Burke, James Lee - Robicheaux 08 by Burke James Lee

Author:Burke, James Lee [Burke, James Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-29T23:10:51+00:00

He walked down the bank in a pair of floppy khaki shorts with zipper pockets, a white straw cowboy hat, and a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off at the armpits. He carried a spinning rod that looked like it belonged to a child.

“Beautiful day for it,” he said, lifting his face in the breeze.

The boat dipped heavily when he got into the bow. The tops of his arms were red with sunburn and unusually big for a man who did administrative work.

I took us through a narrow channel into the swamp, cut the engine, and let the boat drift on its wake into a small black lagoon surrounded with flooded cypress. A deserted cabin, built on pilings, was set back in the trees. A rowboat that was grayish blue with rot was tied to the porch and half-submerged in the water.

The sheriff bit into a ham sandwich. “I got to admit this beats hitting golf balls in sand traps,” he said.

But he was an intelligent and perceptive man whose weekend humor served poorly the concern in his eyes.

Then I said it all, the way as a child I took my confused and labored thoughts into the confessional and tried to explain what both my vocabulary and loneliness made unexplainable. Except now, in order to undo a wrong, I was He said the word for me.

“Lying, Dave. We've never had that problem between us. I have a hard time dealing with this, podna.”

“The guy's grandiose, he's a huckster, he's got electrodes in his temples. But he's down on the wrong beef.”

“I don't give a goddamn what he is. You're violating your oath as a police officer. You're walking on the edges of perjury as well.”

I looked into the diffused green and yellow light on the rim of the lagoon. “The eye remembers after the fact sometimes,” I said.

“You saw the cut-down twelve-gauge under the guy's coat? You felt you were in danger?”

“I'll put my revised statement in your mailbox this afternoon.”

“You missed your calling over in Vietnam. You remember those monks who used to set themselves on fire? You were born for it, Dave.”

“Marsallus doesn't belong in prison. At least not for popping the guy in front of my house.”

The sheriff set his fishing rod across his thighs and pulled up the anchor without my asking him. He stared into the water and the black silt that swirled out of the bottom, then wiped his face with his hand as though he were temporarily erasing an inevitable conclusion from his thoughts.

Monday morning I was suspended from the department without

Pay-Monday night I drove out to the Bertrand plantation and returned the spoon Bertie Fontenot had given me. She fanned herself with a ragged magazine in the swing, her breasts hanging like watermelons inside her cotton dress.

“It's the right time period, but I don't think pirates buried those spoons in your garden,” I said.

“They growed there with my radish seeds?”

“The S on those spoons makes me think they're from the Segura plantation on the lake.

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