The Neon Rain

FIVE

The next morning Cletus and I sat across from each other at our desks in our small, glass-enclosed office with its smudged yellow walls that made you think of a dressing cubicle at the YMCA. Cletus pretended to read a long memo from the superintendent's office, but his eyes were either empty or glazed with the pain of his hangover. He was chain-smoking and eating breath mints, but last night's Scotch was down deep in his lungs. Both of us had already made written reports to Captain Guidry.

"I'm not going to bail you out again, Clete," I said.

"What do you mean, bail out? I put one through his brisket before you popped your first cap."

"I'm not talking about that. You provoked it. It didn't have to happen.",

"You're sure about that, huh? What if Paco had come up with the automatic while you were cuffing Segura? There was a nine-round clip in there. He could have cut both of us in half."

"You provoked it."

"So what if I did? Scratch two lowlifes that should have been fertilizer a long time ago. Save the hearts and flowers, Dave. Nobody's going to be interested in how Julio Segura bought it. I don't think you could find three people to attend the guy's funeral."

"Don't bet on it."

Sergeant Motley came down the corridor and stopped in our doorway. He had just come in from outside, and his round, black head glistened with perspiration. He was eating an ice cream cone, and there were flecks of ice cream in his thick mustache.

"Somebody in the lab said they had to wash Segura's brains off the seat with a hose," he said.

"Oh yeah? That sounds like it might make a clever Excedrin ad," Clete said.

"Guess what else I heard?" Motley said.

"Who cares?" Clete said.

"You'll care, Purcel. The lab says the Cadillac was dirty. Reefer on the cigarette lighter, coke in the rug. Who would have thought Segura would let his broads be so careless?" He smiled. "You guys didn't salt the mine shaft, did you?"

"Why are you so obnoxious, Motley?" Clete said. "Is it because you're fat and ugly, or is it because you're fat and dumb? It's a mystery to all of us."

"Except I hear the broad says you told Segura he was going to take a big fall. Not smart of the Bobbsey Twins in homicide," Motley said.

"Here's to the rapid spread of sickle cell," Clete said, and toasted Sergeant Motley with his coffee cup.

"My dick in your ear," Motley said.

"Lay off it," I said.

"With this guy you've either got to use some humor or a can of insecticide," Clete said.

A few minutes later Captain Guidry told me to come into his office. I wasn't looking forward to talking with the captain, but I was relieved to get away from Clete.

Captain Guidry scratched the hair implants in his head and looked up at me from behind his horn-rimmed glasses. My report and Clete's were side by side on his desk.

"The lab found some marijuana ash and grains of cocaine in the car," he said. His voice was flat and reserved.

"Motley just told us."

He picked up a pencil and began drumming it on his palm.

"They also said a round fired from inside the car bounced off the window frame and blew glass out into the street," he said. "A second round went up through the roof, which would indicate the shooter was hit by that time. A yardman across the street says he heard a sound like a firecracker inside the Cadillac, then he saw you two start shooting. It's all working for you, Dave."

"What's the dwarf say?" I asked.

"Nothing. All he wants is an airplane ticket to Managua."

"Something's not getting said here, Captain."

"I've been over your reports. Very neat stuff. I think they'll get you by Internal Affairs."

"That's good."

"My own opinion is they stink. Tell me why a guy with no arrests, who Whiplash Wineburger would have had back on the street in thirty minutes, would throw down on two armed cops."

I didn't answer.

"Do you think he had a suicidal personality?" the captain asked.

"I don't know."

"Did Segura tell him to do it?"

"No."

"Then why did this guy pull his own plug?" His hand closed on the pencil.

"Internal Affairs gets paid to sort that stuff out."

"To hell with Internal Affairs. I don't like reading a report on two deaths that says 'fill in the blanks.'"

"I can't tell you anything else, Captain."

"I can. I think something else happened out there. I think also you're covering Purcel's butt. That's not loyalty. It's stupidity."

"The essential fact of my report is that somebody pulled a pistol on a police officer and fired it at him."

