DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

  “Got it.”

  She stood up from the desk and put her hands on her hips. She was wearing western-cut tan slacks and a braided belt and tight shirt. Then unexpectedly she looked me straight-on in the face and her eyes and manner took on that peculiar androgynous cast that had a way of turning her into a lovely mystery, one that was both arousing and unsettling at the same time.

  “I should have never sent you back to New Orleans,” she said.

  “Why’s that?

  “Because the Feds have money to clean up their own messes and we don’t. Because you’re a good cop and you never shut the drawer on your cases. Everybody in your caseload stays in your head. If you weren’t a cop, you’d have a Roman collar on.” Her eyes were violet-colored, warmer than they should have been.

  “Can I have a raise?”

  She jiggled her fingers at me. “Bwana go now.”

  I SKIPPED LUNCH and drove out to Otis Baylor’s house on Old Jeanerette Road. He was in his yard, inside deep shade, a four-gallon tank of insect spray on his back. He worked his way along the side of the house, spraying the flower beds and the foundation. It was cool inside the shade, but the canvas loops of his spray tank had formed sweat rings on his shirt. I had a feeling Otis Baylor was pinching every dollar he could.

  I sat on his front steps without invitation, as a neighbor might. Down the long green slope of his property, the bayou wrinkled in the wind and elephant ears grew thickly along the banks. Otis’s nineteenth-century house, with its rusted screens, tin roof, deep shade, and green mold on the foundation, was a humble setting. But inside the trees the air was cool-smelling and filled with the sounds of wind in the bamboo and the drift of pine needles across the roof. It was the kind of place where a man could be at peace with himself and his family and set aside the ambitions that never allow the soul to rest. But I doubted that Otis would ever find that kind of peace, no matter where he chose to live.

  “I took your advice,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Not to play Ronald Bledsoe’s game.”

  He continued to spray along the bottom of the house, as though I hadn’t spoken. “These Formosa termites will flat eat your house up, won’t they?” he said. “If you don’t stay after them, they’ll eat right through the concrete.”

  “One of the guys who attacked Thelma is in town,” I said. “He called me on a cell phone. His name is Bertrand Melancon. He’s the brother of the guy who took one through the throat.”

  Otis nodded, his eyes flat, his spray wand hissing across the latticework at the base of the gallery. “Why would he call you?”

  “He’s scared. I also think he’s remorseful for what he’s done.”

  Otis pumped the handle that pressurized his tank, his eyes looking at nothing. “He should be.”

  Should be scared or remorseful, which? Or both? I pulled on my earlobe. “My boss wants you to know that Bertrand Melancon belongs to us.”

  “Now, you listen, Mr. Robicheaux—”

  This time it was I who interrupted. “You know what kimberlite diamonds are?”

  “No.”

  “A few years back, warlords in Africa were selling them illegally to fuel their war machines. To harvest these diamonds, these warlords massacred large numbers of defenseless people and chopped off the arms of children. That’s why they’re called blood diamonds. Somehow Sidney got his hands on a bunch of them. The guys who looted Sidney’s house accidentally stumbled into the biggest score of their lives. Can you imagine what Sidney or his business partners will do to get them back?”

  Otis paused in his work and seemed to stare into the shadows. He slipped the tank off his bank and, holding it by one loop, set it gently on the grass, the insecticide sloshing inside. He sat down on the step in front of me, rubbing the backs of his hands, his coarse skin making a whispering sound.

  “Those men think we’re between them and their diamonds?” he said.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied.

  “Where’s this black kid now?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “All this is about those diamonds, huh? It doesn’t have squat to do with me or my family, does it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  He stood up and shook my hand, then walked into his backyard without saying good-bye.

  THAT EVENING ALAFAIR went to a book signing at Barnes & Noble in Lafayette, with plans to stay over at a friend’s. Molly and I hooked up my boat and trailer, and drove up to Henderson Swamp. It was a fine evening to fish for big-mouth bass. The wind had died, and the islands of willows and cypress trees had taken on a gold cast against the sunset. Clouds of insects gathered in the lee of the islands, and you could see bream popping the surface and occasionally the slick, black-green roll of a bass’s dorsal fin on the edge of lily pads.

