The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“I shower if I need it or not.”

Twenty minutes later, I met him at the juice bar. His hair was neatly combed, his face glowing and youthful, his slacks and shirt pressed. For just a moment, in the soft pastel lighting, he looked like the cop I walked a beat with in the Quarter, when both of us were sure we would never die. We ordered two fruit drinks, a sprig of mint stuck in the shaved ice.

I looked around. “Where’s your man?”

“We’re meeting him at a biker joint at seven.” Clete wiped at a nostril with one knuckle. “Dave, I got to have some assurances on this.”

“On what?”

“What you’re thinking about. It’s like you got a bee buzzing behind your eyes. You’re on lock and load, noble mon.”

“I don’t know where you get these ideas,” I said.

“If you haven’t noticed, every emotion you have is on your face.”

“Will you stop it?”

He looked around. No one was within earshot. “Here’s the real problem. The guy who killed Bella doesn’t need motivation. He does it for kicks. You knew his kind in Nam. They weren’t abused as children. Their mothers didn’t strap them on the pot. They came out of the womb perverse and meaner than a bucket of goat piss on a radiator.”

“So?” I said.

“So you start thinking up crazy things about Arabs and Russian oligarchs and corrupt politicians. These political cocksuckers—and Louisiana and Jersey and Florida are full of them—they don’t waste their time killing people. They’re too busy robbing the rest of us blind. Face it. We’ve got that killer in Kansas on our hands, what’s-his-name, BTK. You can’t outthink him because there’s nothing there to outthink. The guy loves power and pain and watching the light die in his victim’s eyes.”

“That wasn’t the case with Bella.”

“Because she was older and smarter and read him for the piece of shit he is.”

You didn’t slide one by Clete Purcel. “Why’d this kid have to give his ink back?” I said.

“Ask him.”

• • •

THE BIKER BAR was on the north side of Lafayette. Like most biker bars, it could have served as a laboratory dedicated to the study of misogyny, atavism, and contradiction. A Confederate battle flag was tacked by the corners to the ceiling, puffing in the breeze from an electric fan. The Reich service flag was nailed to one wall; on another wall was a black flag with two white lightning bolts. I always thought the greatest irony of the patrons was in their dress. They affected the roles of Visigoths and iconoclasts but simultaneously seemed to seek uniformity and anonymity. They dressed alike, looked alike, and spoke in the same guttural voice, as though all of them gargled with muriatic acid. The swagger and the way they hid their features inside their facial hair reminded me of actors who were terrified someone would catch on to who they really were.

This does not mean they weren’t dangerous. They were ferocious in groups and found in each other the strength they didn’t own themselves, and their leaders were not only intelligent but disarming and impressive when need be. No matter the occasion or the environment, messing with them was a mistake.

Spider Dupree was probably twenty-five at the outside, his shoulder-

length red hair washed and blow-dried. He wore zoot pants high on his hips and an oversize white long-sleeve shirt with silver thread in it and pearl snap buttons on the pockets and cuffs. The skin below his left eye had been disfigured. A biker bar seemed a strange environment for a kid who obviously had been forced to give back his ink.

Clete introduced me. Spider Dupree’s handshake was as light as air, his eyes like misaligned black stones at the bottom of a fish bowl.

“You probably wonder why I’m doing this,” he said. “I joined a church and got clean. That also means I got to stay on the square.”

“Sure,” I said. Trying to return his gaze was impossible. His eyes seemed to watch separate screens at the same time. “Good to know you, Spider.”

He touched one of the scars that dripped from his eye. “My story is on my face. I got no secrets. These guys here treat me all right. Let’s go over in the booth. You want a beer or anything?”

Before I could reply, Clete said, “Give me a Miller and give Dave a Coca-Cola with some cherries and a lime slice. Right, Dave?”

I didn’t answer.

We waited for Spider to come to the booth with the drinks. “You told me you took a hit of Jack,” Clete said. “So I jumped the gun.”

“Forget it. What’d Spider go down for?”

“Rolling gays in the Castro District.”