Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“I don’t know.”

“Give me another julep,” he said to the bartender.

Bootsie was waiting for me in the parking lot after work.

“How about I buy you dinner, big boy?” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“I just like to see if I can pick up a cop once in a while.”

We drove to Lerosier, across from the Shadows, and ate in the back room. Behind us was a courtyard full of roses and bamboo, and in the shade mint grew between the bricks.

“Something happen today?” I said.

“Two messages on the machine from Connie Deshotel. I’m not sure I like other women calling you up.”

“She probably has my number mixed up with her Orkin man’s.”

“She says she’s sorry she offended you. What’s she talking about?”

“This vice cop, Ritter, taped an interview with a perpetrator by the name of Steve Andropolis. The tape contained a bunch of lies about my mother.”

Bootsie put a small piece of food in her mouth and chewed it slowly, the light hardening in her eyes.

“Why would she do that?” she said.

“Ask her.”

“Count on it,” she said.

I started to reply, then looked at her face and thought better of it.

But Connie Deshotel was a willful and determined woman and was not easily discouraged from revising a situation that was somehow detrimental to her interests.

The next evening Belmont Pugh’s black Chrysler, followed by a caravan of political sycophants and revelers, parked by the boat ramp. They got out and stood in the road, blinking at the summer light in the sky, the dust from their cars drifting over them. All of them had been drinking, except apparently Belmont. While his friends wandered down toward the bait shop for food and beer, Belmont walked up the slope, among the oaks, where I was raking leaves, his face composed and somber, his pinstripe suit and gray Stetson checkered with broken sunlight.

“Why won’t you accept that woman’s apology?” he asked.

“You’re talking about Connie Deshotel?”

“She didn’t mean to cast an aspersion on your mother. She thought she was doing her job. Give her a little credit, son.”

“All right, I accept her apology. Make sure you tell her that for me, will you? She actually got the governor of the state to drive out here and deliver a message for her?”

He removed his hat and wiped the liner out with a handkerchief. His back was straight, his profile etched against the glare off the bayou. His hair had grown out on his neck, and it gave him a distinguished, rustic look. For some reason he reminded me of the idealistic young man I had known years ago, the one who daily did a good deed and learned a new word from his thesaurus.

“You’re a hard man, Dave. I wish I had your toughness. I wouldn’t be fretting my mind from morning to night about that woman on death row,” he said.

I rested the rake and popped my palms on the handle’s end. It was cool in the shade and the wind was blowing the tree limbs above our heads.

“I remember when a guy offered you ten dollars to take a math test for him, Belmont. You really needed the money. But you chased him out of your room,” I said.

“The cafeteria didn’t serve on weekends. You and me could make a can of Vienna sausage and a jar of peanut butter and a box of crackers go from Friday noon to Sunday night,” he said.

“I’ve witnessed two executions. I wish I hadn’t. You put your hand in one and you’re never the same,” I said.

“A long time ago my daddy said I was gonna be either a preacher or a drunk and womanizer. I wake up in the morning and have no idea of who I am. Don’t lecture at me, son.” His voice was husky, his tone subdued in a way that wasn’t like Belmont.