Free DR09 - Cadillac Jukebox by James Lee Burke Page B

tucked inside his polished riding boots. His eyes looked
serene, his face pleasant and cool with the freshness of the morning.
          I almost extended my
hand.
          He looked at the sunrise
over my shoulder.
          '"Red sky at
dawn, sailor be forewarned,'" he said. But he was smiling when he said it.
          "I shouldn't be
here, but I needed to tell you to your face the charges your wife made are
fabricated. That's as kind as I can say it."
          "Oh, that stuff.
She's dropping it, Dave. Let's put that behind us."
          "Excuse
me?"
          "It's over. Come
take a look at my horses."
          I looked at him
incredulously.
          "She slandered
someone's name," I said.
          He blew out his breath.
"You and my wife were intimate. She probably still bears you a degree of
resentment. The god Eros was never a rational influence, Dave. At the same time
she doesn't want to see my campaign compromised because you've developed this
crazy notion about Aaron Crown being railroaded. So she let both her
imagination and her impetuosity cause her to do something foolish. We're sorry
for whatever harm we've done you."
          I cupped my hand on a
fence rail, felt the hardness of the wood in my palm, tried to see my thoughts
in my head before I spoke.
          "I get the
notion I'm in a therapy session," I said.
          "If you were,
you'd get a bill."
          The back door of the
house opened, and a slender, white-haired man with a pixie face, one wrinkled
with the parchment lines of a chronic cigarette smoker, stepped out into the
wind and waved at Buford. He wore a navy blue sports jacket with brass buttons
and a champagne-colored silk scarf. I knew the face but I couldn't remember
from where.
          "I'll be just a minute,
Clay," Buford called. Then to me, "Would you like to join us for
breakfast?"
          "No,
thanks."
          "How about a
handshake, then?"
          Two of the wranglers
were yelling at each other in Spanish as the horses swirled around them in the
lot. One had worked a hackamore over a mare's head and the other was trying to
fling a blanket and saddle on her back.
          "No? Stay and
watch me get my butt thrown, then," Buford said.
          "You were born
for it."
          "I beg your
pardon?"
          "The political
life. You've got ice water in your veins," I said.
          "You see that
dead oak yonder? Two men were lynched there by my ancestors. When I went after
Aaron Crown, I hoped maybe I could atone a little for what happened under that
tree."
          "It makes a great
story."
          "You're a
classic passive-aggressive, Dave, no offense meant. You feign the role of
liberal and humanist, but Bubba and Joe Bob own your heart."
          "So long,
Buford," I said, and walked back to my truck. The wind splayed and
flattened the poplar trees against Buford's house. When I looked back over my
shoulder, he was mounted on the mare's back, one hand twisted in the mane, the
hackamore sawed back in the other, his olive-tan torso anointed with the sun's
cool light, sculpted with the promise of perfection that only Greek gods know.
     
     
    L ater, Clete Purcel returned my call and told me Mingo Bloomberg
had been sprung from City Prison three days ago by attorneys who worked for
Jerry Joe Plumb, also known as Short Boy Jerry, Jerry Ace, and Jerry the Glide.
          But even as I held
the receiver in my hand, I couldn't concentrate on Clete's words about Mingo's
relationship to a peculiar player in the New Orleans underworld. The dispatcher
had just walked through my open door and handed me a memo slip with the simple
message written on it: Call the Cap up at the zoo re: Crown. He says urgent.
          It took twenty
minutes to get him on the phone.
          "You was right.
I should have listened to you. A bunch of the black boys caught him in the tool
shack this morning," the captain