DR09 - Cadillac Jukebox by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

his
grief get on your front porch, it don't stop there, no. It's gonna come in your
house. But you don't never listen."
          He pulled his folded
cap out of his back pocket, popped it open, and fitted it on his head. He
walked down the dock to his truck without saying good night. The tin roof on
the bait shop creaked and pinged against the joists in the wind gusting out of
the south.
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER   5
     
     
    M onday morning the
sky was blue, the breeze warm
off the Gulf when I drove to the University of Southwestern Louisiana campus in
Lafayette to talk with Buford LaRose. Classes had just let out for the noon
hour, and the pale green quadrangle and colonnaded brick walkways were filled
with students on their way to lunch. But Buford LaRose was not in his office in
the English department, nor in the glassed-in campus restaurant that was built
above a cypress lake behind old Burke Hall.
          I called his office
at the Oil Center, where he kept a part-time therapy practice, and was told by
the receptionist I could find him at Red Lerille's Health and Racquet Club off
Johnson Street.
          "Are you sure?
We were supposed to go to lunch," I said.
          "Dr. LaRose
always goes to the gym on Mondays," she answered.
    Red's was a city-block-long complex of heated swimming pools,
racquet ball and clay tennis courts, boxing and basketball gyms, indoor and
outdoor running tracks, and cavernous air-conditioned rooms filled with
hundreds of dumbbells and weight benches and exercise machines.
          I looked for Buford a
half hour before I glanced through the narrow glass window in the door of the
men's steam room and saw him reading a soggy newspaper, naked, on the yellow
tile stoop.
          I borrowed a lock
from the pro shop, undressed, and walked into the steam room and sat beside
him.
          His face jerked when
he looked up from his paper. Then he smiled, almost fondly.
          "You have a
funny way of keeping appointments," I said.
          "You didn't get
my message?"
          "No."
          "I waited for
you. I didn't think you were coming," he said.
          "That's
peculiar. I was on time."
          "Not by my
watch," he said, and smiled again.
          "I wanted to
tell you again I was sorry for my remarks at your party."
          "You went to a
lot of trouble to do something that's unnecessary."
          The thermostat kicked
on and filled the air with fresh clouds of steam. I could feel the heat in the
tiles climb through my thighs and back. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with
my hand.
          "Your jaw's
bruised," he said.
          "We had a
visitor at the bait shop this weekend. NOPD thinks he's a Mexican carnival
worker who got loose from a detox center."
          He nodded, gazed
without interest at the tile wall in front of us, pushed down on the stoop with
the heels of his hands and worked the muscles in his back, his brown, hard body
leaking sweat at every pore. I watched the side of his face, the handsome
profile, the intelligent eyes that seemed never to cloud with passion.
          "You have Ph.D.
degrees in both English and psychology, Buford?" I said.
          "I received
double credits in some areas, so it's not such a big deal."
          "It's
impressive."
          "Why are you
here, Dave?"
          "I have a
feeling I may have stuck my arm in the garbage grinder. You know how it is, you
stick one finger in, then you're up to your elbow in the pipe."
          "We're back to
our same subject, I see," he said.
          Other men walked back
and forth in the steam, swinging their arms, breathing deeply.
          "How do you know
Aaron Crown's daughter?" I asked.
          "Who says I
do?"
          "She does."
          "She grew up in
New Iberia. If she says she knows me, fine . . . Dave, you have no idea what
you're tampering with, how you may be used to undo everything you