“What are you going to do today, little guy?” I said to Alafair.
“Bootsie’s taking me to buy a new swimsuit, then we’re going to have a picnic in the park.”
“Maybe I can join you guys later,” I said.
“Why don’t you, Dave? We’ll be under the trees by the pool.”
“I’ll head over about noon, or a little earlier if I can,” I said. Then I winked at Alafair. “You keep Boots out of the sun, little guy. She’s already got enough tan.”
“It’s bad for her?”
Bootsie looked at me and made an impatient face.
“Well, she doesn’t listen to us sometimes and we have to take charge of her,” I said.
Bootsie rapped me across the back of the hand with her spoon, and Alafair’s eyes squinted with delight. I grinned back at her, then when Bootsie was putting dishes in the sink I came up behind her and hugged her hard around the middle and kissed her neck.
“Later, later,” she whispered, and patted me quietly on the thigh.
It was going to be a fine day. I kissed Alafair good-bye, then flipped my seersucker coat over my shoulder and was almost out the door when the phone on the counter rang and Bootsie picked it up.
“It’s the sheriff,” she said, and handed it to me.
I put my hand over the receiver and touched her shoulder as she walked away. “The picnic is at noon. I’ll be there, I promise, unless he sends me out of town. Okay?” I said.
She smiled without replying and began washing dishes in the sink.
“I just talked to the city chief,” the sheriff said. “They had to take Joey Gouza to Iberia General at seven last night. He went apeshit in his cell, crashing against the bars, rolling around on the floor, and kicking his feet like he was having a seizure, slurping water out of the toilet.”
“You mean he had a psychotic episode?”
“That’s what they thought it was. They got him in a van to take him to the hospital and he puked all over it. The doc at emergency receiving said he acted like he’d been poisoned, so they pumped his stomach out. Except by the time they got the tube down his throat there was hardly anything left inside him except blood from his stomach lining. Evidently the guy’s got ulcers on top of his other problems.”
“What do you think happened?”
“A guard found an empty box of ant poison in the food area. Maybe somebody dumped it into his mashed potatoes. But to tell you the truth, Dave, I don’t believe the city people are in a hurry to admit they can’t provide security for a celebrity prisoner. They’re having more fun with Joey Gouza than pigs rolling in slop.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“If he’s connected with Garrett’s murder, let’s nail his butt before they take him out in a body bag. Not that half of New Orleans wouldn’t get drunk in the streets.”
I drove over to Iberia General and walked down the hall to Joey Gouza’s room. A uniformed cop was reading a magazine outside the door.
“How you doin’, Dave?” he said.
“Pretty good. How’s our man?”
“I have a fantasy. I see him running down the hall in his nightshirt. I see me parking a big one in his brisket. Does that answer your question?”
“Is he that bad?”
“It probably depends on whether or not you have to clean up his piss.”
“What?”
“He took a piss off the side of the bed, right in the middle of the floor. He said he doesn’t use bedpans.”
I went inside the room and closed the door behind me. Gouza’s right wrist was cuffed to the bed rail and one ankle was locked to a leg chain. His elongated face was white on the pillow, his lips caked at the corners with dried mucus. In the middle of the floor was a freshly mopped damp area. The room smelled bad, and I tried to open the window but it was sealed with locks that could only be turned with an Allen wrench.
He rubbed his nose with his finger. His eyes were black and cavernous in his drawn face.
“You don’t like the smell?” he asked. His voice sounded like air wheezing out of sand.
“It’s kind of close in here, partner.”
“They told you I took a leak on the floor?”
“Somebody mentioned it.”
“They told you they keep me chained to the bed, they don’t even let me walk to the toilet?”
“I’ll see what I can do about it.”
“I can’t raise my voice. Come closer.”
I moved a chair to his bedside and sat down. His sour breath and the odor from under his sheet made me swallow.
“It’s a whack,” he said.
“On who?”
“Who the fuck you think?”
