I opened the screen door to the shop but hated to look. The jar of pickled hogs’ feet was smashed on the floor; half-eaten candy bars, hard-boiled eggs, and cracklings, called graton in Cajun French, were scattered on the counter. In the midst of it all, locked in a wire crab trap, Tripod, Alafair’s three-legged coon, stared back at me.
I picked him up in my arms and carried him outside. He was a beautiful coon, with silver-tipped fur and black rings on his tail, a fat stomach and big paws that could turn doorknobs and twist tops off of jars.
“I’ll send Alf down to clean it up,” I said.
“It ain’t right that coon keep messing up the shop, Dave.”
“It looks to me like somebody left a window open.”
“That’s right. Somebody. “Cause I closed every one of them.”
I stopped.
“I didn’t come down here last night, partner, if that’s what you’re saying.”
He straightened up from a table, with the wiping rag in his hand. His face seemed to gather with a private concern. Two fishermen with a minnow bucket and a beer cooler stood by the door of the shop and looked at us impatiently.
“You wasn’t down here last night, Dave?” he asked.
“No. What is it?”
He inserted his thumb and forefinger in the watch pocket of the bell-bottom dungarees he wore.
“This was on the windowsill this morning. I t’ought it was some-ting you found on the flo’,” he said, and placed the oblong piece of stamped metal in my hand. “What you call them t’ings?”
“A dog tag.” I read the name on it, then read it again.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
I felt my hand close on the tag, felt the edges bite into my palm.
“You know I cain’t read, me. I didn’t want to give you so meting bad, no.”
“It’s all right. Help those gentlemen there, will you? I’ll be back down in a minute,” I said.
“It ain’t good you not tell me.”
“It’s the name of a man I was in the army with. It’s some kind of coincidence. Don’t worry about it.”
But in his eyes I could see the self-imposed conviction that somehow his own ineptitude or lack of education had caused me injury.
“I ain’t mad about that coon, Dave,” he said. “Coon gonna be a coon. Tell Alafair it ain’t nobody’s fault.”
I sat at the redwood table with a cup of coffee under the mimosa tree in the backyard, which was still cool and blue with shadow. The breeze ruffled the periwinkles and willows along the edge of the coulee, and two greenhead mallards, who stayed with us year-round, were skittering across the surface of the pond at the back of our property.
The stainless steel dog tag contained the name of Roy J. Bumgartner, his serial number, blood type, religion, and branch of service, the simple and pragmatic encapsulation of a human life that can be vertically inserted as neatly as a safety razor between the teeth and locked in place with one sharp blow to the chin.
I remembered him well, a nineteen-year-old warrant officer from Galveston, Texas, who had brought the slick in low out of the molten sun, the canopy and elephant grass flattening under the down draft while AK-47 rounds whanged off the ship’s air-frame like tack hammers. Ten minutes later, the floor piled with wounded grunts, their foreheads painted with Mercurochromed Ms to indicate the morphine that laced their hearts, we lifted off from the LZ and flew back through the same curtain of automatic weapons fire, the helicopter blades thropping, the windows pocking with holes like skin blisters snapping.
My body was as dry and dehydrated as a lizard’s skin, all the moisture used up by the blood-expander the medic had given me during the night, the way spilled water evaporates off a hot stove. The same medic, a sweaty Italian kid from Staten Island, naked to the waist, held me in his arms now, and kept saying, as much to convince himself as me, You’re gonna make it, Loot... Say good-bye to Shitsville ... You’re going home alive in sixty-five ... Bum’s chauffeuring this baby right into Battalion Aid ... They got refrigeration, Loot ... Plasma ... Don’t put your hands down there ... I mean it... Hey, somebody hold his goddamn hands.
With the ship yawing and grooves shearing out of the rotary and black smoke from an electrical fire spiraling back through the interior, the rice paddies and earthen dikes and burned-out hooches streaking by below us, I stared at the back of the pilot’s head as though my thoughts, which were like a scream inside my skull, could penetrate his: You can do it, pappy, you can do it, pappy, you can do it, pappy.
