DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

  “How did you try to make it up, Bertrand?”

  “What difference do it make now?”

  There was no point in trying to extract any more information from him. Maybe it was finally time to leave Bertrand Melancon to his fate, whatever it was. But I had one more question.

  “When Father LeBlanc fell from his church roof and you saw lights under the water, did a Coast Guard helicopter fly by overhead?”

  “There wasn’t no helicopter. That’s how come all them people drowned,” he replied. “Who tole you there was a helicopter? I would have heard it. All I heard was them people yelling for help inside that attic. You don’t never forget sounds like that.” Chapter 27

  I COULDN’T SLEEP the rest of the night. In the morning I told Molly about the content of Bertrand’s phone call. Alafair had stayed overnight at a girlfriend’s house in Lafayette. It was 8:37 a.m.

  “What time did Alafair say she was going to be home?” I said.

  “She didn’t. Why?” Molly said.

  “Because I think Bledsoe is making a move. He tried to double-cross Kovick or whoever hired him by bribing Melancon, then he tried to clip Melancon to cover it up. I think he plans to blow Dodge, but not before he pays back Alafair for kicking his face in.”

  Molly was framed in the back door, Snuggs’s bowl in one hand and a sack of dry food in the other. The sunlight seemed to form a red nimbus around her head. “Maybe Bledsoe won’t do that.”

  “A guy like that doesn’t make decisions. His choices are already hardwired into his head. He seeks pleasure for himself or he seeks revenge against his enemies. Often the two are the same.”

  “If you’re trying to scare the hell out of me, you’re succeeding.”

  I looked through the Rolodex and called the home of Alafair’s friend in Lafayette. No one answered. I tried to think, but I was too tired, too used up to see anything straight.

  “Something Melancon mentioned doesn’t make sense,” I said. “He told me he and the other looters took a bag of cocaine, a thirty-eight, some counterfeit money, and the blood diamonds from Kovick’s wall. He said the coke had already been cut, which to Melancon meant it was probably Kovick’s private stash. Except Sidney isn’t a doper and neither is his wife. I think the coke and gun and counterfeit all belonged to the same people Sidney took the diamonds from.”

  “I’m not following you,” Molly said.

  “Maybe Sidney has no connection to Ronald Bledsoe. Maybe our enemy is Sidney’s enemy.”

  Molly poured dry food into Snuggs’s bowl and set it on the floor, then opened the back screen and let Tripod in. Tripod and Snuggs began eating nose-to-nose out of the same bowl, their tails stretched out behind them. Molly lit a burner on the stove and dragged a big iron skillet on top of it.

  “Bledsoe is evil, Dave. I don’t care who he works for. If he comes here with the intention of hurting any member of this family, I’ll kill him. That’s a promise. Now sit down while I fix us some eggs and coffee.”

  It must have been coincidence, but both Snuggs and Tripod stopped eating and looked up from their bowl.

  I DROVE TO Helen Soileau’s house in an old neighborhood close to the downtown area. Her house had a wide gallery and tall windows with ventilated shutters like my own. Almost every Saturday morning children came to her house ostensibly to help with the yard work, but the morning activities usually ended with homemade ice cream and hot dogs. On this particular morning four or five kids were helping her weed her flower beds. I parked my pickup at the curb and walked up on the lawn. She got up from her knees, brushing grains of dirt from her gloves. She looked at my face.

  “You okay, Pops?” she said.

  “We need to get Bledsoe into custody.”

  “What else is new?”

  “He may have taken a shot at Bertrand Melancon last night. If that’s the case, I suspect he’s about to blow town. I think he might try to get even with a few other people before he does.”

  “You said ‘if.’”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Bledsoe. Sidney Kovick’s gumballs are in New Iberia. Maybe they’d like to take Melancon off at the neck, too. Plus, I think Otis Baylor may have found out Melancon was staying at his grandmother’s in Loreauville.”

  “How does one black kid get half the planet on his case?”