“Maybe it was an accident. It happens. The people who prepare jailhouse food haven’t worked in a lot of five-star restaurants.”
“I jailed too long, man. I know when the whack’s out. You feel it. It’s in people’s eyes.”
“You’re a superstar, Joey. They’re not going to lose you.”
“You listen to me. Yesterday afternoon a trusty, this punk, a kid with mushmelons for buns, is sweeping out the corridor. Then he looks around real careful and walks over to my cell and says, ‘Hey, Joey, I can get you something.’
“I go, ‘You can get me something? What, a case of AIDS?’
“He says, ‘Stuff you might could use.’
“I go, ‘The only stuff I see around here is you, sweetcakes.’
“He says, ‘I can get you a shank.’
“I go, ‘What I need a shank for from a punk like you?’
“He says, ‘Sometimes there’s some badasses in the shower, man.’
“I go, ‘You clean the shit out of your mouth when you talk to me.’
“He says, ‘It’s just a city jail, but there’s a couple of bad guys here. You don’t want the shank, you don’t want a friend, that’s your business. I was only trying to help out.’
“I go, ‘What guys?’ But he’s already walking off. I go, ‘Come back, you little bitch,’ but he clanks on the door for the screw to open up and shoots me the bone.”
“Like you say, Joey, he’s probably just a punk who wants a job when he gets out. What’s the big deal?”
“You don’t get it. A guy like that don’t shoot the bone at a guy like me. Something’s happening. There’s been some kind of change. . . .” His hand motioned vaguely at the air, at the sunlight through the window. “Out there somewhere. It’s a whack. Look, I want a hot plate and canned food brought in.”
Then I saw something in his eye that I hadn’t seen before, in the corner, a tremolo, a moist, threadlike yellow light, like a worm feeding.
He and his kind spent a lifetime trying to disguise their self-centered fear. It accounted for their grandiosity, their insatiable sexual appetites, their unpredictable violence and cruelty. But almost always, if you were around them long enough, you saw it leak out of them like a sticky substance from a dead tree.
“I owe you a confession, Joey,” I said.
“You owe me a—” He turned his head on the pillow to look at me.
“Yeah, I haven’t been honest with you.”
His brow became netted with lines.
“I cooked the books on you a little bit,” I said. “You wanted me to tell Weldon you weren’t going down by yourself. I did as you asked, but I told the same thing to Bobby Earl.”
His head lifted an inch off the pillow.
“You told Earl—” His breath was rasping. “You told Earl what?”
“That you’re going to take other people down with you.”
“Why you trying to tie me with Earl?”
“You seem to know a lot of the same people, Joey.”
His face was gray and dry. His eyes searched in mine.
“I got you figured,” he said. “You’re trying to put out word to the AB I’m gonna roll over. That’s it, ain’t it? You’re gonna keep squeezing me till I cop to some bullshit plea. Do you know what you’re doing, man? The A
B’s not part of the organization. They think somebody’s gonna rat-out a member, it’s an open contract. They’re in every joint in the country. You do time when there’s an AB hit on you, you do it in lockup. I mean with a solid iron door, too, man, or they’ll get you with a Molotov through the bars. That’s what you’re trying to bring down on me? That’s why you’re pulling on Bobby Earl’s crank? That’s a lousy fucking thing to do, man.”
“Would Jewel Fluck try to whack you, Joey?”
His eyes narrowed and grew wary.
“I saw him take out Eddy Raintree. It was pretty ugly.”
“I got no more to say to you.”
“I can’t blame you. I’d feel the same way if all the doors were slamming around me. But think about it this way, Joey. You’re a made guy. There’re cops who respect that. Are you going to do major time while a guy like Bobby Earl sips Cold Duck and gets his picture on the society page? He’s a Nazi, Joey, the honest-to-God real article. Are you going to take a jolt for a guy like that?”
He leaned over the side of the bed and spit in the waste basket. I looked the other way.
