Burning Angel

  “There’s nothing y’all don’t know,” she said. But her voice was thick now, tired, as though a stone bruise were throbbing deep inside a vulnerable place.

  I started in again. “You’re too smart to let a man like Sweet Pea or Jack run a game on you.”

  She looked back out the window, a hot light in her eyes.

  “Jack’s got a friend who’s built like an icebox. Did you see a guy who looks like that?” I said.

  “I been polite but I’m axing you to leave now.”

  “How do you think all this is going to end?”

  “What you mean?”

  “You think you can deal with these guys by yourself? When they leave town, they wipe everything off the blackboard. Maybe both you and your brother. Maybe Glo and your aunt, too. They call it a slop-shot.”

  “You pretend you’re different from other policemen but you’re not,” she said. “You pretend so your words cut deeper and hurt people more.”

  I felt my lips part but no sound came out.

  “I promise you, we’ll nail this guy to the wall and I’ll keep you out of it,” I said finally, still off balance, my train of thought lost.

  She leaned sideways on the couch, her hands tight on her cane, as though a sliver of pain were working its way up her spine into her eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to insult or hurt you,” I said. I tried to organize my words. My eyes focused on the mole by her mouth and the soft curve of her hair against her cheek. She troubled me in a way that I didn’t quite want to look at. “This man Jack is probably part of an international group of some kind. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m convinced they’re here to do grave injury to us. By that I mean all of us, Ruthie Jean. White people, black people, it doesn’t matter. To them another human being is just a bucket of guts sewn up in a sack of skin.”

  But it was no use. I didn’t know what the man named Jack had told her, or perhaps had done to her, and I suspected his tools were many, but as was too often the case, I knew I was witnessing another instance when the fear that moral cretins could inculcate in their victims was far greater than any apprehension they might have about refusing to cooperate with a law enforcement agency.

  I heard a car outside and got up and looked outside the window. Luke, in a 19705 gas guzzler, had driven just far enough up the lane to see my truck, then had dropped his car in reverse and floor boarded it back toward the entrance to the plantation, dirt rocketing off the tires like shards of flint.

  “I’m beginning to feel like the personification of anthrax around here,” I said.

  “You what?”

  “Nothing. I don’t want to see y’all go down on a bad beef. I’m talking about aiding and abetting, Ruthie Jean.”

  She got up on her cane, her hand locking hard into the curved handle.

  “I cain’t sit long. I got to walk around, then do some exercises and lie down,” she said.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t have any more to say.”

  “Okay, you do what you want. Here’s my business card in case you or Luke feel like talking to me later,” I said, weary of trying to break through her fear or layers of racial distrust that were generations in the making. And in the next few moments I was about to do something that would only add to them. “Could I have a glass of water?” I asked.

  When she left the room I looked behind and under the couch. But in my heart I already knew where I was going to find it. When the perps are holding dope, stolen property, a gun that’s been used in an armed robbery or murder, and they sniff the Man about to walk into their lives, they get as much geography as possible between them and it. But Ruthie Jean wasn’t a perp, and when her kind want to conceal or protect something that is dear to them, they stand at the bridge or cover it with their person.

  I lifted up the cushion she had rested her back against. The gilt-frame color photograph was propped against the bamboo supports and webbing of the couch.

  I had never seen him with a suntan. He looked handsome, leaner, his blue air force cap set at an angle, his gold bars, pilot’s sunglasses, unbuttoned collar, and boyish grin giving him the cavalier and romantic appearance of a World War II South Pacific aviator rather than a sixties intelligence officer who to my knowledge had never seen combat.

  I heard her weight on a floor plank. She stood in the doorway, a glass of water in her hand, her face now empty of every defense, her secrets now the stuff cops talk about casually while they spit Red Man out car windows and watch black women cross the street at intersections.

  “It must have fallen off the shelf,” I said, my skin flexing against my skull. I started to replace the photograph in the dust-free spot at the end of the shelf. But she dropped her cane to the floor, limped forward off balance, pulled the photo from my hand, and hurled the glass of water in my face.

