Burning Angel

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.

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 eyes 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.

”You look sharp, big mon. How about I take y'all to Possum's for lunch?“ he said.

”Not today… I'm going to New Orleans in a few minutes. I told Bootsie you might hang around a little bit.“

He got to his feet and washed his hands under a faucet by the rail.

”What are you up to, Streak?“

”I'm tired of living in a bull's-eye.“

”Who's going to cover your back, mon?“ he said, drying his hands on a rag.

”Thanks for watching the house,“ I said, and walked back up the dock to my truck. When I looked in the rearview mirror, he was leaning against the dock rail, his face shadowed by his hat, one hand propped on his hip.

The wind was hot blowing across the swamp and smelled of beached gars and humus drying in the sunlight. Just as I started my truck, the shadows of large birds streaked across the surface of the bayou. I looked into the sky and saw a circle of buzzards descending out of their pattern into the cypress, their wings clattering for balance just before they lighted on their prey. There are a lot of ways to see New Orleans. At the right time of day the Quarter is wonderful. A streetcar ride up St. Charles Avenue through the Garden District, past Audubon Park and Tulane, is wonderful anytime. Or you can try it another way, which I don't recommend. Those who feed at the bottom of the food chain-the hookers, pimps, credit card double-billers, Murphy artists, stalls and street dips-usually work out of bars and strip joints and do a relatively minor amount of damage. They're given to the classical hustle and con and purloined purse rather than to physical injury. One rung up are the street dealers. Not all of them, but most, are black, young, dumb, and carry a Jones themselves. The rock they deal in the projects almost guarantees drug-induced psychosis; anything else they sell has been stepped on so many times you might as well try to get high huffing baby laxative or fixing with powdered milk. In another category are people who simply deal in criminal finance. They're usually white, older, have few arrests and own legitimate businesses of some kind. They fence stolen property, operate chop shops, and wash stolen and counterfeit money, which sells for ten to twenty cents on the dollar, depending on its origins or quality. Then there is the edge of the Quarter, where, if you're drunk or truly unlucky, you can wander out of a controlled and cosmetic libertine environment into a piece of moral moonscape-Louis Armstrong Park or the St. Louis cemeteries will do just fine-where kids will shoot a woman through the face at point-blank range for amounts of money you could pry out of a parking meter with a screwdriver. The murders receive national attention when the victim is a foreign tourist. Otherwise, they go on with unremarkable regularity, to the point that Louisiana now has the highest murder rate per capita in the United States.

Those at the top of the chain-dealers who form the liaison between Colombia and the wetlands, casino operators who front points for a Mafia-owned amusement company in Chicago-seldom do time or even have their names publicly connected with the forces they serve. They own newspaper people and literally employ the governor's children. Floating casino owners with state legislators on a pad work their shuck on morning television shows like good-natured Rotarians; Mafiosi who some think conspired to kill John Kennedy tend their roses and dine unnoticed in downtown restaurants.

It's not exaggeration.

I took the tour, thinking I could find information in the streets of New Orleans that had eluded me at home, and came up empty. But what should I have expected? Back alley hypes, graduates of City Prison, and prostitutes with AIDS (one of whom, with a haunted look in her eyes, asked me if the stories were true about this place called Lourdes) were people whose idea of a successful scam was to drill holes in their electric meters and pour honey inside so ants would foul and retard the mechanism or, more indicatively of the fear that defined their lives, wondered daily if the Mexican tar and water they watched bubbling in a heated spoon was not indeed the keyhole to the abyss where all the hungry gargoyles and grinding sounds of their childhoods awaited them.

It rained at dusk and I sat under the pavilion at the Cafe du Monde and ate a plate of beignets with powdered sugar and drank coffee au lait. I was tired and wet and there was a hum, a pinging sound in my head, the way your eardrums feel when you've stayed under water too long at a depth beyond your tolerance. St. Louis Cathedral and the park in Jackson Square were gray in the rain, and a cold mist was blowing under the eaves of the pavilion. A young college couple with a portable stereo crossed against the light and ran breathlessly out of the rain into the cafe and sat at a table next to me. They ordered, and the boy peeled the cellophane off a musical tape and stuck it in his machine.

