Creole Belle

4

There are three essential truths about law enforcement: Most crimes are not punished; most crimes are not solved through the use of forensic evidence; and informants produce the lion’s share of information that puts the bad guys in a cage.

I couldn’t help Blue or Tee Jolie Melton, but perhaps I could do something about the shooting death of Bix Golightly and the fact that Clete Purcel had been a witness to it and would probably be hounded by the NOPD. I was convinced that Clete was concealing the identity of the shooter, although I had no idea why. Where does a person go in New Orleans for the type of information you can’t find in the Yellow Pages?

The best source I ever had in New Orleans was a former spieler at a strip club on Bourbon Street known as Jimmy the Dime. Jimmy’s nickname came from the fact that with one phone call, he could connect you with any action you were looking for, maybe a card game or access to counterfeit money that sold for twenty cents on the dollar or a brick of Acapulco gold. In terms of underworld activity, he was a minor offender and never a rat. His troubles usually came about from his bizarre and anachronistic frame of reference, which in his case was that of a Depression-era Irish tenement kid for whom dysfunction and living on the rim were as natural as the rising and setting of the sun.

Jimmy had a house in the Holy Cross section of the Ninth Ward when Hurricane Katrina struck the city. Rather than pay attention to the evacuation order or even listen to the news, Jimmy had watched a porn film on cable the morning the storm made landfall. When a tidal wave blew his house into rubble, Jimmy climbed onto a giant inner tube in polka-dot boxer shorts, with an umbrella and two six-packs of Bud and a Walkman and half a dozen joints in a Ziploc bag, and floated on the waves for thirty-six hours. He was fried to a crisp and almost run down by a Coast Guard boat and ended up in the branches of a tree down in Plaquemines Parish.

Jimmy’s eccentricities, however, were nothing compared to those of his full-time podjo and part-time business partner, Count Carbona, also known as Baron Belladonna. The Count wore a black cape and a purple slouch hat and had a face like a vertical chunk of train rail. The Count shaved off his eyebrows and was obsessed with the female rock-and-roll singers he believed lived under Lake Pontchartrain. If anyone asked how he knew about the women under the lake, the Count explained that he communicated with them daily through the drain in his lavatory. The Count’s current underwater drainpipe pal was Joan Jett.

After I finished work at noon on Monday, I drove to New Orleans and visited Jimmy and the Count at their book and voodoo store down by Dauphine and Barracks. In spite of Katrina, the windows looked like they had not been washed since the fall of the city to Union forces in 1862. The shelves and the array of worthless books on them stayed under a patina of dirt that Jimmy moved from place to place in the shop with his feather duster. In back were cartons of hand-painted tortoise shells and mason jars that contained pickled lizards and snakes and birds’ eggs and alligators’ feet. On the back wall was a garish painting of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans.

“You know anything about Bix Golightly getting capped, Jimmy?” I said.

“There’s not a lot of mourning going on about that,” he replied. He was drinking a bottle of soda behind the counter, next to a beautiful antique brass cash register, his face florid, his hair as white as meringue, his stomach draped over his belt. “Remember that Louis Prima song, how’s it go, ‘I’ll be standing on the corner plastered when they bring your body by’?”

“Any rumors about why he got capped?”

“He was in the AB. The AB is for life. Maybe he made the wrong guys mad about something.”

“Waylon Grimes got popped the same night, probably by the same hitter. Grimes wasn’t in the AB.”

“The word was Bix was into a new racket, something that was more uptown. Also that he was out of his depth, that him and Frankie Giacano and Waylon Grimes decided they were gonna get even with Clete Purcel and make a few bucks at the same time. You talk to Purcel?”

“Clete didn’t do it, Jimmy.”

“Who filled up a guy’s convertible with concrete? Or packed a cue ball into a guy’s mouth? Or dragged a guy’s mobile home onto a drawbridge and set it on fire? Let me think.”

“Have you heard of a new button man in town, somebody named Caruso?”

“There’s always new talent floating around. You read vampire books? I just bought a shitload of them. Vampire lit is in, muff-diver lit is out. I’m ahead of the curve.”

“Where’s the new talent from?” I asked.

“Someplace that begins with M. Miami or Memphis. Maybe Minneapolis. I don’t remember. This is stuff I don’t need to know about.”

I looked toward the back of the store. The Count was sweeping a cloud of dust through the door into a courtyard that was green and dark with mold and cluttered with junk.

“He’s on his meds and doing good. Leave him alone, Dave,” Jimmy said.

“The Count is what is called an autistic savant, Jimmy. Everything he hears and sees goes onto a computer chip.”

