Heaven's Prisoners by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

again.
    “Yes, I wouldn’t want to tell you anything,” she said. “A good Cajun girl stays barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while her macho man goes out and kicks ass and takes names.”
    “I had a partner eight years ago who walked up on a guy trying to change a tire two blocks from the French Market. My partner had just gotten off work and he still had his badge clipped to his belt. He was a nice guy. He was always going out of his way to help people. He was going to ask this guy if he needed a bigger jack. The guy shot him right through the mouth with a nine-millimeter.”
    Her face twitched as though I had slapped her.
    “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, and went out the screen door with the field jacket over my arm.
    The pecan leaves in the yard were loud under my feet. I looked back over my shoulder and saw her watching me through the screen, with Alafair pressed against her thigh. Lord, why did I have to talk to her like that, I thought. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me. She was kind and loving and every morning she made me feel that somehow I was a gift in her life rather than the other way around. And if she ever had any fears, they were for my welfare, never for her own. I wondered if I would ever exorcise the alcoholic succubus that seemed to live within me, its claws hooked into my soul.
    I walked on into the trees toward the dirt road and the parked white car. Then I saw the driver flip his cigarette out into the leaves and start the engine. But he didn’t drive past me so I could look clearly into the car or see the license plate in the rear. Instead, he backed down the dirt road, the spangled sunlight bouncing off the windshield, then straightened the car abruptly in a wide spot and accelerated around a bend that was thick with scrub oak. I heard the tires thump over the wooden bridge south of my property and the sound of the engine become thin through the trees.
    I went back to the house, slipped the clip out of the .45, ejected the shell from the chamber, snicked the shell into the top of the clip again, and folded the towel over the .45 and the clip and replaced them in the dresser drawer. Annie was washing dishes in the kitchen. I stood beside her but didn’t touch her.
    “I’ll say it only once and I’ll understand if you don’t want to accept it right now,” I said. “But you mean a lot to me and I’m sorry I talked to you the way I did. I didn’t know who those guys were, but I wasn’t going to find out on their terms. Annie, when you love somebody dearly, you don’t put limits on your protection of them. That’s the way it is.”
    Her hands were motionless on the sink, and she gazed out the window into the backyard.
    “Who were they?” she said.
    “I don’t know,” I said, and went into the front room and tried to concentrate on the newspaper.
    A few minutes later she stood behind my chair, her hands on my shoulders. Then I felt her bend down and kiss me in the hair.
     
    After lunch I got a telephone call at the dock from the Drug Enforcement Administration in Lafayette. He said his name was Minos P. Dautrieve. He said he was the resident agent in charge, or “RAC,” as he called it. He also said he wanted to talk with me.
    “Go ahead,” I said.
    “No. In my office. Can you come in?”
    “I have to work, Mr. Dautrieve.”
    “Well, we can do it two or three ways,” he said. “I can drive over there, which I don’t have time for. Also, we don’t usually interview people in bait shops. Or you can drive over here at your convenience, since it’s a beautiful day for that sort of thing. Or we can have you picked up.”
    I paused a moment and looked across the bayou at the Negroes fishing in the shallows.
    “I’ll be there in about an hour,” I said.
    “Hey, that’s great. I’m looking forward to it.”
    “Were your people out at my place this morning?”
    “Nope. Did you see somebody who looked like us?”
    “Not unless you guys are