Anybody who grew up in south Louisiana during the fifties would remember those songs: ”Big Blue Diamond,“ ”Shirley Jean,“ ”Lawdy Miss Clawdy,“ ”I Need Somebody Bad Tonight,“ ”Mathilda,“ ”Betty and Dupree,“ and ”I Got the Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie, Too.“

I hadn't realized I was staring.

”You like those songs?“ the boy said.

”Sure, you bet,“ I said. ”They're hard to beat.“

”We bought them over on the corner. It's great stuff,“ he said.

”I saw those guys. Cookie and the Cupcakes, Lloyd Price, Warren Storm. They used to play around here.“

They smiled and nodded, as though they were familiar with all those names, too, then tried to return to their own conversation without seeming impolite. I felt suddenly old and foolish. I wanted to drive back home, mark off the day, forget all the faces I had looked into, erase the seared voices that could have been those of William Blake's lost souls on Lower Thames Street. But I knew what I had to do. I was no longer a cop. My family was at risk as long as Johnny Carp thought I was a threat to one of his enterprises. I had told Moleen pride was a pile of shit. I wondered how good I would be at accepting my own admonition.

I walked back toward Esplanade, got in my truck, and headed up the entrance ramp to I-10 and Jefferson Parish. I thought I saw a chartreuse Cadillac convertible in my rearview mirror; then it disappeared in a swirl of rain. The Giacano family had successfully controlled New Orleans for many reasons, one of which was the fact that they loved the appearance of normalcy and lived in upper-middle-class homes that didn't draw attention to their wealth. Johnny's limo stayed in a garage downtown; when he drove home from work, it was in his Lincoln. Johnny knew if there was one emotion that could overcome fear-which he instilled in his enemies with regularity-it was envy.

When whites began to flee New Orleans for Jefferson Parish and Metairie, the political base of David Duke, Johnny went with them. He joined any club he could buy his way into, pushed a basket around in the supermarket on Saturday mornings, played softball in the neighborhood park, and on Saturday nights threw huge dinners, where the tables with checkered cloths groaned with platters of pasta, sausage, meatballs, and baked lasagna, at a working-class Italian restaurant by the lake. It was a strange evening. The rain was blowing harder now, and the swells in the lake were dark green and dimpled with rain, the causeway haloed with mist and electric lights all the way across the water to Covington, but the late sun had broken free of the clouds on the horizon and filled the western sky with a red glow like flames inside oil smoke. It was a happy, crowded place, with wide verandas and high windows, private banquet rooms, a long railed bar, potted palms and plush maroon sofas by the cash register. I took off my seersucker coat in the men's room, dried my hair and face with paper towels, straightened my tie, tried to brush the powdered sugar from the Cafe du Monde off my charcoal shirt, then combed my hair and looked in the mirror. I didn't want to go back outside; I didn't want to say the words I would have to say. I had to look away from my own reflection.

Johnny was entertaining in a back room, with lacquered pine paneling and windows that gave onto the lake and the lighted sailboats that rocked in the swells. He was at the bar, in fine form, dressed in tailored, pegged gray slacks, tasseled loafers, plum-colored socks, a bright yellow dress shirt with bloodred cuff links as big as cherries.

His marcelled hair gleamed like liquid plastic, his teeth were pink with wine. The hood at the door was in a jovial mood, too, and when I said, ”I got no piece, I got no shield, Max,“ he smiled and answered, ”I know that, Mr. Robicheaux. Johnny seen you outside. He wants you come on in and have a good time.“

I ordered a Dr. Pepper and drank it five feet from where Johnny was holding a conversation with a half dozen people. My presence never registered in his face while he grinned and beamed and told a joke, rocking on the balls of his feet, his lips pursed as he neared the conclusion of his story, a clutch of fifty-dollar bills folded in a fan between his ringed fingers.

Again, I could hear a peculiar creaking sound in my head, like the weight of a streetcar pinging through steel track. I looked out the rain-streaked side window and thought I saw Clete Purcel staring back at me. When I blinked and widened my eyes, he was gone.

I finished my Dr. Pepper and ordered another. I kept looking directly into Johnny's face. Finally I said it, gave recognition to his power, acknowledged my dependence on his mood and the enormous control he had over the lives of others: ”Johnny, I need a minute of your time.“

”Sure, Dave,“ he said, and moved toward me along the bar, pointed toward his Manhattan glass for the bartender. ”How you doin'? You didn't bring that Irish ape, did you? Hey, just kidding. Purcel don't bother me. You ever know his mother? She was a wet-brain, used to sell out of her pants when her old man run off. Ask anybody in the Channel.“

”Can we talk somewhere?“ I said.