  “But the one certifiable psychopath in the mix is still Ronald Bledsoe. He also has the greatest motivation. He tried to cut his own deal with Melancon and Melancon dimed him with Kovick.”

  The day was cool, the sky a hard blue, the sunlight through the trees like gold coins on her face. She watched two children spraying charcoal lighter on the portable grill in the side yard. “You guys wait for me to do that,” she said.

  Then she looked back at me, her thumbs hooked in the sides of her jeans. “We rousted him once. It didn’t work. We can’t tell the guy ‘We don’t like you. Get out of town before sundown.’”

  “How would you like him around these kids?”

  “You want my job, run for office. In the meantime, don’t lecture me, Streak.”

  I got back in my truck without saying good-bye and drove away. In my rearview mirror I saw her toe at the grass, her thumbs still hooked in her jeans, like a teenage girl who had just lost something of value.

  ALAFAIR CAME HOME at noon, blowing out her breath as she came through the door, a drawstring bag slung over her shoulder. I wanted her to tell me her overnight stay in Lafayette had been uneventful, that somehow my concerns were inflated. But I knew better, even before she spoke.

  “I think I saw Ronald Bledsoe this morning,” she said. “We were eating breakfast in a café by the university. He was parked in a blue car under a tree. We went to the mall and I saw him again.”

  “Why didn’t you call me, Alf?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure the man in the blue car was Bledsoe. At the mall I was. Are you going to arrest him because he goes to the same mall I do?”

  “If there’s a pattern, we can get a restraining order.”

  “With Bledsoe, that’s like writing a traffic citation on the guys who flew planes into the Towers.”

  She was right. To make matters worse, we were now arguing among ourselves about a degenerate.

  “Stay close today, will you, kiddo?”

  “I’m not a child, Dave. Don’t treat me like one,” she replied.

  Clete Purcel had always said “Bust them or dust them.” But what do you do with those who have probably been looking for an executioner all their lives, perhaps ensuring their evil lives on in the rest of us long after they are gone? What do you do when those you love most become angry when you try to protect them?

  Maybe there was another way to deal with Ronald Bledsoe.

  I WENT TO CITY PARK and used my cell phone to call Sidney Kovick’s flower shop. His wife answered the phone.

  “It’s Dave Robicheaux, Eunice. I need to talk to Sidney.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “On Saturday?”

  “No, he’s not here,” she repeated. But she didn’t tell me where he was.

  “This isn’t a courtesy call. Marco Scarlotti and Charlie Weiss are in New Iberia. I think I know why they’re here, too. Sidney needs to talk with me.”

  “Give me your number.”

  I gave her both my cell and home numbers. I thought the conversation was over, but it wasn’t.

  “Dave, you don’t know what’s going on. Years ago, Sidney committed a terrible deed. It never allowed him any peace. But he met Father Jude LeBlanc through Natalia Ramos, the El Salvadoran girl he hired to clean his office. You remember my mentioning her to you?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I replied, my attention starting to wane.

  “Father Jude talked to Sidney about changing his life and making up for what he did. Sidney is trying hard to be the best man he can. He’s not always successful, but he’s trying. Be patient with him, will you?”

  Patient with Sidney Kovick? Sidney as victim was a hard act to buy into. “
He’s in New Iberia, isn’t he?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Yeah, you are, Eunice, I thought. But I let it go. “I look forward to hearing from him,” I said, and closed my cell phone.

  Actually, at this point I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk with Sidney or not. Was Sidney actually trying to change or just feeding Eunice’s illusions? I was tempted to turn my cell phone off. But as I sat in the picnic shelter on the bayou’s edge, I could look across the water and see the shadows in my backyard and the caladiums rippling around the trunks of the trees and the lighted kitchen where Molly and Alafair were preparing an early supper so we could go to Saturday afternoon Mass in Loreauville.

  Somewhere out there in the larger world, William Blake’s tiger waited to take it all from me.

