Dixie City Jam

chapter twenty-six

The information requests that I had made about a possible suspect named Schwert were answered, at first, in a trickle, in increments, unspecifically, as though we were pursuing a shadow that had cast itself over other cases and files without ever becoming a solid presence.

Then the computer printouts, the faxes, and the phone calls began to increase in volume, from the FBI, the NCIC, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and finally Interpol.

The sheriff looked down at the clutter of paper on my desk.

'Where'd you get your filing system? It looks like Fibber McGee's closet,' he said. He glanced up at my face. 'Sorry, that's one of those generational jokes, I guess.'

'The first time the name William Schwert shows up is in some phone taps the FBI and ATF had on some neo-Nazis in Idaho during the mideighties,' I said. 'Then ATF found it in the pocket of a guy who blew his face off while he was building a bomb in his basement in Portland.'

'Yeah, I think I remember that. He and some other guys were going to dynamite a synagogue?'

'That's right.'

'Schwert was involved?'

'No one's sure.'

The sheriff tilted his head quizzically.

'In a half dozen cases it's like he's standing just on the edge of the picture but he doesn't leave footprints,' I said.

The sheriff sniffed and blew his nose in a Kleenex.

'It doesn't sound like this is helping us a lot,' he said.

'It gets more interesting. The guy named Schwert seems to spend a lot of time overseas. Interpol has been tracking him for fifteen years. Berlin, London, Madrid, any place there're skinheads, Nazis, or Falangists.'

The light in the sheriff's eyes sharpened. He began poking in the papers on my desk.

'Where is it?' he said.

'What?'

'The Interpol jacket. The mug shots.'

'There aren't any. Nobody's nailed him.'

'This isn't taking us anywhere, Dave. It looks like what you've got here is more smoke. We don't even know if Schwert is Buchalter.'

'Interpol says a guy named Willie Schwert broke out of an asylum for the criminally insane in Melbourne, Australia, seventeen years ago. He tore the window bars out of a maximum security unit with his bare hands.'

'Then where's the sheet?'

'The records on the guy are gone. A fire in their computer system or something.'

'What is it, a computer virus wiping out all the information on this character?'

'You're not impressed?' I said.

'I wish I could say I was.'

'It's the same guy.'

'You're probably right. And it does diddle-squat for us. He's still out there, fucking up people in any way he can. I wish Purcel had dropped the hammer on this guy when he had him at close range… Pardon my sentiment. I'm becoming convinced I'm not emotionally suited for this job.'

'The people who are shouldn't be cops, Sheriff,' I said.

That evening, as Bootsie and I washed the dishes at the sink, the breeze through the screen was dry and warm and the clouds above my neighbor's tree line looked like torn plums in the sun's afterglow. Her hands were chaffed, her knuckles white in the dishwater. For a second time, she began to wash a saucer I had already dried. I took it from her hand and placed it back on the drain rack.

'You want to go to a meeting?' I asked.

'Not tonight.'

'You tired?'

'A little.'

'Do you want to lie down?' I said. I rested my hand on the top of her rump.

'Not really. Maybe I'll just read.' Her eyes focused on a solitary mockingbird that stood in the middle of the picnic table.

I nodded.

'I don't seem to have any energy,' she said. 'I don't know what it is.'

'Long day,' I said, and dried my hands and turned away from her.

'Yes,' she said. 'I guess that's it.'

Later, after she and Alafair had gone to bed, I sat in the living room by myself and stared at the television screen. A gelatinous fat man, with the toothy smile of a chipmunk, was denigrating liberals and making fun of feminists and the homeless. His round face was bright with an electric jeer when he broached the subject of environmentalists and animal rights activists. His live audience squealed with delight.

Eighteen million people listened to him daily.

I turned off the set and went into the kitchen. The moon was down, and I could hear the tree limbs outside the window knocking together in the wind. When the phone rang on the-counter, I knew who it would be. I almost looked forward to the encounter, like a man who has formed a comfortable intimacy with his bête noire.

His voice was indolent and ropy with saliva when he spoke. In the background I could hear the flat, tinny sound of Bix Beiderbecke's 'In a Mist.'

'I never saw tracks on your arm, Will. Do you shoot up in the thighs?'

'You never know.'

'How'd you get my number?' I said.

'People like to please. Not too much gets denied me, Dave.'

'It sounds like you might have done a good load of China pearl. Not a good sign for a guy who likes control.'

'Why did you do it?'

'What?'

'You spit in my face. When I tried to create a tender moment inside our pain.'

'I guess you're just that kind of guy. Besides that, you're probably insane.'

The phonograph stopped and started over again. Beiderbecke's trumpet rose off the record like sound ringing through crystal. Buchalter swallowed wetly, his mouth close to the receiver.

'It's not too late for us,' he said.

