“I've got an awful feeling, Streak. It's like somebody put out a cigarette on my stomach lining. I get up in the morning with it.”
“Feeling about what?”
“They tore Delia Landry apart with their bare hands. They took down Sonny Marsallus in broad daylight. You watch your butt, you understand me?”
“Don't worry about me.”
I heard her hand clench and squeak on the receiver.
“I'm not explaining myself well,” she said. “When I dropped those two perps, I saw my face on theirs. That's how I feel now. Do you understand what I'm talking about?”
I told her it was her imagination, to get away from that kind of thinking. I told her Batist was waiting for me down at the dock.
My answer was not an honest one.
Later, I sat in the backyard and tried to convince myself that my evasiveness was based on concern for a friend. A physician turns his eyes into meaningless glass, shows no expression when he listens through a stethoscope, I told myself. But that wasn't it. Her fear, whether for me or herself, had made me angry.
When you buy into premonitions, you jinx yourself and everyone around you. Ask anyone who's smelled its vinegar reek in the man next to him.
I remembered a helicopter hovering against a fiery red ball that could have been heated in a devil's forge, its blades thropping monotonously, the red dust and plumes from smoke grenades swirling into the air. But for those of us who lay on poncho liners, our wounds sealed with crusted field dressings and our own dried fluids, the dust was forming itself into an enormous, animate shape-domed, slack-jawed, leering, the nose a jagged hole cut in bone, a death's head that ballooned larger and larger above the clearing and called our names through the churning of the blades, the din of voices on the ground, the popping of small-arms fire that was now part of somebody else's war, just like the watery sound of a human voice speaking into an electric fan.
And if you did not shut out the syllables of your name, or if you looked into the face of the man next to you and allowed the peculiar light in his eyes to steal into your own, your soul could take flight from your breast as quickly as a dog tag being snipped onto a wire ring.
The sheriff called me early the next morning.
“I can't just deal you out, Dave. You need to be told this,” he said.
“What?”
“Sweet Pea and a black woman. We're not sure who she is yet.”
“Could you start over?” I said.
During the night a farmer had seen a cone of fire burning in an oak grove out by Cade. The heat was so intense the trees were scaled and baked into black stone. After the firemen covered the Cadillac with foam and stared through the smoke still billowing off the exploded tires, they made out the carbonized remains of two figures sitting erectly on the springs of the front seat, their lipless mouths wide with secrets that had risen like ash into the scorched air.
“The pathologist says double-ought bucks,” the sheriff said.
But he knew that was not the information I was waiting for.
“Sweet Pea had on a locket with his mother's name engraved on it,” he said. Then he said, “I don't have any idea who she is, Dave. Look, I've already tried to find Ruthie Jean. She's disappeared. What else can I tell you? I don't like making this damn phone call.”
I guess you don't, I thought.
Chapter 24
i CALLED CLETE at the small house he had rented by City Park and asked him to meet me at the office on Main. When I got there the newly hired secretary was hanging a curtain on the front window. She was a short, thick-bodied blond woman, with orange rouge on her cheeks and a pleasant smile. “Clete didn't get here yet?” I said. “He went for some coffee. Are you Mr. Robicheaux?”
“Yes. How do you do? I'm sorry, I didn't get your name.”
“Terry Serrett. It's nice to know you, Mr. Robicheaux.”
“You're not from New Iberia, are you?”
“No, I grew up in Opelousas.”
“I see. Well, it's nice meeting you,” I said. Through the window I saw Clete crossing the street with a box of doughnuts and three sealed paper cups of coffee. I met him at the door. “Let's take it with us,” I said. He drove with one hand and ate with the other on the way out to Cade. The top was down and his sandy hair was blowing on his forehead. “How are you going to pay a secretary?” I said.
“She works for five bucks an hour.”
“That's five bucks more than we're making,” I said.
He shook his head and smiled to himself.
“What's the joke?” I asked.