“Yeah, I know all that, and I don’t like people giving him names like ‘autistic savant.’ He did too many drugs, but that don’t mean he’s retarded.”

“You want to ask him, or do you want me to?” I said.

Jimmy poured the rest of his soda into a sink and put a matchstick in his mouth. “Hey, Count, you hear anything about a new mechanic in town?” he said.

The Count stopped sweeping and stared downward at his broom. Rain was swirling inside the courtyard, blowing in a fine mist across his cape and small pale hands. He lifted his eyes to mine, puzzled about either the question or my identity.

“It’s Dave Robicheaux, Count,” I said. “I need your help. I’m looking for a hitter by the name of Caruso.”

“Caruso? Yes. I know that name,” said the Count. He smiled.

“In New Orleans?”

“I think so.”

“Where?” I asked.

The Count shook his head.

“Who’s he work for?” I asked.

He didn’t speak and instead continued to look into my face, his irises tinged with the colors you expect to see only in a hawk’s eyes.

“How about the name Caruso? Is that an alias?” I said.

“It means something.”

I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “It means what?” I asked.

“Like the opera singer.”

“I know who the opera singer is. But why is this guy called by that name?”

“When Caruso sings, everybody in the theater gets quiet. When he leaves, they stay in their seats.”

“Where do you think I might find him? This is real important, Count.”

“They say he finds you. I heard what you said about me. I’m the way I am because I’m smart. People say things in front of me that they won’t say in front of anyone else. They don’t know I’m smart. That’s why they make fun of me and call me names.”

He swept a cloud of dust out into the rain, then followed it into the courtyard and shut the door behind him.

I deserved his rebuke.

T HE HOUR WAS three P.M., and I had time to make another stop before returning to New Iberia, which was only a two-hour drive if you went through Morgan City. The old office of Didi Giacano, the one where he kept an aquarium full of piranha, was on South Rampart, outside the Quarter, just across Canal. The building was two stories and constructed of soft, variegated brick and had an iron balcony and a colonnade, but one of the side walls had been scorched by fire and the building had a singed, used look that the potted bougainvillea and caladium and philodendron on the balcony did little to dispel.

The inside of the office had been completely redone. The beige carpet was two inches thick, the off-white plastered walls hung with paintings of Mediterranean villages and steel-framed aerial color photos of offshore oil platforms, one of them flaring against a night sky. The receptionist told me that Pierre Dupree was at his home in Jeanerette but that his grandfather was in his office and perhaps could help me.

“Actually, I was interested in a safe that used to be here,” I said. “I collect all kinds of historical memorabilia. It was a huge box of a thing right over there in the corner.”

“I know the one you mean. It’s not here anymore. Mr. Pierre took it out when we installed the new carpets.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

She was an attractive blond woman in her early twenties, with an earnest face and eyes that seemed full of goodwill. Her forehead wrinkled. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. I think some movers took it out.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About five or six months ago, I think. Did you want to buy it?”

“I doubt that I could afford it. I just wanted to look at it.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Dave Robicheaux, with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department.”

“I’ll tell Mr. Alexis you’re here. That’s Mr. Pierre’s grandfather. I’ll bet he can tell you all about the safe.”

Before I could stop her, she went into the back of the building and returned with a man I had seen once or twice in New Iberia or Jeanerette. For his age, he was remarkable in his posture and his bearing. He was even more remarkable for the story associated with his name. I couldn’t remember the specific details, but people who knew him said he had been a member of the French Resistance during World War II and had been sent to an extermination camp in Germany. I couldn’t recall the name of the camp or the circumstances that had spared his life. Was it Ravensbruck? He was dressed in slacks and a long-sleeve white shirt rolled to the elbows. When he shook my hand, the bones in his fingers felt hollow, like a bird’s. A chain of numbers was tattooed in faded blue ink on the underside of his left forearm. “You were asking about an old safe?” he said.

“I collect old things. Antiques and Civil War artifacts and that sort of thing,” I replied.

“There was a safe here that came with the building, but it was taken out a long time ago, I think.”

His face was narrow, his eyes as gray as lead, his hair still black, with a few strands of white. There was a pronounced dimple in his chin. On his left cheek were two welted scars. “Would you like coffee or perhaps a drink?”

“No, thank you. I didn’t mean to disturb you. Do you know a fellow by the name of Frankie Giacano or his friend Bix Golightly?”

“Those names aren’t familiar. Are they antique dealers?” He was smiling when he spoke, the way an older man might when he’s showing tolerance of his listener.

“No, they’re bad guys, Mr. Dupree. Pardon me, the use of the present tense isn’t quite accurate. Frankie Giacano is still around, but somebody over in Algiers parked three rounds from a semi-auto in Bix Golightly’s face.”