'It is for you, partner. Your threads are unraveling. We've got a make on you from Toronto and Interpol; we know about the asylum you broke out of in Australia. You're about to slide down the big ceramic bowl, Will.'

'You don't understand power. I can caress you in ways that'll make you beg for death. The auto garage was nothing.'

'Get off it, Buchalter. You're a hype. You're one day away any time your connection wants you.'

I heard his throat working again, words forming, then sticking unintelligibly in his mouth. Someone pulled the receiver from his hand.

'The wifey plowed again, Dave?' she said. Her voice was sweaty and hoarse, like a person high on her own glandular energies. 'You should have taken me up on my invitation. It'd give you something to fantasize about.'

'Your boyfriend's tracked shit over two continents, Marie,' I said. 'It looks like you're going to take the bounce with him.'

'Can she have orgasms while she's on the grog?'

'Save the comic book dialogue for after your trial. There's an amateur theatrical group at the women's prison in St. Gabriel. You'll fit right in.'

'I keep having this dream. There's a pump handle in it. It feels hard in my hand, and it has moisture dripping off it. I wake up all hot, thinking of a big dark policeman. I get hot even talking about it. What's my dream mean, Dave?'

'I'll say adios now, Marie. Then I'll unplug the phones. Enjoy the time you have left with Buchalter. I bet he really knows how to capture a lady's, heart.'

There was a pause, then I heard a match strike against an abrasive surface, the match head hissing, and her breath exhaling.

'Run the coordinates in the personals of The Times-Picayune,' she said. 'If you don't, we reach out and touch someone. No, not the sow or the little girl. Maybe the boogie and her son; maybe your uncontrollable friend, Purcel. Will would love to spend a few hours alone with Mr. Purcel.'

'Be careful what you pray for.'

'You're so clever. And the wifey so sweet. I'm glad you're in the tropics where the sheep don't freeze up.'

I eased the receiver down in the cradle, then unplugged the phone jacks in both the kitchen and living room.

I undressed down to my skivvies and sat on the bed next to Bootsie in the dark. She was sleeping on her stomach, and I ran my hand down the smooth taper of her back and over her rump and bare thighs. Her skin felt hot, almost feverish, but she did not respond to my touch. Outside the window, the trees thrashed and swelled in the dry wind. I lay on top of the sheets and stared upward into the darkness, the backs of my fingers resting against Bootsie's leg, the words of the woman named Marie Guilbeaux like an obscene tongue in my ear.

The next morning I got up early and drove back to New Orleans. I stopped first at the library, or morgue, of The Times-Picayune, then drove down St. Charles and found Hippo Bimstine working behind the candy counter at one of his drugstores in the Garden District. He wore a starched gray apron over his white shirt and tie and rotund stomach, and his hair was oiled and combed as tight as wire, his thick neck talcumed, his face cheerful and bright.

Hippo had the confident and jolly appearance of a man who could charm a snake into a lawn mower.

'Another nice day,' he said.

'It sure is,' I said.

'So why the dark look? You dump some money at the track?' His smile was inquisitive and full of play.

'I guess I get down when I find out a friend has tried to blindside me.'

'What are you talking here?' He tried to look me steadily in the eyes.

'Max Calucci's been saying peculiar things about you, Hippo.'

'Consider the source.'

'I am. He's got no reason to lie. He says Tommy Lonighan told him you removed some stuff about the Nazi U-boat from the public library.'

'I'm under arrest for library theft?'

'Buchalter and his buttwipes used up my sense of humor, partner.'

'We're talking in hieroglyphics here. You're mystifying me, Dave.'

'I found a nineteen fifty-six States-Item story on Jon Matthew Buchalter's death in the files at The Times-Picayune. When The States-Item folded, all its records were kept by The Picayune. But I was careless and missed the story the first time around. I have a feeling it's the one you took from the public library.'

'So you tripped over some big revelation from a rag of thirty-five years ago?'

'Not really. Jon Buchalter was raving on his deathbed about a large gold swastika on board a downed U-boat. Is that the secret you've been keeping from me?'

He considered for a moment and scratched at his neck with one finger. 'Yeah, that's about it. You satisfied?'

'No.'

'It's supposed to weigh forty-two pounds. It's got a gold wreath around it, and the wreath is set with jewels. Big fucking deal, huh?'

'You were willing to let me get involved with Nazis so you could salvage the gold in a World War II wreck?'

'You got some kind of malfunction with your thought processes, Dave. You keep forgetting it was you tried to squeeze every spendolie you could from a finder's fee.'

'I don't let my friends hang their butts in the breeze for money, either, Hippo.' I picked up a roll of mints from the counter and set a half-dollar down on the glass. 'Thanks for your time. See you around.'

I turned to go. Outside, the streetcar rattled down the neutral ground in the sunshine.