“We're going out to see where Sweet Pea Chaisson got turned into a human candle.”
“Yeah?”
“Are we on somebody's clock? Am I a dumb shit who's missed something?”
“You want to go back?”
He set his coffee cup in a wire ring that was attached to his dashboard and tried to put on his porkpie hat without losing it in the wind.
“You think they're wiping the slate clean?” he said.
“Their object lessons tend to be in Technicolor.”
“Why the black woman?”
“Wrong place, wrong time, maybe. Unless the dead woman is Ruthie Jean Fontenot.”
“I don't get it. Black people keep showing up in the middle of all this bullshit. Let's face it, mon. Ripping off the food stamp brigade isn't exactly the big score for these guys.”
“It's land.”
“For what?”
I didn't have an answer.
We drove down a gravel road through sugar and cattle acreage, then turned into an empty field where a section of barbed wire fence had been knocked flat. The weeds in the field were crisscrossed with tire tracks, and in the distance I could see the oak grove and a bright yellow strand of crime scene tape jittering in the wind.
Clete parked by the trees and we got out and walked into the shade. The fire-gutted, lopsided shell of Sweet Pea's convertible was covered with magpies. I picked up a rock and sailed it into the frame; they rose in an angry clatter through the leafless branches overhead.
Clete fanned the air in front of his face.
“I don't think the ME got everything off the springs,” he said.
“Look at this,” I said. “There's glass blown into the backseat and a partial pattern on top of the door.” I inserted my little finger into a ragged hole at the top of the passenger door, then looked at the ground for empty shell casings. There weren't any.
“What a way to get it,” Clete said.
“You can see the angle of fire,” I said. “Look at the holes in the paneling just behind the driver's seat.” I aimed over the top of my extended arm and stepped backward several feet. “Somebody stood just about where I'm standing now and fired right into their faces.”
“I don't see Sweet Pea letting himself get set up like this,” Clete said.
“Somebody he trusted got in the backseat. Another car followed. Then the dice were out of the cup.”
“I got to get out of this smell,” Clete said. He walked back into the sunlight, spit in the weeds, and wiped his eyes on his forearm.
“You all right?” I said.
“In ”Nam I saw a tank burn. The guys inside couldn't get out. I don't like remembering it, that's all.“
I nodded.
”So I probably signed Sweet Pea's death warrant when I put him in the trunk of my car,“ he said. ”But that's the breaks, right? One more piece of shit scrubbed off the planet.“ With his shoe he rubbed the place where he had spit.
”You blaming yourself for the woman?“ I asked.
He didn't have time to answer. We heard a car on the gravel road. It slowed, then turned through the downed fence and rolled across the field, the weeds rattling and flattening under the bumper.
”I know that guy, what's his name, he thinks we should be buddies because we were both in the Crotch,“ Clete said.
”Rufus Arceneaux,“ I said.
”Oh, oh, he doesn't look like
he wants to be friends anymore.“
Rufus cut the engine and got out of the car. He wore tight blue jeans and a faded yellow polo shirt and his pilot's sunglasses, with his badge and holster clipped on a western belt. A small black boy of about ten, in an Astros baseball cap and oversize T-shirt, sat in the backseat. The windows were rolled up to keep the air-conditioning inside the car. But the engine was off now and the doors were shut.
”What the hell do you think you're doing?“ Rufus said.
”The sheriff called me this morning,“ I said.
”He told you to come out here?“
”Not exactly.“
”Then you'd better get out of here.“
”Did y'all find out who the broad was?“ Clete said.
”It's not your business, pal,“ Rufus said.
”Pal. Terrific,“ Clete said. ”Who's the kid? He looks like he's about to melt.“
”Did y'all find any shell casings?“ I said, and opened the back door to Rufus's car and brought the little boy outside. There was a dark, inverted V in his blue jeans where he had wet his pants.
