Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

"Kiss my ass," he said.

Sunday Father Jimmie had gone to Lafayette to collect signatures on a petition to shut down drive-by daiquiri windows and had stayed the night at a retreat house in Grand Coteau. I ate a plate of clam spaghetti at a cafe in Jeanerette, then went to sleep reading T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, with Snuggs on the foot of the bed. My windows were open and in my sleep I heard the wind in the trees, a solitary pecan husk rattle on the tin roof, a workboat chugging heavily on the bayou. The air was cool and clean smelling with ground fog, rainwater ticking in the trees, and I felt Snuggs walk across my back so he could sniff the breeze blowing through the screen. Just after midnight, my bowels constricted as though I had swallowed a piece of broken glass. I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, my thighs trembling with nausea.

Then I heard someone wedge a tool between the back door and the jamb, splinter the deadbolt, and enter the house. Whoever it was moved quickly toward the band of light at the bottom of the bathroom door, opened it slightly, and looked in at me.

"I wasn't planning to meet you like this, but I couldn't resist the opportunity. Can I be getting

you anything? You don't look too well," the figure said.

"Coll?"

"Right you are. No, don't get up. Take care of business while I have my say, then I'll be off." His hand came through the opening and removed the key from the lock. He shut the door and locked it from the outside.

"What do you think you're doing?" I said.

I heard him go into the bedroom, then scrape a chair into position. "This is a fine cat you have here. Been in a few fights, has he?"

"Listen, Coll "

"He's got a real pair of bandoliers back there."

My face was cold with sweat, a bilious fluid rising from my stomach. Gray spots danced before my eyes.

"Father Dolan and I have nothing to do with your life," I said.

"Oh, but you do. Two rather nasty cretins just arrived in town, Mr. Robicheaux, the cousins of Frank Dellacroce. Stone killers, they are, sir, with no parameters and no charitable impulses. Evidently a few of the grease balls think you blew poor Frank's head off. Would you like to hear what they did to a friend of mine?"

"No."

"Took a blowtorch to him. What's the name of your cat?"

"Snuggs."

"What a fine little fellow. Built like a fucking fire hydrant. It's a shame the innocent suffer. But maybe that's the only thing that causes us to take action."

I could feel my heart quicken. "What are you saying?"

"I didn't make the world. I just live in it as best I can. I'll be going now."

"You leave that cat here."

But he didn't reply. I heard his chair scrape but did not hear him set Snuggs down. "Coll? Did you hear me?" I yelled.

I heard him banging about in the kitchen, then a hard, clunking sound and his footsteps going heavily through the house and out the front door. By the time I was able to climb out the bathroom window, the yard and the street were empty, the ground puffing with fog, the moon as bright as a white flame behind the skeletal outline of a water oak.

I went around back and entered the house through the kitchen door. A pitcher of milk rested on the drain board and Snuggs was lapping from a bowl next to it, one Max Coll had filled with both milk and dry cat food.

I started to dial 911, then gave it up, propped a chair against the kitchen door, and went back to sleep, my .45 under my pillow.

lit 8:05 Monday morning Clotile Arceneaux walked into my office. She wore a pair of navy blue slacks, a blouse printed with tropical flowers, and a polished black gunbelt with her badge holder hung from the front and her cuffs pushed through the back. She had the blackest hair and wore the brightest lipstick I had ever seen.

"How's life in the Big Sleazy?" I said.

She grinned broadly, then sat down without being asked. "You're a magnet, Robicheaux," she said.

"For what?"

"Trouble. We keep a few people at the New Orleans airport, watching to see who comes and goes, know what I mean? Three days ago a couple of grease balls from Ft. Lauderdale got into town, spent the night with some hookers, then caught a flight to Lafayette. Guess what their last names are?"