  Molly had fixed fried-oyster po’boy sandwiches for us and packed several cans of Dr Pepper with crushed ice in a cooler, but I had no appetite and could not concentrate on the perfection of the evening or the fish that were feeding in the shadows of trees that were now etched like pyro-fountains against the sun.

  I didn’t want revenge against Ronald Bledsoe. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to do it close up, with a .45, one loaded with 230-grain brass-jacketed hollow-points. I wanted to empty the whole magazine into him. I wanted to smell the good, clean, head-reeling odor of burnt gunpowder and feel the jackhammer recoil of the steel frame in my wrist. I wanted to see Ronald Bledsoe translated into wallpaper.

  “Why so quiet?” Molly asked.

  “No reason,” I replied.

  Had I confessed the nature of my thoughts to Molly, I would not have only frightened or perhaps even repelled her, I would have also revealed my inability to find a legal solution for dealing with Bledsoe and those like him.

  Supposedly we are a Christian society, or at least one founded by Christians. According to our self-manufactured mythos, we revere Jesus and Mother Teresa and Saint Francis of Assisi. But I think the truth is otherwise. When we feel collectively threatened, or when we are collectively injured, we want the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday on the job and we want the bad guys smoked, dried, fried, and plowed under with bulldozers.

  For that reason, I no longer feel guilt and shame over my own inclinations. But I don’t talk about them, either.

  Just as the sun seemed to descend like a molten ball beyond the causeway that spanned the swamp, I cast a Mepps spinner into a cut between two willow islands. There was a current between the islands, and insects that fell from the trees onto the surface were carried into a narrow channel flanged on each side with lily pads. The water was dark and deep and undisturbed. The Mepps arched over the channel and made a tiny splash by a cluster of blooming hyacinths. Just as I began to rotate the handle on my reel, taking the slack from the line, I saw the water swell under the hyacinths as though a pillow of air were rising from the bottom. Then a dorsal fin cut the surface and something hit the Mepps so hard my rod smacked down on the gunwale like a broom handle.

  In Louisiana, in freshwater areas, only large-mouth bass hit with that kind of power and force. I socked him hard, setting the treble hook, and tried to lift the rod and keep the tension and weight of the fish off the monofilament. But the tip of my rod arched to the water, bowing so severely I thought it would break, beads of water shining on the line. Then he began stripping the drag, sawing the line under the boat, trying to find a stump or log to wind it around.

  Molly used the oars to turn us in a half circle, freeing the line from under the boat and allowing the bass to head up the channel. He came up once, rattling the Mepps at the corner of his mouth, then went deep again and tried to pull the boat. He fought for ten minutes, and when he finally began to swim with the pressure of the line and the hook in his mouth, I knew he was done. It was the kind of victory a fisherman doesn’t necessarily take pride in.

  I slipped the net under him and lifted him into the boat. He was heavy and wet and thick-bodied inside the
netting, the barbs of the treble hook protruding from the webbed skin at the corner of his mouth. I wet one hand in the water and lifted him, still inside the net, onto the boat seat and worked the hook out of his mouth. Then I cupped him under the belly and eased him back into the water. I could see his gills working, then he dropped away into the current like a green-gold bubble going in the wrong direction.

  “Giving dispensations these days?” Molly said.

  “Only to warriors and other guys who deserve them,” I said.

  She laughed and opened a can of Dr Pepper and drank it in silence. Then a peculiar phenomenon occurred. Maybe it was because the sun had died and we were deeper into the fall. Maybe it was because the stars were out early and the moon was rising. Maybe car lights on the causeway or the evening glow of Lafayette were reflected off the clouds. But in the cut between the two willow islands, in the darkness of the water where I had just placed the valiant bass, I saw lights that were like pieces of a broken mirror swimming about. I saw them as surely as I had caught that fish and felt it fat and heavy and dripping in my palm. Chapter 23

  H OW DO YOU nail the perps when they have no handles?

