DR08 - Burning Angel (37 page)

Except my foot punched through a plank on the back step that was as soft as rotted cork. I stumbled into the interior still limping, my .45 pointed straight out with both hands. Clete was silhouetted against the broken light beyond the front door, his rifle hanging from his right hand. He was looking at something on the floor.

Then I saw him, amidst the litter of soiled clothes and fishing gear and barbells. He lay on his back by a small table with a shortwave radio on it, dressed in jeans, a sleeveless green T-shirt, suspenders, his bare feet like pale white blocks of wood. A dark pool shaped like a deformed three-leaf clover swelled from the back of his neck. I knelt beside him.

He opened his mouth and coughed on an obstruction deep in his throat.

His tongue was as red and bright as licorice. I started to turn him on his side.

“Don't do it, chief,” he whispered. “He broke the shank off inside.”

“Who did this to you, Emile?”

“Never saw him. A pro. Maybe that cocksucker Marsallus.”

His eyes came together like BB's, then refocused on my face.

“We're going to put you on my boat, then get you out in the bay so a chopper can pick you up,” I said.

But he was already shaking his head before I finished my words. His eyes slid off my face onto my shirt.

“What is it?” I said.

“Lean close.”

I lowered my ear toward his mouth, then realized that was not what he wanted. His hand lifted up and clenched around my religious medal and chain, knotted it across his knuckles, held me hovering above the shrunken pinpoints of his eyes.

“I ain't got the right words. Too many bad gigs, chief. I apologize for the Dutchie,” he whispered.

When his hand fell from my chain, his breath mushroomed out of his mouth and struck against my face like a fist. A bottle fly crawled across his eyes.

Clete clicked off the dial on the shortwave set. The dead radio tubes crackled in the silence.

Chapter 33

NEXT MORNING Helen Soileau walked with me into Clete's office on Main.

The front and back doors were open, and the papers in Clete's wire baskets lifted and ruffled in the breeze. Helen looked around the office.

“Where's Avon's answer to the Beast of Buchenwald?” she said.

“What's the problem?” Clete said from behind his desk, trying to smile.

“They knew we were coming, that's the problem,” she said.

“Terry? Come on,” he said.

“Where is she?” Helen said.

“Getting some stuff photocopied.”

“Does she have any scratches on her?” I said.

“You want me to strip-search my secretary?”

“It's not funny, Clete,” I said.

“She wasn't in the office when Pogue called,” he said.

“You're sure?” I said.

“She was across the street at the doughnut place.”

“You didn't tell her about it?” I asked.

“No .. .” His eyes looked into space. “No, I'm sure of it. I never mentioned Pogue's name, never mentioned a place.”

Helen looked at me and made a sucking sound with her teeth. “Okay,”

she said. “Maybe the hit was already on him. There's Marsal-his to think about, too.”

“Not with a knife. We're talking about one of Pogue's buddies from the Phoenix Program,” Clete said. He leaned over in his chair and clicked on a floor fan, clamped his hand on top of a yellow legal pad by his telephone. The pages blew and rattled in the gust of air.

“Why would anyone try to take a guy like Pogue with a knife? Unless the killer knew we were in the vicinity?” I said.

Clete scratched at the scar that ran through his eyebrow, rested his chin on his knuckles.

“I guess you're right, you got a leak. How about that butt wipe who was in the Crotch?” he said.

“Rufus Arceneaux?” Helen said.

Clete and I drove to New Orleans at dawn, turned off I-io onto St.

Charles Avenue, and went uptown toward the Garden District, past the lovely old Pontchartrain Hotel and rows of antebellum and early Victorian homes with their narrow pillared galleries and oak-canopied yards that stayed black with shadow even in summer. We turned left across the neutral ground and the streetcar tracks and crossed Prytania, the street where Lillian Hellman grew up, then headed up Magazine, the old line of disembarkation into the Irish Channel, toward the levee and a different New Orleans, one of late-nineteenth-century paint less frame houses with ventilated shutters and hardpan dirt yards and tiny galleries propped up on bricks, clapboard corner bars that never closed or took down their Christmas lights, matchbox barbecue joints that smelled of hickory and ribs by 9 A.M.“ and graffiti-scrolled liquor stores whose windows were barred like jails.

