James Lee Burke - The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

DAVE ROBICHEAUX NOVELS

Swan Peak

The Tin Roof Blowdown

Pegasus Descending

Crusaders Cross

Last Car to Elysian Fields

Jolie Blons Bounce

Purple Cane Road

Sunset Limited

Cadillac Jukebox

Burning Angel

Dixie City Jam

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

A Stained White Radiance

A Morning for Flamingos

Black Cherry Blues

Heavens Prisoners

The Neon Rain

BILLY BOB HOLLAND NOVELS

In the Moon of Red Ponies

Bitterroot

Heartwood

Cimarron Rose

HACKBERRY HOLLAND NOVELS

Rain Gods

Lay Down My Sword and Shield

OTHER FICTION

Jesus Out to Sea

White Doves at Morning

The Lost Get-Back Boogie

The Convict and Other Stories

Two for Texas

To the Bright and Shining Sun

Half of Paradise

SIMON & SCHUSTER
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by James Lee Burke

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
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address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition July 2010

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Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burke, James Lee.
The glass rainbow : a Dave Robicheaux novel / James Lee Burke.
p. cm.
1. Robicheaux, Dave (Fictitious character)Fiction.
2. PoliceLouisianaNew IberiaFiction.
3. New Iberia (La.)Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.U723G58 2010
813.54dc22 2010007485
ISBN 978-1-4391-2829-9
ISBN 978-1-4391-3737-6 (ebook)

To my cousins, Alafair Kane, Charlotte Elrod,
Karen McRae, and Mary Murdy

THE GLASS RAINBOW

THE ROOM I had rented in an old part of Natchez seemed more reflective of New Orleans than a river town in Mississippi. The ventilated storm shutters were slatted with a pink glow, as soft and filtered and cool in color as the spring sunrise can be in the Garden District, the courtyard outside touched with mist off the river, the pastel walls deep in shadow and stained with lichen above the flower beds, the brick walkways smelling of damp stone and the wild spearmint that grew in green clusters between the bricks. I could see the shadows of banana trees moving on the window screens, the humidity condensing and threading along the fronds like veins in living tissue. I could hear a ships horn blowing somewhere out on the river, a long hooting sound that was absorbed and muted inside the mist, thwarting its own purpose. A wood-bladed fan revolved slowly above my bed, the incandescence of the lightbulbs attached to it reduced to a dim yellow smudge inside frosted-glass shades that were fluted to resemble flowers. The wood floor and the garish wallpaper and the rain spots on the ceiling belonged to another era, one that was outside of time and unheedful of the demands of commerce. Perhaps as a reminder of that fact, the only clock in the room was a round windup mechanism that possessed neither a glass cover nor hands on its face.

There are moments in the Deep South when one wonders if he has not wakened to a sunrise in the spring of 1862. And in that moment, maybe one realizes with a guilty pang that he would not find such an event entirely unwelcome.

At midmorning, inside a pine-wooded depression not far from the Mississippi, I found the man I was looking for. His name was Jimmy Darl Thigpin, and the diminutive or boylike image his name suggested, as with many southern names, was egregiously misleading. He was a gunbull of the old school, the kind of man who was neither good nor bad, in the way that a firearm is neither good nor bad. He was the kind of man whom you treat with discretion and whose private frame of reference you do not probe. In some ways, Jimmy Darl Thigpin was the lawman all of us fear we might one day become.

He sat atop a quarter horse that was at least sixteen hands high, his back erect, a cut-down double-barrel twelve-gauge propped on his thigh, the saddle creaking under his weight. He wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt to protect his arms from mosquitoes, and a beat-up, tall-crown cowboy hat in the apparent belief that he could prevent a return of the skin cancer that had shriveled one side of his face. To my knowledge, in various stages of his forty-year career, he had killed five men, some inside the prison system, some outside, one in an argument over a woman in a bar.

His charges were all black men, each wearing big-stripe green-and-white convict jumpers and baggy pants, some wearing leather-cuffed ankle restraints. They were felling trees, chopping off the limbs for burning, stacking the trunks on a flatbed truck, the heat from the fire so intense it gave off no smoke.

When he saw me park on the road, he dismounted and broke open the breech of his shotgun, cradling it over his left forearm, exposing the two shells in the chambers, effectively disarming his weapon. But in spite of his show of deference for my safety, there was no pleasure in his expression when he shook hands, and his eyes never left his charges.

We appreciate your calling us, Cap, I said. It looks like youre still running a tight ship.

Then I thought about what I had just said. There are instances when the exigencies of your life or profession require that you ingratiate yourself with people who make you uncomfortable, not because of what they are but because you fear their approval and the possibility you are more like them than you are willing to accept. I kept believing that age would one day free me of that burden. But it never has.

My introspection was of no relevance. He seemed uncertain about the purpose of my visit to Mississippi, even though it was he who had contacted me about one of his charges. This is about those hookers that was killed over in your area? he asked.

I wouldnt necessarily call them that.

Youre right, I shouldnt be speaking unkindly of the dead. The boy I was telling you about is over yonder. The one with the gold teeth.

Thanks for your help, Cap.

Maybe my friend the gunbull wasnt all bad, I told myself. But sometimes when you think youre almost home free, that indeed redemption is working incrementally in all of us, you find you have set yourself up for another disappointment.