”I don't know what it is with you, Robicheaux,“ Rufus said. ”But, to be honest, I'd like to beat the living shit out of you.“
”What are you doing with the boy?“ I said.
”His mother didn't come home. I'm taking him to the shelter. Now, y'all get the fuck out of here.“
I squatted down on my haunches and looked into the little boy's face.
His upper lip was beaded with sweat.
”Where do you live, podna?“ I asked.
”In the trailer, up yonder on the road.“
”What's your mama's name?“
”Gloria Dumaine. They call her “Glo' where she work.”
“Does she work at the juke?” I said.
“Yes, suh. That's where she gone last night. She ain't been back.”
I stood erect and put my fingers lightly on Rufus's arm, turned him toward the trees. I saw the skin stretch tight at the corners of his eyes.
“Walk over here with me,” I said.
“What .. .”
“I know his mother,” I said. “She knew something about the decapitated floater we pulled out of the slough in Vermilion Parish. I think she was in the car with Sweet Pea.”
He removed his sunglasses, his eyes looking from the burned Caddy to the little boy. His mouth was a tight seam, hooked downward at the corners, his expression wary, as though a trap were being set for him.
“Take the little boy to the shelter. I'll call the sheriff and tell him what I told you,” I said.
“I'll handle it from here,” he said.
I walked over to Clete's convertible and got inside.
“Let's hit it,” I said.
As we drove across the field toward the gravel road, I looked back toward the oak grove. Rufus was squatting on his haunches, smoking a cigarette, staring at the scorched hulk in the trees, a man whose keen vision could snap the twine off Gordian knots. The little boy stood unnoticed and unattended in the sunlight, like a black peg tamped into the weeds, one hand trying to hide the wetness in his jeans.
They had killed Sweet Pea and Gloria. Who was next? I didn't want to think about it.
I drove to the office on Main with Clete, then walked down to Moleen Bertrand's law offices across from the Shadows. His secretary told me he had gone home for lunch. I drove across the drawbridge, past the old gray stone convent, which was now closed and awaiting the wrecking ball, and followed the winding drive through City Park to Moleen's deep, oak-shaded lawn and rambling white house on Bayou Teche.
Julia was spading weeds out of a rose bed by the driveway, a conical straw hat on her head. She looked up and smiled at me as I drove by.
Her shoulders were tan and covered with freckles and the skin above her halter looked dry and coarse in the sunlight. Behind her, balanced in the St. Augustine grass, was a tall highball glass wrapped with a napkin and rubber band.
2) O
Moleen was eating a tuna fish sandwich on a paper plate inside the Plexiglas-enclosed back porch. He looked rested, composed, his eyes clear, almost serene. Outside, blue hydrangeas bloomed as big as cantaloupes against the glass. “I'm sorry to bother you at home,” I said. “It's no bother. Sit down. What can I do for you? You want something to eat?”
“You're looking good.”
“I'm glad you approve.”
“I'm not here to give you a bad time, Moleen.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you hear about a guy named Sweet Pea Chaisson getting whacked out by Cade?”
“I'm afraid not.”
“A black woman died with him.” He nodded, the sandwich in his mouth. His eyes were flat. Against the far wall was a mahogany-and-glass case full of shotguns and bolt-action rifles. “Call it off,” I said. “What?”
“I think you have influence with certain people.”
“I have influence over no one, my friend.”
“Where's Ruthie Jean?”
“You're abusing my hospitality, sir.”
“Give it up, Moleen.
Change your life. Get away from these guys while there's time.” His eyes dropped to his plate; the ball of one finger worked at the corner of his mouth. When he looked at me again, I could see a nakedness in his face, a thought translating into words, a swelling in the voice box, the lips parting as though he were about to step across a line and clasp someone's extended hand. Then it disappeared. “Thanks for dropping by,” he said. “Yeah, you bet, Moleen. I don't think you picked up on my purpose, though.”
