“I sent people down into the Lower Nine. I sent people into the shelters. They interviewed evacuees who knew your friend. They knew where his church was. They were there when that wall of water came right across the top of the parish. They didn’t have any reason to lie.”
“Get to it, Bo.”
He looked genuinely inept, frustrated by his inability to speak with confidence outside the confines of a locker room or welding shop. “The guy didn’t make it. Almost everybody in that church attic drowned. I don’t know why they didn’t get out when they had a chance. Hundreds of school buses was left parked in a lot till the water was up to their windows. That’s what happens when people don’t take care of themselves.”
But my attention had faded. I don’t know what I had hoped for. Supposedly ancient people placed heavy stones on the burial places of the dead so their spirits would not roam. I believe there is another explanation, too. When we can fasten the dead to the earth and keep them safely in our midst, they cannot obligate us to search for them in our sleep.
“Thanks for the information,” I said.
But he wasn’t finished. Why he made the addendum I will never know. I have always suspected that born-again people such as Bo Wiggins find themselves in a dilemma they do not wish to recognize: If they truly come to believe in the precepts they profess, they can no longer remain who and what they are.
“A bunch of people say they saw lights under the water, like phosphorescent fish swimming around. That’s not what happened. Just after the priest fell off the roof of the church or maybe got pushed, a coast Guard chopper flew over. It was lit up like a Juárez whore-house. What those people saw was the reflection in the water and the downdraft of the chopper stirring up the reflection.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t the chopper pick up the people who were drowning?”
“You’d have to ask them, son.”
His face looked as vacuous as a scarecrow’s.
THAT AFTERNOON, a black patrolwoman by the name of Catin Segura came into my office. She had started off at the department as a 911 dispatcher, then had gotten an associate degree in criminal justice at a community college in New Orleans. Like Helen Soileau, she had worked as a meter maid before becoming a patrolwoman in both Uptown and across the river in Gretna. When Helen decided to increase the number of black female deputies in the department, Catin was the first one she hired.
Catin was a short, compact woman, unassuming, a bit withdrawn, a single mother who lived with her two children in Jeanerette. She was one of those decent, ordinary people you could always depend upon. You gave her the assignment and then forgot about it. I always admired the grace and dignity that seemed to govern her life.
“What’s the haps, catin?” I said.
“I was on my way home last night and saw the aftermath of an accident by the Jeanerette drawbridge. It looked like a hit-and-run.” She pulled a notebook from her shirt pocket and peeled back two pages. “A guy named Ronald Bledsoe claims he was parked on the shoulder using his cell phone when some maniac backed into him and took off. His radiator was split open and all the antifreeze was draining on the road surface. There was also debris from both vehicles all over the road. Bledsoe was driving a Rolls-Royce. You know this guy, Dave?”
“He’s bad news. He may have broken into my house.”
She gave me a look. “Anyway, he said he was waiting for a tow. But he never called nine-one-one. When I asked him why, he said he figured it was a waste of time. I told him his insurance company would want a police report. He said he hadn’t thought of that. The guy looks like he escaped from a freak show.”
“That’s part of his charm.”
“Here’s where it gets weird. Otis Baylor came out in his yard and was watching me and Bledsoe. I asked him if he had seen the hit-and-run and he said he had not. I asked him if anybody in his house had. He said no. I thought he would just go back inside but he didn’t.”
“So what happened?”
“I got my push broom out of the trunk and starting sweeping all the glass and broken metal onto the shoulder. That’s when I saw the license tag in the grass. Baylor must have seen it, too. When the tow truck came and was hooking up the rolls, he walked out on the road and looked down at the tag. Then he walked back to his house. I could see him pretty clear in the porch lamp. I’d swear he took a pen out of his pocket and wrote something on his hand.”
“The tag number?”
“You tell me. I just ran it. It’s registered to an Elizabeth Crochet in Loreauville. Mean anything?”
“No, but give me the address.”
She wrote it in her notebook, then tore the page out and handed it to me. “I know Baylor is out on bail, so I thought I should tell you about all this.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Baylor shot some black kids in Uptown?”
“That’s what everybody says.”