"You keep telling yourself that. In the meantime, let me tell you a couple of my observations. The guys in Internal Affairs will mutter around over this stuff, ask you a few hard questions, make you feel uncomfortable a little while, maybe even really try to stick a finger in your eye. But eventually they'll cut you loose and everybody around here will ask you guys out for a beer. But you're going to take the suspicion of a wrongful death with you. It's like a cloud you drag along everywhere you go. Sometimes it even grows into a legend. How about Motley and those guys on the wrist-chain that suffocated to death in the elevator?"

I had to look away from his face.

"It's between Purcel and other people, Captain. I didn't deal the play out there," I said.

"I'm sorry to see you take that position, Dave." He opened his palm and dropped his pencil on the top of his desk blotter. "I'll make one other suggestion before you go. Take Purcel with you to some meetings. Also, if you're going to cover for a partner who's going out of control, you'd damn well better be able to take the consequences."

It wasn't the best of all possible mornings.

A half hour later the phone in our office rang.

"Guess who," the voice said.

"The Howdy Doody Show."

"Guess what I'm doing."

"I'm not interested."

"I'm looking at the photographic art on the front page of the Picayune," Fitzpatrick said. "I underestimated your flair for the dramatic. These are the kinds of pictures we used to see in The Police Gazette-grainy black and white stuff, car doors thrown open, bodies hanging out on the street, pools of black blood on the seats. Congratulations, you greased the one solid connection we had."

"If you want to get on my case this morning, you'll have to stand in line. As far as I'm concerned, your meter is already on overtime. In fact-"

"Shut up, Lieutenant."

"What did you say?"

"You heard me. I'm mad as hell right now. You've done a lot of damage."

"You weren't out there, bud."

"I didn't have to be. I had a real strong tingle down in the genitals that it might go like this, and you didn't disappoint me."

"You want to explain that?"

"I'm not sure you can handle it. I thought you were a bright guy. Instead, it doesn't look like you can put one foot after another without somebody painting Arthur Murray dance steps on the floor for you."

I didn't answer. My hand was clenched on the telephone receiver and starting to perspire. Clete was looking curiously at my face.

"Are you where you can talk?" Fitzpatrick said.

"I'm in my office."

"Who's there with you?"

"My partner, Purcel.";

"Yeah, sure you can talk," he said irritably. "I'll pick you up in front of the Acme Oyster Bar on Iberville in ten minutes. I'll be driving a blue Plymouth rental."

"I don't think so."

"You either be there or I'll come up to your houseboat tonight and knock out your goddamn teeth. That's a personal promise."

I waited ten minutes for him in front of the Acme, then went inside and bought a Dr Pepper in a cup of crushed ice with a sliced lime and drank it outside in the sunlight. I could see the spires of St. Louis Cathedral, where I sometimes went to Mass, shining in the clear morning air. By the time Fitzpatrick drew up to the curb, my anger had subsided to the point that I was no longer going to pull him out of his automobile by his necktie. But when I sat down in the passenger's seat I did reach across and turn off his ignition.

"Before we go anywhere, let's sort out a couple of things," I said. "I don't think you've paid enough dues to be telling people to shut up or making threats to them over the phone. But if you think you're a serious rock-and-roller, we can go over to the Y and slip on the gloves and see what develops."

He nodded and clicked his fingernails indifferently on the steering wheel.

"Don't worry, they've got a first-aid man there in case you're a bleeder," I said.

"Okay, you've made your point."

"You're not too big on hanging tough, are you?"

"I wanted you out of your office. If you'll notice your present geography, you're sitting in my automobile and not at the First District. Is it all right if I start the car now?"

"I think you federal guys just have to do everything with three-cushion shots. Wouldn't it be easier for you and me to go into Captain Guidry's office and talk about this stuff in a reasonable way? We don't want guys like Philip Murphy and his trained psychopaths running around New Orleans any more than you do. The captain's a good man. He'll help you if he can."

He started the engine and pulled into the traffic. The sunlight fell across his freckled face and candy-striped Arrow shirt.

"Is Purcel a good man?" he asked.

"He's got some problems, but he's working on them."

"You think he's clean?"

"As far as I know."

"Six weeks ago we had reason to be in a trick pad. His name was in the girl's book. He was a weekly banger. There was no entry about charge, either."

I took a deep breath.

"He's had marital trouble," I said.

"Come off it. We're talking about a compromised cop who started popping caps yesterday on a possible government witness. Which of you nailed Segura?"