  Which was more important, protecting one’s family or worrying about the redemption of a man who had put on a raincoat and rubber boots before entering a basement with a chain saw? In my mind’s eye I saw his victim—in handcuffs, probably bound at the ankles, his mouth taped, his eyes popping with terror. What kind of human being could do something like that to his fellow man?

  Just as I got to my truck, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I flipped it open and placed it against my ear. “Dave Robicheaux,” I said.

  “My wife says you want to talk with me,” a voice said.

  “You in town, Sidney?”

  “Why did you call my shop?”

  “I warned you a long time ago about Ronald Bledsoe, but you wouldn’t listen. He’s got his own deal going on those blood diamonds. I think he’s planning to hurt my daughter as well. If that happens, you’re going to have the worst fucking experience of your life.”

  “No, you’re the one who doesn’t listen, Robicheaux. Marco and Charlie and a few other guys from the Giacano family work for me. Bledsoe doesn’t. You got that straight? I want my goods back. It’s a pretty simple concept.”

  “Then who does he work for?”

  “Maybe the Fuller Brush Company. They hire a lot of bald-headed guys.”

  There was still time for one more run at Sidney before he broke the connection. “After the loss of your little boy, did you kidnap your neighbor, Sidney? Did you take his legs off with a chain saw?”

  “I’m going to give you a short answer here. Did I use a chain saw on somebody? No. Did a guy in Jefferson Parish disappear? Yeah, he did. Is he coming back? No, he ain’t. Tell Bertrand Melancon I’m the only person in this state who can keep him alive.”

  The line went dead.

  THAT AFTERNOON we attended Mass in Loreauville, then returned to the house. The wind was blowing hard out of the south, the surface of the bayou wrinkling like old skin. I went to an AA meeting upstairs at the Methodist church on Main, but I couldn’t shake my conviction that Bledsoe or one of his associates was about to make a move on us.

  Bledsoe was the trigger, but the sense of angst I was experiencing had been a problem in my life long before I met him. Psychologists believe there is a form of long-term anxiety that is caused by turmoil in the natal home: the parents fighting, the child being shaken or dropped, someone constantly bursting through the door in a drunken rage. I can’t say where it comes from. For me it was not unlike seeing a mortar round fall short of your position, followed by a second round that goes long. In that moment you know with absolute certainty you’re registered and the next round is coming down the stack. The feeling you experience is like someone stripping off your skin.

  The truth is, I wanted to drink. Maybe not a lot, just a couple of shots with a beer back, I told myself, just enough to turn down the butane on the burner. Or I wanted to load up my cut-down twelve-gauge pump or my AR-15 and kick it on up to some serious E-major rock ’n’ roll.

  At dusk I looked out the front window just as a cruiser with a black uniformed female deputy behind the wheel pulled into the driveway. Catin Segura got out and gazed at the trees in the yard and the gold and red clusters of four-o’clock flowers opening in the shadows. “You have such a nice place here,” she said.

  “It is,” I said.

  “I was just going off shift and I thought I should mention something to you. I was patrolling the Loreauville Quarters and I saw Otis Baylor talking to a family on their gallery. The address was next door to the house rented by the owner of the hit-and-run tag I ran, Elizabeth Crochet. When I cruised the Quarters again, about ten minutes later, he was knocking on another door, one street over.

  “I asked him if I could help him with anything. He said no, he was an insurance man and was just checking on a couple of clients. I told him I was the same sheriff’s deputy who had investigated the hit-and-run in front of his house. I told him I thought he was there for other reasons.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘Thanks for your offer of help.’ Then he got in his car and drove away. What’s he after, Dave?”

  “A guy named Bertrand Melancon.”

  I used my cell phone in the yard to call the Baylor home. When Otis answered, I hung up. Molly and Alafair were going to the movies. I waited until they left, then I drove down Old Jeanerette Road and pulled into Otis’s driveway. He walked out on the front steps, a napkin tucked inside the top of his shirt.

  “Was that you who called about fifteen minutes ago?” he asked.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you can’t leave us alone.”

