Read Online Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke - Free Book Online

you sold off your boat dock. Too bad. I liked that place,” he said. His accent was a singular one, a strange blend of hard-core coonass and the Italian-Irish inflections of blue-collar New Orleans.
    “How’s it hangin’, Bello?” I said,
    “How’s yours hangin’?” he replied, still grinning, still full of play.
    Then I told him why I was there.
    “You want to talk to my son about that girl who killed herself?” he said. “Sorry to hear about something like that, but what’s it got to do with Tony?” He turned his head toward the tennis court, where his son was whocking back balls fired at him by an automatic machine.
    “Was he seeing Yvonne Darbonne?” I asked.
    Bello rubbed at his nose with the heel of his hand. His brow was knitted, his wide-set, dark eyes busy with thought. “A young guy that good-looking has got a lot of girls around. How should I know? They come and go. I don’t remember anybody by that name around here,” he said.
    I started across the lawn toward the tennis court. I could tell his son, Tony, saw me out of the corner of his eye, but he kept on stroking the ball, his cheeks like apples, his curly brown hair tied off his forehead with a bandanna, his hips thin, almost girlish. I heard Bello on my heels. “Hey, Dave, take it out of overdrive, here. That’s my son, there. You’re saying he’s mixed up in somebody’s death? I don’t like that.”
    I turned around slowly, trying to fix a smile on my face before I spoke. “This is a homicide investigation, Bello. If you want this interview conducted down at the department, that’s fine. In the meantime, I’m requesting that you stay out of it,” I said.
    He opened up his palms, as though bewildered. “It’s Saturday morning. It’s spring. The birds are singing. You hit my front lawn like a thunderstorm. I’m the problem?” he said.
    I opened the door to the court and walked out on the dampened, rolled surface of the clay. Tony Lujan was deferential and polite in every way, repeatedly addressing me as “sir.” But in South Louisiana, protocol is often a given and not substantive, particularly among young people of Tony’s financial background.
    “You knew Yvonne?” I said.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You knew her well?” I said, my eyes locked on his.
    “She worked at Victor’s Cafeteria. I’d see her there and maybe around town some.”
    “When’s the last time you saw her?”
    “The day before she died. We had some ice cream in the park.”
    “You have any idea why she’d want to kill herself?”
    “No, sir.”
    “None?”
    “No, sir.”
    “I think you knew her better than you’re letting on,” I said.
    His eyes were starting to film.
    “Hey, you answer his questions!” Bello said.
    “We went out. We slept together,” Tony said.
    “Why’d you try to lie to me?” I asked.
    The nylon windscreens on the court puffed in the breeze and creaked against their tethers. The color in the boy’s cheeks had the broken shape of flame.
    “You knock that off, Dave. He’s cooperating, here,” Bello said.
    “You need to leave us alone, Bello,” I said.
    “Fuck you. This is my home. You don’t come in here pushing people around,” Bello replied.
    There was nothing for it. Bello was obviously a suffocating, controlling presence in his son’s life, and I knew that without a warrant I would get no more information out of either one of them. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, give me a call, will you?” I said to Tony, handing him my business card.
    “Yes, sir, I will,” he said.
    I walked back to my truck, with Bello at my side, his eyes stripping the skin off my face. “You trying to make trouble here, Dave? You got an old beef with me about something?” he said.
    “No,” I said, opening the door to my truck.
    “Then what ?”
    I didn’t answer and started to get behind the wheel. Bello’s hand sank into my arm. “You don’t demean my family and blow me off,” he said.
    “A young woman