I parked in front of the address Luke Fontenot had given me. A thundershower had just passed through the neighborhood and the air was gray and wet and steam rose from the roofs like smoke in winter. Clete rolled down the window and squinted at the rows of almost identical, weathered, coffee-colored houses, a ramshackle tin-roofed juke joint overgrown with banana trees on the corner, an elderly black man in a frayed suit and sneakers and baseball cap riding a bicycle with fat tires aimlessly up and down the street. I could see shadows and lights in Clete's face, like reflections that cling inside frost on a window.

”They say if you're ever black on Saturday night, you'll never want to be white again,“ he said.

”You usually hear white people say that after they shortchange the yardman,“ I said.

”Our house was one block over.“

I waited for him to go on, but he didn't.

”You want to come in?“ I said.

”No, it's your show. I'm going to get a cup of coffee.“

”Something on your mind?“

He laughed down in his chest, rubbed a knuckle against his nose. ”My old man knocked me into next week because I dropped his bucket of beer in front of that juke joint. He was quite a guy. I was never big on nostalgia, Streak.“

I watched him walk toward the levee, his porkpie hat slanted on the crown of his head, his face lifted into the breeze off the river, his feelings walled up inside a private place where I never transgressed.

Ruthie Jean's address was a two-story house with a fire escape for an upstairs entrance and wash strung across the veranda and a single paint-blistered trellis that was spoked with red roses.

A police cruiser with the NOPD crescent on the door and a white cop in a sky blue shirt behind the wheel slowed by my pickup as I was locking the door behind me.

”Can I help you?“ he said.

I opened my badge holder in my palm.

”On the job,“ I said, and smiled.

”Work on your tan if you're coming back after sunset,“ he said.

”Thanks,“ I said, and felt conspiratorial and slightly ashamed at my own response.

A moment later Ruthie Jean opened the door at the head of the fire escape. She wore a pair of new blue jeans with a silver-tipped western belt and white tennis shoes and a burnt orange blouse and gold hoop earrings. This time there was no anger or recrimination in her face; in fact, I had the sense she expected me.

”I need to talk to you about Moleen,“ I said.

”You surely don't give it up.“

”You don't have to talk to me, Ruthie Jean.“

”I know that. Come in, if you like.“

The living room was airy and cool, the upholstered couch and chairs patterned with flowers and decorated with doilies. The curtains puffed and twisted in the breeze, and you could see the top of the levee and hear boats with horns out on the river.

”Can I give you some coffee?“ she said.

”That'd be nice.“

I sat in a deep chair while she fixed a tray in the kitchen. A steamer trunk lay opened by the couch. In a removable top compartment, which she had set at an angle to the sides in order to pack the bottom, was a clear plastic bag with folded blue and pink baby clothes inside. A withered camellia was pressed between the fabric and the plastic.

She limped into the living room with the tray; her eyes followed mine to the trunk. She lowered the tray down on the coffee table, then reset the wood compartment inside the trunk and closed the lid.

”Why you dislike Moleen so much?“ she said.

”He thinks it's natural for other people to pay for his mistakes.“

”If you're talking about the abortion, it was me went over to Texas.

Moleen didn't have anything to do with it.“

”Moleen ran down and killed the little boy out by Cade, not his wife.“

”I don't believe that.“

I leaned forward with my forearms on my thighs and rubbed my palm idly on my knuckles.

”I don't know how to tell you this,“ I said. ”But I believe Julia

Bertrand may try to do you grave injury. Maybe with Moleen's consent.“

”You cain't forgive him for the world he comes from, Mr. Robi-cheaux.

It's not his fault who he was born.“

I was at a loss.

”Do you have a gun?“ I asked.

”No.“

Her face made me think of a newly opened dark flower about to be burned by a severe light.

”You're an admirable lady, Ruthie Jean. I hope you're going to be all right. Call me if I can ever help you in any way.“

”That's why you sent that other man?“

”Excuse me?“

”The one with the red hair and the skin look like milk. He was standing outside in the rain. I axed him what he was doing in this neighborhood at night. He said he was your friend and you were worried about me. He's your friend, isn't he?“

”Yes, I think he probably is.“

”Think?“

I started to explain, but I didn't. Then I simply said, ”I'd better be going now.“

Her turquoise eyes, gold skin, the mole by her mouth, her thick black hair that curved on her cheek were framed as though in a lens by the curtains that puffed and danced behind her head. Her eyes moved up to meet mine.

