Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“How do you know about Johnny Remeta?” Helen asked.

“ ’Cause I read y’all had him in y’all’s jail. ’Cause everybody on the street knows he did Zipper Clum. ’Cause he used to come in here. The boy has some serious sexual problems. But who want to go into details about that kind of thing?”

“That’s so good of you,” Helen said, stepping close-in to the elbow of the bar, her forearm pressed flat on the wood. “Is there something wrong about the words we use you don’t understand? We’re talking about conspiracy to commit murder for hire. There’s a woman on death row right now. Would you like to join her there?”

Maggie picked up her cup again and drank from it. She watched her bartender break open a roll of quarters and spill the coins into the drawer of the cash register, then watched a man redeem a marker by counting out a stack of one-dollar bills one at a time on the bar. A young black woman sitting next to a white man in a suit quietly picked up her purse and went out the front door. Maggie Glick looked at the clock on the wall.

“The lady at the café across from the French Market said you used to go to her church when you were a little girl,” I said.

Maggie Glick’s eyes cut sideways at me, her lips parting slightly.

“You’re not a killer, Maggie. But somebody used you to set up a hit. I think the person who used you may have been involved in the murder of my mother,” I said.

Her eyes stayed fixed on mine, clouding, her brow wrinkling for the first time.

“Your mother?” she said.

“Two cops killed her. Zipper Clum was going to dime them. You’re a smart lady. Put the rest of it together,” I said.

Her eyes shifted off mine and looked straight ahead into the gloom, the red glow of the neon tubing on the wall clock reflecting on the tops of her breasts. She tried to keep her face empty of expression, but I saw her throat swallow slightly, as though a piece of dry popcorn were caught in it. Her chest rose briefly against her blouse, then the moment passed and her face turned to stone and the slashes of color died in her cheeks. She raised her cup again, balancing it between the fingers of both hands, so that it partially concealed her mouth and made her next statement an unintelligible whisper.

“What?” I said.

“Get out of here. Don’t you be talking about the church I went to, either. What you know about how other people grew up? You used to come in here drunk, but you don’t remember it. Now you think you got the right to wipe your feet on my life?” she said.

She wheeled the top of her barstool around and walked toward the fire exit in back, her long legs wobbling slightly on her heels.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought I saw a flash of wetness in the side of her eye.

That night Bootsie and I went to a movie in New Iberia, then bought ice cream on the way home and ate it

on the redwood table under the mimosa tree in back. Clouds tumbled across the moon and my neighbor’s cane field was green and channeled with wind.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I can’t see through this stuff,” I said.

“About your mother?”

“All the roads lead back to prostitution of some kind: Zipper Clum, Little Face Dautrieve, this woman Maggie Glick, the story the jigger told about my mother working a scam with Mack—”

“It’s the world they live in, Dave—prostitution, drugs, stealing, it’s all part of the same web.” She looked at my expression and squeezed the top of my hand. “I don’t mean your mother.”

“No, it’s not coincidence. Jim Gable—” I hesitated when I used his name, then looked her evenly in the eyes and went ahead. “Gable and this vice cop Ritter are mixed up with hookers. Passion and Letty Labiche’s parents were procurers. Connie Deshotel wet her pants when she thought Passion recognized her. Somehow it’s all tied in together. I just don’t know how.”

“Your mother wasn’t a prostitute. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that.”

“You’re my buddy, Boots.”

She picked up the dishes to take them inside, then stopped and set them down again and stood behind me. Her fingers touched my hair and neck, then she bent over me and slipped her hands down my chest and pressed her body against me, her stomach and thighs flattening into my back, her mouth on my ear.

Later, in bed, she lay against me. Her fingertips traced the shrapnel scars that were like a spray of raised arrowheads on my hip. She turned her head and looked at the limbs of the oaks and pecan trees moving against the sky and the shadows the moon made in the yard.

“We have a wonderful family,” she said.

“We do,” I replied.

That’s when the phone rang. I went into the kitchen to answer it.