  At the front door I looked back at her, blotted the water out of my eyes on my sleeve, and started to say something, to leave a statement hovering in the air that would somehow redeem the moment; an apology for deceiving her, or perhaps even a verbal thorn because she’d both disturbed and bested me. But it was one of those times when you have to release others and yourself to our shared failure and inadequacy and not pretend that language can heal either.

  I knew why the shame and anger burned in her eyes. I believe it had little to do with me. In a flowing calligraphy at the bottom of the photo he had written, “This was taken in some God-forsaken place whose name, fortunately, I forget—Always, Moleen.” I wondered what a plantation black woman must feel when she realizes that her white lover, grandiose in his rhetoric, lacks the decency or integrity or courage or whatever quality it takes to write her name and personalize the photo he gives her.

  Chapter 12

  CLETE CALLED ME from his office the next day.

  “I’ll buy you dinner in Morgan City after work,” he said.

  “What are you up to, Clete?”

  “I’m taking a day off from the colostomy bags. It’s not a plot. Come on down and eat some crabs.”

  “Is Johnny Carp involved in this?”

  “I know a couple of guys who used to mule dope out of Panama and Belize. They told me some interesting stuff about fuckhead.”

  “Who?”

  “Marsallus. I don’t want to tell you over the phone. There’re clicking sounds on my line sometimes.”

  “You’re tapped?”

  “Remember when we had to smoke that greaser and his bodyguard in the back of their car? I know IAD had a tap on me then. Sounds just like it. You coming down?”

  “Clete—“

  “Lighten up.”

  He told me the name of the restaurant.

  It was on the far side of Morgan City, just off the highway by a boat basin lined with docks, boat slips, and tin-roofed sheds that extended out over the water. Clete was at a linen-covered table set with flowers by the window. On the horizon you could see rain falling out of the sunlight like a cloud of purple smoke. He had a small pitcher of draft beer and an ice-filmed schooner and plate of stuffed mushrooms in front of him. His face was glowing with alcohol and a fresh sunburn.

  “Dig in, noble mon. I’ve got some fried soft-shells on the way,” he said.

  “What’s the gen on Sonny?” I left my coat on to cover my .45.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, as though he had forgotten the reason for our meeting. “These two mules, I know them because they’re bondsmen now and handle a lot of the pukes dealing crack in the St. Bernard where I run down about three skips a week. They were flying reefer and coke out of Belize, which was some kind of stop-off place for a whole bunch of runs going in and out of Colombia and Panama. These guys say there were a lot of weird connections down there, CIA, military people, maybe some guys hooked into the White House. Anyway, they knew as swipe and say everybody had him made for DEA.”

  “Asswipe’ is Sonny Boy?”

  His eyes fluttered. “No, I’m talking about a Maryknoll missionary. Come on, Dave, stop
letting this guy job you. His parents should have been sterilized or given a lifetime supply of industrial-strength rubbers.”

  “You buy what these bondsmen say?”

  “Not really. Marsallus never finished high school. The DEA hires college graduates, Notre Dame jocks with brains, not street mutts with tattoos and rap sheets.”

  “Then why’d you have me come down here?” I asked.

  But even as his eyes were drifting toward the door of the restaurant, I already knew the answer. John Polycarp Giacano had just come through the carpeted foyer, a raincoat draped on his shoulders as a movie actor might wear it. He was talking to a man behind him whom I couldn’t see.

  “Wait in the car. It’s all right,” he said, his palms raised in a placating way. “Fix yourself a drink. Then we’ll catch some more fish.”

  He slipped his coat off his shoulders and handed it to a waitress to hang up, never speaking, as though his intention should automatically be understood. He wore white boating shoes, pleated slacks that were the color of French vanilla ice cream, and a navy blue tropical shirt that was ablaze with big red flowers. He walked toward us, smiling, his close-set eyes, thick brows, nose, and mouth all gathered together like a facial caricature in the center of a cake.

  “You shouldn’t have done this, Clete,” I said.

