The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

1) Don’t silhouette on a hill.

2) Get rid of your jewelry, particularly civilian junk. Ostentation can put you in a box.

3) Don’t make enemies with anyone in records.

4) Don’t threaten anyone who knows your location when you don’t know his.

5) Never piss off the people who prepare or serve your food.

6) Be aware that clerks and secretaries run the world and own rubber stamps that can turn your life into a broken pay toilet.

7) Never sass a hack or drill sergeant or any dull-witted white Southerner who has authority over others.

8) Grin and walk through the cannon smoke. It drives the bad guys up the wall.

9) Get the right people on your side. Who would you rather have covering your back in a back-alley brawl, an academic liberal or a hobnailed redneck?

10) Never buy into the acronym FEAR (fuck everything and run). Swallow your blood and don’t let others know you’re hurt. If that doesn’t work, spit it in their faces.

11) Even in the most desperate of situations, stay away from the Herd. Situating yourself between loud oinking sounds and the trough is a surefire way to get trampled to death.

12) Burn this list before anyone catches you with it.

In my vanity, I wanted to think of myself as a vigilante or, even worse, a knight errant. But I was flailing at the dark. Men like Lautrec and Devereaux were surrogates. The person who’d murdered Lucinda Arceneaux and mounted her on a cross and floated her out to sea was either a master manipulator or someone with motivations that were armor-plated in the unconscious. My badge was in limbo. I had no legal power. How could I proceed in a case that had become a room without doors?

On Tuesday morning, I was sitting on my back steps with Mon Tee Coon and Snuggs, throwing pecans into a hat, when I heard someone walk through the porte cochere and come around the side of the house. Mon Tee Coon scampered up an oak tree. Bailey Ribbons walked across the grass, her small black shoes crunching on the patina of red and orange and yellow leaves I had not raked up. “Good morning,” she said.

I stood up. “How you doin’, Bailey?”

“May I sit down?” She was wearing a dark skirt and a lavender blouse and a gold chain with small heart

charms on it.

“Let me get you a chair. The steps are dirty.”

“That’s all right,” she said, sitting down on the steps. She looked up at the oak in front of us. “Did I scare off your coon?”

“He doesn’t know you yet.”

“I feel very bad, Dave. I got the stars in my eyes out there in Arizona. I was acting like an idiot. It’s an honor to be your partner.”

“I wouldn’t get carried away with that,” I said.

“Look at me.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t want to seem forward.”

“About what?” I said.

She picked up my hand in hers. “I don’t want to sit by and watch while you hurt your career. You’re doing things that make no sense, and I think they have something to do with me.”

“I’m an expert at messing up things on my own.”

She squeezed my hand, hard. “You listen to me. I’ve worked with cops who should be in cages. We can’t afford to lose people like you.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”