Free Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke

stumbling into the crowd and went down on the floor like he’d stepped on a high-voltage wire. At first I thought it was part of the switch-off. I had to shove my way through the crowd to look at him close-up. He was curled in a ball, shivering all over, spit coming out of both sides of his mouth, then somebody started yelling, ‘The guy’s having an epileptic fit!’
    “Except I knew Frogman didn’t have epilepsy. His hands were shriveled up like claws against his chest and his eyes were popping out of his head. I told the boxman to get a resuscitation cup out of their first-aid kit, but he just stared at me like I was talking Sanskrit. So I shouted at him, ‘Nobody does mouth-to-mouth in a time of AIDS. Get the cup out of your fucking first-aid kit.’
    “You know what kind of medical aid they have in a dump like that? French ticklers and aphrodisiacs you buy from the rubber machine in the can. I couldn’t believe what I had to do next. I don’t think Frogman Andrepont has gone near a toothbrush since he got out of Angola five years ago. I grabbed his nose and opened up his mouth and was just about to do the unthinkable, when the broad with the bod that looks like Venus in blue jeans pushed me aside and said, ‘Move it over, bub.’
    “She closed off Frogman’s nostrils and blew air down his throat and pounded on his chest until he finally made this terrible sucking sound and started breathing again. The security guys still weren’t sure if they were watching a scam or not. They were checking the dice on the table, but they couldn’t find the ones she’d switched into the game. Then the paramedics got there and Venus in blue jeans beat it out the back door.
    “I showed some deputies my papers on Frogman and cuffed him to the gurney and was going to ride to the hospital in the ambulance with him, when I saw Venus hauling that beautiful ass of hers across the parking lot. I caught up with her and said, ‘You just ripped off the casino and saved a guy’s life at the same time. Grifters don’t do that.’
    “She was walking real fast and says, ‘Grifter up your nose. Who do you think you are?’
    “I go, ‘I’m a private investigator. I was chasing a bail skip, the guy you saved. I got my clock cleaned at the blackjack table.’
    “She says, ‘You ought to stay out of casinos.’
    “I say, ‘What’s your name?’
    “She says, ‘Trouble.’
    “I go, ‘How about a drink? Or something to eat?’
    “She looks over my shoulder and sees the security guys coming for us. Then she looks all around for her friends, but she’d already lost them in the crowd. She goes, ‘I’m up Shit’s Creek, handsome. Can you get us out of here?’ My big-boy started flipping around in my slacks, like it had gone on autopilot and was trying to break out of jail.”
    Molly shut the kitchen window.
    “Sorry,” Clete said.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “She said her name is Trish Klein. She says you and her old man were buds. She says you were there when some guys took his head off with a shotgun.”
    I stared through the trees at the bayou, trying to assimilate Clete’s story and connect it with the other information I had on Dallas Klein’s daughter. But Clete wasn’t finished. “This morning an FBI broad knocked on my door. Her name is Betsy Mossbacher and she’s got a king-size broom up her ass. The Feds had a tail on Trish Klein last night, and now they’ve connected me with her and you with me. What’s this bullshit about, Dave?”
    “You’re getting it on with grifters now?”
    “Don’t change the subject.”
    “I knew Trish Klein’s father in Miami. He was a guard on an armored truck. He owed money to some wiseguys and I think they made him give up the truck’s schedule. They cleaned the slate when they boosted the truck. I think Trish Klein is here on a vendetta. The Feds think she was mixed up in taking down a savings and loan in Mobile that was a laundry operation for the Mob.”
    His big