Then he turned and looked behind him, and I saw his thin blond face inside his helmet, the dry lump of chewing tobacco in his cheek, the red field dressing across one eye, the bloodshot and desperate energies in the other, and I knew, even before I saw the waves sliding onto the beach from the South China Sea, that we were going to make it, that no one this brave could perish.
But that conclusion was born out of political innocence and a soldier’s naive belief that he would never be abandoned by his own government.
Bootsie brought me another cup of coffee and a bowl of Grape-Nuts with milk and blackberries in it. She wore a pair of faded jeans and a beige sleeveless shirt, and her face looked cool and fresh in the soft light.
“What’s that?” she said.
“A dog tag that’s thirty years old.”
She touched the tag with the balls of her fingers, then turned it over.
“It belonged to a guy who disappeared into Laos,” I said. “He never came back home. I think he’s one of those who got written off by Nixon and Kissinger.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Batist found it on the windowsill in the bait shop this morning. It’s thespian bullshit of some kind. Last night somebody put a rusted leg iron on the seat of my truck.”
“Did you tell the sheriff?”
“I’ll talk to him Monday.”
I chewed a mouthful of Grape-Nuts and kept my face empty.
“Alafair’s still asleep. You want to go back inside for a little while?”
“You bet.”
A few minutes later we lay on top of the sheets in our bedroom. The curtains were gauzy and white with small roses printed on them, and they puffed in the breeze that blew through the azaleas and pecan trees in the side yard. Bootsie kissed like no woman I ever knew. Her face would come close to mine, her mouth parting, then she would angle her head slightly and touch her lips dryly against mine, remove them, her eyes never leaving mine; then she’d brush my lips with hers one more time, her fingernails making a slow circle in the back of my hair, her right hand moving down my stomach while her tongue slid across my teeth.
She made love without inhibition or self-consciousness, and never with stint or a harbored resentment. She sat on top of me, took me in her hand, and placed me deep inside her, her thighs widening, a wet murmur breaking from her throat. Then she propped herself on both arms so that her breasts hung close to my face, her breath coming faster now, her skin bright with a thin sheen of sweat. I felt her heat spreading into my loins, as though it were she who was controlling the moment for both of us. She leaned closer, gathering herself around me, her feet under my thighs, her face flushed and growing smaller and turning inward now, her hair damp against her skin like swirls of honey. In my mind’s eye I saw a great hard-bodied tarpon, thick and stiff with life, glide through tunnels of pink coral and waving sea fans, then burst through a wave in strings of foam and light.
Afterward, she lay inside my arm and touched what seemed to me all the marks of my mortality and growing age—the white patch of hair on the side of my head, my mustache, now flecked with silver, the puckered indentation from a .38 round below my left collarbone, the gray scar, like a flattened earthworm, from a pun gi stick, on my stomach, and the spray of arrow-shaped welts on my thigh where steel shards from a Bouncing Betty still lay embedded. Then she rolled against me and kissed me on the cheek.
“What’s that for?” I said.
“Because
you’re the best, cher”
“You, too, Boots.”
“But you’re not telling me something.”
“I have a bad feeling about this one.”
She raised up on one elbow and looked into my face. Her bare hip looked sculpted, like pink marble, against the light outside.
“These two murders,” I said. “We’re not dealing with local dimwits.”
“So?”
“It’s an old problem, Boots. They come from places they’ve already ruined, and then it’s our turn. By the time we figure out we’re dealing with major leaguers, they’ve been through the clock shop with baseball bats.”
“That’s why we hire cops like you,” she said, and tried to smile. When I didn’t answer, she said, “We can’t remove south Louisiana from the rest of the world, Dave.”
“Maybe we should give it a try.”
She lay against me and placed her hand on my heart. She smelled of shampoo and flowers and the milky heat in her skin. Outside, I could hear crows cawing angrily in a tree as the sun broke out of the clouds like a heliograph.
