Dixie City Jam

chapter four

We lived south of New Iberia, on an oak-lined dirt road next to the bayou, in a house that my father had built of notched and pegged cypress during the Depression. The side and front yards were matted with a thick layer of black leaves and stayed in deep shade from the pecan and oak trees that covered the eaves of the house. From the gallery, which had a rusted tin roof, you could look down the slope and across the dirt road to my boat-rental dock and bait shop. On the far side of the bayou was a heavy border of willow trees, and beyond the willows a marsh filled with moss-strung dead cypress, whose tops would become as pink as newly opened roses when the sun broke through the mist in the early morning.

I slept late the morning after we brought the boat back from New Orleans. Then I fixed coffee and hot milk and a bowl of Grape-Nuts and blackberries, and took it all out on a tray to the redwood picnic table under the mimosa tree in the backyard. Later, Bootsie came outside through the screen door with a glass of iced tea, her face fresh and cool in the breeze across the lawn. She wore a sleeveless white blouse and pink shorts, and her thick, honey-colored hair, which she had brushed in swirls and pinned up on her head, was burned gold on the tips from the sun.

'Did you see the phone messages from a police sergeant on the blackboard?' she asked.

'Yeah, thanks.'

'What does she want?'

'I don't know. I haven't called her back.'

'She seemed pretty anxious to talk to you.'

'Her name's Lucinda Bergeron. I think she probably has problems with her conscience.'

'What?'

'I tried to help her on an insubordination beef. When I asked her to do a favor for Batist, she more or less indicated I could drop dead.'

'Maybe it's just a misunderstanding.'

'I don't think so. Where's Alafair?'

'She's down at the dock with Batist.' She drank from her iced tea and gazed at the duck pond at the foot of our property. She shook the ice in the bottom of the glass and looked at it. Then she said, 'Dave, are we going to pay for his lawyer?'

'It's either that or let him take his chances with a court-appointed attorney. If he's lucky, he'll get a good one. If not, he can end up in Angola.'

She touched at her hairline with her fingers and tried to keep her face empty of expression.

'How much is it going to cost?' she said.

'Ten to twenty grand. Maybe a lot more.'

She widened her eyes and took a breath, and I could see a small white discoloration, the size of a dime, in each of her cheeks.

'Dave, we'll go into debt for years,' she said.

'I don't know what to do about it. Nate Baxter targeted Batist because he couldn't get at me or Clete. It's not Batist's fault.'

The breeze blew through the mimosa, and the shade looked like lace rippling across her face. I saw her try to hide the anger that was gathering in her eyes.

'There's nothing for it, Boots. The man didn't do anything to deserve this. We have to help him.'

'All this started with Clete Purcel. He enjoys it. It's a way of life with him. When are you going to learn that, Dave?'

Then she walked into the house and let the screen slam behind her.

I hosed down some boats at the dock, cleaned off the telephone-spool tables after the lunch crowd had left, then finally gave in and used the phone in the bait shop to return Lucinda Bergeron's call. I was told she had gone home sick for the day, and I didn't bother to leave my name. Then I called three criminal attorneys in Lafayette and two in New Orleans. Their fees ran from eighty to one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, with no guarantees of anything.

'You all right, Dave?' Alafair said. She sat on a tall stool behind the cash register, her Houston Astros cap on sideways, her red tennis shoes swinging above the floor. Her skin was dark brown, her Indian black hair filled with lights like a raven's wing.

'Everything's copacetic, little guy,' I said. Through the screened windows the sun looked like a wobbling yellow flame on the bayou. I wiped the perspiration off my face with a damp counter towel and threw the towel in a corner.

'You worried about money or something?'

'It's just a temporary thing. Let's have a fried pie, Alf.'

'Batist is in some kind of trouble, Dave?'

'A little bit. But we'll get him out of it.' I winked at her, but the cloud didn't go out of her face. It had been seven years since I had pulled her from the submerged wreck of an airplane carrying illegal refugees from El Salvador. She had forgotten her own language (although she could understand most words in Cajun French without having been taught them), and she no longer had nightmares about the day the soldiers came to her village and created an object lesson with machetes and a pregnant woman in front of the medical clinic; but when she sensed difficulty or discord of any kind in our home, her brown eyes would immediately become troubled and focus on some dark concern inside herself, as though she were about to witness the re-creation of a terrible image that had been waiting patiently to come aborning again.

