James Burke - In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

"Why's that?"

"The detective assigned to it thinks you're a pain in the ass and you should have stayed in your own territory."

"When's the last time anyone saw Amber Martinez?"

"Three or four days ago. She was a bender drinker and user. She was supposed to be getting out of the life, but I think she'd work up a real bad Jones and find a candy man to pick up her tab until she ended up in a tank or a detox center somewhere."

"Who was her pimp?"

"Her husband. But he's been in jail the last three weeks on a check-writing charge. Whoever killed her probably got her out of a bar someplace."

"Yeah, but he knew her before. He used another woman to keep leaving Amber's name on messages at my office."

"If I can get the Buick vacuumed, what are we looking for?"

"I know I saw gun flashes inside the car. But there weren't any holes in the front of the bar. See what you come up with."

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't you forget the forensic bullshit and concentrate on what your nose tells you?"

"What's that?"

"This isn't the work of some lone fuckhead running around. It has the smell of the greaseballs all over it. One smart greaseball in particular."

"You think this is Julie's style?"

"I worked two years on a task force that tried to get an indictment on the Bone. When he gets rid of a personal enemy, he puts a meat hook up the guy's rectum. If he wants a cop or a judge or a labor official out of the way, he does it long distance, with a whole collection of lowlifes between him and the target."

"That sounds like our man, all right."

"Can I give you some advice?"

"Go ahead."

"If Balboni is behind this, don't waste your time trying to make a case against him. It doesn't work. The guy's been oiling jurors and judges and scaring the shit out of witnesses for twenty years. You wait for the right moment, the right situation, and you smoke him."

"I'll see you, Lou. Thanks for your help."

"All right, excuse me. Who wants to talk about popping a cap on a guy like Balboni? Amber Martinez probably did herself. Take it easy, Dave."

At six the next morning I took a cup of coffee and the newspaper out on the gallery and sat down on the steps. The air was cool and blue with shadow under the trees and the air smelled of blooming four o'clocks and the pecan husks that had moldered into the damp earth.

While I read the paper I could hear boats leaving my dock and fishermen's voices out on the water. Then I heard someone walking up the incline through the leaves, and I lowered the newspaper and saw Mikey Goldman striding toward me like a man in pursuit of an argument.

He wore shined black loafers with tassels on them, a pink polo shirt that hung out of his gray slacks, and a thick gold watch that gleamed like soft butter on his wrist. His mouth was a tight seam, down-turned at the corners, his jaw hooked forward, his strange, pale, bulging eyes flicking back and forth across the front of my house.

"I want a word with you," he said.

"How are you today, Mr. Goldman," I said.

"It's 6 a.m., I'm at your house instead of at work; I got four hours' sleep last night. Guess."

"Do I have something to do with your problem?"

"Yeah, you do. You keep showing up in the middle of my problem. Why is that, Mr. Robicheaux?"

"I don't have any idea."

"I do. It's because Elrod had got some kind of hard-on for you and it's about to fuck my picture in a major way."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't use that kind of language around my home."

"You got a problem with language? That's the kind of stuff that's on your mind? What's wrong with you people down here? The mosquitoes pass around clap of the brain or something?"

"What is it you want, sir?"

"He asks me what I want?" he said, looking around in the shadows as though there were other listeners there. "Elrod doesn't like to see you get taken over the hurdles. Frankly I don't either. Maybe for other reasons. Namely nobody carries my load, nobody takes heat for me, you understand what I'm saying?"

"No."

He cleared something from a nostril with his thumb and forefinger.

"What is it with you, you put your head in a bucket of wet cement every morning?" he asked.

"Can I be frank, too, Mr. Goldman?"

"Be my guest."

"A conversation with you is a head-numbing experience. I don't think any ordinary person is ready for it."

"Let me try to put it in simple words that you can understand," he said. "You may not know it, but I try to be a fair man. That means I don't like somebody else getting a board kicked up his ass on my account. I'm talking about you. Your own people are dumping on you because they think you're going to chase some big money out of town. I leave places or I stay in places because I want to. Somebody gets in my face, I deal with it, personal. You ask anybody in the industry. I don't rat-fuck people behind their back."

I set down my coffee cup, folded the newspaper on the step, and walked out into the trees toward his parked automobile. I waited for him to follow me.

"Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?" I said.

"No, of course not. I'm just out here to give you my personal profile. Listen to me, I'm going to finish this picture, then I'm never coming back to this state. In fact, I'm not even going to fly over it. But in the meantime no more of my people are going to the hospital."

"What?"

"Good, the flashbulb went off."

"What happened?" I said.

"Last night we'd wrapped it up and everybody had headed home. Except Elrod and this kid who does some stunt work got loaded and Elrod decides he's going to 'front Julie Balboni. He picks up a Coke bottle and starts banging on Julie's trailer with it. Julie opens the door in his jockey undershorts, and there's a twenty-year-old local broad trying to put on her clothes behind him. So Elrod calls him a coward and a dago bucket of shit and tells him he can fix him up in L.A. with Charlie Manson's chippies, like they got hair under their arms and none on their heads and they're more Julie's speed. Then El tells him that Julie had better not cause his buddy Robicheaux any more grief or El's going to punch his ticket for him, and if he finds out Julie murdered Kelly he's going to do it anyway, big time, with a shotgun right up Balboni's cheeks.

"I don't know what Balboni was doing with the broad, but he had some handcuffs. He walked outside, clamped one on El's wrist, the other on a light pole, and said, 'You're a lucky man, Elrod. You're a valuable piece of fruit. But your friend there, he don't have any luck at all.' Then he stomped the shit out of the stunt kid. 'Stomped' is the word, Mr. Robicheaux, I mean with his feet. He busted that kid's nose, stove in his ribs, and ripped his ear loose from his head."

"Why didn't you stop it?"

"I wasn't there. I got all this from the kid at the hospital. That's why I didn't get any sleep last night."

"Is the kid pressing charges?"

"Get real. He was on a flight back to Los Angeles this morning with enough dope in him to tranquilize a rhinoceros."

"What do you want with me?"

"I want you to take care of Elrod. I don't want him hurt."

"Tell me the truth. Do you have any concerns at all except making your pictures?"

"Yeah, human beings. If you don't accept that, I say fuck you."

His tense, protruding eyes reminded me of hard-boiled eggs. I looked away from him, felt my palm close and unclose against my trousers. The sunlight on the bayou was like a yellow flare burning under the water.

"I'm not in the baby-sitting business, Mr. Goldman," I said. "My advice is that you tell all this to the sheriff's department. Right now I'm still suspended. I'm going back and finish my coffee now. We'll see you around."

"It's Dogpatch. I'm in a cartoon. I talk, nobody hears me." He tapped himself on the cheek. "Maybe I'm dead and this is hell."