“Drop dead, man. I don’t know anything about Bobby Earl.”
I studied his face. His skin was grained, unshaved, filled with twitches.
“What are you staring at?” he said.
“Give him up.”
“You must have some kind of brain tumor or something. Nothing I say seems to get in your head. You guys ain’t gonna do this stuff to me. You tell these local bozos I’m walking out of this beef. I’m not doing time, I’m not getting whacked in custody, either. I ain’t getting whacked. Can you handle that, Jack?”
“The local bozos aren’t taking a lot of interest in your point of view, Joey. Every once in a while a token guy gets dropped in the skillet, and this time it looks like you’re it. It might not be fair, but that’s the way it works. You never saw a mob run across town to do a good deed, did you?”
He tried to turn away from me, but his wrist clanked the handcuff chain against the bed rail. He hit the mattress with his other fist, then clenched his arm over his eyes.
“I want you to leave me alone,” he said.
I got up from the chair and walked to the door. His chained right foot stuck out from under the sheet. He tried to clear his throat and instead choked on his saliva.
“I’ll see about the canned goods and the hot plate,” I said.
He worked the sheet up to his chin, kept his arm pressed tightly across his eyes, and didn’t reply.
I ARRRIVED IN the park before Bootsie and Alafair and walked idly along the bayou’s edge under the trees. Desiccated gray leaves were scattered along the mudbank. I squatted down and flipped pebbles at several thin, needle-nosed garfish that were turning in the current.
I was troubled, uncomfortable, but I couldn’t wrap my hand around the central concern in my mind.
Joey Gouza was in custody, where he belonged. Why did I worry?
Policemen often have many personal problems. TV films go to great lengths to depict cops’ struggles with alcoholism, bad marriages, mistreatment at the hands of liberals, racial minorities, and bumbling administrators.
But my experience has been that the real enemy is the temptation to misuse power. The weaponry we possess is awesome—leaded batons, slapjacks, Mace, stun guns, M-16s, scoped sniper rifles, 12-gauge assault shotguns, high-powered pistols and steel-jacketed ammunition that can blow the cylinders out of an automobile’s engine block.
But the real rush is in the discretionary power we sometimes exercise over individuals. I’m talking about the kind of people no one likes—the lowlifes, the aberrant, the obscene and ugly—about whom no one will complain if you leave them in lockdown the rest of their lives with a good-humored wink at the Constitution, or if you’re really in earnest, you create a situation where you simply saw loose their fastenings and throw down a toy gun for someone to find when the smoke clears.
It happens, with some regularity.
I saw Bootsie and Alafair setting out picnic food on a table by the baseball diamond and I walked over to join them. Alafair streaked past me, her face already flushed with expectation.
“Hey, where you going, little guy?” I said.
“To play kickball.”
“Don’t blind anyone.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Then she turned and plunged into the midst of the game, knocking another child to the ground. I sat down in the shade with Bootsie and ate a piece of fried chicken and two or three bites of dirty rice before my attention wandered.
“Did something happen this morning?” Bootsie asked.
“No, not really. Joey Gouza’s probably having his day in the Garden of Gethsemane, but I guess that’s the breaks.”
“Do you feel bad about him for some reason?”
“I don’t know what I feel. I suppose he deserves anything that happens to him.”
“Then what is it?”
“I think he’s in jail for the wrong reasons. I think Drew Sonnier is lying. I also think nobody cares whether Drew is lying or not.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Dave. If he didn’t do it to her, who did?”
Out on the field the kids had torn loose a base pad from its fastening in the sand, where it served as the home base for one side. Alafair had the volleyball under one arm and was trying to replace the wooden peg in the sand without anyone else taking the ball from her.
“I don’t know who did it,” I said. “Maybe Gouza ordered it done as a warning to Weldon, then Drew lied to put him at the scene. But a guy like Gouza doesn’t go out on a job himself.”