  Tuesday afternoon, just before quitting time, Clete called me at the office. “A guy who’s a regular at the casino just went in Bledsoe’s cottage,” he said. “This dude is a Texas Hold ’Em player. I saw him reading the back of a package of rubbers in the restroom, in front of about six guys who’d seen him with his girlfriend outside the door.”

  “You think he can be a lead?”

  “He’s Bledsoe’s kind of guy. Bledsoe has left no trail, but how many of his friends can have the same kind of luck? Doing anything tonight?”

  “Not a thing,” I replied.

  “Let’s use two vehicles. I’ll stay with them for now. Leave your cell on,” he said.

  I was about to hang up when he added, “You won’t believe the jugs on the broad who’s sitting in his convertible. I’m getting a boner just looking through the blinds.”

  “Will you act your age and stop talking like that?”

  “You’re right. There’s nothing funny about this bunch. Somebody is going to pay for what they did to Courtney. It’s been a while since the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide were under a black flag.”

  I wished I hadn’t said anything.

  An hour and a half later, while Molly and I were washing the dishes, Clete called again. “I’m about a quarter of a mile behind Bledsoe and his friend and the broad with Elsie-the-Cow bongos. I think they’re headed for the casino. Unless I call you back, we ROA there,” he said.

  Roger that, I thought, more casually than I should have.

  “Where are you going?” Molly asked.

  “Clete has a lead on Bledsoe.”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “It’s just surveillance. It’s pretty boring stuff.”

  “That doesn’t matter. He broke in our home. He urinated in Alafair’s bedroom. My stomach turns when I think about it. She told me he tried to get on as a volunteer at the shelter.”

  “He’s going off the board, Molly. It’s a matter of time.”

  She stepped closer to me. “You think I have to be protected from reality? I had maryknoll friends who were raped and murdered in El Salvador. Our government didn’t do a goddamn thing about it. Dave, I’m not going to sit around while this man brings his evil into our lives.”

  “I understand how you feel.”

  “Do you?”

  I looked at the earnestness in her face and wanted to hold her. I put my arms around her back, cupping one hand on her neck. She was wearing a sundress and her skin felt cool and warm at the same time under the wood-bladed ceiling fan. I rubbed my cheek against her hair and squeezed her tighter. “I promise I won’t let him hurt us again,” I said.

  She lowered her head and I felt her hands slide off my back. “Why do you think it’s all up to you? Why is it only about you?”

  “It isn’t,” I said. “You have to trust me when I say that. For once, just trust me.”

  I went outside and started the truck, my face hot, my ears ringing with the harshness of our exchange. The yard had fallen into shadow and cicadas were droning in the trees, like a bad headache that won’t go away. Just as I was backing into the street, regretting my words, trying to accept Molly’s anger and hurt feelings, she came out on the gallery and waved good-bye.

  That’s what happens when you marry nuns.

  space

  THE CASINO WAS located on reservation land, down Bayou Teche, in what used to be a rural slum. Now the reservation is prosperous and the people there live in neat homes not far from the confluence of the Teche and another waterway which together form into a bay. The house lots have no fences and contain persimmon and pecan trees, live oaks and slash pines. It’s a lovely piece of topography that hides certain economic realities that few care to dwell on.

  The patrons of the casino are the working poor, the uneducated, the compulsive, and the addicted. The booze is free as long as the patron continues to gamble. The interior glitters and charms; the restaurant is first-rate. The bands that play there do Cajun and zydeco and shitkicker, too. Inside the hermetically sealed environment, one that has no clocks or windows, all the problems of the outside world disappear.

  After Katrina and Rita, the profits at Louisiana’s casinos soared to all-time highs. If you have already lost most of the ranch, what does it matter if you lose the basement?

  Clete was standing by his car in the parking lot, smoking a Lucky Strike, his features taut with anticipation. A thermos rested on his car hood. I parked next to him, took the cigarette from his mouth, and flipped it sparking on the asphalt. “They’re inside?” I said.