“That’s a graphic image, Mr. Robicheaux. Why are you telling me this?”

“It’s probably just the ambience. I remember when Didi Gee used to hold a person’s hand in an aquarium over by that wall. I came in here once when the water was full of blood.”

“I’m not one who needs convincing of man’s inhumanity to man.”

“I meant you no offense.”

“Of course you did,” he said. “Good day to you, sir.”

I started to leave. He was an elderly man. The tattoo on his left arm was of a kind that only a visitor to hell could have acquired. Sometimes there are occasions when charity requires that we accept arrogance and rudeness and deception in others. I didn’t feel this was one of them. “You lied to me, sir.”

“How dare you?” he replied, his eyes coming to life.

The next morning at work, Helen Soileau called me into her office. She was watering the plants on her windowsill with a tin sprinkler painted with flowers. “I just got off the phone with Alexis Dupree. You called an eighty-nine-year-old man a liar?” she said.

“I said he lied to me. There’s a difference.”

“Not to him. My ear is still numb. What were you doing in his office?”

I explained to her about Didoni Giacano’s old safe and the marker that supposedly was found inside it. “The receptionist said the safe was taken out five or six months ago. The old man said otherwise. In front of her. Her face turned red.”

“Maybe Dupree was confused. Or maybe the receptionist was.”

“I think he was lying. I also think he was mocking me.”

“What happens in New Orleans is not our business.”

“I went there on my own time.”

“You identified yourself at Dupree’s office as a member of this department. That’s why he called here and yelled in the phone for five minutes. I don’t need this kind of crap, Pops.”

“That old man is corrupt.”

“Half the state is underwater, and the other half is under indictment. Our own congressional representative said that.”

“What was the name of the death camp Dupree was in?” I asked.

“What difference does it make?”

“Was it Ravensbruck?”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“I’m almost sure it was Ravensbruck. I read a feature on Mr. Dupree in the Advocate about two years ago.”

“Why do you care which camp he was in? Dave, I think you’re losing your mind.”

“Ravensbruck was a women’s camp, most of them Polish Jews,” I said.

“I’m about to throw a flowerpot at your head,” she said.

“I don’t think the problem is mine,” I replied.

I went back to my office. Ten minutes later, Helen buzzed my extension. “I Googled Ravensbruck,” she said. “Yes, it was primarily a women’s extermination camp, but a camp for male prisoners was right next to it. The inmates were liberated by the Russians in 1945. Does this get World War Two off the table?”

“That old man is hinky, and so is his grandson,” I replied.

I heard her ease the receiver into the phone cradle, the plastic surfaces clattering against each other.

It started raining again that night, hard, in big drops that stung like hail. Through the back window, I could see leaves floating under the oaks and, in the distance, the drawbridge at Burke Street glowing inside the rain. I heard Molly’s car pull into the porte cochere. She came through the back door, a damp bag of groceries clutched under one arm, her skin and hair shiny with water. “Did you see my note on the board?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Clete called,” she said, putting down her groceries on the breakfast table.

“What did he want?”

She tried to smile. “I could hear music in the background.”

“He was tanked?”

“More like his boat left the dock a little early.”

“Was he in town or phoning from New Orleans?”

“He didn’t say. I think Clete is trying to destroy himself,” she said.

When I didn’t reply, she began putting away the groceries. She had the arms and shoulders of a countrywoman, and when she set a heavy can on a shelf, I could see her shirt tighten on her back. She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and looked at me. “I don’t want to see you lying on a gurney in an emergency room with a bullet hole in your chest again. Is that wrong?” she said.

“Clete’s in serious trouble, and he doesn’t have many friends.”

“Don’t get mixed up in it.”

“All of us would be dead if it wasn’t for Clete.”

“You can be his friend without making the same kinds of choices he does. You’ve never learned that.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t,” she said.

She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her and turned the lock.

I put on my raincoat and hat and drove to Clete’s motor court down the Teche. His cottage was the last one on a driveway that dead-ended in a grove of live oaks by the bayou. His Caddy was parked by the trees, the rain clicking loudly on the starched top. The cottage was dark, and pine needles had clotted in the rain gutters, and water was running down the walls. I knocked, then knocked again harder, with the flat of my fist. A lamp went on inside, and Clete opened the door in his skivvies, the unventilated room sour with the smell of weed and beer sweat and unchanged bed linens. “Hey, Dave, what’s the haps?” he said.

“You ever hear of opening a window?” I said, going inside.

“I nodded out. Is it morning?”

“No. Molly said you called.”