“It must be hard on his wife.”
“How’s that?”
“I knew her in New Orleans. She was in my Al-Anon group. Her first husband was a sado-porn addict. Call me if you need anything else,” she said.
LATER, I CALLED Otis Baylor’s house, but there was no answer. I also called the phone number of Elizabeth Crochet. No help there, either. Just before quitting time, Clete Purcel came by.
“I’m either experiencing delayed stress syndrome or having daytime nightmares,” he said.
It was Friday afternoon and I didn’t want to hear it. “What’s going on?” I said.
“I saw Marco Scarlotti in the Winn-Dixie.”
“Are you sure?”
“I followed him outside. It was Marco. Charlie Weiss was waiting for him in a car. They had two big sacks of groceries. I waved them down, but they kept going. What are Sidney Kovick’s greaseballs doing in New Iberia?”
“You got me.”
“I went to the Lafayette Oil Center this afternoon to check out this Bo Diddley Wiggins character. He told me to get lost. He also told me he gave you all the information he had on Bobby Mack Rydel.”
“That’s right.”
Clete began unwrapping the foil from a stick of gum. “So you’re factoring me out of the investigation?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
He fed the stick of gum into his mouth and chewed it. I heard a bird thump into my window glass. “Bobby Mack Rydel checked out of the hospital today. I made a couple of calls to Morgan City. He’s not at his home or office.”
There was nothing for it. Clete was either going to work alongside me or work by himself. If the latter was the case, it would not be good for anyone, particularly Clete. “Want to have a bite to eat with us, then take a drive up to Loreauville?” I asked.
“What’s cooking?”
“My guess is Bertrand Melancon, in a big iron pot,” I replied.
IT RAINED right at sunset, then the sky cleared and the air was fresh and smelled of fish spawning and water dripping out of the trees. Alafair was going on a date and Molly was going to a meeting of Pax christi at Grand Coteau. I opened all the windows to let in the wind and the cool autumnal fragrance of night-blooming flowers in our yard. Through the trees the clouds were purple- and rose-stippled in the west. Down at the foot of the slope, a blue heron stood among the lily pads, pecking at insects on its wing, its slender lines like a haiku inside feathers.
I didn’t want to chase down Bertrand Melancon or leave this perfect moment inside our simple house on Bayou Teche. I didn’t want to return to the world of violence and avarice that seems to define the era in which we live. As a police officer I was not supposed to hate. But in reality I despised those who manipulate and exploit our society, and I’m not talking about the pathetic collection of miscreants we spend most of our time and money locking up. But maybe the world has always been the way it is today. I can’t say. Like Voltaire’s protagonist Candide, I just wanted to retreat to a private garden and not deal with it anymore.
Unhappily, that’s not the way it works.
Clete and I got into his convertible and, like a pair of 1950s low-riders, headed up the bayou to the Loreauville Quarters and the home of Elizabeth Crochet.
DECADES AGO, during the 1960s, a black minister in oakland, California, addressed an open letter to the founders of the Black Panthers, young men he had known since childhood. His thesis was simple, namely, that the foundations of the black community had always rested in the church and the family. The family was matriarchal and the church was usually Southern Baptist.
The minister added that his young friends did not understand the atavistic nature of loyalty within the black family. Unlike whites who would call the man on their own children, the matriarch would open her veins before she would dime a grandchild with Officer chuck. Because the Panthers did not respect either the church or the traditional ethos of the family, their constituency would prove to be evanescent at best and their movement little more than a historical asterisk.
Elizabeth Crochet wore her gray hair in a bun and walked with a cane, her back terribly bent. When she pushed open the screen for us to enter, she could barely lift her head sufficiently to see our faces. Clete removed his porkpie hat, and I showed my badge and photo ID. Her living room was neat, the faded throw rugs broom-swept clean, the slipcover on the couch printed with a floral design. She sat in a hard chair and indicated the couch and the one stuffed chair were for us. Her blue eyes jittered when she tried to focus them on us.
“You say my lI’l car been in an accident?”
“Down by the Jeanerette drawbridge,” I said.
“News to me,” she said.
“Where is your car now, ms. Crochet?” I asked.
