DR07 - Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke Page A

open up?'
    'No.'
    'You're starting to piss me off, Art.'
    'What can I say? Wait in your truck, I'll send you guys out
some drinks and sandwiches. Give me a break, all right?'
    He walked back toward the house. The swimmers were leaving the
screened-in pool for a shady area in the trees, set with lawn chairs, a
drinks table, and a smoking barbecue pit. The skin flexed around the
corners of Clete's eyes.
    'You still got your binoculars?' he asked.
    'In the glove compartment.'
    He went to the truck and returned to the gate. He focused my
pair of World War II Japanese field glasses through the steel bars and
studied the people in the shade.
    'Check it out, mon,' he said, handing me the glasses.
    One woman lay on a reclining chair with a newspaper over her
face. A second, older, heavyset and big-breasted, her skin tanned
almost the color of mahogany, stood on the lawn with her feet spread
wide, touching each toe with a cross-handed motion, her ash blond hair
cascading back and forth across her shoulders. A third woman, with dyed
red hair, who could not have been over twenty or twenty-one, was bent
forward over a pocket mirror, a short soda straw held to one nostril,
the other nostril pinched shut with a forefinger. Seated on each side
of her was a thick-bodied, sun-browned, middle-aged man with a neon
bikini wrapped wetly around the genitals, the back and chest streaked
with wisps of black and gray hair. The face of one man was flecked with
fine patterns of scab tissue, as though he had walked through a reddish
brown skein of cobweb.
    'When did Tommy Blue Eyes hook up with the Caluccis?' Clete
said. 'They always hated each other.'
    'Business is business.'
    'Yeah, but the micks always looked down on the greaseballs.
They didn't socialize with them.' He took the glasses out of my hand
and looked again through the bars. 'If you think Bobo and Max are
geeks, check out the cat flopping steaks on the grill.'
    A man who must have been six and one half feet tall had come
out of the side entrance to the house with a tray of meat. He had a
flat Indian face, a cheerless mouth, and wide-set, muddy eyes that
didn't squint or blink in the smoke rising from the pit. His hair was
jet black and freshly barbered and looked like a close-cropped wig
glued on brownish red stone.
    'All the guy needs are electrodes inset in his temples,' Clete
said.
    'I don't think this is going anywhere,' I said. 'I probably
should head back to New Iberia.'
    His green eyes roamed over my face. 'You don't think Bootsie
can handle it?' he asked.
    'How do I know, Clete? He humiliated her, he put his tongue in
her mouth, he left bruises on her kidney like he'd taken a pair of
pliers to her.'
    He nodded and didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, 'That
blonde doing the aerobics is Tommy's regular punch when his old lady's
out of town. No, she's more than that, he got a real Jones for her.
Believe me, Tommy and that clunk of radiator hose he's got for a
schlong aren't far away. Dave, look at me. You got my word, I'm going
to dig this guy Buchalter out of the woodwork. If you're not around,
I'll give you a Polaroid, then you can burn it.'
    He continued to stare into my face, then he said, 'You're
troubling me, noble mon.'
    'What's the problem?'
    'You look wired to the eyes, that's the problem.'
    'So what?'
    'You have a way of throwing major monkey shit through the
window fan, that's what.'
    '
I
do?'
    'Go down to the corner and call Bootsie. Then we'll give it
another hour. If Tommy's not back by then, we'll hang it up.'
    We waited in the truck for another hour, but Tommy Lonighan
didn't return. The metal of my dashboard burned my hands when I touched
it, and the air smelled of salt and dead water beetles in the rain
gutters. I started the engine.
    'Wait a minute. They're coming out. Let's not waste an
opportunity, mon,' Clete said.
    The electronic piked gate opened automatically, and the
Calucci brothers, in a light blue Cadillac convertible, with the two
younger women in the