“Yeah?” he said, rubbing his hand over his face, moving toward the breakfast table, where a manila folder lay open. “I forgot why I called. I was drinking doubles at Clementine’s, and a switch went off in my head. It’s not morning?”

“It’s not even ten P.M.”

“I guess I was having some kind of crazy dream,” he said. He closed the folder and moved it aside, as though straightening things so we could have a cup of coffee. His nylon shoulder holster and blue-black snub-nosed. 38 were hanging on the back of a chair. A huge old-style blackjack, one teardropped in shape and stitched with a leather cover and mounted on a spring and wood handle, lay by the manila folder. “I dreamed some kids were chasing me through the Irish Channel. They had bricks in their hands. What a funny dream to have.”

“Why don’t you take a shower, and then we’ll talk.”

“About what?”

“Why you called me.”

“I think it was about Frankie Giacano. He called me up and begged me to help him.”

“Frankie Gee begged?”

“He was about to shit his pants. He thinks he’s going to get capped like Bix Golightly and Waylon Grimes.”

“Why?”

“He won’t say.”

“Why does he think you can get him off the hook?”

“He mentioned your name. He said, ‘You and Robicheaux won’t let this thing die.’”

“What’s he talking about?” I asked.

“Who knows? Did you roust him or something?”

“I went to Pierre Dupree’s office on South Rampart yesterday. I talked with the grandfather. He lied to me about the safe. What’s in the manila folder?”

“Nothing.”

“You want to level with me, or should I leave?”

“It’s a file on a kid in Fort Lauderdale. I got it from a friend in the state attorney’s office in Tallahassee.”

“Who’s the kid?”

“Just a kid. One who was abused.”

“Abused how?”

“As bad as it gets. So bad you don’t want to know. Dave, don’t look at that.”

I took my hand away from the folder. Clete pulled out a drawer under the table and removed a clear plastic bag of weed and a sheaf of cigarette papers.

“Lay off that stuff,” I said.

“I’ll do what I please.”

“No, you won’t.” I pulled the bag from his hand and opened the front door and shook the weed into the rain. I threw the bag and the papers into a waste can.

“Even my ex didn’t do that.”

“Too bad. What’s in the folder?”

“Let it slide, big mon.”

I picked up the folder regardless and looked at the black-and-white photographs of a small child. I read the medical report written by an emergency room physician. I read the statements of a social worker who threatened to quit her agency if the state didn’t remove the child from the home. I read the report of a Broward County sheriff’s detective detailing the arrest of the mother’s live-in boyfriend and the condition in which he found the child upon his last visit to the mother’s apartment. Most of the photos and the paperwork were almost twenty-five years old. The photos of the child were of a kind you never want to see or remember or discuss with anyone. “Who’s the mother?” I asked.

“A junkie.”

“You knew her?”

“She used to strip and hook out of a joint on Bourbon. She was from Brooklyn originally, but she’d moved to New Orleans, and she and her pimp were running a Murphy game on conventioneers. They blew town on an assault warrant. The john got wise to the scam when the pimp showed up as the outraged husband, because the same pimp had shown up on the same john six months earlier. So the pimp busted up the john with a pair of brass knuckles. How about that for a bunch of geniuses?”

“The pimp is the one who did this?” I was holding one of the photos, the paper shaking slightly in my fingers.

“No, Candy would screw anybody who’d give her heroin. There were always different guys living with her.”

“That’s when you were in Vice?”

“Yeah, and on the grog and pills and anything else I could cook my head with.”

“You got it on with her?”

“Big-time.”

“What’s going on, Cletus?”

He got a beer out of the icebox and ripped the tab and sat down at the table. The scar that ran through his eyebrow and touched the bridge of his nose had flushed a dark pink. He drank from the can and set it down and took his hand away from it and looked at the prints his fingers had left on the coldness of the can. “The kid in those photos had a miserable life.”

“Who is she?”

“You already know.”

“Tell me.”

“Let it go, Dave.”

“Say it, Cletus.”

“It won’t change anything.”

“Is she alive?”

“You’d better believe it.” He was breathing harder, through his nose, his face shiny under the overhead light.

“Come on, partner.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

“Her name is Gretchen.” His hands were propped on his knees, his big shoulders bent forward. He looked like a man experiencing vertigo aboard a pitching ship. “I made some calls to people around Miami and Lauderdale. In Little Havana people talk about a hitter they call Caruso. The old Batistiano and Alpha 66 crowd don’t mess with her. The greaseballs in Miami Beach say she’s like the Irish button men on the west side of New York: all business, no passion, a stone killer. They say maybe she’s the best on the East Coast. I think Caruso might be my daughter, Dave. I feel like somebody drove a nail in my skull.”