DR03 - Black Cherry Blues

  "Tell me about the shell again."

  "It came up in a shovelful of mud. I didn't even see it until I had stopped digging. It's bottlenecked, like a 7.62 round. Mapes has got a Tokarev. He had it in his hand at his girl's house down in the Bitterroot. I think he had it in Lafayette, too. He was trying to get to his open suitcase when I hit him with the chain. Look, it's enough for a search warrant. But it's got to be done right. You can bring the FBI in on it, let them coordinate it."

  "Oh?"

  "They can use kidnapping and interstate flight, or depriving a minority of his civil rights by taking his life. The locals might blow it. If Mapes gets a sniff of what's going on before they serve the warrant, he'll lose the Tokarev."

  "I had to take a lot of heat because of that phone tap."

  "I'm sorry."

  "It hasn't quieted down yet."

  "I was up against the wall. I don't know what else to tell you. You want me to hang up and call the sheriff's office?"

  He waited a moment.

  "No, don't do that," he said finally.

  "I guess we've got a vested interest. This whole Indian thing started with Pugh, and Pugh's had a longtime involvement with Sally Dee. Give me the directions again."

  I told him in detail once more. The shower had moved eastward across the fields, and rain was now clicking on the roof of the phone booth. An Indian boy on an old bicycle with fat tires rattled past me on the road, his face bent down against the rain.

  "I'll call the FBI and the Teton sheriff's office," Nygurski said.

  "Then I'll be out myself. I want a promise from you, though."

  "What is it?"

  "Other people take it from here on in. You're out of it. Absolutely."

  "All right."

  "I want your word. You don't go near Mapes."

  "You have it, but you've got to get him with the Tokarev."

  "I think you've made your point. But are you sure that's what you saw in his hand? I wonder why he didn't get rid of it."

  "They were prize souvenirs in Vietnam. Besides, he always sailed out of everything he ever did."

  "Where are you going to be?"

  "On the road where their truck went into the ditch. We can walk in from there, or find the access road that leads back to the garbage dump."

  "Did you hear anything more from Dio?"

  "Nope. Except two of his goons broke Parcel's hand. He says he took a couple of gold ashtrays out of Dio's house."

  "Bad guy to steal from. Purcel must not have pressed charges, because we didn't hear anything about it."

  "He said something strange when I went to see him in the hospital yesterday. He said, "Our man's going to have a sandy fuck." Or maybe I misunderstood him. I think Dio has a girlfriend named Sandy. Anyway, it didn't make any sense to me."

  "Where is he?"

  "St. Pat's in Missoula."

  "Maybe it's time we have a talk with him. I'll see you a little later this morning. In the meantime, congratulations. You're a good cop, Robicheaux. Get your badge back."

  "You've been a good friend, too, Dan."

  "And, lastly, keep your name out of my paperwork for a while."

  I drove back up the road in the rain and parked by the stream where I had entered the woods at dawn. Then the clouds moved eastward and the rain drifted away over the land behind me, and in the distance the sheer red cliffs of the mountains rose into the tumbling plateaus of ponderosa. When I closed my eyes and laid my head back against the seat I heard robins singing in a lone cotton-wood by the stream.

  The next morning I drank almost two pots of coffee and waited for the phone to ring. I had spent nearly all of the previous day at the murder site, the Teton sheriff's department, and the coroner's office. I watched three deputies finish the exhumation and put the bodies gingerly in black bags, I gave a statement to the FBI and one to the sheriff's office, I talked to the pathologist after he had opened up the brain pans of both Indians with an electric saw and had picked out the 7.62 slugs that had been fired at close range into the back of their skull. I had them contact the St. Martin Parish sheriff's office about Dixie Lee's deposition in which he claimed to have overheard Vidrine and Mapes talking about the murder of the Indians I told them where to find Mapes in the Bitterroot Valley, where his girlfriend worked in Missoula, the kind of cars he drove; I talked incessantly, until people started to walk away from me and Nygurski winked at me and said he would buy me a hamburger so I could be on my way back to Missoula.

  So I drank coffee on the back steps and waited for someone to call. Dixie Lee went to work and came back in the early afternoon, and still no one had phoned.

  "Ease up, boy. Let them people handle it," he said.

  We were in the kitchen, and I was shining my shoes over some newspapers that I had spread on the floor.

  "That's what I'm doing," I said.

  "You put me in mind of a man who spent his last cent on Ex-Lax and forgot the pay toilet cost a dime."

  "Give me a break on the scatology."

  "The what?"

  "It's not a time for humor, Dixie."

  "Go to a meet. Get your mind off it. They got his butt dead-bang. You're out of it, boy."

  "You have them dead-bang when you weld the door on them."

