Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel Read Free Page A

obligations. Miami is supposed to be an open city. No contract hits, no one guy gets a lock on the action. But nothing goes on here that doesn’t get pieced off to the New York families. You see my drift?”
    “Not really,” I said, not wanting to know more about Dallas’s involvement with Miami’s underworld.
    “What a life, huh?” he said.
    “Yeah,” I replied. “Make mine rare, will you?”
    “Rare it is, Loot,” he said, squeezing the grease out of a patty, wincing in the flare of smoke and flame.
    I washed my hands before we ate. Dallas’s work uniform hung inside a clear plastic dry cleaner’s bag on a hook in the bathroom, the logo of an armored car company sewn above the coat pocket.

    B UT D ALLAS DID NOT BLOW D ODGE . Instead, I saw him talking on a street corner in Opa-Locka with Ernesto, the leviathan driver of the lavender Cadillac. The two of them got in the Caddy and drove away, Dallas’s face looking much older than he was. Twice I asked Dallas to go to the track with me, but he claimed he was not only broke but entering a twelve-step program for people with a gambling addiction. “I’ll miss it, but everything comes to an end, right?” he said.
    Spring came and I disengaged from Dallas and his problems. Besides, I had plenty of my own. I was trying to get through each morning with aspirin, vitamin B, and mouth spray, but my lend-lease colleagues at the Miami P.D. and the cadets in my class at the community college were onto me. My irritability, the tremble in my hands, my need for a vodka collins by noon became my persona. The pity and ennui I saw in the eyes of others followed me into my sleep.
    I went three weeks without a drink. I jogged at dawn on Hollywood Beach, snorkeled at the tip of a coral jetty swarming with clown fish, pumped iron at Vic Tanney’s, ate seafood and green salads at a surfside restaurant, and watched my body turn as hard and brown as a worn saddle.
    Then on a beautiful Friday night, with no catalyst at work, with a song in my heart, I put on a new sports jacket, my shined loafers, and a pair of pressed slacks, and joined the crew up in Opa-Locka and pretended once again I could drop lighted matches in a gas tank without consequence.
    That’s when I got my second look at the short man who worked as a collector for Whitey Bruxal. He stood in the open doorway, scanning the interior, forcing others to walk around him. Then he went to the bar and spoke to the bartender, and I heard him use Dallas’s name. The bartender shook his head and occupied himself with washing beer mugs in a tin sink. But the collector was not easily discouraged. He ordered a 7Up on ice and began peeling a hard-boiled egg on top of a paper napkin, wiping the tiny pieces of shell off his fingernails onto the paper, his eyes on the door.
    Stay out of it, I heard a voice say inside my head.
    I went to the men’s room and came back to my table and sat down. The collector was salting his egg, chewing on the top of it reflectively while he stared out the front door into the street, his shoes hooked into the aluminum rails of the barstool. He wore stonewashed jeans and a yellow see-through shirt and a porkpie hat tipped forward on his brow. His back was triangular, like a martial arts fighter’s, his facial skin as bright and hard-looking as ceramic.
    I stood next to him at the bar and waited for him to turn toward me. “Live in the neighborhood?” I asked.
    “ Right, ” he said.
    “I never did catch your name.”
    “It’s Elmer Fudd. What’s yours?”
    “I like those platform shoes. A lot of Superfly types are wearing those these days. Ever see that movie Superfly ? It’s about black dope pushers and pimps and white street punks who think they’re made guys,” I said.
    He brushed off his fingers on his napkin and pulled at an earlobe, then motioned to the bartender. “Fix Smiley here whatever he’s drinking,” he said.
    “You see, when you give names to other people, it’s not just