Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke

It’s cool. You could turn it into a nightclub act. It’s like Tweety Bird married Meat Loaf and they had a kid.”
    “That mean your ‘machine,’ see, and the reason I knowed you was going to colletch was I seen this ’sheen before, down on Ann Street, when you and a UL girl was scoring some Ex. See, we knowed who the UL girl was ’cause she was balling down the line long before she was balling you. Except none of us would ball her anymore ’cause of her gonorrhea. One guy still lets her give him head, but he say it ain’t very good.”
    The street was quiet except for the rustle of the wind, a plastic cup rattling in the parking lot.
    “Slim can hurt you, man,” Tony said.
    Monarch’s right thumb was hooked on the edge of his pants pocket, his knuckles like pale quarters under his skin. His eyes shifted sideways, out toward the street. His hand worked its way into his pocket and Tony Lujan involuntarily stepped back. Monarch smiled and lifted his car keys jingling from his pocket. “Is that where I hit it, that li’l line in the dust?” he said, examining the SUV’s door.
    He rubbed away the dirt and then dug a bronze-colored key into the paint, peeling it back in a long curlicue, cutting through the primer, exposing a shiny strip of metal. His face clouded with concern. “No, that ain’t where I hit it. It was just a smudge in the dirt. Or maybe I ain’t hit it at all. What y’all t’ink?”
    He raked a long silver line across the first one, forming an X, then straightened up and blew his nose softly into a Kleenex. No one had moved. While Monarch had vandalized the SUV, one of his cohorts had squirmed bare-chested through a window on the passenger side of the Firebird and had positioned himself on the window jamb, his underwear bunched on his stomach, a black bandanna tied down tightly on his scalp. In his right hand was a semiautomatic that he held flatly against the roof, the muzzle pointed at Tony Lujan and his friend Slim.
    Monarch removed a roll of currency from his pocket and peeled off several bills. He crumpled the bills inside his soiled Kleenex and tossed the balled Kleenex on the seat of the SUV.
    “Them dead presidents gonna take care of the scratch. Y’all want some more Ex, come see me. Get tired of white schoolgirl stuff, I can hep you there, too. In the meantime, check out Snoop and P. Diddy and improve your musical taste,” he said. “You want to call us niggers, just don’t do it where we can hear you.”
    A thick green vein that looked like knotted twine pulsed in Slim’s forehead. He inhaled deeply, as though he were deciding whether or not to leap out the door of an airplane at a high altitude. Then he said, “Fuck you,” and hit Monarch with a blow that slung a rope of spittle and blood across the Firebird’s rolled white leather seat.
    Monarch clutched his mouth with one hand, breathing hard through his nose, as though he could not allow himself to realize how badly he had been hurt. He stared at his palm, his lips as red and shiny as a clown’s. He stepped toward Slim, his hands balling into fists.
    “Don’t touch me,” Slim said.
    Monarch swung at the air, off balance, tripping on his shoelaces, his body caroming off Slim’s shoulder.
    Slim pushed him away, whirled, and delivered a tae kwon do kick that exploded on Monarch’s eye and snapped his head sideways, knocking him against the Firebird. Then Slim’s foot shot out again, spearing Monarch in the center of his face.
    “Clear my line of fire, Monarch! That motherfucker dead!” the shirtless kid in the black head scarf shouted.
    But Monarch behaved like a king. With a siren pealing in the distance, his mouth and nose streaming blood, a piece of broken tooth glistening on his chin, he lifted one hand as though he were giving a benediction, his body positioned between his armed friend and the boy whose nickname was Slim. “Lose the—” he began. He pressed his palm against his mouth, swallowed, and tried