"I did. He was trying to get out the door, and he raised up right in front of me."

"I'll bet one of Purcel's rounds was already in him. What did the autopsy say?"

"I don't know."

"Great."

"You're telling me Clete wanted to kill Segura?"

"It's a possibility."

"I don't buy it."

"You don't buy lots of things, Lieutenant. But there's people just like you in my bureau. That's why they're sending me back to Boston next week."

"You're off it?"

"I will be. I haven't made my case and there's other work waiting."

He looked across at me, and for the first time I felt a liking for him. Under all the invective he was a full nine-inning pitcher. We bought a bucket of fried shrimp and two cartons of dirty rice and ate it in a small, shady park off Napoleon Avenue. A bunch of black and white and Chicano kids were playing a workup game in front of an old chicken-wire backstop. They were rough, working-class boys and they played the game with a fierce physical courage and recklessness. The pitcher threw spitters and beanballs; the base runners broke up double plays with elbows and knees, and sanded their faces off in headlong slides; the catcher stole the ball out from under the batter's swing with his bare hand; and the third baseman played so far in on the grass that a line drive would tear his head off. I thought it no wonder that foreigners were awed by the innocent and naive nature of American aggressiveness.

"Does anything about elephants figure in all this?" I asked.

"Elephants? No, that's a new one. Where'd you get it?"

"I heard Lovelace Deshotels was giggling about elephants when Segura's people shot her up. I dropped it on Segura, and his face twitched like a plumber's helper."

"Well, we've got a second chance. I found her roommate, a Mexican girl from the same massage parlor, and she wants to stick it to all these bastards."

"Why is she talking to you instead of me?"

"She seems to think you guys are cretins. Is there a vice sergeant down there named Motley?"

"Yep."

"She says his zipper's open."

"Sounds accurate."

"She's a dancer in a nude bar out by the airport now. For three hundred dollars she says she can turn a couple of interesting people for us, then she wants to take her little girl back to San Antonio and study to be a hairdresser."

"It sounds like a shuck to me."

"I think she's straight. Her boyfriend was a Nicaraguan ex-national guardsman who worked for Segura. Then he beat her up and stole her money. They're a class bunch, those guys. Now she wants to blow Dodge. It seems reasonable to me."

"I think she's selling the same information Didi Gee already gave me."

"She's hip about Bobby Joe Starkweather. She says he's a latent bone-smoker and can't make it with women. He threw a waitress out of a hotel window, and some local hood got fried for it up at Angola."

I looked away at the boys playing workup.

"What's the matter?" Fitzpatrick asked.

"I knew him. His name was Johnny Massina."

"Were you tight with him or something?"

"I tried to help him get off the hooch once. Does she know where Starkweather might be?"

"She's vague on that."

"I thought so," I said. "Write her name and address down for me, would you, but I'm going to pass on her right now. They've got me on a short leash, anyway."

"Lieutenant, can I broach something personal?"

I started to say "Why not?" since he had never shown any restraint about anything before, but he kept right on talking before I could speak.

"It's obvious you're a good cop and a private kind of man, but you're a Catholic and you must have feelings about what's going on down there," he said.

"Where?" I already knew the answer, but I wasn't ready to pursue the discussion.

"Central America. They're doing some bad shit to our people. They're killing priests and Mary knoll nuns and they're doing it with the M-16s and M-60 machine guns we give them."

"I don't think you ought to take all that responsibility on yourself."

"It's our church. They're our people. There's no way to get around the fact, Lieutenant."

"Who's asking you to? You've just got to know your limits, that's all. The Greeks understood that. Guys like you and me need to learn from them."

"You think that's good advice, huh?" he said.

"It beats walking around with a headful of centipedes."

"Since you're fond of classical metaphors, try this one: Why do we admire Prometheus and have contempt for Polonius? Don't try to tilt with a Jesuit product, Lieutenant. We've been verbally demolishing you guys for centuries."

He grinned at me the way a high school pitcher would after throwing you a Carl Hubbell screwball that left you twisted in your own swing.

