The New Iberia Blues

Chapter Thirty-One

Saturday morning was perfect. The sunrise was striped with pink and purple clouds, the live oaks a deep green after the rain, the bayou high above the banks, the lily pads and elephant ears rolling with the current. It was a study in the mercurial nature of light and shadow and the way they form and re-create the external world second by second with no more guidance than a puff of wind. I believed it was akin to the obsession of Desmond Cormier with John Ford’s films and the Manichean dualism of light and darkness. I believed I was looking into the center of the Great Mystery right there in my backyard.

But my lighthearted mood did not last long. Later, as I was raking leaves in the front yard, I saw Antoine Butterworth’s Subaru coming up East Main, past the library and city hall and the grotto devoted to Jesus’ mother. I turned my back to the street, gathering up an armload of leaves to stuff in a barrel, hoping that Butterworth would drive on by.

I heard his wheels turn into my driveway and bounce with the dip. The top of his Subaru was down. He cut his engine and got out, dressed in pleated white slacks and a golf shirt and sandals, with a pale blue silk bandana tied around his neck, the way a rogue Errol Flynn might wear it. He held a manila envelope in one hand.

“Normally, I’d take this to your supervisor,” he said. “But since she’s not in on Saturday, I thought you wouldn’t mind my dropping by. What a snug little place you have here.”

“What is it, Butterworth?”

“Actually, I was made privy to this material by Lou Wexler, busy little shit that he is.”

“You’re not a Brit. Why do you try to talk like one?”

“You don’t think Lou is a little shit? Oh, I forgot, he’s dating your daughter.”

“She’s not dating him, bub.”

“That would be news to Lou.”

I began raking again, the tines biting into the dirt.

“He did some checking on your partner, Detective Ribbons,” Butterworth said. “Want to hear the results?”

My hands were tingling. I raked harder, a bead of sweat running down my nose.

“Not curious at all?” he said. “My, my.”

I stopped, the rake propped in my hand. “Say it.”

“Bailey was a bad little girl and was playing with matches.”

I held my eyes on his. How could either Wexler or Butterworth know about the arson deaths of the three rapists on an Indian reservation in western Montana? According to Bailey, she had never told anyone what she had done except me and the Indian woman with whom she lived.

“Cat got your tongue?” he said.

“I’m off the clock now,” I said. “I’m also on my own property.”

“Meaning?”

“You might be having your next meal through a glass straw.”

“I’ll leave this private investigator’s report for you to read at your leisure. Ta-ta.”

“Why would Wexler be interested in the background of Detective Ribbons?”

“It’s not Wexler. Outside of posing in front of a mirror, his chief interest in life is lessons in classical Latin, if you get my drift. Put it this way — he loves to shoot films in Thailand. Desmond told him to check out your partner.”

“Why her?”

“You and she are hurting Des financially. That said, by extension, you’re hurting Lou and me.”

“Get off my property.”

“Not interested in the tykes who got burned in a schoolhouse fire?”

Then I realized he wasn’t talking about the death of the rapists. My stomach felt sick, my face sweaty and cold in the wind. “Where’d this happen?”

“In Holy Cross, in the Lower Ninth Ward. None of the children died. But a certain little girl was in a lot of trouble for a while. The welfare worker said she was ‘disturbed.’ Broken home, alcoholic mother, poverty, all that Little Match Girl routine, no pun intended.”

I went back to raking, my hands dry and stiff on the rake handle, my eyes out of focus.

“No clever remarks?” he said.

“I think you’re full of it.”

“Just going to let it roll off your back?”

I didn’t look up. “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

“Let’s see. Three things, actually. I took a couple of AK rounds that probably had feces on them. One of my wives gave me the clap. And spending time in this place.”

I took the manila envelope from his hands, walked him to his vehicle, and slammed him into the seat hard enough to jar his teeth. Then I tore his envelope into pieces and sprinkled them on his head.

“Keep being the great example you are,” I said. “We know you can do it.”

