Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (16 page)

“Is Clete with a lady by the name of Trish Klein?” I asked the secretary.

“He was with someone. I heard a lot of noise in the background. I think he was in a casino,” Hulga said.

Clete lived down the bayou in a Depression-era motor court, one that still did not have telephones in the cottages and was covered by the shade of oaks hundreds of years old. At ten Saturday morning, I knocked on his door. He answered it in his skivvies and an undershirt, smiling sleepily. “How you doin’, big mon?” he said. A square bandage was taped high up on his left shoulder.

“Why don’t you tell your friends where you are once in a while?”

“Oh, Trish and I drove over to the Big Sleazy for the day, then one thing led to another. You know how it goes. You want coffee?”

“I don’t want to hear Darwin’s history of the planet. Did you let her hustle you?”

“Lighten up on the terminology,” he replied, filling a metal coffeepot at the sink.

“What happened to your shoulder?”

“Nothing. A scratch. I had to get a tetanus shot.”

“I think Trish Klein is playing you, Cletus,” I said, instantly regretting my words.

“Hell, yes. Why would a great-looking broad be interested in an over-the-hill P.I. who’s got a worse jacket than most perps?”

“I didn’t say that. Your weakness is your good heart. People take advantage of it.”

“Good try. Get the milk out of the icebox, will you? God!”

“God
what
?”

“I woke up feeling great. I haven’t had any booze in two days. Trish and I are going to a street dance in Lafayette tonight. Then you come in here and walk around on my libido with golf shoes. Plus you insult Trish.”

“I worry about you. You were gone four days without telling me where you were.”

He tossed a loaf of bread into my hands. “Make some toast.”

“What happened in New Orleans?”

“Ever hear of a guy named Lefty Raguza?”

“He’s a psychopath who works for a bookie and general shithead by the name of Whitey Bruxal.”

“I had to straighten him out. It wasn’t a major event. You don’t figure him for a listener, huh?”

“What have you done, Clete?”

Then he told me of the beginnings of his romantic involvement with the girl whose nickname he had taken from a song by Jimmy Clanton.

Chapter
9

L
AST
S
UNDAY MORNING
he and Trish Klein had headed down the four-lane toward New Orleans, the top down, the cane blowing in the fields on each side of them, then they skirted a sun-shower at Morgan City and turned into a convenience store to put up the top. It was still early and there were few vehicles on the highway. A Ford Explorer that had been a quarter mile behind Clete went past the convenience store, a blond man at the wheel, then the road was empty again, the wind balmy and flecked with rain.

“I love it here. You can almost smell the Gulf. That’s the only thing I miss about Miami—the smell of the ocean in the morning,” Trish said.

“You lived by the water?” Clete said.

She had taken a bandanna off her head and was shaking out her hair. Clete couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Nor could he read her or her intentions, or judge whether or not he had any chance with her. All he knew was she had the most beautiful blue eyes and heart-shaped face he had ever seen. “We had a house in Coconut Grove. My grandmother kept a sailboat. We used to sail down into the Keys when the kingfish were running,” she said.

“That must have been great,” he said, his gaze wandering over her eyes and mouth, her words not really registering.

“You want to go now?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“It’s starting to rain.”

“Right,” he said.

They drove back onto the four-lane and crossed the bridge over the wide sweep of the Atchafalaya River. From the bridge’s apex, Morgan City looked like a Caribbean port, with its palm-dotted streets, red-tiled roofs, biscuit-colored stucco buildings, and shotgun houses fronted by ceiling-high windows and ventilated green shutters. As Clete descended the bridge, he glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the Ford Explorer again. The blond man was hunched over the wheel, wearing shades, cutting in and out of the passing lane. Then he dropped behind a semi and disappeared from view.

Clete and Trish crossed another bridge at Des Allemands and ate deep-fried soft-shell crabs in a restaurant by a waterway where the banks were still thickly wooded and undeveloped and houseboats were moored under the overhang of the trees. When they got back on the highway, Clete saw the Explorer swing behind him. Clete took the exit to Luling and approached the huge steel bridge spanning the Mississippi. The Explorer dropped back four cars but stayed with him.