”This is good.“ Two of his hoods stood behind him, eating out of paper plates, salami and salad hanging off their lips. Their steroid-pumped upper arms had the diameter and symmetry of telephone poles inside their sports coats. ”Don't be shy. What's the problem?“

”No problem. That's what I'm saying, Johnny. I'm no threat to you guys.“

”What am I listening to here? I ever said you were a problem?“ He turned to his men, a mock incredulous look on his face.

”My daughter saw a guy hanging around our house, Johnny. You think I have information, which I don't. They pulled my shield, I'm out of the game, I don't care what you guys do. I'm asking you to stay away from me and my family.“

”You hear this crazy guy?“ he said to his hoods. Then to me, ”Eat some dinner, drink some wine, you got my word, anybody bother you with anything, you bring it to me.“

”I appreciate your attitude, Johnny,“ I said. My palms felt damp, thick, hard to fold at my sides. I was sweating inside my shirt. I swallowed and looked away from the smile on his face.

”I accused you of something that was in the imagination. I'm sorry about that,“ he said. His men were grinning now.

”Excuse me?“ I said.

”A redheaded guy, looked like Sonny Boy Marsallus, out at my house, walking around downtown, I asked you and Purcel if you'd hired an actor, remember?“ he said.

I nodded.

”There he is,“ he said, and pointed to a man in a white jacket busing a table. ”He's Sonny's cousin, a retard or something, I got him a job here. He looks just like him, except his brains probably run out his nose.“

”He looks like a stuffed head,“ one of Johnny's men said.

”He'd make a great doorstop,“ the other man said.

”Why was he at your house?“ I said. The skin of my face burned and my voice felt weak in my throat.

”He was looking for a job. He'd been out there with Sonny once. Now he's making six bucks an hour and tips cleaning slops. So I done a good one for Sonny.“ One of the men behind Johnny gargled with his drink. ”Salt water's good for the throat,“ he said to me. ”Take a glass-bottom boat ride, Robicheaux, ask Sonny if that ain't true.“

Johnny stripped a folded fifty out of the fan in his hand and dropped it on my forearm. ”Get something nice for your daughter,“ he said. ”You done the right thing here tonight.“ He reached out with one hand and adjusted the knot in my tie. I saw the balloon of red-black color well up behind my eyes, heard a sound like wet newspaper ripping in my head, saw the startled and fearful look in his face just before I hooked him above the mouth, hard, snapping my shoulder into it, his nose flattening, his upper lip splitting against his teeth. I caught him again on the way down, behind the ear, then brought my knee into his face and knocked his head into the bar.

I kept waiting for his men to reach inside their coats, to pinion my arms, but they didn't move. My breath was heaving in my chest, my hands were locked on the lip of the bar, like a man aboard ship during a gale, and I was doing something that seemed to have no connection with me. He fought to get up, and I saw my shoe bite into his chin, his ear, his raised forearm, his rib cage, I felt Johnny Carp cracking apart like eggshell under my feet.

”Mother of God, that's enough, Dave!“ I heard Clete shout behind me.

Then I felt his huge arm knock me backward, away from Johnny's body, which was curled in an embryonic position next to the brass bar rail, his yellow shirt streaked with saliva and blood, his fists clenched on his head.

Then Clete laced his fingers under my arm, a paper bag crushed against the contour of his palm, and drew me back toward the door with him, a pistol-grip, sawed-down double-barrel twelve-gauge pointed at Johnny's men. The only sound in the room was the service door to the kitchen flipping back and forth on its hinges. The faces of the diners were as expressionless as candle wax, as though any movement of their own would propel them into a terrible flame. I felt Clete push me out into the darkness and the cold odor of an impending electric storm that invaded the trees like a fog. He shoved the sawed-down twelve-gauge into the paper bag and threw it on the seat of his convertible.

”Oh Dave,“ he said. ”Noble mon…“ He shook his head and started his car without finishing his sentence, his eyes hollow and lustrous with a dark knowledge, as though he had just seen the future.