James Burke - Black Cherry Blues

After we ate, Dixie Lee and Alafair found a pile of rocks that was full of chipmunks, and while they threw bread crumbs down into the crevices I walked farther down the stream and sat by a pool whose surface was covered by a white, swirling eddy of froth and leaves and spangled sunlight. Through the cottonwoods on the other side of the stream I could see the steep, moss-streaked cliff walls rise up straight into the sky.

Then a strange thing happened, because she had never appeared to me during the waking day. But I saw her face in the water, saw the sunlight spinning in her hair.

Don't give up, sailor, she said.

What?

You've had it worse. You always got out of it before.

When?

How about Vietnam?

I had the U.S. Army on my side.

Listen to the voices in the water and you'll be all right. I promise. Bye-bye, baby love.

Can't you stay a little longer?

But the wind blew the cottonwoods and the light went out of the water, and the pool turned to shadow and an empty pebble-and-sand bottom.

"Don't be down here talking to yourself, son," Dixie Lee said behind me.

"You'll give me cause to worry."

I didn't have to wait long to learn how Sally Dio would try to handle his new situation. He called me that evening at the house.

"I want a meet," he said.

"What for?"

"We talk some stuff out."

"I don't have anything to say to you."

"Look, man, this is going to get straightened out. One way or another. Right now."

"What have I got that you're interested in?"

"I ain't interested in anything you got. What's the matter with you? You got impacted shit in your head or something?"

"I'm busy tonight. Plus, I don't think I want to see you again, Sal."

I could almost hear his exasperation and anger in the silence.

"Look, I'm making an effort," he said.

"I'm going the extra mile. I don't have to do that. I can handle it other ways. But I'm treating you like a reasonable man."

I deliberately waited a good five seconds.

"Where?" I said.

"There's a bar and restaurant in Missoula, the Pink Zebra, right off Higgins by the river. It's in an alley, but it's a class place. Nine o'clock."

"I'll think it over."

"Listen, man" I hung up on him.

Later, I put the.45 back under the seat of the truck, dropped Alafair off at the baby-sitter's, then drove to the Pink Zebra downtown. It was located in a brick-paved alley that had been refurbished into a pedestrian walkway of small cafes and shops and bars that offered philodendron and brass elegance more than alcohol.

I went inside and walked past the espresso machines and a row of booths that had copper champagne buckets affixed to the outside. The brick walls and the ceiling were hung wich gleaming kettles and pots of ivy and fern, and in the back was a small private dining room, where I saw Sally Dio at a table with two men whom I hadn't seen before. But they came out of the same cookie cutter as some I had known in New Orleans. They were both around thirty, heavier than they should have been for their age, their tropical shirts worn outside their gray slacks, their necks hung with gold chains and religious medals, their pointed black shoes shined to the gloss of patent leather, their eyes as dead and level and devoid of emotion as someone staring into an empty closet.

I stopped at the door, and one of them stood up and approached me.

"If you'll step inside, Mr. Robicheaux, I need to make sure you're not carrying nothing that nobody wants here," he said.

"I don't think we'll do that," I said.

"It's a courtesy we ask of people. It's not meant to insult nobody," he said.

"Not tonight, podna."

"Because everybody's supposed to feel comfortable," he said.

"That way you have your drink, you talk, you're a guest, there ain't any tensions."

"What's it going to be, Sal?" I said.

He shook his head negatively at the man next to me, and the man stepped back as though his body were attached to a string.

Sal wore a cream-colored suit, black suspenders, and an open-necked purple sport shirt with white polka dots. His duck tails were combed back on the nape of his neck, and he smoked a cigarette without taking his hand from his mouth. He looked at me steadily out of his blade-face, his stare so intense that the bottom rim of his right eye twitched.

"Get the waiter," he said to the man who was standing.

"What are you having, Mr. Robicheaux?" the man said.

"Nothing."

He motioned the waiter to the door anyway.

"Bring a bottle of something nice for Mr. Dio's guest," he said.

"Bring Mr. Dio another Manhattan, too. You want anything else, Sal?"

Sal shook his head again, then motioned the two men out of the room. I sat down across the table from him. A half-dozen cigarette butts were in the ashtray, and ashes were smeared on the linen tablecloth. I could smell the heavy odor of nicotine on his breath. The looped scar under his right eye was tight against his skin.

"What the fuck's going on?" he said.

"What do you mean?"

"With Charlie Dodds."

"I don't know anything about him."

"Cut the shit. He tried to clip me last night."

"What has that got to do with me?"

He breathed through his nose and wet his lips.

"I want to know what's going on," he said.

"You got me, Sal. I don't know what you're talking about."

"You and Dodds cut some kind of deal."

"I think maybe you've burned out some cells in your brain."

"Listen, you stop trying to fuck with my head. You and him got something going. You paid him or something, you turned him around. I don't know what kind of deal you're working, but believe me, man, it ain't worth it."

"This is why you wanted to meet? Big waste of time."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing."

"I mean it, you quit jerking me around. We're talking business. We straighten all this out right now. We don't, my old man will. You understand that? You and Charlie Dodds aren't going to fuck up millions of dollars in deals people got around here."

"You're hitting on the wrong guy, Sal."

The waiter brought in a Manhattan and a green bottle of wine in a silver ice bucket. He uncorked the wine and started to pour it into a glass for me to taste.

"Get out of here," Sal said.

After the waiter was gone, Sal lit a fresh cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs.

"Listen," he said, "there's nothing between us."

"Then you shouldn't send bad guys around my house."

"It was a personal beef. It's over. Nobody got hurt. It ends now. There's a lot of money going to be made here. You can have in on it."

I looked at my watch.

"I have to be somewhere else," I said.

"What the fuck is with you? I'm talking a score you couldn't dream about. I'm talking three, four large a week. Broads, a condo in Tahoe, any fucking thing you want. You going to turn that down because you got a personal beef to square?"

"I'll see you, Sal. Don't send anybody else around my house. It won't help your troubles with Charlie Dodds."

I started to get up. He put his hand on my forearm.

"I know something you want, you need, man. And I'm the cat can give it to you," he said.

"What's that?"

"That guy Mapes. Dixie said he can send you up the road. How'd you like it Mapes wasn't around to worry you anymore?" He took a drink from his Manhattan. His eyes were level and intent over the glass.

"I don't even know where he is," I said.

"You say the word, you end this bullshit between you and me, you deliver up that cocksucker Charlie Dodds, Mapes is dead meat. You'll get Polaroids, then you burn them. You don't have any connection with it. Nobody'll ever see the guy again. It'll be like he never existed."

"I'll think about it."

"You'll think about it?"