“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Funny place to drink soda pop, Wyatt,” the man in the suit said. He glanced up at the stage, where three girls were gyrating and twisting on chromed poles. “I’d think you’re too old for eye candy.”

“I do business with a bunch of feed growers and cutting-horse breeders up the Jocko. This is where I meet them at.”

“That’s interesting. We didn’t know that,” the man in the suit said, jotting something on a notepad. He was a plainclothes sheriff’s detective by the name of Bill Pepper whose manner and way of doing business seemed to come from an earlier time. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes and wore his hair in a buzz cut and spoke with a Deep South accent, although he had been with LAPD many years and never mentioned where he’d grown up. His eyes were recessed and as dead as buckshot, his lips gray, his coat slightly askew from the lead-weighted blackjack shaped like a darning sock that he carried in the right pocket.

“Is this about that girl who says I shot an arrow at her?”

“She’s not a girl. She’s a grown woman. Grown women are sensitive about that these days.”

“So that’s what this is about?”

“What do you think?”

“I got no idea.”

“I left a business card in your door. I left one in your mailbox, too.”

“People stick trash in my door and mailbox every day.”

“Want to sit in a cell tonight?” Pepper said.

Wyatt folded his hands on top of the table, his face tight. He blew his nose on a bandana and stuck the bandana in his pocket. “I ain’t shot an arrow at nobody. I told that to your deputy. I told it to the girl and her father. Don’t fuck with me.”

“Lot of people say you’re a mean motor scooter. Is that what you are? A mean motor scooter?”

Wyatt stared straight ahead, his pupils like small black insects frozen inside glass.

“Let me ask you another question. You come in here a lot?” Pepper said.

“When I’m of a mind to.”

The plainclothes detective’s pen had gone dry. He clicked the button on it several times, then took another pen from his shirt pocket. “You know what ‘fortuitous’ means? In this instance it means we might be looking at you in a new light. Were you in here about a week ago?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know an Indian girl by the name of Angel Deer Heart?”

“A little bitty thing, about seventeen or eighteen, her britches hanging off her seat?”

“That’s the one.”

“She’s the granddaughter of a big oilman. Yeah, I saw her in here. A couple of times.”

“You see her last Thursday night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“But you were here?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, you did.” Pepper wrote again in his notebook. “You feel protective toward young girls?”

“I don’t get around them long enough to be protective.”

“Seems only natural, a rodeo man like you. You see a young thing at the bar with her panties showing, and you cruise on over and buy her a drink and tell her you’ll drive her home because she shouldn’t be hanging in a snatch patch full of guys who’d love to tear her apart. Did something like that happen?”

Tags: James Lee Burke Dave Robicheaux Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net