Burning Angel by James Lee Burke

Author:James Lee Burke [Burke, James Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Private Investigators, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Louisiana, Robicheaux; Dave (Fictitious character), Detective and Mystery Stories, Police Procedural, Organized Crime, Central America
ISBN: 9780786889044
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 1995-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

After supper that night I put on my gym shorts and running shoes and did three miles along the dirt road by the bayou, then I did three sets of military presses, dead lifts, and arm curls with my barbells in the backyard. The western sky was streaked with fire, the air warm and close and alive with insects. I tried to rethink the day, the week, the month, my involvement with Sonny Boy Marsallus and Ruthie Jean and Luke and Bertie Fontenot and Moleen Bertrand, until each of my thoughts was like a snapping dog.

“What’s bothering you, Dave?” Alafair said behind me.

“I didn’t see you there, Alf.”

She held Tripod on her shoulder. He tilted his head at me and yawned.

“Why you worrying?” she asked.

“A guy’s in jail I don’t think belongs there.”

“Why’s he in there then?”

“It’s that fellow Marsallus.”

“The one who shot the—“

“That’s right. The guy who was looking out for me. Actually, looking out for all of us.”

“Oh,” she said, and sat down on the bench, her hand motionless on Tripod’s back, an unspoken question in the middle of her face.

“The man he shot died, Alf,” I said. “So Sonny’s down on a homicide beef. Things don’t always work out right.”

Her eyes avoided mine. I could smell my own odor, hear my breathing in the stillness.

“It’s not something I had a choice about, little guy,” I said.

“You said you wouldn’t call me that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said, then picked up Tripod in her arms and walked away.

“Alafair?”

She didn’t answer.

I put on a T-shirt without showering and began hoeing weeds out of the vegetable garden by the coulee. The air was humid and mauve colored and filled with angry birds.

“Time for an iced tea break,” Bootsie said.

“I’ll be inside in a minute.”

“Cool your jets, Streak.”

“What’s with Alf?”

“You’re her father. She associates you with perfection.”

I chipped at the weeds with the corner of the hoe. The shaft felt hard and dry and full of sharp edges in my hands.

“Moleen’s the problem, Dave. Not Sonny,” Bootsie said.

“What?”

“You think he’s a hypocrite because he left the black woman in jail. Now maybe you’re wondering about yourself and Sonny Boy.”

I looked up at her, squinted through the sweat in my eyes. I wanted to keep thudding the hoe into the dirt, let her words go by me as though they were illogical and unworthy of recognition. But there was a sick feeling in my stomach.

I propped my hands on the hoe handle, blotted my eyes on my forearm.

“I’m a police officer,” I said. “I can’t revise what happened. Sonny killed a man, Boots. He says he’s killed others.”

“Then put it out of your mind,” she said, and went back inside the house.

Across the fence in my neighbor’s field, I saw an owl swoop low out of the sun’s last red light and, in a flurry of wings, trap and then scissor a field mouse in its beak. I could hear the mouse’s voice squeaking helplessly as the owl flew into the sun.

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