'You have to trust me when I tell you not to worry about things, Squanto,' I said.

Then she surprised me.

'Dave, do you think you should be calling me all those baby names? I'm twelve years old.'

'I'm sorry, Alf.'

'It's all right. Some people just might not understand. They might think it's dumb or that you're treating me like a little kid or something.'

'Well, I won't do it anymore. How's that?'

'Don't worry about it. I just thought I ought to tell you.'

'Okay, Alf. Thanks for letting me know.'

She punched around on the keys of the cash register while blowing her breath up into her bangs. Then I saw her eyes go past me and focus somewhere out on the dock.

'Dave, there's a black woman out there with a gas can. Dave, she's got a pistol in her back pocket.'

I turned and looked out into the shade of the canvas awning that covered the dock. It was Lucinda Bergeron, in a pair of faded Levi's that barely clung to her thin hips, Adidas tennis shoes, and a white, sweat-streaked T-shirt with the purple-and-gold head of Mike the Tiger on it. She wore her badge clipped on her beltless waistband; a chrome snub-nosed revolver in an abbreviated leather holster protruded from her back pocket.

Her face was filmed and gray, and she wiped at her eyes with one sleeve before she came through the screen door.

'Are you okay?' I said.

'May I use your rest room?' she said.

'Sure, it's right behind the coolers,' I said, and pointed toward the rear of the shop.

A moment later I heard the toilet flush and water running, then she came back out, breathing through her mouth, a crumpled wet paper towel in one hand.

'Do you sell mouthwash or mints?' she said.

I put a roll of Life Savers on top of the counter. Then I opened up a can of Coca-Cola and set it in front of her.

'It settles the stomach,' I said.

'I've got to get something straight with you.'

'How's that?'

She drank out of the Coke can. Her face looked dusty and wan, her eyes barely able to concentrate.

'You think I'm chickenshit,' she said.

'You were in a tough spot.'

'But you still think I'm chickenshit, don't you?'

'I know you're not feeling well, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't use profanity in front of my daughter.'

'Excuse me. Did you have a reason for not returning my phone calls?'

'When I called back, you were already gone. Look, Sergeant, I appreciate your coming down here, particularly when you're sick. But you don't owe me anything.'

'You've decided that?'

I let out my breath. 'What can I say? It's not my intention to have an argument with you.'

'You sell gas? I ran out down the road. My gauge is broken.' She clanked the gasoline can on the counter.

'Yeah, I've got a pump for the boats at the end of the dock.'

'Your friend, the black man, Batist Perry, they're sticking it to him. Nate Baxter held some information back from you.'

'Alafair, how about telling Bootsie we'll go to Mulate's for supper tonight?'

She made an exasperated face, climbed down from the stool, unhitched Tripod, her three-legged pet raccoon, from his chain by the door, and went up the dock toward the house with Tripod looking back at me over her shoulder.

'The murdered man had his heart cut out,' Lucinda Bergeron said. 'But so did three other homicide victims in the last four months. Even one who was pitched off a roof. He didn't tell you that, did he?'

'No, he didn't.'

'The press doesn't know about it, either. The city's trying to sit on it so they don't scare all the tourists out of town. Baxter thinks it's Satanists. Your friend just happened to stumble into the middle of the investigation.'

'Satanists?'

'You don't buy it?'

'It seems they always turn out to be meltdowns who end up on right-wing religious shows. Maybe it's just coincidence.'

'If I were you, I'd start proving my friend was nowhere near New Orleans when those other homicides were committed. I've got to sit down. I think I'm going to be sick again.'

I came around from behind the counter and walked her to a chair and table. Her back felt like iron under my hands. She took her revolver out of her back pocket, clunked it on the table, and leaned forward with her forearms propped on her thighs. Her hair was thick and white on the ends, her neck oily with sweat. Two white fishermen whom I didn't know started through the door, then turned and went back outside.

'I'll be right with y'all,' I called through the screen.

