James Burke: Robicheaux

“Smiley just killed someone else? In New Orleans?”

“He gets around. Call Rowena and Levon and tell them what I said.”

“You’re trying to queer the DA’s case, aren’t you.”

“All this would come up in discovery anyway. The former gunbull was going to kill Clete. Smiley saved his life.”

“I bet he loves his mother, too,” she said.

“I doubt it. Talk to you later, Alf.”

I closed the cell phone.

Sherry Picard and I moved deeper into the crowd at the casino. The carpets were the color of a freshly sliced pomegranate, the gaming tables covered with lavender felt. Giant bronze replicas of palm trees looked down on the tables. Each gambling machine was outfitted with a padded leather-backed chair that gave the patron a sense of comfort and security. The ceilings were high and spacious and created the impression of a separate universe but one that allowed no view of the outside world.

Jimmy Nightingale was at the beverage tables, surrounded by hundreds of well-wishers, his security people around him but having a hard time of it.

“There’s Clete,” Sherry said.

“Where?”

“By the door.”

I stood on my toes and tried to see over the heads of the crowd. “I don’t see him.”

“I’m almost sure it was him. He’s gone now.”

I pushed my way through the crowd. Many of them were drunk or on the edge of drunk. Over the heads I could see Bobby Earl with Nightingale. Somebody clamped me on the shoulder. “Robicheaux! You back on the hooch? Son of a bitch, I thought you were on the side of the tree huggers. You’re one of us, you old bastard.”

He was a big, sweaty, red-faced man whose skin oozed grease and whose rumpled suit smelled like a locker room. He threw a meaty arm over me, a well of stink rising from his armpit. I had no idea who he was. “Goddamn it, son, it’s good to see you. This November we’re gonna kick some ass. Who’s this lady with you?”

Sherry opened her badge in his face. “On the job. Beat feet, fatso.”

“What was that?” he said, releasing me. “What’d you call me?”

She pushed him in the chest. “You heard me.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” he said. “You can’t push people around like that.”

I was still forty feet from Nightingale. I felt like I was sinking in wet concrete.

“Somebody call security!” the fat man said. “There’s a crazy woman here.”

I thought I saw Clete on the edge of the crowd. I changed direction and headed toward him. I popped out on the back edge of the crowd and saw the men’s room door open and smoke billow out. Clete was nowhere in sight. A short man in a panama hat and oversize white slacks and two-tone shoes and a dark blue shirt with bananas printed on it, worn outside the belt, was walking from the restroom through the banks of gambling machines and the throng that had come through a side entrance and was headed for the free booze and food.

“Smiley!” I shouted.

He did not turn around or change his stride. I went after him. A band up on a platform broke into “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

When Clete saw the smoke, he went straight to the restroom and watched the men flowing out the door. A young man in a security guard uniform, carrying a fire extinguisher, almost knocked him down.

“Sorry, sir,” the guard said.

“You see a short guy with skin like an albino?” Clete said.

“No,” the security guard said. “He have something to do with the fire?”

Clete looked through the doorway. Three wastebaskets packed with wet paper towels were burning. “His name is Smiley. He kills people.”

“Sir, is that a weapon under your coat?”

“I’m a PI. I have a license to carry.”

“Not in the casino, sir. Not under Louisiana law. That’s a fact, sir.”

“Take it easy,” Clete said. “We’re on the same side.”

The security guard began spraying the fire with the extinguisher, glancing at Clete. “I got my hands full. You’re not supposed to have a firearm in here, sir. I’ll have to take it from you.”

How do you fault a brave kid for doing his job? “Listen, there’s a guy running loose in here who probably killed Jimmy Nightingale’s sister. Don’t give me a hard time. You diggez-vous, noble mon?”

“I don’t speak French, sir.”

“Look, you’re stand-up and trying to do your job. But don’t let your job get ahead of your brain.”

The smoke had gathered on the ceiling, and eye-watering amounts of it were still rising from the cans.

“I have to ask for your gun, sir,” the security guard said. He was not armed. He put his two-way to his ear.

“I’m sorry to do this,” Clete said. He tore the radio from the security guard’s hand; he wanted to smash it or throw it into the commode. He looked at the humiliation in the security guard’s face. “What’s your name?”

“Jody Weinberger.”

“My name is Clete Purcel. You got moxie, Jody.” Clete tossed him the two-way. “How about you forget my piece and cover my back? Do me a solid, kid. You won’t regret it.”

“I could do that.”

“The bad guy I told you about is the real deal. His name is Smiley.”

“What do we do when we find him?”

“We take him down,” Clete said. But his words tasted bitter and insincere before they left his mouth.

Clete pushed his way through the crowd. Once again he had thoughts of a kind he’d never had, a sense of foreboding that normally only deranged or messianic people were haunted by, as though only they saw the dark portent of the events taking place around them. In Clete’s mind, Jimmy Nightingale had become the hooded figure that lives in our sleep, a memory passed on from the caves of ancient Albion and the pantheons of Philistines, the embodiment of guile and deception, a serpent cracking through its shell in a garden between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Then Clete saw him, surrounded by his acolytes, Bobby Earl by his side. The band was playing “Under the Double Eagle.” Amid the meretricious decor of the casino, Nightingale’s face was suffused with the soft buttery glow of a gold coin. Bobby Earl’s hand rested on his shoulder. Clete had never hated a man as much as Nightingale. He longed for the excuse to free his snub-nose from its holster and, in a blaze of bullets, free the world forever of the creature he was sure the Bible warned us about.

He looked over his shoulder. Jody Weinberger was right behind him, his youthful, trusting face expectant, his eyes fixed on Clete’s.

“Shouldn’t we warn Mr. Nightingale?” Jody said.

On the far side of a craps table, Clete saw a man in a panama hat and a loud shirt, his arms like rolls of sourdough, his head tilted down, his expression concealed.

“Can you answer me, Mr. Purcel?” the security guard said. “Maybe we should call it in. Sir, we’ve got to do something. Or I’ve got to call for help.”

I felt as though I were in a mob of revelers at a public execution. The fat man who had clamped my shoulder was still with us, leading two security guards, pushing people out of his way. “There she is!” he shouted. “Impersonating a police officer! Lock that bitch up!”

A woman fell, and a man tripped over her. The brass horns in the band were ear-splitting. Someone with horrendous breath was yelling incoherently in my face. I had no idea who he was.

“What do you want?” I yelled.

“My wife is having a heart attack!” he said. He looked around desperately. “Help me get her out of here!”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” I said.

Sherry grabbed my arm. “Look! On the other side of the craps table! The guy in the panama hat! Is that him?”