That night I drove to the Tulane campus to hear Annie Ballard's string quartet play. She was pretty on the lighted stage in her dark skirt and jacket and frilly white blouse. Her face was both eager and concentrated while she read the music sheet on the metal stand in front of her and drew her bow back and forth on her cello. In fact, her face had a lovely childlike quality in it while she played her music, the kind you see in people who seem to go through a photogenic transformation when they do that private thing that they hold separate for themselves. Afterwards, we were invited to a lawn party in the Garden District. The trees were strung with Japanese lanterns; the swimming-pool lights glowed smokily below the emerald surface; the air smelled of jasmine and roses and the freshly turned, watered dirt in the flower beds; and Negro waiters carrying trays of champagne glasses and cool tropical drinks moved deferentially among the groups of laughing people in evening dresses and summer tuxedoes.

She was having a good time. I saw that her eyes were empty now of the fear and self-loathing that Bobby Joe Starkweather had put in them, and she was doing her best, also, to make me forget what had happened in the back of Julio Segura's Cadillac yesterday. But I was selfish.

I couldn't let go of those ten seconds between the time the gatekeeper pulled the automatic out of the door pouch and the moment when the.45 roared upward in my hand and Segura's head exploded all over the inside of the car. I'm convinced that, unlike most of the hapless and pathetic people whom we usually dealt with, he was truly an evil man, but anyone who has ever fired a weapon at another human being knows the terrible adrenaline-fed sense of omnipotence and arrogance that you feel at that moment and the secret pleasure you take in the opportunity being provided you. I had done it in Vietnam; I had done it twice before as a police officer, and I knew that simian creature we descend from was alive and well in my breast.

I was also bothered by Sam Fitzpatrick and his admonition to me about my religion and my humanity. I wanted to dismiss him. He was a kid, an idealist, a federal hotdog who probably broke a lot of bureau rules and would eventually blow out his doors. If he hadn't become a Treasury agent, he would probably be pouring chicken blood on draft files. A half-dozen like him could have a whole city in flames.

But I couldn't get rid of him. I liked him and he had gotten to my pride.

I genuinely tried to enjoy myself that night. The people at the lawn party came from another world than mine, but they were pleasant and friendly and went out of their way to be courteous to me. Annie was a fine girl, too. When she saw my expression wandering away from the conversation, she would touch the back of my hand with hers and smile at me with her eyes. But it wasn't any good. I gave it up, made an excuse about having to go to work in the morning, and drove her home. On her porch I saw the faint look of hurt in her face when I said I couldn't come in.

"Do you like to be alone, Dave?" she asked.

"No. It's not a good life."

"Another time, huh?"

"Yes. I'm sorry about tonight. I'll call tomorrow."

She smiled and then she was gone, and I drove home more depressed than I had been in years.

Why? Because the truth was that I wanted to drink. And I don't mean I wanted to ease back into it, either, with casual Manhattans sipped at a mahogany and brass-rail bar with red leather booths and rows of gleaming glasses stacked in front of a long wall mirror. I wanted busthead boilermakers of Jack Daniel's and draft beer, vodka on the rocks, Beam straight up with water on the side, raw tequila that left you breathless and boiling in your own juices. And I wanted it all in a rundown Decatur or Magazine Street saloon where I didn't have to hold myself accountable for anything and where my gargoyle image in the mirror would be simply another drunken curiosity like the neon-lit rain striking against the window.

After four years of sobriety I once again wanted to fill my mind with spiders and crawling slugs and snakes that grew corpulent off the pieces of my life that I would slay daily. I blamed it on the killing of Julio Segura. I decided my temptation for alcohol and self-destruction was maybe even an indication that my humanity was still intact. I said the rosary that night and did not fall asleep until the sky went gray with the false dawn.

That afternoon I still had Sam Fitzpatrick on my mind. I called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and was told by the Assistant Special Agent in Charge that Fitzpatrick was not in.

"Who is this, please?" he asked.

I told him my name and who I was.

"Are you calling from your office?"

I said I was.

"I'll call you there in two minutes," he said, and hung up.

Sure enough, the phone rang a minute and a half later. They were a very careful bunch down at the Federal Building.

"We're worried about him. He hasn't checked in and he's not at his motel," he said. "Are you the guy who smoked Segura?"

"Yes."

"Bad day at Black Rock, huh?" he said, and laughed.

"Do all you guys have the same sense of humor?"