  “Yeah, they put in their names for a Texas Hold ’Em table. They’re at the buffet table now.” He unscrewed the top of the thermos and drank from it but offered me none.

  “Did you get anything on Bledsoe’s bud?”

  “Joe Dupree at Lafayette PD ran his tag for me. The car is registered to a Bobby Mack Rydel in Morgan City. Joe’s description of the ID photo fits the guy driving the car. I don’t know who the broad is. How do you want to play it?”

  “What are you drinking?” I asked.

  “Vodka Collins. You mind?”

  “How big a gambler is Rydel?”

  “The Hold ’Em table is a hundred-dollar buy-in. I’ve seen him buy a grand’s worth with the bills in his shirt pocket.”

  “What about Bledsoe?”

  “I haven’t seen him in action. There’s one thing about creeps, though. They want to be treated like they’re normal. Particularly in public.”

  I thought about it. “Let’s spit in the punch bowl. Where’s their car?”

  “It’s the Saab ragtop a couple of rows over.”

  “Think it might have a vehicle violation or two?”

  “I’ll check it out,” he replied.

  Clete walked through the parked cars and looked down at the rear tag on a black Saab. Then he removed his Swiss Army knife from his pants pocket and squatted down below eye level. He was gone from sight longer than I expected. When he returned he was folding a knife blade back into the knife’s casing. “You were right. The guy’s tag is missing. A couple of his tire valves are busted, too. What a shame,” he said.

  We entered the casino and walked past banks of slot machines that rippled with color and rang with the sound of coins cascading into metal trays. Hard by the rows of slots were dozens of Hold ’Em card tables, each seating nine players. The game was so popular the players had to get on a waiting list in order to buy a hundred-dollar chair. While the players waited for a vacancy, they fed the slots. When they got tired of waiting, they had another drink on the house and fed the slots some more.

  Clete nodded in the direction of two men and a statuesque woman with white-gold hair who were being seated at one of the far tables. Bledsoe was wearing powder-blue slacks, a matching vest, a bolo tie, and a long-sleeved shirt with silver stri
pes in it. His elongated, polished head and the vacuous smile painted on his face seemed to float like a glistening white balloon above the people around him. His friend, Bobby Mack Rydel, if that was his name, was a heavy, swayback man dressed in brown jeans with big brads on them. He also wore a wide cowboy belt, maroon suede boots, and a dark red shirt with pearl snap buttons. He had long sideburns that flared on his cheeks and a fleshy sag under his chin. He wore an Australian bush hat, the brim turned down all around the crown, the leather chin cord flopping loose on his throat. While he was being seated, he kept his hand in the small of the woman’s back.

  A security guard was drinking a cup of coffee at the end of the bar, glancing at his watch, occasionally yawning. “What’s happenin’, Dave?” he said.

  “On the job, you know how it is,” I replied.

  “Overtime is overtime,” he said.

  Clete put a mint in his mouth and snapped it between his molars. “See that dude in the Digger hat?” he said.

  “The what?” the guard asked.

  “The guy in the Australian flop hat. You might check your Griffin book,” Clete said.

  “He’s a regular,” the guard said.

  “All griffins are regulars. That’s how they end up in the Griffin book,” Clete said.

  The guard looked at me for confirmation. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged.

  “Thanks for the tip,” the guard said.

  “No problem, noble mon,” Clete said.

  We worked our way closer to the table where Bledsoe and Bobby Mack Rydel and the woman with white-gold hair were playing Texas Hold ’Em. Bledsoe had just received his second hole card and was peeling it up with his thumb to peek at it.

  “Hey, Dave, look, it’s Ronnie Bledsoe, you know, Ole Ronald McDonald from the motor court,” Clete said. “Ronnie, how’s your hammer hanging?”

  Bledsoe turned in his chair, his face uplifted, his mouth puckered, like a guppy at the top of a tank. His eyes seemed to radiate serenity and goodwill. He continued to look up into Clete’s face without speaking.