Page 151 of Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'Do you see anything in there that looks peculiar?' I said.

'That's like asking if there's any washroom graffiti that shouldn't be on a Hallmark card,' he said. 'Hold on… Here's one that's all numbers. No message, just numbers.'

'Read them.' I could hear my own breath in the phone. I wrote the numbers down as he read them off. 'Those are the coordinates for that Nazi sub, Ben. You check with The Times-Picayune, you'll find Clete ran that ad.'

'I don't get it.'

'Buchalter kidnapped Martina and forced Clete to find out where I'd seen the sub. I gave him the coordinates. But it took a couple of days for the ad to come out. Look, we need to get a boat or a chopper out there.'

'Call your own department.'

'We don't have anything available.'

'You think I can snap my fingers on Saturday afternoon and come up with a boat or a helicopter? We don't have jurisdiction out on the salt, anyway.'

'You don't understand. I left a message on Clete's machine. I told him Martina's all right. As soon as he retrieves the message, you know where he's headed.'

'So let him light up the fun house. It's what Purcel does best.'

'He might lose, too. I need a boat.'

'You won't get it from me this weekend.'

'Motley—'

'It's Motley now? Why don't you call Nate Baxter? See what kind of help you get.'

I started back home, It was getting dark now, and the palm trees along the highway were beating in the wind, the rain spinning in my headlights. It would take me at least four and a half hours to reach New Iberia, then another seven, maybe more, with the bad weather, to get my boat down Bayou Teche and into the gulf south of Grand Isle.

I pulled into a filling station by the Pearl River and called Lucinda Bergeron's house. The gum trees around the phone booth were green and brightly lit by the filling station's signs, and the leaves were ripping like paper in the wind.

'Zoot?'

'Hey, Mr. Dave, what's happenin'?'

'Where's your mom?'

'She ain't here. Something wrong?'

'I've got to get ahold of her. I need a boat.'

'She went to the grocery. What kind of boat you looking for?'

'A fast one,' I said.

'You ax the right man.'

'Oh?'

'I tole you at your house. But you wasn't listening real good, remember? I worked on all kinds of boats.'

'Who owns this boat, Zoot?'

'A man who don't mind lending it, I promise. When you coming?'

An hour and a half later I parked the truck at a boatyard way out in Jefferson Parish. It had quit raining; and the sky was dark, and water was dripping off the tin shed where Zoot waited in a cabin cruiser with the interior lights on. I took my Japanese field glasses from the glove compartment, then unlocked the iron box welded to the bed of my pickup and removed my old army field jacket and the AR-15 and my Remington twelve-gauge with the barrel sawed off right in front of the pump that I had wrapped in a canvas duffel bag. I dropped a box of .223 rounds and a box of double-ought buckshot into the bag and pulled the drawstring. When I walked out onto the dock under the shed I saw that Zoot wasn't alone.

'Hello, Lucinda,' I said, stepping down into the boat.

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