DR07 - Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

neighborhood?'
    'Sure. I worked it when I was a patrolman. Years ago that bar
on the corner was a hot-pillow joint.'
    'I know. My auntie used to hook there. It's a shooting gallery
now,' she said, and walked inside to call me a cab.
    Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought.
     
    It was late evening after I picked up
my truck down in
Barataria and drove back into the city. I called Clete at his apartment
in the Quarter.
    'Hey, noble mon,' he said. 'I called you at your house this
afternoon.'
    'What's up?'
    'Oh, it probably doesn't amount to much. What are you doing
back in the Big Sleazy, mon?'
    'I need some help on these vigilante killings. I'm not going
to get it from NOPD.'
    'Lose this vigilante stuff, Dave. It's a shuck, believe me.'
    'Have you heard about some guys having their hearts cut out?'
    He laughed. 'That's a new one. Where'd you get that?' he said.
    'Lucinda Bergeron.'
    'You've been out of Homicide too long, Streak. When they
cancel them out, it's for money, sex, or power. This vampire or ghoul
bullshit is out of comic books. Hey, I got another revelation for you.
I think that Bergeron broad has got a few frayed wires in her head. Did
she tell you she went up to Angola to watch a guy fry?'
    'No.'
    'It probably just slipped her mind. Most of your normals like
to watch a guy ride the bolt once in a while.'
    'Why'd you call the house?'
    'I'm hearing this weird story about you and a Nazi submarine.'
    'From where?'
    'Look, Martina's over here. I promised to take her to this
blues joint up on Napoleon. Join us, then we'll get some
étouffée at
Monroe's. You've got to do it, mon, it's not up for discussion. Then
I'll fill you in on how you've become a subject of conversation with
Tommy Blue Eyes.'
    'Tommy Lonighan?'
    'You got it, Tommy Bobalouba himself, the only mick I ever met
who says his own kind are niggers turned inside out.'
    'The Tommy Lonighan I remember drowned a guy with a fire hose,
Clete.'
    'So who's perfect? Let me give you directions up on Napoleon.
By the way, Bootsie seemed a little remote when I called. Did I spit in
the soup or something?'
     
    The nightclub up on Napoleon was
crowded, the noise deafening,
and I couldn't see Clete at any of the tables. Then I realized that an
exceptional event had just taken place up on the bandstand. The Fat
Man, the most famous rhythm and blues musician ever produced by New
Orleans, had pulled up in front in his pink Cadillac limo, and like a
messiah returning to his followers, his sequined white coat and coal
black skin almost glowing with an electric purple sheen, had walked
straight through the parting crowd to the piano, grinning and nodding,
his walrus face beaming with goodwill and an innocent
self-satisfaction, and had started hammering out 'When the Saints Go
Marching In.'
    The place went wild.
    Then I realized that another event was taking place
simultaneously on the dance floor, one that probably not even New
Orleans was prepared for—Clete Purcel and his girlfriend
doing the
dirty boogie.
    While the Fat Man's ringed, sausage fingers danced up and down
on the piano keys and the saxophones and trumpets blared behind him,
Clete was bopping in the middle of the hardwood floor, his porkpie hat
slanted forward on his head, his face pointed between his girlfriend's
breasts, his buttocks swinging like an elephant's; then a moment later
his shoulders were erect while he bumped and ground his loins, his
belly jiggling, his balled fists churning the air, his face turned
sideways as though he were in the midst of orgasm.
    His girlfriend was over six feet tall and wore a flowered
sundress that fit her tanned body like sealskin. She waved bandannas in
each hand as though she were on a runway, kicking her waxed calves at
an angle behind her, lifting her chin into the air while her eyelids
drifted shut and she rotated her tongue slowly around her lips. Then
she let her mouth hang open in a feigned pout, pushed her reddish brown
hair over the top of her head with both hands,