”You're a very good man,“ she said.

”Good-bye, Ruthie Jean,“ I said, and took her hand in mine. It was small and dry and I wanted to hold it a long time. I knew in a way that words could not explain that this was much more than a casual farewell.

We pulled into the circle drive of the yacht club and parked not far from the practice green. The yacht club was sparkling white in the sunlight, with flagstone terraces and tinted, glassed-in dining areas and fairways that looked like corridors of velvet between the oak trees. When we got out of the truck, Clete pulled his shirt down over the front of his slacks, smoothed it with his fingers, adjusted his belt with his thumb, looked down at his shirt again.

”How does a prick like Johnny Carp get in a joint like this?“ he said.

”They recognize a closet Republican when they see one.“

”How do I look?“ he said.

”Lean and mean, not a bump on you.“

”You sure you want to do this?“

”You got to do something for kicks,“ I said.

”I'm starting to worry about you, big mon.“

We walked in the shade of the building toward the entrance. Sailboats were rocking in their slips out on Lake Pontchartrain. The maitre d'

stopped us at the door to the dining room.

”Do you gentlemen have reservations?“ he said. His face and accent were European, his closed-shaved cheeks ruddy with color.

I opened my badge holder. ”We're here to see Polly Gee,“ I said. He looked at me blankly. ”That's Johnny Carp .. . John Giacano. His secretary said he's having lunch here.“

His facial skin tightened against the bone. His eyes involuntarily glanced at a glass-domed annex to the main dining room. He cleared his throat softly.

”Is there going to be a problem, gentlemen?“ he asked.

”We'll let you know if there is. Bring me a double Jack, with a Dixie on the side, and put it on Johnny's tab. He told me to tell you that,“

Clete said.

The domed annex was empty, except for Johnny Carp and his crew, who were eating from gumbo appetizer bowls at a long linen-covered table set with flowers and pitchers of sangria. Johnny lowered his spoon from his mouth, his face dead. A scar, like a piece of black string, was crimped into his lip where I had hit him. One of Johnny's crew, a one-thousand-dollar-a-hit mechanic named Mingo Bloomberg, started to rise from his chair. He was a handsome, copper-haired man with ice blue eyes that were totally devoid of moral light.

”The man with the badge has a pass. You don't, Purcel,“ he said.

”Don't get up on my account,“ Clete said.

”A guy's got to try. It's nothing personal.“

”Put your hand on me and you're going to wear a metal hook, Mingo.“

”So we see how it shakes out,“ Mingo said, and began to stand up.

Clete fitted his hand on Mingo's face and shoved him back down in his chair. Then he hit him twice with the flat of his hand, like a man swinging a fielder's glove filled with cement.

”You want another one?“ he said. ”Tell me now, Mingo. Go ahead, open your mouth again.“

I cupped my palm around Clete's bicep. It felt like a grapefruit.

”I'm fed up with this shit. Somebody get security in here,“ Johnny said.

”You're looking good, John,“ I said.

”You're a lucky man, Dave.“ He pointed his fork at me. ”You ought to burn a few candles at your church.“

”That's not quite how I see it, John,“ I said. ”You don't want to queer your people's action in Iberia Parish by killing a police officer, but then again you're not always predictable. That means I need to do something about you, like maybe squeeze Patsy Dapolito until he gives you up. You think Patsy will give you up, John?“

”What's to give? He don't work for me no more. He never really did.“

”Oh?“ I said.

”That's right, he's a malignant geek, a short-eyes, a freak. You gonna nail me with the testimony of a child molester? You know what my lawyer would do with a guy like that on the stand? When he gets excited he drools. Hey, you guys, picture star witness Patsy Bones drooling on the stand.“ Johnny stretched his face out of shape and let his tongue roll wetly in his mouth while all his crew laughed. ”You two twerps get out of here.“

”It's always a pleasure, John,“ I said.

Clete picked up a bread stick, dipped it in a Sangria pitcher, and snapped it off in his jaw, winking at me while he grinned outrageously.