Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“Could I see your driver’s license, please?” the man at Micah’s window said. He wore pilot’s sunglasses and seemed bored, looking away at the sunset over the cane fields, his palm extended as he waited for Micah to pull his license from his wallet.

“What’s the problem?”

The man in sunglasses looked at the photo on the license, then at Micah’s face.

“You see what it says over your picture? ‘Don’t drink and drive … Don’t litter Louisiana,’ ” he said. “Every driver’s license in Louisiana has that on it. We’re trying to keep drunks off the road and the highways clean. You threw a beer can out the window back there.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Step out of the car, please.”

“You guys are from New Orleans. You don’t have authority here,” Micah said.

“Walk around the far side of the car, please, and we’ll discuss that with you.”

They braced him against the roof, kicked his ankles apart, ran their hands up and down his legs, and pulled his pockets inside out, spilling his change and wallet onto the shale.

A car passed with its lights on. The two cops watched it disappear between the cane fields. Then one of them swung a baton into the back of Micah’s thigh, crumpling it as though the tendon had been cut in half. He fell to one knee, his fingers trying to find purchase against the side of the limo.

The second blow was ineffective, across his shoulders, but the third was whipped with two hands into his tailbone, driving a red shard of pain into his bowels. Micah rolled in the dirt, shuddering, trying to control his sphincter muscle.

The cop who had taken his license dropped it like a playing card into his face, then kicked him in the kidney.

“You got a sheet in New Mexico, Micah. Go back there. Don’t make us find you again,” he said.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said.

The cop with the baton leaned over and inserted the round, wooden end into Micah’s mouth, pushing hard, until Micah gagged and choked on his own blood.

“What’s that? Say again?” the cop said, bending down solicitously toward Micah’s deformed face.

Clete called me the next afternoon and asked me to meet him in Armand’s on Main Street. It was cool and dark inside, and Clete sat at the antique, mirrored bar, a julep glass in his hand, an electric fan blowing across his face.

But there was nothing cool or relaxed about his demeanor. His tropical shirt was damp against his skin, his face flushed as though he had a fever. One foot was propped on the runner of the barstool; his knee kept jiggling.

“What is it, Clete?”

“I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t have called you. Maybe I should just drive up the stock price on Jack Daniel’s by three or four points.”

“I got a call from Cora Gable. A couple of NOPD goons beat up her driver. She says they scared him so bad he won’t press charges.”

“Jim Gable wants him out of town?”

“The driver had just delivered a petition for Letty to Belmont Pugh. Maybe the message is for Cora.”

“What’s Gable’s interest in Letty Labiche?”

“I don’t know. You going to tell me why you called me down here?”

• • •

The affair had started casually enough. Clete had gone to her house at evening time and had found her working in back, carrying buckets of water in both hands from the house faucet to her garden.

“Where’s your hose?” he asked.

“The boy who cuts the grass ran the lawn mower over it,” she replied.

They carried the water together, sloshing it on their clothes, pouring it along the rows of watermelons and strawberries, the sky aflame behind them. Her face was hot with her work, her dress blowing loosely on her body as she stooped over in the row. He walked back to the house and filled a glass of water for her and carried it to her in the garden.