  Finally I called Nygurski's office. He wasn't in, he had left no message for me, and when I called the Teton sheriff's office a deputy there refused to talk with me. I had become a spectator.

  I sat down at the kitchen table and started buffing my loafers again.

  "While you were gone yesterday I put all Clete's stuff in the basement," Dixie Lee said.

  "Was that all right?"

  "Sure."

  "He'll probably get out in a couple more days. He's got one rib that's broke bad, though. The doc says he's got ulcers, too."

  "Maybe he'll go back to New Orleans and get started over again."

  "There was something funny in his jeep."

  "What's that?" But I really wasn't listening.

  "A pillowcase. With sand in it."

  "Huh."

  "Why would he put sand in a pillowcase?"

  "I don't know."

  "He must have had a reason. Clete never does anything without a reason."

  "Like I say, I don't know."

  "But it's funny to do something like that. What d'you think?"

  "I don't care, for God's sakes. Dixie, cut me some slack, will you?"

  "Sorry." ' "It's all right."

  "I just thought I'd get your mind off of things."

  "Okay."

  "I want to see you loosen up, smile a little bit, start thinking about Louisiana, let them people handle it."

  "I'll do all those things. I promise," I said, and I went into the bathroom, washed my face, then waited out on the front porch until it was time for Alafair to get out of school.

  But he was right. I was wired, and I was thinking and acting foolishly. In finding the bodies of the Indians I had been far more successful than I had ever thought I would be. Even if the FBI or the locals didn't find the Tokarev, Mapes would still remain the prime suspect in the murder because of motive and Dixie Lee's testimony, and he could be discredited as a prosecution witness against me in Louisiana. No matter how it came out, it was time to pack our bags for New Iberia.

  And that's what I started doing. Just as the phone rang.

  "Mr. Robicheaux?" a woman said.

  "Yes."

  "This is the secretary at the DEA in Great Falls. Special Agent Nygurski called a message in from his car and asked me to relay it to you."

  "Yes?"

  "He said, "They found the weapon. Mapes is in custody. Call in a couple of days if you want ballistic results. But he's not going to fly on this one. Enjoy your trip back to Louisiana." Did you get that, sir?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you want to leave a message?"

  "Tell him Playgirl magazine wants him on a centerfold."

  She laughed out loud.

  "I beg your pard
on?" she said.

  "Tell him I said thank you."

  Five minutes later Alafair came through the front door with her lunch box.

  "How'd you like to head home day after tomorrow?" I said. Her grin was enormous.

  We cooked out in the backyard that evening and had Tess Regan over, then Alafair and I climbed the switchback trail to the concrete M on the mountain behind the university. The whole valley was covered with a soft red glow. The wind was cold at that altitude, even though we were sweating inside our clothes, and rain and dust were blowing up through the Bitterroot Valley. Then the wind began to blow harder through the Hellgate, flattening the lupine and whipping grains of dirt against our skin. Overhead a U.S. Forest Service flre-retardant bomber came in low over the mountains and turned toward the smoke jumpers' school west of town, its four propellers spinning with silver light in the sun's afterglow.

  The thought that had kept bothering me all afternoon, that I had tried to push into a closed compartment in the back of my mind, came back like a grinning jester who was determined to extend the ball game into extra innings.

  When we got home I unlocked Clete's jeep and picked up the soiled pillowcase that was on the floorboard. I turned it inside out and felt the residue of dry sand along the seams. Then I called Sally Dio's number at the lake. It was disconnected. I had reserved the next day for packing, shutting off the utilities, greasing the truck, making sandwiches for our trip home, and having a talk with Tess Regan about geographic alternatives. But Sally Dee was to have one more turn in my life.

  "What time are you going in to work?" I said to Dixie Lee at breakfast the next morning.

  "I ain't. The boss man said he don't need me today. That's something I want to talk with you about, Dave. With you cutting out, I don't know what kind of future I got here. Part-time fork lifting ain't what you'd call a big career move."

  "Will you watch Alafair while I go up to the lake?"

  "Why you going up there?"

  '"I need to talk with Dio. If he's not there, I'll leave him a note. Then I'll be back."

  "You're going to do what?" He set his coffee cup down on the table and stared at me.

  I drove to Poison, then headed up the east side of the lake through the cherry orchards. I could have called Dan Nygurski or the sheriff's office, but that would have forced me to turn in Cletus, and I thought that a man with ulcers, a broken rib, a crushed hand, and stitches in his head had paid enough dues.

