Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke

sweetheart.

    Your father’s here.

    How is he?

    He says to tell you not to get sucked in. What’s he mean? You’re not in trouble again, are you, baby love? We talked a long time about that before.

    It’s just the way I am, I guess.

    It’s still rah-rah for the penis, huh? I’ve got to go, Dave. There’s a big line. Are you coming to see me?

    Sure.

    You promise?

    You bet. I won’t let you down, kiddo.

    “You really want me to tell you what it means?” the psychologist in Lafayette said.

    “Dreams are your province.”

    “You’re an intelligent man. You tell me.”

    “I don’t know.”

    “Yes, you do.”

    “Sometimes alcoholics go on dry drunks. Sometimes we have drunk dreams.”

    “It’s a death wish. I’d get a lot of distance between myself and those kinds of thoughts.”

    I stared silently at the whorls of purple and red in his carpet.

    The day after I visited the St. Martin Parish courthouse I talked with the sheriff there on the phone. I had met him several times when I was a detective with the Iberia Parish sheriff’s office, and I had always gotten along well with him. He said there was nothing in the coroner’s report that would indicate the girl had been struck with a tire iron or a jack handle before the fish camp burned.

    “So they did an autopsy?” I said.

    “Dave, there wasn’t hardly anything left of that poor girl to autopsy. From what Pugh says and what we found, she was right over the gas drum.”

    “What are you going to do with those two clowns you had in your office yesterday?”

    “Nothing. What can I do?”

    “Pugh says they killed some people up in Montana.”

    “I made some calls up there,” the sheriff said.

    “Nobody has anything on these guys. Not even a traffic citation. Their office in Lafayette says they’re good men. Look, it’s Pugh that’s got the record, that’s been in trouble since they ran him out of that shithole he comes from.”

    “I had an encounter with those two guys after I left your department yesterday. I think Pugh’s telling the truth. I think they did it.”

    “Then you ought to get a badge again, Dave. Is it about lunch-time over there?”

    “What?”

    “Because that’s what time it is here. Come on by and have coffee sometime. We’ll see you, podna.”

    I drove into New Iberia to buy some chickens and sausage links from my wholesaler. It was raining when I got back home. I put “La Jolie Blonde” by Iry Lejeune on the record player, changed into my gym shorts, and pumped iron in the kitchen for a half hour. The wind was cool through the window and smelled of rain and damp earth and flowers and trees. My chest and arms were swollen with blood and exertion, and when the rain slacked off and the sun cracked through the mauve-colored sky, I ran three miles along the bayou, jumping across puddles, boxing with raindrops that dripped from the oak limbs overhead.

    Back at the house I showered, changed into a fresh denim shirt and khakis, and called Dan Nygurski collect, in Great Falls, Montana. He couldn’t accept the collect call, but he took the number and called me back on his line.
        
    “You know about Dixie Lee?” I said.

    “Yep.”

    “Do you know about the waitress who died in the fire?”

    “Yes.”

    “Did y’all have a tail on him that night?”

    “Yeah, we did but he got off it. It’s too bad. Our people might have saved the girl’s life.”

    “He lost them?”

    “I don’t think it was deliberate. He took the girl to a colored place in Breaux Bridge, I guess it was, a zydeco place or something like that. What is that, anyway?”

    “It’s Negro-Cajun music. It means ‘vegetables,” all mixed up.”

    “Anyway, our people had some trouble with a big buck who thought it was all right for Pugh to come in the club but not other white folks. In the meantime Pugh, who was thoroughly juiced, wandered out the side door with the girl and took off.”

    “Have you heard his