Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'It's Buchalter. We found him about three this morning,' he said, pulling a blanket around his shoulders.

'We came up on him from the south. I thought we had him. There's a metal stairs on his port side. We were going to drift up to it, then take them from behind while all that machinery was roaring. Except we hit a log and punched a hole in the hull.'

He sat on top of a locker filled with life vests and scuba gear and worked the stopper from a bottle of Cutty Sark he had taken from the liquor cabinet. The scar through his eyebrow and across the bridge of his nose looked like a stitched strip of pink rubber.

'Who's we, Clete?'

'Brother Oswald.' His voice changed when he said the words. His eyes looked away from me, then at Lucinda and Zoot. Then he looked at the deck. He lifted the bottle to his mouth.

'Why didn't you wait?' I said.

'For what? The guy to blow the country?'

'You could have waited,' I said.

'Get real, Streak. You nail this guy under a black flag or he'll live to piss on your grave.'

'What's a black flag?' Zoot said.

Clete started to raise the Scotch again, then the color drained out of his face and he went through the hatchway and threw up over the stern. He came back inside, wiping his mouth with a towel.

'Excuse me, I swallowed some oil out there,' he said. 'When the boat turned over, I hung on to it. Brother Oswald had on a life preserver. He was drifting right past that stairs I was talking about. He didn't come out north of the ship, either.'

'You mean he's onboard with Buchalter?' Lucinda said.

'The tide was coming in real strong. He couldn't be anywhere else,' Clete said. 'I would have seen him. I know I would have.'

'I'll give our position to the Coast Guard,' I said.

'The old guy kept talking about Gog and Magog. What's Gog and Magog?' Clete said.

'It's a biblical prophesy about the war between good and evil,' I said.

'I don't know about no black flags and Magogs, but there's something I ain't mention yet,' Zoot said.

We all stared at him. In the silence a wave broke across the bow and streaked the glass.

'The radio don't work,' he said.

* * *

chapter thirty-two

I was crouched behind Clete on the steps of the small passageway that gave onto the bow. He had put on my raincoat and a red wool shirt he found in a closet. His big hands were clenched on the stock and pump of the twelve-gauge shotgun. I could hear him breathing with expectation.

He glanced backwards at me and started to smile. Then stopped.

'Why the scowl, mon?'

'This is your fault.'

'I don't read it that way.'

'Why didn't you go take care of Martina? Why'd you have to go out on the salt with a fanatical old man?'

'I don't like what you're saying to me, Streak.'

'Too bad.'