Then I got into my truck, drove around his Subaru — scraping the fender with my bumper — and headed up Loreauville Road to Bailey’s cottage, my heart the size and density of a cantaloupe.

She wasn’t home. I got on my cell phone and called Frank Rizzo, an old friend and former arson investigator who had served five years as a superintendent with the New Orleans Fire Department. “Bailey Ribbons?” he said. “Yeah, that clangs bells. You say a schoolhouse in Holy Cross?”

“Yeah, in the Lower Ninth.”

“Can you give me a date?”

“No.” I hated to tell him I had torn up the document that contained the information we needed.

“I’ll get on it. You need it right away? It’s the weekend.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Two hours later, he called back. “It was twenty-one years ago, after school. Some Girl Scouts were holding a meeting there. One of them said she had learned how to make a fire with flint and kindling. But she couldn’t get the fire started. The other girls lost interest and went outside. A few minutes later, the curtains were burning.”

“Who was doing the demonstration with the flint and kindling?”

“Bailey Ribbons. She was thirteen.”

“So it was an accident?” I said.

“This is where it gets sticky. She denied starting the fire. There was a hot plate in the room. She claimed one of the other girls had left it on and a coat had fallen off a wall hook on top of the coil. Except there were match heads in the kindling. It was obvious she wanted to impress the other girls and had set up the demonstration before she got there.”

“What was the conclusion on the report?”

“Maybe the coat did fall on the hot plate. A social worker and the school counselor said the girl had problems. The mother was a drunk, the father gone. The mother and daughter lived on food stamps and church charity. We gave the girl a lecture and dropped it. It was a judgment call, the kind you want to forget.”

I could hear a sound in my ears like wind blowing in a seashell. “Why did you want to forget it?”

“When you train as an arson investigator, you try to learn what goes on in the head of a firebug. It’s about power and control. That little girl had every warning sign on her. Has this woman done something I should know about?”

I felt my throat tighten. “Her jacket is clean. A guy was trying to spread some dirt on her.”

“You doing a background check for the department?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Glad to hear everything worked out.”

“Yeah,” I said meaninglessly.

“It can go the other way sometimes.”

“Pardon?”

“You know, you err on the side of compassion. Then ten years down the line, you find out the person you let go fried a bunch of people.”

After I hung up, my knees were so weak I had to sit down.

That evening a squall blew through the parish, knocking down branches on power lines and flooding the storm sewers and gutters on East Main. I had no idea where Bailey was. I wondered if I had been played, or if I was dealing with a sociopath or a pyromaniac. But that’s the nature of gossip and lies or half-truths or incomplete information. Suspicion begins with a fine crack and grows into a chasm. I fed Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon in the kitchen and tried to take comfort in their company.

“How are you guys doing?” I said.

I got a tail swish from Mon Tee Coon.

“Let me make a confession to you,” I said. “I think the world would be a better place if we turned it over to you and the rest of us got off the planet.”

They continued eating, noncommittal. I heard Alafair pull into the drive and get out and run through the puddles into the house. She got a towel out of the bathroom and came into the kitchen, wiping her face. “All the traffic lights are knocked out. What a mess.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Playing handball at Red Lerille’s with Lou.”

“Earlier today Antoine Butterworth was here with some dirt on Bailey Ribbons.”

“Dave, I don’t want to hear any more about Antoine. He’s weird. What else is new? End of subject.”

“This isn’t about Butterworth. He says he got his information from Lou Wexler.”

“No, this isn’t adding up. What would Lou know about Bailey Ribbons? Why would he have any interest in her?”

“Evidently, Wexler hired a PI as part of his scut work for Desmond Cormier.”

“Lou does not do scut work. He’s a producer and a writer. He’s bankrupted himself out of his loyalty to Desmond. You may not know this, but when Des finishes the picture, he may well have produced one of the greatest films ever made. And the only way he can finish it is to beg, borrow, and steal every nickel he can. Maybe you don’t agree with that, but give him and Lou some credit.”

