Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

A moment later I felt Clete stop pulling on the rope, then it was slipping free over the side of the salvage ship, curling down out of the waves toward me. I released the body of the woman called Marie Guilbeaux and watched it spin downward, the puffed arms extended sideways like a scarecrow's, the weighted boots pulling it past the bank of lights into the darkness, until the rope snapped taut again, and Marie's drowned figure swung back and forth against the bottom of the sub's hull.

I blew my glass clear again and swam upward to the surface. I popped through a wave into the wind, the groan of cables straining from the side booms, my mask streaked with water, my eyes searching the deck for Clete and Lucinda.

They were nowhere in sight. I climbed back aboard, breathless with cold, and slipped the straps to the air tank off my back. My AR-15 was gone.

I put on my field jacket, buttoned it against the wind, and took the .45 from the side pocket. A hollow-point round was already in the chamber. I cocked back the hammer and moved toward the stern, past the air compressor, the gasoline-powered generator, the winches, the piles of salvage nets and coils of acetylene hose, my shoulder brushing lightly against the base of the pilothouse, past an entrance to a room throbbing with the diesel motors that powered the side booms, past the galley, past a machine shop, finally to an open hatch that gave onto a small confined area that served as crew quarters.

No one.

I went inside the crew's quarters. It smelled of unwashed bedding and expectorated snuff. A color photograph of a nude black woman torn from a magazine was glued against one bulkhead. I went through another open hatch into a passageway that traversed the interior of the ship and led back toward the pilothouse and the bridge. The bulkheads were gray and cold with moisture, the deck patterned with the wet imprints of tennis shoes.

I opened or went through each hatch along the passageway.

Nothing.

The end of the passageway was unlighted, shrouded in gloom, as indistinct as fog. I didn't notice the broken lightbulb glass until the sole of my shoe came down on a piece of filament and cracked it against the deck. By then it was too late.

Buchalter stepped out from behind an open storage locker door, the stock of the AR-15 tight against his shoulder and cheek, one green eye as hard and bulbous as an egg behind the iron sights.

'You lose again, Dave. Throw it away,' he said, and kicked the door shut behind him, allowing me to see Lucinda and Clete on their knees by the ladder that led into the pilothouse, their fingers hooked behind their necks. There was a raw, skinned area above Clete's left eye.

'You want to take a chance and plant one in them?' Buchalter said.

'Don't give up your piece, Streak!' Clete shouted.

I held the .45 out to my side, bent slightly with my knees, and placed it carefully on the deck. Buchalter wore combat boots and khakis, a heavy gray wool shirt, and long underwear buttoned to the throat. His cheeks and chin were gold with the beginnings of a beard, the spray of blackheads fanning from his eyes like powder burns.

I smelled a bright, clean odor in the air, one that travels to the brain as quickly as a slap. Like the smell of white gas.

'Your friend killed my sister, Dave. What do you think of that?' he said. He looked at me with his lopsided grin.

'We tried to save her,' I said.

'Come join us,' he said.

'Maybe I shouldn't.'

'Oh, yes. It won't be complete without you. You and I have a date. All three of you do.' His thick tongue worked itself wetly along his lips.

'He soaked us with gasoline, Dave. Run!' Lucinda said.

'You know you're not going anywhere, Dave. Come closer. That's it, come on. The little boy is always inside the man. Don't be ashamed. You'd be surprised what people are willing to do under the right circumstances.' He held the rifle against his side by the pistol grip and worked a Zippo lighter out of his left pocket with his thumb.

'One's a Negro, the other a gentile who has intercourse with a Jew,' he said. 'They're going to die, anyway. Would you like to watch their performance with me, or be part of it? Nobody'll know, either, Dave.'

He pursed his lips and sucked in his cheeks, as though a mint lay on his tongue.

'The Coast Guard's on the way, Will.'

'I guess we should finish quickly then. Even when they catch my kind, you know what they do with us. Government hospitals. Clean drugs, maybe a horny nurse who needs a few extra dollars. Come on, kneel down with your friends, now.'

The heel of one boot clanked against a gasoline can. But then I heard another sound, too—behind me, at the far end of the passageway, a clumsy thud like an awkward person tripping across the bottom of a hatchway.

Buchalter heard it too, and his eyes shot past me, trying to focus on an image that they couldn't quite accept.

'Duck, Mr. Dave!'

I dropped to the deck, curling in an embryonic ball, waiting for the quick, sharp report of the AR-15. Instead, I heard a sound like a strand of broken piano wire whizzing through the air.