  “No, that’s not the problem at all, Mr. Baylor. The problem is the fact you were in the Loreauville Quarters. You knew who was driving the hit-and-run vehicle and you used your insurance connections to run the tag number and get the address of the owner. You were in the Loreauville Quarters looking for Bertrand Melancon. Except he wasn’t there, so you started questioning his neighbors.”

  “If you know all this, why bother telling me about it?”

  “I wouldn’t be clever, Mr. Baylor. What I don’t understand is your motivation. Melancon has done irreparable damage to your daughter and family, but evidently he’s tried to make amends. You still want to cancel the guy’s ticket?”

  “What do you mean, ‘amends’?”

  “I talked with Melancon. He said he tried to make it up to y’all. I don’t think he was lying. He knows he’ll probably end up as a contribution to landfill.”

  I don’t think I have ever seen a man look as dumbfounded as Otis Baylor did in that moment. He stared at me for a long time. “Mr. Robicheaux, please don’t be vague or misleading.”

  “What I’ve said to you is an accurate statement. For what it’s worth, I think Melancon is sorry for what he did. I think he also knows it’s a matter of time before he catches the bus. If he’s lucky, somebody won’t use a blowtorch on him first. That’s not an exaggeration. Andre Rochon probably suffered the pains of the damned before he died.”

  “My God in heaven,” he said in dismay, his face white.

  “What have you done, sir?”

  He shook his head, his eyes filming.

  “Talk to me, Mr. Baylor. This is the time to do it.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” he said. “Please excuse me. We have to finish dinner. I have to help my wife with the dishes. I have to help my daughter with some of her schoolwork. Please excuse me, sir.”

  He went inside the house and I heard him snap the door bolt in place. But I didn’t leave the yard. I stood a long time in the shadows, inside the sounds of birds gathering in the treetops and some kids in a pirogue out on the bayou. The wind rattled the shutters on his windows and sent leaves feathering off the eaves. The blinds were drawn, the window frames etched by yellow light from inside. Under other circumstances, the house might have been a picture of familial warmth against the coming of the night. But not a sound came from the house and my guess was that nothing aside from misery lived inside those walls.

  space

  SUNDAY MORNING I convinced Molly and Alafair to go with me to a camp I had rented on the levee by Henderson Swamp. It was a fine place, built of pine, partially
set on pilings, the screen gallery facing a bay that was dotted with cypress trees and willow islands. The wind was down, the sac-a-lait had been biting, and I wanted to get out of town and away from concerns about Ronald Bledsoe, at least for a day. We hitched up the boat and trailer, packed food and cold drinks in the cooler, and stretched bungee cords across the rods and life preservers in the bottom of the boat. I glanced at the sky in the south and went back into the house for our raincoats. Alafair followed me inside.

  “Dave, we don’t have to do this,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Run away from this guy.”

  “The perps all go down. Just wait them out and they go down.”

  “How long was Hitler killing people? Twelve years?” she said.

  When we reached the swamp, the bays were dented with raindrops. The early-morning fishermen who had gone out for crappie, or what are called “sac-a-lait” in south Louisiana, were already coming back in. We drove along the top of the levee, past the boat-rental and bait shops and the restaurants that offer swamp tours in French and English. Then we entered a long stretch of verdant waterside terrain that was unmarked by litter or development or even weekend fish camps of the kind I had rented.

  Alafair and I put the boat in the water and used the electric motor to fish along a chain of willow islands between the levee and the bay. We tried shiners and then jigs, both without success. The wind had come up and the water was cloudy and too high, the time of day wrong as well. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with Alafair and Molly, away from town, away from the job, away from avarice and deceit and people scamming people and profiting from the desperation and hardship of their fellow Americans.

  The change of the season was already in the air. The leaves of the cypress had turned gold and I could smell gas on the breeze. The flooded woods along the shore were dark, the lily pads that had bloomed with yellow flowers in the summer now curling into brown husks along the edges. I could smell schools of fish under the water, like the seminal odor of birth, but I could see nothing below the darkness on the surface, as though part of a life cycle were being removed from my own life.