James Burke: Robicheaux

Smiley was standing alone, as though no one was in the building except him and Jimmy Nightingale. I saw him reach into his right-hand pocket. I began fighting my way toward him. It was like swimming with a bag of rocks strapped on my back.

Clete saw Smiley moving toward Jimmy Nightingale and Bobby Earl, a hand in his pocket, a sweet look on his face. Clete reached inside his coat for his snub-nose. But he didn’t pull it from its holster.

“Is that him, Mr. Purcel?” Jody said. “Is that him? What are you waiting on, sir?”

Let it happen, a voice said. You’re not God.

“You’ve got to, Mr. Purcel,” Jody said.

“Got to do what?” Clete replied, as though drugged.

“Stop whatever is happening.”

“Get out of here, kid,” Clete said.

“This is my job. I was trying to help you.”

“That man up there is shit. Don’t let him ruin your life. Now beat it before I knock you down.”

Jody tried to get around him. Clete hit him in the chest with an elbow, then saw Smiley ease a small revolver from his pocket and lower it by his thigh and begin walking rapidly toward Nightingale.

Clete burst from the crowd and crashed through Jimmy Nightingale’s security people, his gun falling from its holster. He tackled Jimmy and slammed him to the carpet just as Smiley fired one shot, then a second one. Clete could hear the breath wheeze out of Jimmy’s chest and feel the spray of spittle on his cheek. When Jimmy tried to get up, Clete mashed his head into the carpet with a forearm. The casino turned into bedlam.

Everyone around Sherry and me either ran for the exits or cowered on the floor. Sherry squatted behind me, pulling a revolver from an ankle holster, trying to see beyond the beverage table where Clete and Jimmy Nightingale were. She pushed past me, touching my shoulder to steady herself, her face tight and pale, like that of someone looking into an arctic wind. I stood up next to her, my nine-millimeter in my hand. “You see him?” I asked.

“Who?” she said.

“Smiley.”

“No.”

“Circle to the left, I’ll go right,” I said.

“Roger that.” Then she said, “Oh, fuck.”

“What do you see?” I said.

“That kid. He’s got a gun. He looks like he’s about to piss his pants.”

Amid the sea of people on the floor, we saw a young security guard walking toward the drink and food tables. He was pointing a white-handled snub-nose revolver, a .38, with both arms extended in front of him. The snub-nose looked exactly like Clete’s.

Smiley was somewhere beyond a bronze palm tree and a fountain dancing with red and green and purple lights. Sherry and I closed on him from both sides. He began firing, then shucked his shells and used a speed loader and started firing again. Both of us huddled behind marble pillars and tried to get a clear shot, one that wouldn’t hit a civilian. I could hear Smiley’s rounds going long, breaking glass and ricocheting off metal and stone. I thought I heard a woman cry out. The kid who had the snub-nose was advancing on Smiley, snapping off three rounds, heedless of the people in the background.

Clete raised himself on his elbows. He looked up at the young security guard. “Get down before you kill somebody.”

“I’m gonna get him, Mr. Purcel.”

“There’s a dining room and a kitchen back there!”

Jimmy Nightingale crawled out from under Clete. He pressed his wrist against his nose and looked at it. “How much do you weigh?”

“Shut up,” Clete said.

One of the food and beverage tables had been knocked over, and the carpet was soaked in booze and étouffée and shrimp and crawfish casserole.

“You saved my life,” Jimmy said. “Maybe Bobby’s, too.”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Nightingale. I want to tear you up. You and Earl both. I want to keep you alive and hurt you every day of your worthless life. I don’t care how this ends, but wherever you see me, you’d better cross the street.”

Jimmy sat up and found a napkin and touched at his bloody nose, then wiped off his shirt. “You’re a hell of a guy, Clete, whether you know it or not.”

Clete fitted his hand on Jimmy’s face like a starfish clamping a stone, mashing his nose, and shoved his head as hard as he could, almost snapping his neck.

I bolted from behind the marble pillar and dove headlong behind a row of gambling machines. Sherry was running toward Smiley at the same time. The security guard went past me, firing Clete’s revolver. People were flattened on the floor throughout the casino. Then I heard the revolver snap on an empty chamber. Sherry stood up, gripping her nine-millimeter with two hands, and fired until the bolt locked open.

The lights went out in the concourse that led to the front of the building. Smiley had disappeared. “Dave!” I heard Clete say.

I turned around. There was blood on his shirt. “Are you hit?” I asked.

“Nightingale had a nosebleed and got it on my shirt. I saved that pus-head’s life. I’ll never get over it. Where’s Smiley?”

“He headed for the exit.”

“Where’s that security guard? Where’s my piece? I’m going to kill that kid.”

A semblance of order began to take place in the casino. My hands were trembling. The young security guard walked toward us. He handed Clete the snub-nose. “He got away. Some people in the concourse were wounded. Maybe flying glass or something.”

I turned in a circle. “You see Sherry?”

“A minute ago,” Clete said. “Out of the corner of my eye. She was putting another magazine in her nine-mike.”

Medical personnel were coming through the portals of the building. The bandstand was a wreck. The fat man who’d wanted Sherry arrested was still yelling. The man whose wife had suffered a heart attack was weeping. I saw Sherry sitting in one of the leather-padded gambling machines, her back to me. She seemed to be staring at the five golden bells inside the machine’s window. Her piece rested on her thigh.

I walked through the trash scattered on the floor and touched her on the back. “You good, Detective?”

“Lost my breath,” she said. “Take my piece. I’m getting over the hill for this shit. Did you get him?”

“Smiley? It doesn’t look like it.”

“Too bad,” she said. “Some fun, huh, boss?”

I stepped closer to her and rested my hand on her shoulder. Her head dipped forward. Then I saw the blood welling through her shirt, pooling in her slacks. The light was still in her eyes, like tiny chips of a diamond frozen in time. But there was no movement on her body except for the second hand on her watch.

It’s fall now, and the election is over, and Jimmy Nightingale is a member of the United States Senate, probably headed for an even grander career. The assassin nicknamed Smiley disappeared inside Mexico or the Caribbean Islands, depending on which law enforcement agency you talk to. For many legal reasons, neither Levon nor Rowena Broussard ever stood trial for the death of Kevin Penny. But the real reason was that nobody cared. In fact, Levon and Rowena adopted Homer. I knew the truth about Rowena’s culpability, but I joined ranks with those who looked the other way. Perhaps I’ve become a cynic. Or better said, I’ve learned to let the season have its way, to not fight against the pull of the earth and the tidal movements of the oceans and the admonitions that the race is not to the swift and that the earth abides forever.

Clete had saved the life of a man he hated and may have contributed to the ascendancy of a man who would write his name on the clouds in the worst possible way. In the meantime, a brave woman lost her life from a bullet that ballistics proved to have ricocheted from Clete’s snub-nose. Although exonerated, the boy who fired the round will probably live with guilt the rest of his life. Whenever Clete and I are in New Orleans, we ask him to dinner. He never accepts the invitation.