Free DR07 - Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke

her feet.
'I have to go somewhere now.'
    'Where?'
    'That's not your… Please go now.'
    He rose to his feet. His face looked down into hers, only
inches away. For the first time she noticed that there were blackheads,
like a spray of pepper,- at the corners of his eyes.
    'I only wanted to help,' he said. 'To bring you and your
husband some information that you didn't have before. You invited me
in.'
    'I thought you were someone else,' she repeated. 'It's not
your fault. But I want you to leave.'
    'I'd like to help you, if you'd let me.'
    'I'm going out the door now. If you don't leave, I'll
call—'
    'Who? That black man washing fish? I think you're very tense.
You don't need to stay that way, Mrs. Robicheaux. Believe me.'
    'Please get out of my way.'
    He rested both of his hands on her shoulders and searched in
her eyes as a lover might. 'How does this feel?' he asked, then
tightened his fingers on her muscles and inched them down her back and
sides, widening his knees slightly, flexing his loins.
    'You get away from me. You disgusting—' she said,
his breath, the astringent reek of his deodorant washing over her.
    'I wouldn't hurt you in any way. You're a lovely woman, but
your husband is working for Jews. Hush, hush, now, I just want to give
you something to remember our little moment by.'
    His arms encircled her waist, locking hand-on-wrist in the
small of her back, tightening until she thought her rib cage would
snap. He bent her backwards, smothering her body with his, then pushed
his tongue deep inside her mouth. He held her a long moment, and as he
did, he clenched her left kidney with one hand, like a machinist's vise
fastening on a green walnut, and squeezed until yellow and red patterns
danced behind her eyes and she felt urine running from her shorts.
    She sat cross-legged and weeping against the wall, her face
buried in her hands as he started his red convertible in the drive,
tuned his radio, and backed out into the dirt road, the dappled
sunlight spangling on the waxed finish of his car.

----
chapter
seven
    There was no record of a Will
Buchalter with the New Iberia
city police or the sheriffs department or with the state police in
Baton Rouge. No parish or city agency in New Orleans had a record of
him, either, nor did the National Crime Information Center in
Washington, D.C. Nor could Bootsie identify him from any of the mug
shots at the Iberia Parish sheriff's office.
    Our fingerprint man lifted almost perfect sets of prints from
the water glass used by the man who called himself Will Buchalter, from
the record jackets he'd touched, and from the box of candy he'd left
behind. But without a suspect in custody or corresponding prints on
file, they were virtually worthless.
    There was another problem, too, one that many victims of a
sexual assault discover. Sexual crimes, as they are defined by our
legal system, often fall into arbitrary categories that have nothing to
do with the actual degree of physical pain, humiliation, and emotional
injury perpetrated on the victim. At best we would probably only be
able to charge the man who called himself Will Buchalter with
misdemeanor battery, committed under circumstances that would probably
make a venal defense lawyer lick his teeth.
    I called Hippo Bimstine early the next morning, then drove to
New Orleans and met him at his house in the Carrollton district by the
levee. He sat in a stuffed red velvet chair by the front window, which
reached from the floor to the ceiling, and kept fooling with a
cellophane-wrapped cigar that was the diameter of a twenty-five-cent
piece. His hair was wet and freshly combed, parted as neatly as a ruled
line down the center of his head. His lower stomach bulged like a
pillow under his slacks. Hanging on the wall above the mantel was a
gilt-framed photograph of Hippo and his wife and their nine children,
all of whom resembled him.
    'How about sitting down, Dave?' he said. 'I don't feel too
comfortable with a guy who acts like he was