“It’s the city’s case. It’s not your responsibility.”
“I twisted him. I made Bobby Earl think Gouza was going to drop the dime on him, then I told Gouza about it. The guy’s experiencing some real psychological pain. He thinks a hit’s out on him.”
“Is there?”
“Maybe. And if there is, I might be responsible.”
“Dave, a man like that is a human garbage truck. Whatever happens to him is the result of choices he made years ago. . . . Are you listening?”
“Sure,” I said. But I was watching Alafair. She couldn’t hold the wooden peg with one hand and tamp it down in the sand without releasing the volleyball with the other, so she balanced the peg against her folded knee, then knocked it down with the heel of her free hand.
“What is it?” Bootsie said.
“Nothing,” I said. “You’re right about Joey Gouza. It would be impossible to be more than a footnote in that guy’s life.”
“Do you want another piece of chicken?”
“No, I’d better get back to the office.”
“Let the city people handle it, cher.”
“Yeah, why not?” I said. “That’s the best idea.”
She squinted one eye at me, and I averted my gaze.
TEN MINUTES AFTER I was back at the office, my phone rang.
“Dave?” His voice was cautious, almost deferential, as though he were afraid I’d hang up.
“Yeah, what is it, Weldon?”
He waited a moment to reply. In the background I could hear “La Jolie Blonde” on a jukebox and the rattle of pool balls.
“You want to have a bowl of gumbo down at Tee Neg’s?” he asked.
“I’ve already eaten, thanks.”
“You shoot pool?”
“Once in a while. What’s up?”
“Come down and shoot some nine-ball with me.”
“I’m a little busy right now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“About what?”
“For taking a punch at you. I’m sorry I did it. I wanted to tell you that.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all . . . ‘okay’?”
“I pushed you into a hard corner, Weldon.”
“You’re not still heated up about it?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“B
ecause I wouldn’t want you mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“So come down and shoot some nine-ball.”
“No more games, podna. What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve got to get out of this situation. I need some help. I don’t know anybody else to ask.”
After I hung up I drove over to Tee Neg’s pool hall on Main Street. The interior had changed little since the 1940s. A long mahogany bar with a brass rail and cuspidors ran the length of the room, and on it were gallon jars of cracklings (which are called graton in southern Louisiana), hard-boiled eggs, and pickled hogs’ feet. Wood-bladed fans hung from the ceiling; green sawdust was scattered on the floor; and the pool tables were lighted by tin-shaded lamps. In the back, under the blackboards that gave ball scores from all around the country, old men played dominoes and bourée at the felt tables, and a black man in a porter’s apron shined shoes on a scrolled-iron elevated stand. The air was thick and close with the smell of gumbo, boiled crawfish, draft beer, whiskey, dirty-rice dressing, chewing tobacco, cigarette smoke, and talcum from the pool tables. During football season illegal betting cards littered the mahogany bar and the floor, and on Saturday night, after all the scores were in, Tee Neg (which means “Little Negro” in Cajun French) put oilcloth over the pool tables and served free robin gumbo and dirty rice.
I saw Weldon shooting pool by himself at a table in back. He wore a pair of work boots, clean khakis, and a denim shirt with the sleeves folded in neat cuffs on his tan biceps. He rifled the nine ball into the side pocket.
“You shouldn’t ever hit a side-pocket shot hard,” I said.
“Scared money never wins,” he said, sat at a table with his cue balanced against his thigh, knocked back a jigger of neat whiskey, and chased it with draft beer. He wiped at the corner of his mouth with his wrist. “You want a beer or a cold drink or something?”
“No thanks. What can I do to help you, Weldon?”
He scratched at his brow.
“I want to give it up, but I don’t want to do any time,” he said.
“Not many people do.”
“What I mean is, I can’t do time. I’ve got a problem with tight places. Like if I get in one, I hear popsicle sticks snapping inside my head.”
He motioned his empty jigger at the bar.