James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'Come on in, Dave. I'm glad you're here. We weren't sure when you'd be back. We're going to work this thing out. Hey, I was listening to your records. I love them,' he said.

Behind him, seated on a chair turned backwards in the hallway, was a small man with defective eyes and a head shaped like a tomato. There was even a furrow in his scalp, with a twist of hair in it, like the indentation and stem of a tomato freshly torn from the vine. In his hands was a military-issue crossbow, the kind sometimes used in special operations, with a steel-flanged arrow mounted on the bowstring. The small man's elbows were propped on the back of the chair, and his eyes, which were crossed, one locking intermittently by the bridge of his nose, were sighted in their peculiar way along the arrow's shaft at the side of Bootsie's face.

They had drawn the blinds on the windows now, and the small man with crossed eyes was drinking from a bottle of milk at the breakfast table and spitting pistachio shells into a paper bag. After he had locked my wrists behind me with the handcuffs he'd found on my dresser he bound Bootsie's forearms to her chair with electrician's tape, then crisscrossed it through her breasts and wrapped it around the back of the chair. The man named Buchalter watched with a small.25 caliber Beretta in the palm of his hand, a torn smile like that of Will Rogers at the corner of his mouth.

'You remember me?' he said.

'No.'

'You saw me in the helicopter. Out on the gulf,' he said.

'This is of no value to you, or your cause, or whatever it is you're after,' I said. 'You've got the wrong people.'

He pulled up a chair and sat between me and Bootsie. He pushed his hat back on his head. A strand of fine blond hair fell in his eyes.

'Are you mad at me? Because of what I did to Mrs. Robicheaux?' he said.

I stared at his face, his unblinking, inquisitive eyes, and didn't answer. I could feel the handcuffs biting into my wrists, cutting off the blood, swelling the veins.

'We don't know why you've come here. You have nothing to gain by being here. Don't you understand that?' Bootsie said.

'I wouldn't say that. There're always possibilities in every situation. That's what I like to believe, anyway,' he said, and reached out, touched my cheek with his hand, and let his glance rove lazily over my face.

I saw tears well in Bootsie's eyes.

'Try to hear this, Buchalter,' I said. 'I'm a police officer. I work with people who'll square this one way or another. No matter what happens here tonight, they'll find you and blow up your shit, I guarantee it.'

He made shushing noises with his lips, and again his hand reached up and touched my face and brushed gingerly around the corners of my mouth. I could feel the grain of his skin against mine and smell an odor on it like hair oil and the inside of a leather glove.

'You take your hands off him, you degenerate, you vile animal-' Bootsie said. Her eyes were hot and receded, her face as gray as cardboard.

Buchalter nodded to the small man with crossed eyes. He spat a pistachio shell into the paper sack, then walked behind Bootsie's chair and wound the electrician's tape across her mouth, wrapping it around and around the thick swirls of her hair at the back of her head, tightening it across her mouth each time he made a revolution. She leaned forward and gagged on her tongue.

I could feel my heart thundering against my rib cage, hear the blood roaring in my ears like wind in a seashell.

'I don't know where the sub is,' I said. 'I'd tell you if I did. I don't even known why you guys want it. Why would I keep the information from you?'

'Because you work for Jews, my friend,' he said. 'Because I think you lie.'

'It's got air trapped in the hull. It floats right above the gulf's floor. It probably drifts in a pattern with the Gulf Stream,' I said. 'Hire some salvage people who understand those things. New Orleans and Miami are full of them.'

'But evidently you've found it twice. That means you know something other people don't.'

'There may be more than one sub down there,' I said. 'The Navy nailed three or four of them during nineteen forty-two. Maybe I saw two different subs.'

He took a nautical chart from his pocket, unfolded it, and spread it flat on the table in front of me. It showed the Louisiana coast, all its bays and soundings, and the northern gradations of the gulf. He stood behind my chair and fitted his huge hands over my shoulders, inserted his thumbs in the back of my neck.

'Our business can end here tonight in a couple of ways,' he said. 'I believe you understand me.'

'After you know where the sub is, you'll just go away?'

'Why not?' he said. His fingers tightened on my shoulder tendons.

'Because you're in over your head.'

He lowered his mouth to my ear. 'It isn't a time to be clever, Dave,' he said. 'You want me to make you trace the drift pattern with your nose?'

I tried to lean forward, away from the steady beat of his breath on my skin. Then he cupped one hand under my chin, the other on the back of my neck, like a man about to do a trick shot with a basketball.

'Would you like me to snap it?' he said. 'I can turn your body into a slug's from the neck down. I'm not exaggerating, Dave. I've done it twice before. Ask Chuck there.'

Think, think, think.

I tried to avoid swallowing, tried to keep my voice empty of fear. I closed and opened my eyes, and blinked the sweat out of them. Bootsie's hair had fallen in her face; the black tape that cut across her mouth was slick with saliva, and her eyes were red and liquid with terror at what she was about to witness.

'There're two things that aren't going to happen here tonight, Buchalter,' I said. 'I'm not going to give you information I don't have, and nobody here is going to kiss your butt. You're a piece of shit. Nothing you can do here will ever change that fact.'

He was quiet a moment. I felt his fingers move, but they were uncertain now, the pressure against my chin and neck temporarily in abeyance.

'You want to say that again?' he asked.

'Guys like you are cruel because you got fucked up in toilet training. That's how it works. Go to a psychologist and check it out. It's better than living with skid marks in your underwear.'

The man with crossed eyes started to laugh, then looked at Buchalter's face.

Buchalter was breathing heavily now. His hands were moist with perspiration, poised on my chin and neck. But the indecision, the physical pause, was still there, the means of resolving the insult not quite yet in place.

Then the man with crossed eyes turned in his chair and stared at the side window, whose blinds were drawn. He raised one hand in the air.

'Will, there's somebody outside,' he said.

Buchalter's hands slid away from me. He took the Beretta from his pocket while the man called Chuck peeked out the side of the blinds.

'It's a delivery guy,' he said.

'What do you mean "a delivery guy"?' Buchalter said.

'A fucking delivery guy. With a clipboard and a flashlight. He's coming to the back door.'

'Let him give you what he's got, then get rid of him.'

'Me?'

'Yes, you.'

The man called Chuck went out on the back porch, beyond my angle of vision. Buchalter rested one hand on my shoulder and placed the barrel of the Beretta behind my ear.

'UPS. I got a box for Dave Robicheaux. I guess your doorbell's broke,' a voice said out in the darkness.

I saw Bootsie's eyes fasten on mine.

'Put it on the gallery,' Chuck said.

'It's COD.'

'How much?'

'Eight fifty.'

'Wait a minute.'

The man named Chuck came back into the kitchen, his face filled with consternation.

'I ain't got any money, Will,' he said.