Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'Right. Warm. Not hot exactly. Terms like borrowed and lend-lease come to mind,' I said, and leaned forward on my hands. 'You've got your own agenda tonight, Lucinda.'

'He tortured my son.'

'You know when a good cop does it by the numbers? The day he thinks he shouldn't do it by the numbers.'

'I get this from the friend and advocate of Clete Purcel? Wonderful.'

'Don't let Buchalter remake you in his image.'

She looked into my face for a long time.

'Your advice is always good, Dave,' she said. 'But it's meant for others. It has no application for yourself, does it?'

We stared silently at each other as the hull of the boat veered toward the cut at Grand Terre.

It was a strange, cold dawn. With first light the sky looked streaked with india ink, then the wind dropped suddenly and the sun came up red and molten on the gulf's watery rim. The tide was coming in, rose-dimmed, heavy with the fecund smell of schooled-up trout, flecked with foam toward the shore, the air loud with the cry of gulls that glided and dipped over our wake. I watched the gray-green landmass of Louisiana fall away behind us,

Zoot stood erect in front of the wheel, his hooded workout jersey zipped up to his chin, his long hands resting lightly on the spokes. He had cranked open the glass, and the skin of his face looked taut and bright with cold.

'How you doing, Skipper?' I said.

'Not bad. She asleep?'

'Yes.'

'You know what she said about you the other day?'

'I wouldn't want to guess.'

'She say, "He's probably crazy but I wouldn't mind if I'd met him before he was married."'

'You'd better not be giving out your mama's secrets,' I said.

'Why you think she tell it to me?' he said.

Through my field glasses I could see the black, angular silhouettes of two abandoned drilling platforms against the sun and a freighter with rusty scuppers and a Panamanian flag to the far west. Zoot cut back on the throttle, and we rocked forward on our own wake.

'Look at the sonar, Mr. Dave,' he said. 'We're in about forty feet now. But see where the line drops? That's a trench. I been over it before. It runs maybe two miles, unless it drifts over with sand sometimes.'

'You're pretty good at this.'

'I ain't even gonna say nothing. You and her just alike. Got one idea about everything, so every day you always surprised about something.'

'I think you're probably right.'

'Probably?' He shook his head.

But I wasn't listening now. Just off the port bow, beyond one of the drilling platforms, I saw the low, flat outline of a salvage vessel, one that was outfitted with side booms, dredges, and a silt vacuum that curved over the gunwale like the body of an enormous snake. I sharpened the image through the field glasses and saw that the ship was anchored bow and stern and was tilted slightly to starboard, as though it were straining against a great weight.

Then I saw something move on the drilling platform closest to us. I stepped outside the cabin and refocused the field glasses. The tide was washing through the pilings at the base of the platform, and upside-down in the swell, knocking against the steel girders, was the red and white hull of a capsized boat. I moved the glasses up a ladder to the rig itself and held them on a powerful, sunburned, bare-chested man whose Marine Corps utilities hung just below his navel.

'What is it?' Lucinda said behind me. The side of her face was printed with lines from her sleep.

I handed the glasses to her.

'Take a look at that first rig,' I said.

She balanced herself against the sway of the deck and peered through the glasses.