  It was cold and bright on the lake. The wind was puckering the electric-blue surface, and the waves were hitting hard against the rocks along the shore. I parked in front of the Dies' redwood house on the cliff, took off my windbreaker and left it in the truck so they could see I wasn't carrying a weapon, and used the brass knocker on the door. There was no answer. I walked around the side of the house, past the glassed-in porch that was filled with tropical plants, and saw the elder Dio in his wheelchair on the veranda, his body and head wrapped in a hooded, striped robe. In his hand was a splayed cigar, and inside the hood I could see the goiter in his throat, his purple lips, the liquid and venomous expression in his eyes. He said something to me, but it was lost in the wind, because I was looking down the tiers of redwood steps that led to the rocks below and the short dock where Sally Dee and his two hoods had just carried armloads of suitcases and cardboard boxes. Even Sal's set of drums was stacked on the dock.

  The three of them watched me silently as I walked down the steps toward them. Then Sal knelt by a big cardboard box and began reinforcing a corner of it with adhesive tape as though I were not there. He wore a yellow jumpsuit, with the collar flipped up on his neck, and the wind had blown his long copper-colored hair in his face.

  "What d'you want us to do, Sal?" one of his men said.

  Sally Dee stood erect, picked up a glass of iced coffee from the dock railing, drank out of it, and looked at me with an almost amused expression.

  "Nothing," he said.

  "He's just one of those guys who get on the bottom of your shoe like chewing gum."

  "I'll just take a minute of your time, Sal," I said.

  "I think somebody fucked your airplane."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  "My airplane?"

  "That's right."

  "How'd they fuck my airplane?"

  "I think maybe somebody put sand in your gas tank."

  "Who's this somebody you're telling me about?"

  "That's all yoji get. You can make use of it or forget I was here."

  "Yeah? No shit? Fuck with my airplane."

  "If I were you, I'd check it out."

  "You see my airplane around here?"

  "Well, I told you what I had to say, Sal. I'll be going now."

  "Why you doing me these favors?" he said, and grinned at the two men, who were leaning against the dock rail.

  "Because I don't want a guy like you on my conscience."

  He winked at the two men, both of whom wore shades.

  "Keep looking at that spot between those two islands," he said to me, and pointed.

  "That's it, right over there. Keep watching. You hear that sound? It's an airplane. You know whose plane that is? You see it now, coming past those pine trees? It sounds like there's sand in the gas tank? It looks like it's going to crash?"

  The milk-white amphibian came in low between the islands and touched down into the dark-blue surface of the water, the backwash of the propellers blowing clouds of spray in the air.

  "Number one, I got locks on those gas tanks," Sal said.

  "Number two, I got a pilot who's also a mechanic, and he checks out everything before we go anywhere." Then he looked at the other two men again and laughed.

  "Hey, man, let me ask you an honest question. I look like I just got off the boat with a bone in my nose and a spear in my hand? Come on, I ain't mad. Nothing's going to happen to you. Give me an honest answer."

  I turned to go.

  "Hey, hey, man, don't run off yet. You're too fucking much." His mouth wAs grinning widely.

  "Tell me for real. You think we're all that dumb? That we weren't going to catch on to all these games? I mean, I look that dumb to you?"

  "What are you trying to say?"

  "It was a good scam. But you ought to quit when you're ahead. Foo-Foo promised the florist a hundred bucks if he should see the guy who sent the flowers and the note. So he came out yesterday and told us he seen the guy. So we found the guy, and the guy told us all about it. Charlie Dodds hasn't been anywhere around here."

  "It looks like you're on top of every thing. I'm sorry I wasted your time."

  He tried to hold his grin, but I saw it fading, and I also saw the hard brown glint in his eyes, like a click of light you see in broken beer glass.

  "I'll tell you what's going to happen a little ways down the road," he said.

  "I'm going to be playing cards with some guys in Nevada. Not Carl or Foo-Foo here. Guys you never heard of or saw before. I'll just mention your name and the name of that shithole you come from. I'll mention Purcel's name, too. And I might throw Dixie's in as a. Lucky Strike extra. That's all. I won't say nothing else. Then one day a guy'll come to your door. Or he'll be standing by your truck when you come out of a barbershop. Or maybe he'll want to rent a boat from you. It's going to be a big day in your life. When it happens, I want you to remember me."

  His two men grinned from behind their shades. The sunlight was brilliant and cold on the lake, the wind as unrelenting as a headache.

  CHAPTER 12

  The story was on the front page of the Missoulian the next morning. The amphibian went down on the Salish Indian Reservation, just south of the lake. Two Indians who saw it crash said they heard the engines coughing and misfiring as the plane went by overhead, then the engines seemed to stall altogether and the plane veered sideways between two hills, plowing a trench through a stand of pines, and exploded. A rancher found a smashed wheelchair hanging in a tree two hundred yards away.