“It ain’t out front?”
“No, ma’am,” I said.
“Then I guess it ain’t here, no.”
Clete suppressed a yawn and looked out the door, knowing the drill from many years.
“Ms. Crochet, we’ve already spoken to a couple of your neighbors,” I said. “I know your grandson is Bertrand Melancon. I know he’s staying with you. I don’t want to see him hurt. But some very bad men will do whatever it takes to get their hands on something they believe Bertrand has in his possession or at least has access to. I can’t stress enough how dangerous these men are.”
“He’s in trouble again, huh?”
“Yes, he is.”
“It started with their mama,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Their mama always liked a downtown man. She went off to New Orleans, wasn’t gonna live in the Quarters like a field hand, she said. Eddy and Bertrand never had no real daddy.”
For just a moment I thought our trip was not in vain. “Where’s Bertrand right now, ms. Crochet?”
“Don’t know.”
“Has a man named Otis Baylor tried to contact you?”
“Who’s he?”
I wrote my home phone on the back of my business card and put the card on her coffee table. “Ask Bertrand to call me.”
“I got the feeling I ain’t gonna see him again, Mr. Robicheaux.”
I was surprised she had remembered my name and I realized that her mind and intelligence were far less influenced by her age than her body was. “Why is that?”
“’Cause I always knowed he was gonna die young. He didn’t talk till he was fo’ years old. Know why? He was always scared. A li’l boy scared every day of his life. He always been that same li’l boy, trying to prove he ain’t scared of nobody.”
“Bertrand told me he had an auntie in the Lower Nine. Think he might be with her?” I smiled when I said it.
“From what I hear, ain’t nobody left in the Lower Nine, lessen you count dead people.”
I got up to go.
“Suh?” she said.
“Yes?”
“What’s Bertrand done? He ain’t killed nobody? He ain’t done somet’ing like that, no?”
She made me think of a small bird looking up from the bottom of a nest.
CLETE AND I got back in his convertible and drove up the lane, to the end of the Quarters, on the outside chance Bertrand was at a neighbor’s house. I could tell Clete was exasperated by the way the interview had gone. “Why didn’t you tell her her grandson probably killed a Catholic priest?” he said.
“Because it wouldn’t do any good. Because she’s too old to handle that kind of weight.”
“You didn’t press her about the aunt, either.”
“I can’t chase him all over the state, Clete. I don’t have the time or the resources. How about lightening up?”
The right-front tire hit a chuckhole and the frame slammed down on the spring, splashing water on the windshield.
“It’s your case, but he’s still my bail skip,” Clete said. “And he’s still the guy who ran me down with his automobile.”
“That’s right, it’s my case. I’m glad we have that straight.”
Clete clicked on the radio, then clicked it back off, the color climbing in his neck.
“Say it,” I said.
“It’s your case, handle it the way you want. But I think you cut these bastards too much slack.”
I looked out the window and decided this time not to reply.
Clete turned onto another lane and drove slowly back toward the state road. The sky had darkened and lights were going on in the shotgun houses on either side of us. The boarded-up windows, the junker cars, the wash lines, and the open drainage ditches full of trash were like photos taken by Walker evans during the Great Depression, as though seven decades had not passed. Who was responsible? I have trouble with the notion of collective guilt. But if I had to lay it at anyone’s feet, I’d start with the White League, the Knights of the White Camellia, the Saturday-night nigger-knockers, and all the people who did everything in their power to keep their fellow human beings poor and uneducated and at one another’s throats so they would remain a source of cheap labor.
“Did I piss you off?” Clete said.
“No,” I said. “I think Bertrand Melancon was at Otis Baylor’s house.”
“He wants to square what he did to Baylor’s daughter?”
“Yeah, but how?”
“He could give them the diamonds. But I don’t think a pus head like Melancon has it in him.”
I was tired and didn’t want to think about it anymore. “I’ll buy you a Dr Pepper up at miller’s market.”
“I can’t wait. Life with you is—”
“What?”
“You’re the best cop I ever knew. But you’re nuts, Dave. You always have been,” he said. “Life with you is like being around a guy who’s got kryptonite for a brain.”