"We've got an agent out of the nest, Lieutenant. Do you have something we ought to know?"

"He was going to see a Mexican girl, a nude dancer out by the airport. She told him she could turn a couple of Segura's people."

"We already know about her. What else?"

"That's it."

"Stay in touch. Drop by and have coffee sometime. We need a better liaison with you people. By the way, Lieutenant, Agent Fitzpatrick has a way of wandering beyond some of our parameters. That doesn't mean that some local authorities should reciprocate by wandering themselves into a federal jurisdiction. You get the picture, don't you?"

There was a pause, then the receiver went dead.

Late that afternoon I went to the Mexican girl's apartment building out in Metairie. No one was home, and the apartment manager said she had not seen the girl, whose name was Gail Lopez, or her daughter in a couple of days. I stuck a small piece of Scotch tape between the bottom of the door and the doorjamb, and drove out to the strip bar by the airport in the fading twilight.

Jet airliners lifted off the runway across the road and roared over the top of the bar into the lavender sky. The building was constructed of cinder blocks that had been painted purple; the door was fingernail-polish red; and the interior smelled of cigarette smoke, refrigerated air, and bathroom antiseptic. Behind the bar was a burlesque runway where a stand-up comic with a face like crinkled parchment went through a lifeless and boring routine that no one at the tables or bar listened to. In the middle of his routine, some bikers in the corner plugged in the jukebox and turned it on full tilt.

The bartender was a big man, about thirty, with a huge granite head that was bald and shining on top with oiled ducktails combed back on the sides. He wore black trousers, a white shirt, and a black velvet vest like a professional bartender, but his thick arms and neck and massive chest and the wooden mallet on a shelf behind him indicated something about his other potential. I asked him about Gail Lopez.

"You don't recognize me, Lieutenant?" he asked, and smiled.

I squinted at him in the smoke and against the glare of lights on the burlesque stage.

"Five or six years ago, right?" I said. "Something about driving a Picayune delivery truck over a Teamster steward."

"Actually, it's been eight years and I never really got to tell my side of that story, Lieutenant. But it don't matter now. I'm always walking toward something rather than away from something. You know what I mean? Let me ask a little favor of you, though. My PO don't need to know about this situation, does he? He's a good guy and kind of protective and he don't want me working in no shitholes, but some of the guys down at the union hall hold a grudge and don't want to give me my card back and there ain't many places I can make six bucks an hour and tips. Hell, it's degrading to work in a dump like this. I got to pick up cigarette butts from the urinals with my hands and scrub out toilets and mop up the vomit every time one of these fuckers pukes. What do you want to drink? It's on me."

"Uh, nothing right now. What about Gail Lopez?"

"Well, all these broads get a lot of traffic, you know what I mean? It's a lowlife clientele here, Lieutenant. Greasers, hitters, bull dykes, jerks that like to get in my face till they're way out on the edge, you know what I mean? There's a guy comes in here every night and melts Demerol down in a glass of Wild Turkey, then when I say 'Nice weather we're having' or 'Hard rain we had this afternoon,' he says 'No duh.' I ask him if he wants another drink and he says 'No duh.' 'You want some more peanuts?' 'No duh.' 'You're in the wrong place to be a wise-ass.' 'No duh.'"

"No, Charlie, I'm talking about a guy who looks like a human freckle."

"I haven't seen him. Look around you, Lieutenant. A guy like that in here would stand out like shit in an ice cream factory. Anyway, ask her. She'll be here in an hour."

I sat through two floor shows that consisted of a half-dozen naked girls dancing to a three-piece band whose instruments could have been tuned to a snare drum. The girls wore thin gold chains around their ankles and stomachs, and their faces seemed lit with some inner narcissistic pleasure that had nothing to do with the world outside them. They undulated and raised their arms above their heads as though they were moving in water, and occasionally their eyes would meet and light with some secret recognition.

During all this the bartender washed glasses indifferently in a tin sink while his cigarette ashes fell into the dishwater. Someone in back caught his attention and he left the bar a few minutes, then returned with an uncomfortable look on his face.

"Lieutenant, I got an embarrassing situation here," he said. "The manager, Mr. Rizzo, is very happy you're here and he don't want you to pay for anything. But a guy that sits at the bar drinking 7-Up with a piece showing under his coat is kind of like-"

"Anthrax?" I said.