Chapter 7
IT’S PROBABLY SAFE to say the majority of them are self-deluded, uneducated, fearful of women, and defective physically. Their political knowledge, usually gathered from paramilitary magazines, has the moral dimensions of comic books. Some of them have been kicked out of the service on bad conduct and dishonorable discharges; others have neither the physical nor mental capacity to successfully complete traditional basic training in the U.S. Army. After they pay large sums of money to slap mosquitoes at a mere training camp in the piney woods of north Florida, they have themselves tattooed with death heads and grandiloquently toast one another, usually in pecker wood accents, with the classic Legionnaire’s paean to spiritual nihilism, “Vive la guerre, vive la mort.”
Miami is full of them.
If you want to connect with them in the New Orleans area, you cross the river over to Algiers into a neighborhood of pawnshops and Vietnamese-owned grocery stores and low-rent bars, and visit Tommy Carrol’s Gun & Surplus.
It was Sunday evening, and Helen Soileau and I were off the clock and out of our jurisdiction. Tommy Carrol, whom I had never met, was locking up his glass gun cases and about to close. He wojje baggy camouflage trousers, polished combat boots, and a wide-necked bright yellow T-shirt, like body builders wear. His shaved head reminded me of an alabaster bowling ball. He chewed and snapped his gum maniacally, his eyes flicking back and forth from his work to Helen and me as we walked in file between the stacks of survival gear, ammunition, inflatable rafts, knife display cases, and chained racks of bolt-action military rifles.
“So I’m stuck again with me goddamn kids, that’s what you’re saying?” Helen said over her shoulder to me. She wore tan slacks, lacquered straw sandals, and a flowered shirt hanging outside her belt. She sipped from a can of beer that was wrapped in a brown bag.
“Did I say that? Did I say that?” I said at her back.
“You need something?” Tommy Carrol said.
“Yeah, a couple of Excedrin,” I said.
“Is there a problem here?” Tommy Carrol asked.
“I’m looking for Sonny Boy Marsallus,” I said.
“Don’t tell us the herpes outpatient clinic, either. We already been there,” Helen said.
“Shut up, Helen,” I said.
“Did I marry Mr. Goodwrench or not?” she said.
“What’s going on?” Tommy asked, his gum snapping in his jaw.
“Doesn’t Sonny hang in here?” I said.
“Sometimes. I mean he used to. Not anymore.”
“Helen, why don’t you go sit in the car?” I said.
“Because I don’t feel like changing diapers on your goddamn kids.”
“I’ve been out of the loop,” I said to Tommy. “I’d like to get back to work.”
“Doing what?”
“Peace Corps. Isn’t this the sign-up place?” I said.
He arched his eyebrows and looked sideways. Then he made a tent on his chest with the fingers of one hand. His eyes were like blue marbles.
“It makes you feel better to jerk my Johnson, be my guest,” he said. “But I’m closing up, I don’t have any contact with Sonny, and I got nothing to do with other people’s family troubles.” He widened his eyes for emphasis.
“This is the guy knows all the meres?” Helen said, and brayed at her own irony. She upended her beer can until it was empty. “I’m driving down to the store on the corner. If you’re not there in five minutes, you can ride the goddamn bus home.”
She let the glass door slam behind her. Tommy stared after her. “For real, that’s your wife?” he said, chewing his gum.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your experience? Maybe I can help.”
“One tour in “Nam. Some diddle-shit stuff with the tomato pickers.”
He pushed a pencil and pad across the glass countertop.
“Write your name and number down there. I’ll see what I can come up with.”
“You can’t hook me up with Sonny?”
“Like I say, I don’t see him around, you know what I mean?” His eyes were as bright as blue silk, locked on mine, a lump of cartilage working in his jaw.
“He’s out of town and nobody’s missing him?” I smiled at him.
“You summed it up.”
“How about two guys who look like Mutt and Jeff?”
He began shaking his head noncommittally. “The short guy’s got a fire hydrant for a neck. Maybe he did some work for Idi Amin. Maybe Sonny Boy popped a cap on his brother,” I said.
