'Why are you calling me?'
'I just told you.'
'It's my understanding you're suspended.'
'So what? Your medical findings are a matter of public record, aren't they?'
'When they become public they are. Right now they aren't public.'
'Come on, Sollie. Somebody's trying to deep-fry my cojones in a skillet.'
In my mind's eye I could see him idly throwing paper clips at his wastebasket.
'What's the big mystery I can clear up for you?' he said.
'What caliber weapon killed her?'
'From the size of the wound and the impact of the round, I'd say a.45.'
'What do you mean 'size'?'
'Just what I said.'
'What about the round?'
'It passed through her. There wasn't much to recover. It was a clean exit wound.'
'It was a copper-jacketed round?'
'That's my opinion. In fact, I know it was. The exit hole wasn't much larger in diameter than the entry.'
I closed and opened my eyes. I could feel my heart beating in my chest.
'You there?' he said.
'Yes.'
'What's wrong?'
'Nothing, Sollie. I use hollow-points.'
I could hear birds singing in the trees, and the surface of the swimming pool seemed to be dancing with turquoise light.
'Anything else?' he asked.
'Yeah, time of death.'
'You're crowding me.'
'Sollie, I keep seeing the back of her head. Her hair had stuck to the carpet. The blood had already dried, hadn't it?'
'I can't tell you about that because I wasn't there.'
'Come on, you know what I'm asking you.'
'Did she die earlier, you want to know?'
'Look, partner, you're my lifeline. Don't be jerking me around.'
'How about I go you one better? Did she die in that car, you want to ask me?'
I had learned long ago not to interfere with or challenge Sollie's moods, intentions, or syntax.
'It's gravity,' he said. 'The earth's always pulling on us, trying to suck us into the ground.'
'What?'
'It's what the shooter didn't think about,' he said. 'Blood's just like anything else. It goes straight down. You stop the heart, in this case the brain and then the heart, and the blood takes the shortest course to the ground. You with me?'
'Not quite.'
'The blood settles out in the lowest areas of where the body is lying. The pictures show the woman curled up on her side on the floor of the Buick. Her head was higher than her knees. But the autopsy indicates that she was lying full length on her back at the time of death. She also had high levels of alcohol and cocaine in her blood. I suspect she may have been passed out when she died.'
'She was shot somewhere else and moved?'
'Unless the dead are walking around on their own these days.'
'You've really been a friend, Sollie.'
'Do you ever carry anything but a.45? A nine-millimeter or a.357 sometimes?'
'No, I've always carried the same Colt.45 auto I brought back from Vietnam.'
'How many people know that?'
'Not many. Mostly cops, I guess.'
'That thought would trouble me. So long, Robicheaux.'
But the moment was not one for brooding. I walked back to the hot-dog stand and bought snowballs for a half-dozen kids. When a baseball bounced my way from the diamond, I scooped it up in my palms, rubbed the roughness of the horse hide, fitted my fingers on the stitches, and whipped a side-arm slider into the catcher's glove like I was nineteen years old and could blow a hole through the backstop.
That night I called Lou Girard at his home in Lafayette, told him about my conversations with the coroner and the mulatto woman across from the bar, and asked him if anyone had vacuumed the inside of the Buick.
'Dave, I'm afraid this case isn't the first thing on everybody's mind around here,' he said.
'Why's that?'
'The detective assigned to it thinks you're a pain in the ass and you should have stayed in your own territory.'
'When's the last time anyone saw Amber Martinez?'
'Three or four days ago. She was a bender drinker and user. She was supposed to be getting out of the life, but I think she'd work up a real bad Jones and find a candy man to pick up her tab until she ended up in a tank or a detox center somewhere.'
'Who was her pimp?'
'Her husband. But he's been in jail the last three weeks on a check-writing charge. Whoever killed her probably got her out of a bar someplace.'
'Yeah, but he knew her before. He used another woman to keep leaving Amber's name on messages at my office.'
'If I can get the Buick vacuumed, what are we looking for?'
'I know I saw gun flashes inside the car. But there weren't any holes in the front of the bar. See what you come up with.'
'Like what?'
'I don't know.'
'Why don't you forget the forensic bullshit and concentrate on what your nose tells you?'
'What's that?'
'This isn't the work of some lone fuckhead running around. It has the smell of the greaseballs all over it. One smart greaseball in particular.'
'You think this is Julie's style?'
'I worked two years on a task force that tried to get an indictment on the Bone. When he gets rid of a personal enemy, he puts a meat hook up the guy's rectum. If he wants a cop or a judge or a labor official out of the way, he does it long distance, with a whole collection of lowlifes between him and the target.'
'That sounds like our man, all right.'
'Can I give you some advice?'
'Go ahead.'
'If Balboni is behind this, don't waste your time trying to make a case against him. It doesn't work. The guy's been oiling jurors and judges and scaring the shit out of witnesses for twenty years. You wait for the right moment, the right situation, and you smoke him.'
'I'll see you, Lou. Thanks for your help.'
'All right, excuse me. Who wants to talk about popping a cap on a guy like Balboni? Amber Martinez probably did herself. Take it easy, Dave.'
At six the next morning I took a cup of coffee and the newspaper out on the gallery and sat down on the steps. The air was cool and blue with shadow under the trees and the air smelled of blooming four o'clocks and the pecan husks that had moldered into the damp earth.
While I read the paper I could hear boats leaving my dock and fishermen's voices out on the water. Then I heard someone walking up the incline through the leaves, and I lowered the newspaper and saw Mikey Goldman