"Well, if you notice, there's nobody else at the bar, Lieutenant, which is not meant as a reflection on you, but on the degenerate pus-bags that drink in here. Even the guy that gets off saying 'No duh' to me is sitting way in back tonight. You got to understand the degenerate mind. See, they all got hard-guy fantasies, but when they take it out too far and step on the nuts of some heavy-metal badass, like some cat that just got out of Angola and has already got a Coke bottle kicked up his ass, I got to bail them out."

I paid for the 7-Ups I'd drunk and waited another half hour at a small table in a dark part of the room. Gail Lopez didn't show up. I gave the bartender my office card with my telephone number and asked him to call me if she came in. He put down his bar rag and leaned forward and spoke a few inches from my face.

"One of her boyfriends is a tall Nicaraguan dude with a mustache," he said. "Don't let him blind-side you, Lieutenant. One night out in the parking lot he cut a guy from his armpit down to his liver. He's the kind of cat if you got to dust him you take him off at the neck."

I drove back out to the Mexican girl's apartment in Metairie and found the tape still in place between the door and the jamb. I told the building manager that I couldn't ask him to open the apartment, but I suspected that if he did, all he would find would be empty clothes hangers. It took him less than two minutes to get the passkey.

I was wrong, however. She hadn't simply left behind empty clothes hangers. In the wastebasket were several crumpled travel brochures that advertised scenic tours of the Caribbean, not San Antonio and hairdressing school. Fitzgerald, you poor fish, I thought.

I was tired when I drove home along Lake Shore Drive, past the amusement park with its Ferris wheel lighted against the sky, past the University of New Orleans and its quiet, dark lawns and black trees, and I entered into a self-serving dialogue with myself that almost extricated me from my problems. Let Fitzgerald's own people take care of him, I thought. Illegal guns and explosives are their jurisdiction, not yours. You took on an obligation about the murdered black girl in the bayou and you fulfilled it, whether you wanted to or not, when you translated Julio Segura's brains into marmalade. If you're interested in revenge against Philip Murphy, Starkweather, and the little Israeli, you're in the wrong line of work. Somewhere down the road they'll step in their own flop and somebody'll be there to put them away. So disengage, Robicheaux, I told myself. You don't have to be a long-ball hitter every time. A well-placed bunt has its merits.

I had almost achieved some tranquility by the time I parked my car on the short, darkened street that dead-ended into a sand dune and three coconut palms and the dilapidated dock where I kept my houseboat moored. A smooth, hard path with salt grass growing on the edges cut through the dune, and the waving palm fronds made shadows on the sand and the roof of my houseboat. I could hear the water slapping against the hull, and the moonlight fell across the lake itself in a long silver band. I walked across the gangplank with the wind cool in my face, the bend of the wood easy and familiar and comforting under my foot, the froth of the incoming tide sliding up on the sand under me. The mahogany and yellowish brown teak and glass panes and brass fittings of my boat were as rectangularly beautiful as metal and wood could be. I opened the hatch, stepped down into the main cabin, and turned on the light switch.

Bobby Joe Starkweather rose up quickly from the floor and swung a short length of pipe at my face. It was crowned on one end with a pipe bonnet and wrapped with friction tape on the other. I ducked and put my hands in front of me and took part of the blow on my forearm, but the cast-iron bonnet raked down the side of my face and my ear felt torn loose from my head. I tried to get my.38 out of my belt holster, but someone pinned my arms to my sides from behind and the three of us fell into my rack of musical records on the far wall. My collection of historical jazz, old seventy-eight records that were as stiff and delicate as baked ceramic, shattered in black shards all over the floor. Then a third man was on top of me, a tall man with a pencil mustache and pomade-scented, reddish Negroid hair, and I was covered by their hands, arms, thighs, scrotums, buttocks, knees, their collective weight and strength and visceral odor so powerful and smothering now that I couldn't move or breathe under them. I felt a needle sink into my neck, an unspoken wish clicked dryly in my throat, and my mouth locked open as though the joints of my jaw had been broken. Then my trio of friends squeezed the remaining air out of my chest, the blood out of my heart, the light from my eyes.