Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

"Aaron Crown bothers me."

"You went on television, Dave, with this Hollywood character, what's-his-name, Felton, whatever."

"I was taped here while he interviewed me on the phone, then it was spliced into the show."

"Forget the technical tour. Why don't you resign your job while you're at it? What's your boss have to say?"

"I don't think he's heard about it yet."

"You don't take police business to civilians, big mon. To begin with, they don't care about it. They'll leave you hanging in the breeze, then your own people rat-fuck you as a snitch."

"Maybe that's the way it's supposed to shake out," I said.

He drank from a bottle of Dixie beer, one eye squinting over the bottle at me. "Something else is involved here, mon," he said.

"Don't make it a big deal, Clete."

"It's the broad, isn't it?" he said.

"No."

"You got into the horizontal bop once with her and you're worried you're going to do it again. So you got rid of temptation with a baseball bat. In the meantime maybe you just splashed your career into the bowl . . . Wait a minute, you didn't pork her again, did you?"

"No . . . Will you stop talking like that?"

"Dave, rich guys don't marry mud women from New Guinea. She's one hot-ass piece of work. We all got human weaknesses, noble mon. All I got to do is see her on TV and my Johnson starts barking."

"You were a fugitive on a homicide warrant," I said. "The victim was a psychopath, and his death was a mistake, but the point is you killed him. What if you hadn't beat it? What if you were put away for life unjustly?"

He wiped a smear of barbecue sauce off his palm with a napkin, looked out at the sunlight on the street.

"This guy Crown must mean a lot to you ... I think I'm going to Red's in Lafayette, take a steam, start the day over again," he said.

An hour later the sheriff buzzed my extension and asked me to walk down to his office. By now I was sure he had heard about my appearance on "Morning Edition," and all the way down the corridor I tried to construct a defense for conduct that, in police work, was traditionally considered indefensible. When I opened the door he was staring at a sheet of lined notebook paper in his hand, rubbing his temple with one finger. His Venetian blinds were closed, and his windowsill was green with plants.

"Why is everything around here hard? Why can't we just take care of the problems in Iberia Parish? Can you explain that to me?" he said.

"If you're talking about my being on 'Morning Edition,' I stand behind what I said, Sheriff. Aaron Crown didn't have motivation. I think Buford LaRose is building a political career on another man's broken back."

"You were on 'Morning Edition'?"

The room was silent. He opened the blinds, and an eye-watering light fell through the window.

"Maybe I should explain," I said.

"I'd appreciate that."

When I finished he picked up the sheet of notebook paper and looked at it again.

"I wish you hadn't done that," he said.

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

"You don't understand. I wanted to believe the Mexican with the machete was simply a deranged man, not an assassin. I wanted to believe he had no connection with the Crown business."

"I'm not with you."

"I don't want to see you at risk, for God's sake. We got two calls from Mexico this morning, one from a priest in some shithole down in the interior, the other from a Mexican drug agent who says he's worked with the DEA in El Paso . . . The guy with the spiderweb tattoos, the lunatic, some rurales popped holes all over him. He's dying and he says you will too . . . He says 'for the bugarron.' What's a bugarron?"