James Burke - In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

He cocked his finger, pointed it at me, and made a hollow popping sound with his mouth.

That night I dreamed that I was trying to save a woman from drowning way out on the Gulf of Mexico. We were sliding down a deep trough, the froth whipping across her blond curls and bloodless face, her eyes sealed against the cobalt sky. Our heads protruded from the water as though they had been severed and placed on a plate. Then her body turned to stone, heavier than a marble statue, and there was no way I could keep her afloat. She sank from my arms, plummeting downward into a vortex of spinning green light, down into a canyon hundreds of feet below, a gush of air bubbles rising from a pale wound in her throat.

ROSIE CAME THROUGH THE DOOR, CLUNKED HER PURSE LOUDLY on her desk, and began rummaging through the file cabinet. She had to stand on her toes to see down into the top drawer.

"You want to have lunch today?" she asked.

"What?"

"Lunch… do you want to have lunch? Come in, Earth."

"Thanks, I'll probably go home." Then as an afterthought I said, "You're welcome to join us."

"That's all right. Another time." She sat down behind her desk and began shifting papers around in a couple of file folders. But her eyes kept glancing up into my face.

"Have you got something on your mind?" I asked.

"Yeah, you."

"You must be having an uneventful day."

"I worked late last night. The dispatcher and I had a cup of coffee together. He asked me how I was getting along here, and I told him real good, no complaints. Then he asked me if I'd experienced any more smart-aleck behavior from some of the resident clowns in the department. I told him they'd been perfect gentlemen. I bet you can't guess what he said next."

"You got me."

She imitated a Cajun accent. " 'Them guys give you any mo' trouble, you just tell Dave, Miz Rosie. He done tole 'em what's gonna happen the next time they bother you.' "

"He was probably exaggerating a little bit."

"You didn't need to do that for me, Dave."

"I apologize."

"Don't be a wise-ass, either."

"Boy, you're a pistol."

"How should I take that?"

"I don't know. How about easing up?"

"Don't count on it."

She rested one small hand on top of the other. She had the same solid posture behind her desk that I remembered in the nuns at the elementary school I attended.

"You look tired," she said.

"I have bouts of insomnia."

"You want to talk about what happened out on the bayou?"

"No."

"Do you feel guilty about it?"

"What do you think I feel? I feel angry about it."

"Why?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Do you feel angry because you couldn't control what happened? Do you think somehow you're to blame for her death?"

"What if I said 'yes to all the above'? What difference would it make? She's dead."

"I think beating up on yourself has about as much merit as masturbation."

"You're a friend, Rosie, but let it go."

I busied myself with my paperwork and did not look back up for almost a minute. When I did, her eyes were still fixed on me.

"I just got some interesting information from the Bureau about Julie Balboni," she said. She waited, then said, "Are you listening?"

"Yes."

"This year N.O.P.D. Vice has closed up a half-dozen of his dirty movie theaters and two of his escort services. His fishing fleet just went into bankruptcy, too." When I didn't respond, she continued. "That's where he laundered a lot of his drug money. He'd declare all kinds of legitimate profits to the IRS that never existed."

"That's how all the wiseguys do it, Rosie. In every city in the United States."

"Except the auditors at the IRS say he just made a big mistake. He came up with millions of dollars for this Civil War movie and he's going to have a hard time explaining where he got it."

"Don't count on it."

"The IRS nails their butts to the wall when nobody else can."

I sharpened a pencil over the wastebasket with my pocket knife.

"I have the feeling I'm boring you," she said.

"No, you're just reviving some of my earlier misgivings."

"What?"

"I think your agency wants Julie's ass in a sling. I think these murders have secondary status."

"That's what you think, is it?"

"That's the way it looks from here."

She rose from her chair, closed the office door, then stood by my desk. She wore a white silk blouse with a necklace of black wooden beads. Her fingers were hooked in front of her stomach like an opera singer's.

"Julie's been a longtime embarrassment to the feds," I continued. "He's connected to half the crime in New Orleans and so far he's never spent one day in the bag."

"When I was sixteen something happened to me that I thought I'd never get over." There was a flush of color in her throat. "Not just because of what two drunken crew leaders did to me in the back of a migrant farmworkers' bus, either. It was the way the cops treated it. In some ways that was even worse. Have I got your attention, sir?"

"You don't need to do this, Rosie."

"Like hell I don't. The next day I was sitting with my father in the waiting room outside the sheriff's office. I heard two deputies laughing about it. They not only thought it was funny, one of them said something about pepper-belly poontang. I'll never forget that moment. Not as long as I live."

I folded up my pocket knife and stared at the tops of my fingers. I brushed the pencil shavings off my fingers into the wastebasket.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"When I went to work for the Bureau, I swore I'd never see a woman treated the way I was. So I take severe exception to your remarks, Dave. I'd like to bust Julie Balboni, but that has nothing to do with the way I feel about the man who raped and murdered these women."

"Where'd this happen?"

"In a migrant camp outside of Bakersfield. It's not an unusual story. Ask any woman who's ever been on a crew bus."

"I think you're a solid cop, Rosie. I think you'll nail any perp you put in your sights."

"Then change your goddamn attitude."

"All right."

She was waiting for me to say something else, but I didn't.

Her shoulders sagged and she started back toward her desk. Then she turned around. Her eyes were wet.

"That's all you've got to say?" she asked.

"No, it's not."

"What, then?"

"I'm proud to be working with you. I think you're a standup lady."

She started to take a Kleenex out of her purse, then she snapped the purse shut again and took a breath.

"I'm going down the hall a minute," she said.

"All right."

"Are we both clear about the priority in this investigation, Dave?"

"Yeah, I think we are."

"Good. Because I don't want to have this kind of discussion again."

"Let me mention just one thing before you go. Several years ago my second wife was murdered by some drug dealers. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"One way or another, the guys and the woman who killed her went down for it. But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and the old anger comes back. Even though these people took a heavy fall, for a couple of them the whole trip, sometimes it still doesn't seem enough. You know the feeling I'm talking about, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Fair enough." Then I said, "You're sure you don't want to come home and have lunch with us today?"

"This isn't the day for it, Dave. Thanks, anyway," she said, and went out the door with her purse clutched under her arm, her face set as impassively as a soldier's.

Elrod Sykes called the office just after I had returned from lunch. His voice was deep, his accent more pronounced.

"You know where there're some ruins of an old plantation house south of your boat dock?" he asked.

"What about it?"