The New Iberia Blues

Chapter Three

Clete called me at the department late the same afternoon and asked me to come to his office. It was located on Main Street in a century-old brick building half a block from the Shadows. The receptionist was gone, and the folding metal chairs were empty except for one where a man with long hair as slick and shiny as black plastic was cleaning his nails with a penknife. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and gum wrappers and an apple core and a banana peel. Clete sat behind his desk in the back room, the door ajar. He waved me in. “Close the door,” he said.

There were printouts and two folders and a legal pad on his desk. Through the window I could see his spool table and umbrella on the concrete pad behind the building, and the drawbridge at Burke Street and the old convent across the bayou.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I made several calls about Hugo Tillinger. It’s a complex case. It also stinks.”

“I talked with Helen about him, Clete. Let us take it from here.”

“Is everything okay? I mean with me not reporting Tillinger right away?”

I avoided his eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you ID the body of the girl on the cross?”

“She’s the daughter of a Baptist minister in Cade. Her name is Lucinda Arceneaux. She was a volunteer for the Innocence Project.”

He flinched.

“That doesn’t mean she knew Hugo Tillinger,” I said.

“Stop it.”

He got up from his desk and opened the door. “Come in here, Travis.”

The man with black hair greased straight back folded his knife and dropped it in his slacks. He had the beginnings of a paunch and cheeks that looked like they had been rubbed with chimney soot. He wore his slacks below the belly button; hair protruded from the top of his belt.

“This is Travis Lebeau,” Clete said. “Tell Dave what you know about Hugo Tillinger.”

“While he was being held for trial, I’d bring ice to his cell,” Travis said.

“Ice?” I said.

“That’s what I did in this particular jail. I brought ice from the kitchen and got paid in smokes or whatever.”

Three teardrop tats dripped from his left eye. Two blue stars the size of cigar burns were tattooed on the back of his neck.

“Travis was in the AB,” Clete said. “Now he’s trying to do a few solids to make up for the past.”

“I thought the AB was for life,” I said.

“They sold me to the niggers. The BGF,” he replied. “They claimed I snitched on a guy. I never snitched on anybody in my life.”

“Go ahead about Tillinger,” Clete said.

“We played checkers on the floor, between the bars,” Travis said. “He knew he was gonna get the needle. He said the jury and the judge and cops and his lawyer were working for Satan. I told him they don’t need Satan, they’re working for themselves, that’s bad enough. Can I sit down? I feel like a fireplug that’s about to get pissed on.”

“Sure,” Clete said.

“He went on and on, like all these reborn people, you know, they cain’t shut up talking about it,” Travis said. “He told me he was a drunk, a rage-a-holic or whatever, then he got saved by the Pentecostals at a tent rival. He was a pain in the ass to listen to.”

“You’re going a little fast for me, Travis,” I said.

“I’m saying Tillinger wasn’t a criminal or the kind of guy who burns up his family. He ripped all the posters off his daughter’s walls when he was drunk, and yelled and hollered in the yard, but that was it. I believed him. So did the colored girl who showed up.”

“Which colored girl?” I asked.

“Her name was Lucinda. She started visiting him right after he got sentenced. She said the people at the Innocence Project were taking his case. She said she knew people in the movie business, maybe some of the people who got Hurricane Carter out of prison. It gave him hope. But I thought he was gonna ride the needle from the jump.”

“Why?” I said.

“The governor was running for president. Guys who want to be president don’t get elected by being kind to guys charged with murdering their family.”

“What was the black woman’s last name?” I said.

“He called her Miss Lucinda. That’s all.”

“A rage-a-holic wouldn’t set fire to his house?” I said.

“Maybe a guy like me would. Tillinger didn’t belong in the system. Everybody knew it. You know what con-wise is, right?”

I didn’t reply.

