The New Iberia Blues: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke

Author:James Lee Burke [Burke, James Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781501176876
Amazon: B07GNTW4X5
Goodreads: 40538584
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2019-01-08T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

AFTER THEY WERE gone, Smiley bathed in a claw-footed tub down the hall and dressed in clean underwear and an unpressed khaki shirt and green cargo pants and pink tennis shoes with Mickey Mouse’s face embossed on the rubber toes. He snugged a baseball cap on his head and walked painfully down the stairs and got into his car and drove to the storage shed he rented on the edge of town. Inside were his survival gear, a box of passports and driver’s licenses, a suitcase filled with clothes, his stamp and coin collection, boxes of comics that he read over and over and did not think of as collectibles, a scoped 1903 Springfield, a Taser, half a dozen pistols, a Browning automatic rifle, an M107 sniper rifle, an AK-47, the classic British commando knife, flash grenades, and a box that contained a weapon he had tested but never used on the job.

He unlocked the box and reached inside and hooked the thick straps of the unit in his hands and dragged it free. His face and hands were tingling like chimes blowing in a tree or the music of an ice cream truck. In minutes he was on his way to Morgan City, the night sky clearing, the stars shining as brightly as they did on Wonder Woman’s short pants.

He passed a boatyard and a series of docks and a ramshackle nightclub. Next door was a motel that advertised porn and hourly rates. Smiley drove back and forth in the parking lot of the club, then circled the motel, but he saw no sign of the two men or their midnight-blue Buick. He drove to the motel entrance and went inside. A man about thirty, with a mustache and sideburns as shiny as black grease and pipe-cleaner stems for arms, wearing a vinyl vest with no shirt, sat behind the counter, working a crossword puzzle.

“Hi, hi. Can I have a room for thirty minutes?” Smiley said.

“Thirty minutes?” the clerk said. He looked beyond Smiley out into the dark. “You with somebody?”

“I have to poop.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“I have to go poop real bad.”

“Go to the club next door.”

“People wee-wee on the seat.”

“You need to get out of here, man.”

Smiley kept the back of his head to the surveillance camera on the wall. “You don’t have to get nasty.”

The clerk set down his pencil. “Want me to walk you to your car?”

“Have my friends Marco and Jerry Gee been here?”

“We don’t give out the names of our guests. What does it take for you to get the message? Out!”

“Maybe I’ll come back later. I like crossword puzzles.”

“That’s it,” the clerk said, and got off his stool.

“You are bad. You’ll see what happens to bad people,” Smiley said. The bell above the door tinkled as he went out.

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