“I didn't?” he said, wiping his chin with a linen napkin, his white shirt as crinkly and fresh as if he had just put it on.
“I have a feeling me and Clete Purcel might be on somebody's list.
Don't let me be right.”
He looked at something outside, a butterfly hovering in a warm air current against the glass.
“Read Faust, Moleen. Pride's a pile of shit,” I said.
“I was never theologically inclined.”
“See you,” I said, and walked out into the humidity and the acrid reek of the chemical fertilizer Julia was feverishly working into her rosebushes.
But my conversation with him was not over. Two hours later he called me at the bait shop.
“I don't want to see you or your friend harmed. That's God's honest truth,” he said.
“Then tell me what you're into.”
“Dave, take the scales off your eyes. We don't serve flags or nations anymore. It's all business today. The ethos of Robert E. Lee is as dead as the world we grew up in.”
“Speak for yourself.”
He slammed the receiver down.
It was hot and dry that night, and through the bedroom I could see veins of heat lightning crawl and flicker through the clouds high above the swamp. Bootsie woke and turned toward me. The window fan made revolving shadows on her face and shoulders.
“Can't you sleep?” she said.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you.”
“Are you worried about our finances?”
“Not really. We're doing okay.”
She placed one arm across my side.
“The department did you wrong, Dave. Accept it and let it go. We don't need them. What do you call that in AA?”
“Working the Third Step. But that's not it, Boots. I think Johnny
Giacano or these military guys are starting to take people off the board.”
“They'd better not try it around here,” she said. I looked into her face. It was calm, without anger or any display of self-manufactured feeling. Then she said, “If one of those sons of-bitches tries to harm anyone in this family, he's going to think the wrath of God walked into his life.” I started to smile, then looked at the expression in her eyes and thought better of it. “I believe you, kiddo,” I said. “Kiddo, yourself,” she answered. She tilted her head slightly on the pillow and moved her fingers on my hip. I kissed her mouth, then her eye
s and hair and ran my hands down her back. Bootsie never did anything in half measures. She closed the door that gave onto the hallway-in case Alafair got up from bed and went into the kitchen for a drink of water-then pulled off her nightgown and stepped out of her panties in front of the window. She had the smoothest complexion of any woman I'd ever known, and in the spinning shadows of the window fan's blades the curves and surfaces of her body looked like those of a perfectly formed statue coming to life against a shattering of primordial light. I moved on top of her and she hooked her legs inside mine and pressed her palms into the small of my back, buried her mouth in my neck, ran her fingers up my spine into my hair, rolled her rump in a slow circle as her breath grew louder in my ear and her words became a single, heart-twisting syllable: “Dave .. . Dave .. . Dave …
oh Dave …” It started to rain outside, unexpectedly, the water sluicing hard off the roof, splaying in front of the window fan. The wind-stiffened branches of the oak tree seemed to drip with a wet light, and I felt Bootsie lock her arms around my rib cage and draw me deeper inside her, into coral caves beneath the sea where there was neither thought nor fear, only an encompassing undulating current that rose and fell as warmly as her breast.
I had wired my house with a burglar alarm system that I couldn't afford and had taught my thirteen-year-old daughter how to use a weapon that could turn an intruder into potted meat product.
I also had dragged “my insomnia and worry into the nocturnal world of my wife.
Who was becoming the prisoner of fear? Or, better put, who was allowing himself to become a spectator while others wrote his script?
Early Saturday morning Clete took one of my outboards down the bayou, with his spinning rod and a carton of red wigglers, and came back with a stringer of bream and sun perch that he lifted out of his cooler like a heavy, gold-green ice-slick chain. He knelt on the planks in the lee of the bait shop and began cleaning them in a pan of bloody water, neatly half-mooning the heads off at the gills.
”You should have gone out with me,“ he said.
”That's like inviting the postman for a long walk on his day off,“ I said.
He put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and smiled. The fish blood on his fingers made tiny prints on the cigarette paper.