'You righteous cocksucker,' he said behind me. A woman with a magazine cupped in her hand replaced it on the rack and walked away.

'Excuse me?' I said.

'When you guys got nothing to support your own argument against a Jew, you always take your shot about money. It takes a while, but you always get to it.'

'You set me up, Hippo.'

'Fuck you I did.' He came around the edge of the counter. He touched his finger against my breastbone. 'You want the rest-of the story? The gold in that swastika was pried out of the mouths of Polish Jews. It was a gift from Heinrich Himmler himself. You know what else's supposed to be in that sub? Hitler's plan for the United States. I don't let any man talk down to me because I'm a Jew, Dave. I don't want you in my store.'

'I'll try my best to stay out of your life.' He went back behind the counter and began knocking open rolls of change and shaking them into the cash drawer. Then he stopped and slammed the drawer shut with the flat of his pudgy hand. I walked outside, my face burning, the eyes of a half dozen people fastened upon me.

Lucinda Bergeron was sanding the wood steps on the back of her house. The air was sunny and warm, and her hair looked damp and full with the heat from her body and her work. She wore flip-flops and a denim shirt that hung over her pink shorts, and blades of grass stuck to the tops of her feet. She kept glancing up at me while she sanded. The tiny gold chain and cross around her neck were haloed with perspiration against her black skin.

'You go back on duty tomorrow?' I said.

'That's right. All sins forgiven.'

'How do you feel?'

'You know, one foot in front of the other, a day at a time, all that jazz.'

I brushed off a step where she had already sanded and sat down. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and wrapped a fresh piece of sandpaper around a block of wood. She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and smoothed the paper against the grain.

'I want you to be careful, Lucinda.'

'Worry about yourself, hotshot.'

'It's a mistake to be cavalier about Buchalter, or Schwert, or whatever his name is. There's nothing predictable about this guy or the woman working with him.'

She raised her eyes to mine while her arm and hand kept a steady motion against the step, 'I can't tell you how much I'd love the opportunity,' she said.

'When you're forced to… to pop a cap in the line of duty, something happens to you, at least if you're not a sociopath yourself. The next time it goes down, you get sweaty, you hesitate, you doubt your motivations. It's a dangerous moment.'

'You think I'll freeze up?'

'You tell me.'

'I don't have doubts about the man who hurt my child, believe me.'

'When are you going to quit calling Zoot a child?'

'When I feel like it, Mr. Smart-ass.' She smiled, then worked the nozzle loose from the hose, turned on the faucet, and drank, with her body bent over, the backs of her thighs tight against her shorts, the water arching bright across her mouth. She wet a paper towel and wiped her face and neck and dropped it into a paper sack filled with garden cuttings.

'I have some tea made. Come inside,' she said.

The porcelain and yellow plastic surfaces of her kitchen gleamed in the sunlight through the windows, and the sills rang with red and blue dime-store vases. I sat at the breakfast table and watched her twist a handful of ice cubes in a towel and batter them on a chopping board with a rolling pin, then fill two tall glasses with the crushed ice and mint leaves and tea. The straps of her bra made a hard line across the wash-faded thinness of her denim shirt.

She turned toward me with the drink glasses in each hand. Her eyes looked at mine, and her expression sombered. She sat down across from me and folded her hands.

'I think you're a good person, Dave. That means some things aren't your style,' she said.

'I look like I have a clandestine agenda?'

'I've lived single for a long time. You recognize certain things in people. Even without being told.'

'I don't know if that's too complimentary.'

'Purcel was here yesterday.'

'There's a warrant on him.'

'I'm still suspended. I should worry about a warrant on Clete Purcel?'

'Why was he here?'

'He says one of the Caluccis' greasers will testify Nate Baxter's on a pad. He told me about your trouble at home.'

'Maybe some people should stay out of my private life.'

'Oh, that's perfect. Your closest friends shouldn't worry about you or try to help you?'

I felt my lips crimp together. I looked away from her unrelenting stare.

I stood up and took my seersucker coat off the back of the chair.

'Give me a call if Buchalter shows up,' I said, and walked toward the front door.

She followed me. The sun made slats of light on her face, causing her to squint as she looked up at me.

'Don't leave like this,' she said.

I took a breath. Her hair was scintillated with silver threads and curved thickly on her cheeks.

'What am I supposed to say, Lucinda?'

'Nothing. You're a good man. Good men don't need to say anything.'

The door was wide open so that nothing she did was hidden from view. She put her arms around my neck and bent my face to hers, raising herself on the balls of her feet, her knees pinching together, her thighs flexing and pressing against me unavoidably; then she kissed me on the cheeks, the bridge of the nose, the eyes, and finally once, a light adieu, on the mouth, as her hands came loose from my neck and my face felt as though it were covered with hot red dimes.