazy sometimes… He started hitting her with his fists for no reason, then he went in there with some scissors. I didn't have anything to do with it, man.'

'Hit who?'

'The broad… I thought that's why you were here. The broad he's been holding.' He stared at the look on my face. 'Oh shit, man, this ain't my doing. You got to believe that.'

I scraped the pail and mop out of the way with my foot and opened the side door.

She was tied to a chair with clothesline, her mouth and eyes wrapped with silver tape, her reddish hair shorn and hacked to the scalp. One nostril was caked with dried blood, her neck and shoulders marbled with bruises the color of pomegranates. She turned her head toward my sound, like a blind person, her nostrils dilating with fear.

'Martina?' I said, my heart dropping.

She tried to talk through the tape.

I removed it first from her eyes, then her mouth. Her right eye was swollen shut, the inside of her lips gashed, her teeth pink, as though they had been painted with Mercurochrome. I opened my Puma knife and sliced the rope from the arms and back of the chair. She held me around the waist while I stroked her shorn head.

'It's all right,' I said. 'We'll get you to a hospital. I'll have somebody stay with you. You hear me? Buchalter's gone. Everything's going to be okay.'

She turned her face up to me. Her left eyeball jittered, as though a nerve in it were impaired. 'Where's Clete?' she said.

'I don't know. But we'll find him.'

'The man who beat me, he told me about the things he was going to do to Clete. He has pictures of what he's done to people.'