I took the towel from her hand and wiped her hair with it. “You want me to fix you something to eat?”

“No.” Her eyes remained on mine. “This isn’t about Antoine or Lou, is it?”

“No.”

“What did the PI dig up on Bailey?”

“She may have accidentally started a fire in a schoolhouse when she was thirteen.”

“That’s it?”

“She’d put some matchheads inside some kindling she wanted to light with a flint.”

Alafair went to the icebox and took a pitcher of tea from the tray, her eyes neutral and impossible to read. She had graduated with honors from Reed and had finished Stanford Law at the top of her class. She had an IQ that only two people in a million have.

“What’s the rest of it?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Don’t play games with me, Dave.”

“I’m not sure who Bailey is.”

“She’s got a history? Something to do with fire?”

“I’d better not say any more.”

She set the pitcher of tea on the table and turned toward me. “Oh, Dave, what have you gotten yourself into?”

One hour later, the sky had grown darker, the rain heavier, blowing in sheets on the bayou. The phone rang on the kitchen counter. I looked at the caller ID before I picked up. “Is that you, Sean?”

“Remember when we went fishing and you said you’d have my back?” he said.

“Sure.” The truth was, I didn’t remember. But that didn’t matter. “What’s up, podna?”

“I’m a little snaky today and probably not seeing things right. Some of Hugo Tillinger’s church friends was taking his body back to Texas, so I went over to the funeral home and hung around. I wasn’t in uniform.”

Wrong move, I thought. But I didn’t say it.

“One guy asked if I was a relative or friend. I told him I was just paying my respects. I guess you could call that lying.”

“You were in a difficult situation,” I said. I rubbed my forehead and sat down in a chair. I knew where we were going, and I wanted to get out of it as fast as I could. I started to speak again but didn’t get the chance.

“So the guy asks me where I knew Tillinger from. I told the guy I shot him.”

“Listen to me, Sean—”

“He didn’t say a word. He just stared at me with his eyes misting over. I never had anybody look at me like that.”

“You’re an honorable man. That’s why you went to the funeral home. Nobody has the right to condemn you. That man wasn’t there when Tillinger pointed a Luger at us.”

“I wanted to explain it to him.”

“There’re situations for which no words are adequate. This was one of them. I’m sure that fellow respects you for coming to the funeral home.”

I heard him take a breath. “I didn’t mean to pester you,” he said.

Through the window I could see lightning flickering on the oak trees in the yard, the door on Tripod’s empty hutch swinging in the wind. “I’d better go now,” I said.

“What I just told you ain’t the only reason I called. I could have dropped a guy tonight. I called you because I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not.”

“Could have dropped whom?”

“Somebody out by my barn. I called him out and he took off running.”

“Clear this up for me, Sean, and get it right. You say you could have dropped him. You drew down on him, you had him in your sights, what?”

“Lightning flashed and I saw somebody inside the barn. His skin looked real white. I think he had a rifle. I cain’t be sure. I had my piece out, but I didn’t raise it. He run out the back of the barn into the pecan trees.”

“Did you call it in?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want people to think I’m losing it.”

“Will you be there for the next fifteen minutes?”

Sean rented a paintless termite-eaten farmhouse with a wide gallery and a peaked tin roof down by Avery Island. All the lights were on in the house when I pulled into his dirt yard and went up the steps with a raincoat over my head. He opened the door.

“Hate to be an inconvenience and general pain in the butt,” he said. “Want some coffee? It’s already made.”

“No, thanks.”

He was wearing a white T-shirt and starched jeans and flip-flops. Leaning by the door was a scoped rifle with a sling. A holstered revolver and gun belt hung on the back of a chair in the dining room.

“Miss Bailey get aholt of you?” he said.

“No, I’ve been looking for her.”

“That’s funny. She was just here.”

“What for?”

“She thought this Smiley guy might want to do me in ’cause of Tillinger being his friend or something.”