“I did double nickels back to back. I did them straight up and went out max time. I burnt up my brother-in-law in his car and did a guy inside. In the chow line. For one of these teardrops on my face. I didn’t mean to kill my brother-in-law, but that’s the way it worked out. I deserved what I got. Tillinger is what we call a virgin. He never got his cherry busted. That means he was never in the life. He belongs in the PTA and shit like that.”

“We don’t need all that information,” I said.

“About the hit in the chow line?” he said. “You don’t like that? You think I give a shit if anybody knows?”

I didn’t answer.

“Look at me, man,” he said. “You got any idea of what those fucking black animals did to me? My best friends sold me for two cartons of smokes. They said, ‘Rip his feathers off.’ I got to live with what they did every night of my life. Fuck you, asshole.”

His eyes were brimming.

After Travis was gone, Clete and I walked down the street under the colonnade to Bojangles’ and had coffee and a piece of pecan pie in a back corner of the room.

“You believe him?” I said.

“He’s on the square most of the time,” Clete said. “He doesn’t want to lose the few connections he has. He knows the Aryan Brotherhood will probably get him down the road.”

“I don’t buy Tillinger’s innocence.”

“Here’s what happened,” Clete said. “Tillinger’s house was a hundred years old and dry as kindling. The flames were in the second story when he came home. The daughter and the mother were upstairs. He claimed he tried to get them out, but the heat was too great. Later, he told the fire inspector some of the wiring in the walls needed replacing, but he didn’t have the money for repairs.

“So far, so good. Then the inspector finds signs of an accelerant trailing from the gallery into the hallway, or at least that’s what he thought he saw. He said the fire started on the first floor and climbed the walls to the ceiling and up the stairwell. One of the neighbors said Tillinger never tried to go inside the house. Instead, he moved his new Ford F-150 away from the fire.

“On top of it, Tillinger had a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on both the wife and daughter. He also shot off his mouth in the Walmart and told a group of churchgoers his family had better straighten up or he would burn the house down.

“It looked more and more like arson and homicide. Then an ACLU lawyer showed up and began looking at the evidence. The guy who called himself a fire inspector wasn’t certified and had little experience in arson investigation. The accelerant was a can of charcoal lighter that somebody had left next to the portable barbecue pit on the gallery. There was no accelerant trail in the hall. Also, the heat marks on the baseboards were probably caused by an explosion of flame from the stairwell, not from a fire that started on the first floor.

“The defense lawyer was from the ACLU and went over like elephant turds in a punch bowl.”

Customers at other tables turned and looked at us.

“What’s your opinion?” I said.

“It doesn’t matter. I should have called 911 when I saw a guy in jailhouse whites bail off the train.”

“We can’t be sure the guy was Tillinger. Why would he jump off in the Mermentau River? Why wouldn’t he keep going until he was in Florida?”

“I checked that out. There were some gandy dancers working on the track. He could see them from the top of the boxcar. Helen is pretty hot about this, isn’t she?”

“You’re a good cop, Clete. She knows that.”

“I’m not a cop. I blew it.”

“Don’t say that. Not now. Not ever.”

He looked at nothing. The whites of his eyes were shiny and tinged with a pink glaze. He glanced up at the air-conditioning vent. “It’s too cold in here. Let’s take a walk. I feel like I walked through cobwebs. Sorry about the way Travis talked to you. He was a bar of soap in the shower at Huntsville.”

As always, I walked to work the next morning. Desmond Cormier was waiting for me in the shady driveway that led past the city library and the grotto devoted to the mother of Jesus. He was sitting in the passenger seat of a Subaru convertible with California plates driven by Antoine Butterworth.

Desmond got out and shook my hand. His friend winked at me. “I have to talk with you, Dave,” Desmond said.

I didn’t answer. Butterworth lifted a gold-tipped cigarette from the car’s ashtray, took one puff, and flipped it into the flower bed surrounding the grotto.

“I feel so foolish,” Desmond said. He was wearing tennis shorts and a yellow T-shirt and a panama straw hat. “About that business with the telescope and the woman on the cross. My right eye is weak and I have a cataract on the left. That’s why I didn’t see her. I should have explained.”

