Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'Remember the dude in New Iberia General? He got a hypodermic load of roach paste. Buchalter ends here.'

I punched him on the shoulder with my finger.

'We need to understand something, Clete. You're not going to re-create the O.K. Corral out here.'

He twisted around on his haunches.

'What do you want to do?' he said. 'Go all the way back to land to notify the Coast Guard, then hope they're not a hundred miles away? The old man's on his own up there. We go in there and blow up their shit.'

I punched him with one finger, hard, on the shoulder again. He turned and slapped my hand away, his green eyes suddenly disturbed and dark, as though he were looking at someone he didn't know.

'This whole gig started with you tearing up the Calucci brothers,' I said. 'It's not going to end that way. We're putting Buchalter in a cage.'

'Tell it to the Rotary Club,' he said, and looked upward toward the closed hatch.

We could hear Zoot cutting back the gas now, the exhaust pipes throbbing at the waterline, echoing off the steel hull of the salvage ship. Then we heard Lucinda making her way forward, picking up the bowline off the deck, as though it were natural to tie onto the metal steps that zigzagged down the side of the ship.

Clete eased the hatch upward a half inch.

'We found an injured man on an oil platform! We need your radio!' Lucinda shouted.

There was no answer. We could hear the sounds of an air compressor, a winch grinding, chains rattling through pulleys, a diesel engine working hard.

'It's a boat hand who doesn't know what to do,' Clete said. 'He probably went for somebody else.' He looked back at me again. 'Lighten up. I figure no more than five of them, including the diver in the water. Easy odds, mon.'

But the creases in the back of his neck were bright with sweat, his knuckles white and ridged on the shotgun's stock.

'We're calling it in for you!' someone yelled down at Lucinda.

'I'm a nurse! I need to describe his condition! I think he's had a coronary!'

'We're radioing your message! You can't come onboard!'

The hull bumped against the rubber tires that were roped to the bottom of the steps.

'Repeat… You can't come onboard! No one but company personnel are allowed! Your message is being transmitted!'

'This man may die!'

Clete's eyes were level with the crack between the deck and the hatch.

'She's tying on. That broad's got ice water in her veins,' he whispered. 'That's it, Lucinda, get on the steps, do it, do it, do it, do it…'

'Mr. Dave, leave me something 'case I got to come after y'all.'

I turned around. It was Zoot, bent down below the level of the passageway in the cabin.

'If it goes sour, partner, you get help,' I said.

It was very fast after that.

'Party time,' Clete said, and charged out onto the bow with the shotgun at port arms.

Lucinda had already reached the top of the stairs and was on the deck of the salvage ship, her .357 pointed straight out in front of her with both hands, her hair whipping in the wind, while she shouted at two paralyzed deckhands, 'Police officer, motherfucker! Down on your face, hands laced behind your neck! Are you deaf? Down on your face! Now! Or I blow your fucking head off!'

I hit the stairs running, right behind Clete, my .45 flopping in the pocket of my field jacket. I had already chambered a round in the AR-15, and my hand was squeezed tight on the grip and inside the trigger guard, my thumb poised on the safety. I could hear waves bursting against the stern and hissing along the hull.

The salvage ship was old, covered with tack welds, the scuppers orange with corrosion, the paint blistered and soft and flaking under the hand, the glass in the pilothouse oxidized and dirty with oil. The hatch to the engine room was open, and from belowdecks I could smell electrical odors, diesel fuel, stagnant water in a sump, a salty, rotten stench like a rat that's been caught in machinery.