“That’s a possibility. You think you saw Smiley Wimple?”

“I ain’t sure.”

“You weren’t in the service, were you?”

“No, sir.” He waited. “How come you ask me that?”

“You’ve got your whole environment lit up. You’d make a great silhouette on a window shade.”

“I don’t study on things like that.”

“On what things?”

“Dying. I figure everybody has a time. Till it comes, I say don’t study on it.”

“Let’s take a look at your barn.”

He put on a raincoat with a hood, and we went out into the rain and walked under an oak tree and crossed a clear spot and entered the dry barn. He closed the door behind us and pulled the chain on a solitary lightbulb. Fresh shoe marks were stenciled in the dirt, though not to the extent that I could tell their size.

“Were you in here?”

“No, sir.”

“You stood outside?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the guy ran from here to that pecan grove?”

“Like I said.”

“Your clothes didn’t get wet?”

“They was sopping. That’s why I put on dry ones.”

“I was just wondering. I thought you might have secret powers.”

“You did, huh?”

It was too late to take back the wisecrack. “What else did Bailey have to say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Sean—”

“To heck with you, Dave. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

He pulled the chain on the light and walked back to his house, the rain glistening on his raincoat, his profile as sharp as snipped tin.

I didn’t sleep that night. Early Sunday morning I drove to Clete’s motor court and banged on his door. The rain was still falling, a thick white fog rolling on the bayou, the air cold, like snow on your skin. Clete answered the door in his pajamas. “Have you gone nuts?”

“Thanks for the kind words,” I said, brushing past him.

He shut the door. “You had trouble with Bailey Ribbons?”

“Why do you think that?”

“You’re a mess with women.”

“I’m a mess?”

“Yeah, without my guidance, you’d really be in trouble,” he said. “What’s the haps with Bailey?”

“I’ve got to have your sacred oath.”

At first he didn’t answer. He put on a bathrobe and fluffy blue slippers. Then he said, “Don’t be talking to me like that, big mon. You either trust me or you don’t.”

I told him about the men who raped Bailey, and the fire she set under the propane tank on their trailer, and how all three men died, and the trouble she had in Holy Cross when she was thirteen. Then I told him about my visit the previous night to Sean McClain’s place.

“McClain couldn’t recognize Smiley Wimple?” Clete said. “Wimple looks like an albino caterpillar that glows in the dark.”

“Yeah, I wondered the same thing.”

“Sean McClain bothers you for some reason?”

“He’s been around too many murder scenes,” I said. “That’s what I keep thinking. Same with Bailey. I don’t know who she is.”

Clete started a pot of coffee on his small gas stove. He opened his icebox and took out a box of glazed doughnuts and tossed it to me. “You know what you’re always telling me, right?”

“No.”

“People are what they do, not what they say, not what they think, not what they pretend to be.”

“That’s not reassuring. Bailey killed three people. That’s what she did. With fire.”

“These guys were running a meth lab. They deserved what they got. Besides, she told you about it. Would she get on the square like that if she were jacking you around?”

“Why is it that everything you say has something in it about genitalia?”

He removed the coffeepot from the stove and set it and two cups on the table. “Dave, there’s an explanation for what you’re experiencing. The guy we’re after is waging war against this entire community. He wants us at each other’s throats. Don’t fall into his trap.”

“How do you know this?”

“I don’t. It’s just a thought. But nothing else makes sense.”

We were both quiet. I took a bite out of a doughnut.

“I’ve got a worse scenario, one I can’t get out of my head sometimes,” Clete said. “I wake up with it in the middle of the night. Some mornings, too. That’s when it really gets bad.”

“What does?”

“The dream. I dream we’re all dead. We fucked up while we were alive and now we’re stacking time in a place where there’re no answers, only questions that drive you crazy. I went to a shrink about it.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. I didn’t give him a chance. He was one of the people in the dream. Enjoy the day we get, Streak. Being dead is a pile of shit.”