'Like hell you will,' I heard one of them say as they walked back toward their cars.

'I'll drive you back to New Orleans. I think maybe you've got a bad case of stomach flu,' I said to Lucinda.

'Just fill my gas can for me. I'll be all right in a little bit.' She took a crumpled five-dollar bill from her Levi's and put it on the tabletop.

'I have to go back for my truck, anyway. It's at a dock down by Barataria Bay. Let's don't argue about it.'

But she wasn't capable of arguing about anything. Her breath was rife with bile, her elongated turquoise eyes rheumy and listless, the back of her white T-shirt glued against her black skin. When I patted her on the shoulder, I could feel the bone like coat hanger wire against the cloth. I could only guess at what it had been like for her at the NOPD training academy when a peckerwood drill instructor decided to turn up the butane.

I carried the gas can down to her Toyota, got it started, filled the tank up at the dock, and drove her to New Orleans. She lived right off Magazine in a one-story white frame house with a green roof, a small yard, and a gallery that was hung with potted plants and overgrown with purple trumpet vine. Around the corner, on Magazine, was a two-story bar with a colonnade and neon Dixie beer signs in the windows; you could hear the jukebox roaring through the open front door.

'I should drive you out to the boatyard,' she said.

'I can take a cab.'

She saw my eyes look up and down her street and linger on the intersection.

'You know this neighborhood?'

'Sure. I worked it when I was a patrolman. Years ago that bar on the corner was a hot-pillow joint.'

'I know. My auntie used to hook there. It's a shooting gallery now,' she said, and walked inside to call me a cab.

Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought.

It was late evening after I picked up my truck down in Barataria and drove back into the city. I called Clete at his apartment in the Quarter.

'Hey, noble mon,' he said. 'I called you at your house this afternoon.'

'What's up?'

'Oh, it probably doesn't amount to much. What are you doing back in the Big Sleazy, mon?'

'I need some help on these vigilante killings. I'm not going to get it from NOPD.'

'Lose this vigilante stuff, Dave. It's a shuck, believe me.'

'Have you heard about some guys having their hearts cut out?'

He laughed. 'That's a new one. Where'd you get that?' he said.

'Lucinda Bergeron.'

'You've been out of Homicide too long, Streak. When they cancel them out, it's for money, sex, or power. This vampire or ghoul bullshit is out of comic books. Hey, I got another revelation for you. I think that Bergeron broad has got a few frayed wires in her head. Did she tell you she went up to Angola to watch a guy fry?'

'No.'

'It probably just slipped her mind. Most of your normals like to watch a guy ride the bolt once in a while.'

'Why'd you call the house?'

'I'm hearing this weird story about you and a Nazi submarine.'

'From where?'

'Look, Martina's over here. I promised to take her to this blues joint up on Napoleon. Join us, then we'll get some étouffée at Monroe's. You've got to do it, mon, it's not up for discussion. Then I'll fill you in on how you've become a subject of conversation with Tommy Blue Eyes.'

'Tommy Lonighan?'

'You got it, Tommy Bobalouba himself, the only mick I ever met who says his own kind are niggers turned inside out.'

'The Tommy Lonighan I remember drowned a guy with a fire hose, Clete.'

'So who's perfect? Let me give you directions up on Napoleon. By the way, Bootsie seemed a little remote when I called. Did I spit in the soup or something?'

The nightclub up on Napoleon was crowded, the noise deafening, and I couldn't see Clete at any of the tables. Then I realized that an exceptional event had just taken place up on the bandstand. The Fat Man, the most famous rhythm and blues musician ever produced by New Orleans, had pulled up in front in his pink Cadillac limo, and like a messiah returning to his followers, his sequined white coat and coal black skin almost glowing with an electric purple sheen, had walked straight through the parting crowd to the piano, grinning and nodding, his walrus face beaming with goodwill and an innocent self-satisfaction, and had started hammering out 'When the Saints Go Marching In.'

The place went wild.

Then I realized that another event was taking place simultaneously on the dance floor, one that probably not even New Orleans was prepared for-Clete Purcel and his girlfriend doing the dirty boogie.