“How about your friend there? He didn’t see her, either.”

“It’s just his way,” Desmond said. “He’s contrary. He’s been in a couple of wars. Somalia and the old Belgian Congo. You’d find him quite a guy if you’d give him a chance. Have lunch with us.”

“Another time.”

“Dave, you were one of the few I looked up to.”

“Few what?”

“The regular ebb and flow.”

“There’s some pretty good people here, Desmond.”

“See you around, I guess.”

“You ever hear of a guy named Hugo Tillinger?” I asked.

“No. Who is he?”

“An escaped convict. He knew the dead woman. He may be in the vicinity.”

“I wish I could be of help,” he said. “This is an awful thing.”

“Before you go — that still shot you have on your wall of Henry Fonda standing on the roadside saying goodbye to Clementine?”

“What about it?”

“That scene is about failed love, about the coming of death, isn’t it?”

“For me it’s about the conflict between light and shadow. Each seeks dominion. Neither is satisfied with its share.”

I looked at him. I didn’t try to follow his line of thought. “I saw the picture at the Evangeline Theater in 1946. My mother took me.”

He nodded.

“I think a scene like that could almost take a guy over the edge,” I said.

“I never heard it put that way.”

“It’s strange what happens when a guy gets too deep into his own mind,” I said.

“Maybe you think too much,” he said.

“Probably.” I reached down and picked up the burning cigarette Butterworth had thrown in the flower bed. I mashed it out on the horn button of the Subaru and stuck it in Butterworth’s shirt pocket. “We’re heck on littering.”

Butterworth grinned. “In Louisiana?”

The pair of them drove away, the sunlight spangling on the windshield.

I couldn’t get the still shot of Wyatt Earp and Clementine out of my mind. I could almost hear the music from the film blowing in the trees.

I had another surprise waiting for me at the rear entrance to city hall. Travis Lebeau was slouched against the brick wall, in the shade, picking his nails. “Hey.”

“What’s the haps?” I said.

“Need to bend your ear.”

“Come upstairs.”

“How about down by the water? I’m not big on visiting cop houses.”

I looked at my watch. When it comes to encouraging confidential informants, there is no greater inducement than a show of indifference. “I’m under the gun.”

“I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my back,” he replied.

I walked down the bayou’s edge and let him follow. “Say it.”

“There’s a couple of AB guys who know where I am. Give me five hundred. I’ll give you Tillinger.”

“The same guy you stood up for?”

“I’m in a spot,” he said, his eyes leaving mine. “He liked to drop names.”

“People Lucinda Arceneaux knew?”

He looked sideways and blew out a breath. “Yeah, people she knew.”

“Which people?”

“How about the money?”

“You haven’t given me anything, Travis.”

He scratched his forearms with both hands, like a man with hives. “I got to score, straighten out the kinks,” he said. “I’ll make good on my word.”

“You’re an addict?”

“No, I’m Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road.”

“Can’t help you, partner.”

I turned to go.

“Maybe I exaggerated a little,” he said.

“About what?”

“Tillinger. He creeped me out.”

“In what way?”

“The way sex between men bothered him. He had a crazy look in his eyes when he’d hear a couple of guys getting it on. You ever know a guy like that who probably wasn’t queer himself? Sometimes he’d burn himself with matches. He talked about casting out our demons and raising the dead.”

“Would he hurt Lucinda Arceneaux?”

He shook his head slowly, as though he couldn’t make a decision. “I don’t know, man. I can’t go in somebody’s head.”

“In reality, you don’t have anything to sell, do you.”

He didn’t know what to say. I started up the slope.

“Two hunnerd,” he said at my back.

I kept walking. He caught up with me and pulled on my shirt. “You don’t understand. They’ll use a blowtorch. I saw them do it in a riot.”

“Sorry.”

“Maybe the chocolate drop led him on. Maybe Tillinger lost it. Come on, man, I got to get out of town.”

