James Burke - Dixie City Jam

She stood up and walked cooly to a trash can, dropped her paper cup and unfinished pastry in it, and sat back down on the stone bench. Her flowered blouse puffed with air in the breeze.

'Don't try to stonewall me about this contract stuff,' she said. 'Who is it the greaseballs don't clip?'

'Politicians.'

'Who else?'

'Ordinary people who are on the square. Particularly influential ones.'

'Come on, Robicheaux.'

'Would you not call me by my last name, please? It reminds me of the army.'

'Who else?'

'They don't do made guys without the commission's consent.'

'That's it?'

'Cops,' I said.

She looked me evenly in the eyes, biting down softly on the corner of her lip.

That night I dreamed of a desolate coastline that looked like layered white clay. On it was a solitary tree whose curled, dead leaves were frozen against an electrical blue sky. The ocean should have been teeming with fish, but it, like the land, had been stricken, its chemical green depths empty of all life except the crew of a German submarine, who burst to the surface with emergency air tanks on their backs, their bone-hard, white faces bright with oil. They gathered under the tree on the beach, looking over their new estate, and I realised then that they had the jowls and mucus-clotted snouts of animals.

They waited for their leader, who would come, as they had, from the sea, his visage crackling with salt and light, and, like Proteus, forever changing his form to make himself one of us.

A psychologist would smile at the dream and call it a world destruction fantasy, the apocalyptic fear that a drunk such as myself carries around in his unconscious or that you see on the faces of religious fundamentalists at televised revivals.

But when I woke from the dream I sat in the dark and thought about the preacher's words, about things coming apart at the center, about blood-dimmed tides and mackerel-crowded seas that could wrinkle from continent to continent with the reverberating brass gong of the millennium, and I did not sleep again until the trees outside were black and stiff with the coming of the gray dawn.

Two days later, at five-thirty on Saturday morning, Bootsie heard a car turn into our driveway. She stood at the window in her nightgown and looked through the curtain.

'It's somebody in a pink Cadillac,' she said.

'Maybe he's just turning around,' I said from the bed. There was mist in the trees outside and a cool smell blowing through the window.

'No, they're just sitting there. Two people.'

'Batist probably hasn't opened the shop yet. I'll go down,' I said.

'Dave-'

'It's all right. Bad guys don't park in your drive at sunrise.'

I dressed in a pair of khakis, old loafers, and a denim shirt, and walked out on the gallery. The light was on in the bait shop. The Cadillac was parked in the shadows under the trees, but I could see two figures in the front seat. The air smelled like flowers and damp earth. I walked across the yard toward the car. To my right I could hear Tripod scratching against the screen on his hutch.

Tommy Bobalouba got out on the driver's side, dressed in striped, dark brown slacks, tasseled loafers, and a form-fitting canary-yellow polo shirt. Across the bridge of his nose was a thick, crusted scab where I had pistol-whipped him. He was smiling. He put his finger to his lips and motioned me away from the automobile.

'Charlotte's sleeping,' he whispered. 'She ain't used to being up this early.'

'What are you doing at my house, Tommy?'

'It's the weekend. Sometimes I like a drive in the country. Maybe I can rent a boat, you can take us out.'

He combed his white hair while he gazed approvingly at the surroundings.

'You didn't come here to square a beef, did you, partner?' I said.

'You got a cup of coffee?'

'We can walk down to the bait shop.'

'The bait shop? What is this, the white trash treatment I get?'

'My wife's not dressed yet.'

'I want a favor from you.'

'Tommy, I'm having a hard time with your presence here.'

'What? I'm a germ?'

'I'm the guy who hit you across the face with a forty-five. Now you're at my house.'

'I don't hold a grudge.'

'Good. Then you won't be offended when I recommend that you give me a call during business hours at the office.'

'You made some remarks at my house. About stuff that's maybe on my conscience. So maybe I'm gonna try to set it right. You don't want to help me, then run it up your hole.'

'I'd appreciate it if you'd watch what you say around my house.'

The door on the passenger's side opened, and the ash blond lady named Charlotte got out and stretched sleepily.

'Oh, Mr. Robicheaux, our favorite daytime nightmare,' she said.

'We're gonna have some coffee. Down at his shop,' Tommy said.

'Breakfast among the worms. How could a girl ask for more?' she said.

'His wife ain't up yet,' Tommy said. Then with his back to the woman, he moved his lips silently so I could read the words Give me some fucking help, man .

I took a quiet breath and put my hands in my back pockets.

'I apologize for not inviting y'all in,' I said. 'But Batist has some doughnuts and some ham-and-egg sandwiches that I can heat up.'

'Boy, that sounds good. I could go for that,' Tommy said. He hit me hard on the arm with the flat of his hand.

The three of us walked down the slope to the dock. I couldn't begin to explain Tommy Blue Eyes' mercurial behavior. He walked on the balls of his feet, talking incessantly, his shoulders rolling, his eyes flicking from the bayou to the outboards leaving the dock to a flight of black geese dissecting the early sun.

He and the woman named Charlotte sat at a spool table under the canvas awning while I went inside and brought out coffee and doughnuts on a tray.

'Call Hippo for me,' Tommy said.

'What for?'

'Maybe I don't want to be enemies anymore. Maybe we ought to work together.'

'Call him yourself,' I said.

'I get three words out and he hangs up.'

'Write him a letter.'

'What I look like, St. Valentine or something?' He glanced at his wristwatch, then shook it close to his ear. 'You got the time?'

'It's ten to six,' I said.

'Look, why should Hippo and me be always cutting a piece out of each other? We're both in the casino business. Hippo's a good businessman, he'd be a good partner, he doesn't steal from people. I want you to tell him I said that.'

'I think you got some damn nerve, Tommy.'

He took his coffee cup away from his mouth and pointed four stiffened fingers into his chest. 'You come out to my house, you give me a lecture on conscience and responsibility, you hit me in the face with a gun, now I get another lecture?'

'Is there anything else you want to tell me? I have some work to do.'

He pushed a knuckle against his teeth, then clamped his hand across my forearm when I attempted to rise. He took it away and made a placating gesture.

'It's not easy for me to talk to Hippo,' he said. I saw his blue eyes fill with a pained, pinched light. 'He just doesn't listen, he sees it one way, it's always been like that, he'd just walk off when I tried to say I was sorry about his little brother. I tried a whole bunch of times.'

'When?'

'When we were growing up.'

'It's between you and him, Tommy. But why don't you say it to him once more, as honestly as you can, then let it go?'

' He's not. He sees me on the street, he looks at me like I was butt crust.'

'So long, Tommy. About the other day, I didn't want to hit you. I'm sorry it happened.' I nodded to the woman as I got up to go.

He wiped part of a doughnut off his mouth with his wrist.

'We're gonna rent a boat and some gear, do some fishing,' he said. 'If you're around later, we'll buy you lunch.'