While the Fat Man's ringed, sausage fingers danced up and down on the piano keys and the saxophones and trumpets blared behind him, Clete was bopping in the middle of the hardwood floor, his porkpie hat slanted forward on his head, his face pointed between his girlfriend's breasts, his buttocks swinging like an elephant's; then a moment later his shoulders were erect while he bumped and ground his loins, his belly jiggling, his balled fists churning the air, his face turned sideways as though he were in the midst of orgasm.

His girlfriend was over six feet tall and wore a flowered sundress that fit her tanned body like sealskin. She waved bandannas in each hand as though she were on a runway, kicking her waxed calves at an angle behind her, lifting her chin into the air while her eyelids drifted shut and she rotated her tongue slowly around her lips. Then she let her mouth hang open in a feigned pout, pushed her reddish brown hair over the top of her head with both hands, flipped it back into place with an erotic challenge in her eyes, and rubbed a stretched bandanna back and forth across her rump while she oscillated her hips.

At first the other dancers pulled back in awe or shock or perhaps even in respect; then they began to leave the dance floor two at a time and finally in large numbers after Clete backed with his full weight into another dancer and sent him careening into a drink waiter.

The Fat Man finished, wiped his sweating face at the microphone with an immaculate white handkerchief, and thanked the crowd for their ongoing roar of applause. I followed Clete and his girl to their table, which was covered with newspaper, beer bottles, and dirty paper plates that had contained potatoes French-fried in chicken fat. Clete's face was bright and happy with alcohol, and the seams of his Hawaiian shirt were split at both shoulders.

'Martina, this is the guy I've been telling you about,' he said. 'My ole bust-'em or smoke-'em podjo.'

'How about giving that stuff a break, Clete?' I said.

'I'm very pleased to meet you,' she said.

Her face was pretty in a rough way, her skin coarse and grained under the makeup as though she had worked outdoors in sun and wind rather than on a burlesque stage.

'Clete's told me about how highly educated you are and so well read and all,' she said.

'He exaggerates sometimes.'

'No, he doesn't,' she said. 'He's very genuine and sincere and he feels very deeply for you.'

'I see,' I said.

'He has a gentle side to his nature that few people know about. The people in my herbalist and nude therapy group think he's wonderful.'

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Clete study the dancers out on the floor as though he had never seen them before.

'He says you're trying to find the vigilante. I think it's disgusting that somebody's out there murdering colored people in the projects and nobody does anything about it.'

'Clete doesn't seem to give it much credence.'

'Look, mon, let me tell you where this vigilante stuff came from. There's a citizens committee here, a bunch of right-wing douche bags who haven't figured out what their genitalia is for, so they spend all their time jacking up local politicians and judges about crime in the streets, dope in the projects, on and on and on, except nobody wants to pay more taxes to hire more cops or build more jails. So what they're really saying is let's either give the blacks a lot more rubbers or do a little less to stop the spread of sickle-cell.'

Martina had taken a pocket dictionary from her purse. She read aloud from it: '"Credence-belief, mental acceptance or credit." That's an interesting word. It's related to "credibility," isn't it?'

Clete widened his eyes and looked at her as though he were awakening from sleep. Then somebody on the opposite side of the dance floor caught his attention.

'Dave, a guy's coming over to our table,' he said. 'He just wants to talk a minute. Okay? I told him you wouldn't mind. He's not a bad guy. Maybe you might even be interested in what he's got to say. It doesn't hurt to listen to a guy, right?'

Through the layers of drifting cigarette smoke my eyes focused on a man with two women at a table. His solid physique reminded me of an upended hogshead; even at a distance his other features-his florid, potato face, his eyes that were as blue as ice, his meringue hair-were unmistakable.

'You shouldn't have done this, partner,' I said to Clete.

'I provide security at two of his clubs. What am I supposed to say to him, "Drop dead, Tommy. My buddy Dave thinks you're spit on the sidewalk, get off the planet, sonofabitch"?'

'He's not just an eccentric local character. He was up on a murder beef. What's the matter with you?'

'The guy he did with the fire hose was beating up old people in the Irish Channel with an iron pipe. Yeah, big loss. Everybody was real upset when they heard he'd finally caught the bus.'