His eyes stayed fixed on mine, but I saw his hand tic on the countertop, heard his heavy ring click on the glass. He picked up the notepad from the countertop and tossed it on a littered desk behind him.
“You shouldn’t job me, man,” he said. His eyes were unblinking, his gum rolling on his teeth.
“You think I’m a cop?”
“You got it, Jack.”
“You’re right.” I opened my badge holder on the countertop. “You know who the guy with the sawed-off neck is, don’t you?”
He dropped his ring of keys in his pocket and called out to a man sweeping the wood floors in front, “Lock it up, Mack. I’m gonna see what the old woman’s got for supper. The fun guy here is a cop. But you don’t have to talk to him, you don’t want.” Then he spat his chewing gum neatly into a trash bag and clanged through a metal door into the back alley.
I went through the door after him. He began to walk rapidly toward his car, his keys ringing in the pocket of his camouflage trousers.
“Hold on, Tommy,” I said.
Helen had parked her car by the end of the alley, next to a Dumpster and a stand of banana trees that grew along a brick wall. She got out of her car with her baton in her hand.
“Right there, motherfucker!” she said, breaking into a run. “Freeze! Did you hear me? I said freeze, goddamn it!”
But Tommy Carrol was not a good listener and tried to make his automobile. She whipped the baton behind his knee, and his leg folded under him as though she had severed a tendon. He crashed into the side of his car door, his knee held up before him with both hands, his mouth open as though he were trying to blow the fire out of a burn.
“Damn it, Helen,” I said between my teeth.
“He shouldn’t have run,” she said. “Right, Tommy? You got nothing to hide, you don’t need to run. Tell me I’m right, Tommy.”
“Lay off him, Helen. I mean it.” I helped him up by one arm, opened his car door, and sat him down in the seat. An elderly black woman, pulling a child’s wagon, with a blue rag tired around her head, came off the side street and began rooting in the Dumpster.
“I’m going to file charges on you people,” Tommy said.
“That’s your right. Who’s the short guy, Tommy?” I said.
“You know what? I’m gonna tell you. It’s Emile Pogue. Send the mutt here after him. She’ll make a great stuffed
head.”
I heard Helen move behind me, gravel scrape under her shoes. “No,” I said, and held up my hand in front of her.
Tommy kneaded the back of his leg with both hands. A thick blue vein pulsed in his shaved scalp.
“Here’s something else to take with you, too,” he said. “Emile didn’t work for Idi Amin. Emile trained him at an Israeli jump school. You jack-offs don’t have any idea of what you’re fooling with, do you?”
Monday morning I went to the Iberia Parish Court House and began researching the records on the Bertrand plantation out by Cade. Bertie Fontenot maintained that Moleen Bertrand’s grandfather had given a strip of land to several black tenants, her ancestors included, ninety-five years ago, but I could find no record of the transfer. Neither could the clerk of court. The early surveys of the Bertrand property were crude, in French arpents, and made use of coulees and dirt roads as boundaries; the last survey had been done ten years ago for an oil company, and the legal descriptions were clear and the unit designations now in acres. But no matter—there had been no apparent subdivision of the plantation granting Bertie and her neighbors title to the land on which they lived.
The secretary at Moleen’s law office told me he had gone out to the country club to join his wife for lunch. I found them by the putting green, he on a wood bench, only enough bourbon in his glass to stain the water the color of oak, she in a short white pleated skirt and magenta blouse that crinkled with light, her bleached hair and deeply tanned and lined face a deceptive and electric illusion of middle-aged health down in the Sunbelt.
For Julia Bertrand was at the club every day, played a mean eighteen as well as game of bridge, was always charming, and was often the only woman remaining among the male crowd who stayed at the bar through supper time. Her capacity was awesome; she never slurred her words or used profane or coarse language; but her driver’s license had been suspended twice, and years ago, before I was with the sheriff’s department, a Negro child had been killed in a hit-and-run accident out in the parish. Julia Bertrand had been held briefly in custody. But later a witness changed his story, and the parents dropped charges and moved out of state.