At one point the blond man threw some trash out the window, perhaps a fast-food container, something that splattered and bounced across the pavement.

“Know anybody who drives a dark green Explorer?” Clete said.

“Nobody I can think of.” Trish leaned forward so she could see into the side mirror. “I don’t see one. Where is it?”

“He’s about three cars back now. A blond guy with shades on, throwing garbage on the road.”

“No, that doesn’t sound like anybody I know. He’s following us?”

“He’s probably just a jerk. Sometimes I think we should make littering a capital offense, you know, have a few roadside executions. It would really solve a lot of environmental problems here.”

He could feel her looking at the side of his face. When he glanced at her, she was smiling, her eyes lit with a tenderness that made his loins go weak.

“What’d I say?” he asked.

“Nothing. You’re just a sweet guy.” She touched his shoulder with her fingertips. Clete forgot about the man in the Explorer and wondered if he wasn’t being played.

They drove down I-10 to New Orleans and parked in a multilevel garage in the French Quarter. A storm was blowing off Lake Pontchartrain and the air smelled like salt and warm concrete when the first drops of rain hit it. They walked to the casino, at the bottom of Canal, and Clete could hear the horn blowing on the paddle-wheel excursion boat out on the river. He paused at the steps leading into the casino, under a row of transplanted palms that lifted and straightened in the breeze.

“Sure you want to go in here? Wouldn’t you like to take a boat ride instead?” he said.

“Come on, I’m just going to play a couple of slots. Then I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“What kind of surprise?”

“You’ll see.” She winked at him.

He told himself he was pulling the rip cord if she went near the craps table or if she started playing blackjack and a member of her crew was in place at the table or watching the game from the crowd. Clete had never been a gambler, but he had learned most of the casino hustles when he had run security for Sally Dio in Vegas and Reno. One of the best scams going involved card counting. Actually, it wasn’t even a scam. It was a matter of having more brains than the house. A good card counter could determine at which point a blackjack deck contained a preponderance of cards in the high numbers, usually 10 through king. The high numbers in the shoe raised the odds that the dealer, who was required to take a hit on 16 or less, would go bust. The player just had to stand pat and let the dealer beat himself.

There was a hitch, however. The casino cameras and pit managers could tell when a card counter’s betting pattern had changed. So a crew made use of a player who always bet the same high amount of money but did not take a seat at the table and commence betting until he received a signal from a colleague in the crowd. The player would stay at the table as long as the odds remained in his favor, then linger briefly after the shuffle, losing a few bets if necessary. Finally he would glance at his watch, pick up his winnings, and stroll over to a craps or roulette table, where he would be absorbed into the crowd.

Clete ordered a vodka collins at the bar and watched while Trish wandered between the rows of slot machines. Was she casing the joint? Did she and her crew plan to take it down? He couldn’t tell. But she was no garden-variety grifter. Nor was she a degenerate gambler. So what were they doing here.

The recycled air was like cigarette smoke that had been trapped for days in a refrigerator full of spoiled cheese. Half the people on the floor had B.O. and reminded Clete of outpatients at the methadone clinic. The rest were peckerwoods in shiny suits and vinyl shoes, with haircuts that resembled plastic wigs that didn’t fit their heads. What a dump, he thought. The people who ran it would probably comp Hermann Göring.

Then he saw the blond driver of the Explorer watching him from behind a column by the entrance. The blond man wore a silk neckerchief and a magenta-colored silk shirt that was molded against his lats and shoulders and tapered waist. His facial skin was bright and hard-looking, like polished ceramic, his eyes a mystery behind his shades. He pulled a cigarette out of his pack with his mouth and cupped the flame from a gold lighter to it.

Clete thought about bracing him, then decided to let the hired help handle it. He introduced himself to a security man by the craps table, out of sight of the blond man, opening his P.I. badge holder in his palm. “I have an office on St. Ann in the Quarter and one in New Iberia,” he said. “I think a dude hanging by the entrance is bird-dogging me and my lady friend. Blond hair, shades, reddish-purple shirt, kerchief around the neck. He’s been following me since Morgan City. But I’ve got no idea who he is.”