'Fire hose?' Martina said, and made a puzzled face.

There was nothing for it, though. The man with the red face and the eyes that were like flawless blue marbles was walking toward our table.

Clete mashed out his cigarette in a paper plate.

'Play it like you want, Dave,' he said. 'You think Tommy Bobalouba's any more a geek than Hippo Bimstine, tell him to ship out.'

'What about Hippo?' I said.

'Nothing. What do I know? I thought I might bring you a little extra gelt. You're too much, Streak.'

Tommy Lonighan hooked two fingers under an empty chair at an adjacent table without asking permission of the people sitting there, swung it in front of him, and sat down. He wore a long-sleeve pink shirt with French cuffs and red stone cuff links, but the lapels were ironed back to expose the mat of white hair on his chest, and the hair on his stubby, muscular forearms grew out on his wrists like wire. He had the small mouth of the Irish, with downturned corners, and a hard, round chin with a cleft in it.

'What d'you say, Lieutenant?' he said, and extended his hand. When I took it, it was as square and rough-edged as a piece of lumber.

'Not much, Mr. Lonighan. How are you this evening?' I said.

'"Mr. Lonighan," he says. I look like a "mister" to you these days?' he said. The accent was Irish Channel blue-collar, which is often mistaken for a Brooklyn accent, primarily because large sections of New Orleans were settled by Irish and Italian immigrants in the 1890s. He smiled, but the clear light in his eyes never changed, never revealed what he might or might not be thinking.

'What's up?' I said.

'Boy, you fucking cut straight to it, don't you?'

'How about it on the language, Tommy?' Clete said.

'Sorry, I spend all day with prizefighters down at my gym,' he said, glancing sideways at Martina. 'So how much is Blimp-stine offering you to find this sub?'

'Who?' I said.

'Hippo Bimstine, the beached whale of south Louisiana. Who you think I'm talking about?'

'How do you know Hippo's offering me anything?'

'It's a small town. Times are hard. Somebody's always willing to pass on a little information,' he said, and put a long French fry between his lips, sucking it deep into his mouth with a smile in his eyes.

'You're right, there's a Nazi sub out there someplace. But I don't know where. Not now, anyway. For all I know, it's drifted all the way to the Yucatan. The alluvial fan of the Mississippi probably works it in a wide circle.'

He set his palm on my forearm and looked me steadily in the eyes. There were thin gray scars in his eyebrows, a nest of pulsating veins in one temple that had not been there a moment ago.

'Why is it I don't believe you?' he said.

'What's your implication, Tommy?' I said.

'It's "Tommy" now. I like it, Dave. I don't "imply" anything. That's not my way.' But his hand did not leave my forearm.

Martina read from her pocket dictionary: '"Alluvial fan-the deposit of a stream where it issues from a gorge upon an open plain." The Mississippi isn't a stream, is it?'

Lonighan stared at her.

'I'm not sure why either you or Hippo are interested in some World War II junk, but my interest is fading fast, Tommy,' I said.

'That's too bad. Because both Hippo and me are going into the casino business. I'm talking about riverboats here, legalized gambling that can make this city rich, and I'm not about to let that glutinous sheeny set up a tourist exhibit on the river that takes maybe half my business.'

'Then tell it to Hippo,' I said, and pulled my arm out from under his hand.

'What?' he said. 'You got your nose up in the air about something? I come to your table, you act like somebody's flushing a crapper in your face? You don't like me touching your skin?'

'Take it easy, Tommy. Dave didn't mean anything,' Clete said.

'The fuck he didn't.' Then he said it again: 'The fuck he didn't.'

'I'd appreciate your leaving our table,' I said.

He started to speak, but Martina beat him to it.

'I happen to be part Jewish, Mr. Lonighan,' she said, her face serene and cool, her gaze focused benignly on him as though she were addressing an abstraction rather than an enraged man at her elbow. 'You're a dumb mick who's embarrassing everybody at the table. It's not your fault, though. You probably come from a dysfunctional home full of ignorant people like yourself. But you should join a therapy group so you can understand the origin of your rude manners.'

The crow's-feet around Lonighan's eyes were white with anger and disbelief. I looked at Martina in amazement and admiration.