Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“I apologize,” I said.

He smiled and turned his attention away from the rest of the table. “You lift, don’t you? I’ve always wanted to get into that,” he said to me.

“I haven’t had much time. I’m still tied up with that Little Face Dautrieve investigation. Remember Little Face? A black hooker who worked for Zipper Clum?” I said.

“No bells are going off,” he said.

“We hope to have all of you to a lawn party as soon as the weather cools,” Cora Gable said. “It’s been frightfully hot this summer, hasn’t it?”

But Gable wasn’t listening to his wife. His arm rested on top of the tablecloth and his eyes were fixed indolently on mine. His nails were clipped and pink on his small fingers.

“I understand Clete Purcel had trouble with some off-duty cops. Is that what’s bothering you, Dave?” he said.

I looked at my watch and didn’t answer. Gable lit a thin black cigar with a gold lighter and put the lighter in his shirt pocket.

“What a character,” he said, without identifying his reference. “You and Purcel must have made quite a pair.”

“Please don’t smoke at the table,” Bootsie said.

Gable looked straight ahead in the silence, a smile frozen on his mouth. He rotated the burning tip of his cigar in the ashtray until it was out, and picked up his wineglass and drank from it, his hand not quite hiding the flush of color in his neck.

From behind the caked makeup on her face, Cora Gable watched her husband’s discomfort the way a hawk on a telephone wire might watch a rabbit snared in a fence.

After lunch, as our group moved through the dining room and out onto the gallery and front walk, the sheriff hung back and gripped my arm.

“What the hell was going on in there?” he whispered.

“I guess I never told you about my relationship with Jim Gable,” I said.

“You treated him like something cleaned out of a drainpipe,” he said.

“Go on?” I said.

But Jim Gable was not the kind of man who simply went away after being publicly corrected and humiliated. While Micah was helping Cora Gable into the back of the limo, Gable stopped me and Bootsie as we were about to walk back to our car.

“It was really good to see y’all,” he said.

“You’ll see more of me, Jim. I g

uarantee it,” I said, and once again started toward our car.

“You look wonderful, Boots,” he said, and took her hand in his. When he released it, he let his fingers touch her wrist and trail like water down the inside of her palm. To make sure there was no mistaking the insult, he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles.

Suddenly I was standing inches from his face. The sheriff was out in the street and had just opened the driver’s door of his cruiser and was now staring across the roof at us.

“Is there something wrong, Dave?” Gable asked.

“Would you like to have a chat over in the alley?” I said.

“You’re a lot of fun,” he said, and touched my arm good-naturedly. “Twenty-five years on the job and you spend your time chasing down pimps and whores and talking about it in front of your new mayor.” He shook the humor out of his face and lit another cigar and clicked his lighter shut. “It’s all right to smoke out here, isn’t it?”

I went back to the office and spent most of the afternoon doing paperwork. But I kept thinking about Jim Gable. In A.A. we talk about putting principles before personalities. I kept repeating the admonition over and over to myself. Each time I did I saw Gable’s fingers sliding across my wife’s palm.

When the phone rang I hoped it was he.

“I thought I’d check in,” the voice of Johnny Remeta said.

“You have a thinking disorder. You don’t check in with me. You have no connection with my life.”