The security man listened attentively. He was trim and well dressed, his whitewalled hair freshly barbered. “You said your name was Purcel?”

“Right.”

“You used to be with NOPD?”

“What about it?”

“I heard your name mentioned at Second District headquarters, that’s all.”

Clete waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. The security man stepped away from the craps table and glanced casually toward the front of the casino. “Wait here.”

“Maybe the guy doesn’t know I made him. I’d appreciate being left out of it.”

But the security man walked off without acknowledging Clete’s last statement, and Clete concluded the reference to his past history at the Second District wasn’t a positive indicator of his situation. The security man began talking to the blond man, the silhouette of a potted palm between them and Clete. But he quickly became a listener rather than a talker. He listened and then he listened some more. The blond man slipped what looked like a photo from his pocket and the two men examined it together, the blond man tapping on it for emphasis. Then the blond man gave the photo to the security man, obviously to keep.

When the security man returned to the craps area, he had the photo cupped in his palm. It showed Trish Klein at a blackjack table, laughing, a drink in her hand, one of her crew on the stool next to her. She had five cards turned up on the green felt in front of her, the total sum of which was under 21.

“Is this your girlfriend?” the security man asked.

“That’s the lady I’m with.”

“She’s in the Griffin Book.”

“That looks like a photo of somebody who just hit a five-card Johnny. That gets you blackballed here?”

“You and your friend are welcome to play the slots, Mr. Purcel. Just stay away from the tables. If you get near them, you’ll be escorted from the building.”

“Really?” Clete said, stepping closer to him. “How about my initial question? Who’s this geek with the shades following me around?”

“He does the same kind of work I do, at least in my off-duty capacity. You and Miss Klein enjoy yourselves. At the slot machines.”

Clete’s face was burning. “We need to get something straight here.”

“No, we don’t. Thank you for visiting the casino,” the security man said, and walked off.

Suddenly Clete’s shirt felt too tight for his chest. Inside the steady din of coins rattling into metal trays and the excited yelling around the craps table, he could hear the hoarseness of his own breathing and a sound like wind roaring in his ears. It took him five minutes to find Trish, who was watching a blackjack game, one knuckle poised on her chin, a thoughtful expression on her face. Thirty feet away, two security men were talking to each other, glancing in her direction.

“Time to boogie,” Clete said.

“What for?”

“I want to show you the battleground at Chalmette.”

She seemed to consider the idea.

Please, God, Clete thought.

“All right,” she said. “But don’t forget I have a surprise.”

He put one arm over her shoulders, and the two of them began walking toward the entrance. Through the glass doors he could see the dark green of the palm fronds in the rain and the lighted store-fronts along Canal. We’re almost there, he thought.

“I have to stop by the restroom,” she said.

“Now?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, giving him a look. “I might be a minute or two.”

“Sure,” he said, his eyes sweeping the casino. “I’ll wait at the bar. Take your time.”

Just cool it, he told himself. You can’t always dee-dee out of Indian country when you want. Sometimes you just have to brass it out.

He took a seat at the bar and ordered a soda and lime slice. It was a mistake. He heard a stool squeak on its swivel and felt a presence near his left arm, almost like an energy field that had the potential of a beehive.

Clete took the soda and lime from the bartender’s hand, then turned and looked into the sunglasses of the blond man in the reddish-purple shirt.

“Your gash go to the can?” the man asked.

“What did you say?”

“I said did the lady, your gash, stop by the john?”

Clete took a sip from his glass, then put the lime slice in his mouth and chewed it. “What’s your name, buddy?”

“Lefty Raguza,” the man said, and offered his hand. When Clete didn’t take it, he removed his shades and grinned. His eyes made Clete think of a cool green fire, an intense combination of color and light that didn’t indicate thought patterns or moods so much as incipient cruelty that had no specific target.

Clete drank the rest of his soda and crunched ice between his molars. He looked into the bar mirror when he spoke. “Here are the ground rules for you, Lefty. You don’t bird-dog us, you keep your mouth off certain people, and if I see you passing around photos of my lady again, I’m going to rip your wiring out.”