In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

and drove back through the pecan trees to the highway, the sun's reflection bouncing on my hood like a yellow balloon.
     
     
    IT HAPPENED MY SECOND YEAR ON THE NEW ORLEANS POLICE force, when I was a patrolman in the French Quarter and somebody called in a prowler report at an address on Dumaine. The lock on the iron gate was rusted and had been bent out of the jamb with a bar and sprung back on the hinges. Down the narrow brick walkway I could see bits of broken glass, like tiny rat's teeth, where someone had broken out the overhead light bulb. But the courtyard ahead was lighted, filled with the waving shadows of banana trees and palm fronds, and I could hear a baseball game playing on a radio or television set.
          I slipped my revolver out of its holster and moved along the coolness of the bricks, through a ticking pool of water, to the entrance of the courtyard, where a second scrolled-iron gate yawned back on its hinges. I could smell the damp earth in the flower beds, spearmint growing against a stucco wall, the thick clumps of purple wisteria that hung from a tile roof.
          Then I smelled him, even before I saw him, an odor that was at once like snuff, synthetic wine, rotting teeth, and stomach bile. He was a huge black man, dressed in a Donald Duck T-shirt, filthy tennis shoes, and a pair of purple slacks that were bursting on his thighs. In his left hand was a drawstring bag filled with goods from the apartment he'd just creeped. He swung the gate with all his weight into my hand, snapped something in it like a Popsicle stick breaking, and sent my revolver skidding across the flagstones.
          I tried to get my baton loose, but it was his show now. He came out of his back pocket with a worn one-inch .38, the grips wrapped with black electrician's tape, and screwed the barrel into my ear. There was a dark clot of blood in his right eye, and his breath slid across the side of my face like an unwashed hand.
          "Get back in the walkway, motherfucker," he whispered.
          We stumbled backward into the gloom. I could hear revelers out on the street, a beer can tinkling along the cement.
          "Don't be a dumb guy," I said.
          "Shut up," he said. Then, almost as an angry afterthought, he drove my head into the bricks. I fell to my knees in the water, my baton twisted uselessly in my belt.
          His eyes were dilated, his hair haloed with sweat, his pulse leaping in his neck. He was a cop's worst possible adversary in that situation—strung-out, frightened, and stupid enough to carry a weapon on a simple B & E.
          "Why'd you have to come along, man? Why'd you have to do that?" he said.
          His thumb curled around the spur of the pistol's hammer and I heard the cylinder rotate and the chamber lock into place.
          "There're cops on both ends of the street," I said. "You won't get out of the Quarter."
          "Don't say no more, man. It won't do no good. You messed everything up."
          He wiped the sweat out of his eyes, blew out his breath, and pointed the pistol downward at my chest.
          Baby Feet had on only a bathrobe, his jockey underwear, and a pair of loafers without socks when he appeared in the brick walkway behind the black man.
          "What the fuck do you think you're doing here?" he said.
          The black man stepped back, the revolver drifting to his thigh.
          "Mr. Julie?" he said.
          "Yeah. What the fuck you doing? You creeping an apartment in my building?"
          "I didn't know you was living here, Mr. Julie."
          Baby Feet took the revolver out of the black man's hand and eased down the hammer.
          "Walter, if I want to, I can make you piss blood for six months," he said.
          "Yes, suh, I knows that."
          "I'm glad you've taken that attitude. Now, you get your sorry ass out of here." He pushed the black man toward the entrance. "Go on." He kept