“You need to take your hand off my arm.”

“Come on, man. I’m hurting.”

“Life’s a bitch.”

His face made me think of a piece of blank paper crumpling on hot coals. Cruelty comes in all forms. It’s least attractive when you discover it in yourself.

I walked home for lunch. A cherry-red Lamborghini was parked in the driveway. Alafair was eating at the kitchen table with a middle-aged man I had never seen. A plate of deviled eggs and two avocado-and-shrimp sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper and a glass of iced tea with mint leaves in it had obviously been set for me. But she had not waited upon my arrival before she and her friend started eating.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hey, Dave,” she said. “This is Lou Wexler. He has to get to the airport, so we started without you.”

Wexler was a tall, thick-bodied man with a tan that went to the bone and blond hair sun-bleached on the tips. He was ruggedly handsome, with intelligent eyes and large hands and the kind of confidence that sometimes signals aggression. He wiped his fingers with a napkin before rising and shaking hands. “It’s an honor.”

“How do you do, sir?” I said, sitting down, glancing out the window at the bayou. My manner was not gracious. But no father, no matter how charitable, trusts another man with his daughter upon first introduction. If he tells you he does, he is either lying or a worthless parent.

“Lou is a screenwriter and producer,” Alafair said. “He works with Desmond.”

“Actually, I don’t work with Desmond,” he said. “I help produce his films. Nobody ‘works’ with Desmond. He’s his own man. In the best way, of course.”

“How about this fellow Butterworth?” I said.

“You’ve met Antoine, have you?”

“Twice.”

Wexler’s eyes were sparkling. “And?”

“An unusual fellow,” I said.

“Don’t take him seriously,” Wexler said. “Nobody does. He’s a bean counter posing as an artist.”

“I heard he was in a couple of wars,” I said.

“He was best at scaring the natives in the bush, rattling around in a Land Rover, and showing up for photo ops. South Africa was full of them.”

“That’s your home?” I asked.

“For a while. I was born in New Orleans. I live in Los Angeles now.”

If he’d grown up in New Orleans, he had acid-rinsed the city from his speech.

“We pulled a body out of the salt just south of Desmond Cormier’s house,” I said. “The body was tied to a cross. I spotted the cross through a telescope. Our man Butterworth took a peep but couldn’t see a thing. Neither could Desmond, although this morning he told me he had bad eyesight. Butterworth didn’t seem bothered one way or another.”

The room was silent. Alafair stared at me.

“Can you run that by me again?” Wexler said.

I repeated my statement.

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” Wexler said. “Sorry, I haven’t been watching the time. I have to get a new gym bag. Then I need to pick up some fellows in Lafayette. We’re searching out a couple of locations. Perhaps you can help us.”

His level of self-involvement was hard to take.

“I probably wouldn’t know what you’re looking for,” I said.

He touched at his mouth with his napkin and set it aside. “It’s been grand meeting you, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“Likewise.”

“Don’t get up.”

I didn’t intend to. Alafair walked him to the door. Then she came back into the kitchen, her jaw clenched. “Why do you have to be so irritable?”

“You’re a success on your own. You don’t need these phony bastards.”

“You stigmatize an entire group because of this Butterworth character?”

“They’re nihilists.”

“Desmond’s not. He’s a great director. You know why? Because he paid his goddamn dues.”

“How about it on the language, Alf?”

“Sometimes you really disappoint me,” she said.

I felt my face shrink. I took my plate outside and finished eating at the picnic table with Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon. Then I went back inside. Alafair was brushing her hair in front of the mirror in the bedroom. She was five-ten and dark-skinned, with beautiful hair that fell to her shoulders. She had a black belt in karate and ran five miles every morning. Sometimes I couldn’t believe she was the same little El Salvadoran girl I’d pulled from a submerged airplane near Southwest Pass.

“What was that guy doing here, anyway?” I said.

“Inviting me out. For supper. This evening,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”