  “It’s got to be cleared up, Streak. Patsy Dap listens to only one man. Just let me do the talking and everything’s going to be cool.”

  “How you doin’, fellas?” Johnny Carp said, and sat down.

  “What’s the haps, John?” I said.

  He picked up a stuffed mushroom with his fingers and plopped it in his mouth, his eyes smiling at me while he chewed.

  “He asks me what’s the haps,” he said. “Dave, I love you, you fucking wild man.”

  “Glad you could make it, Johnny,” Clete said.

  “I love to fish,” he said. “It don’t matter redfish, gaff top specs, white trout, it’s the fresh air, the waves flopping against the boat, Dave, you’re a fucking zonk, we ain’t living in the days of the O.K. Corral no more, know what I’m saying?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Johnny,” I said.

  “Hey, Clete, get us some drinks over here, some snapper fingers, some oysters on the half shell, make sure they’re fresh, I got to talk to this crazy guy,” Johnny said.

  “I don’t think you do, John,” I said.

  “What’s he saying, Clete?”

  “Streak doesn’t like to bother people with his trouble, that’s all, Johnny.”

  “His trouble’s my trouble. So let’s work it out. I got a guy out in the car gonna have to have plastic surgery over in Houston. This is a guy nobody needs to have pissed off at him. I’m talking about a face looks like a basketball with stitches all over it. This guy couldn’t get laid down at the Braille school. This ain’t something you just blow out your ass because you happen to be a cop, Dave.”

  “You’re a generous man with your time, Johnny,” I said. “But I didn’t ask for a sit-down.”

  “What, I’m here to play with my dick under the table?”

  A family sitting close to us got up and left.

  “Your man went across the line,” I said.

  “I think we got a problem with pride here, Dave. It ain’t good.”

  “There’re cops in New Orleans who would have blown out his candle, Johnny,” I said.

  “You ain’t in New Orleans. You degraded the man. He works for me. I got to square it, I’m being up-front here.”

  “I don’t think you’re hearing me. I was off my turf. So your man’s not down on an assault charge. End of subject, Johnny,” I said.

  “You’re burning up a lot of goodwill, Dave. That’s the oil makes all the wheels turn. You’re educated, I ain’t got to tell you that,”

  Johnny said. “The guy I got out in the car never had your advantages, he don’t operate on goodwill, he operates out of respect for me. I don’t honor that respect, then I don’t get it from nobody else, either.”

  “What do you think you’re going to get here today?” I asked.

  “I got an envelope with ten large in it. You give it to the guy for his hospital bill, just say you got no hard feelings. You ain’t even got to say you’re sorry. The money don’t matter ‘cause I’m paying his hospital bill anyway and he’ll have to give me the ten back. So everybody wins, everybody feels better, and we don’t have no problems later.”

  “Are you serious?” I said.

  “I throw a net over a guy makes some people wake up with cold sweats, pump him full of Demerol so he don’t kick out my fucking windows, just so I can get him off your back, you have the fucking nerve to ask me if I’m serious?”

  He took a comb out of his shirt pocket and ran it through his hair, touching the waves with his fingers simultaneously, his knurled forehead furrowing as his eyes bored into my face. The teeth of his comb were bright with oil.

  “Come on, Johnny, Dave’s not trying to dis anybody. The situation just got out of control. It happens.”

  “He’s not trying to what?” Johnny said.

  “Dis anybody. He doesn’t mean any disrespect.”

  “I know what it means, why you using nigger language to me?”

  Clete eased out his breath and lifted his shirt off his collarbone with his thumb. “I got fried out in my boat today, Johnny,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t say things very well. I apologize.”

  “I accept your invitation to dinner, you talk to me like I’m a goddamn nigger?”

  The waiter set down a Scotch and milk in front of Johnny, another pitcher of beer for Clete, an iced tea for me, and a round tray of freshly opened oysters flecked with ice. Johnny reached across the table and popped Clete on top of the hand.

  “You deaf and dumb?” he said.

  Clete’s green eyes roved around the room, as though he were appraising the fish nets and ship’s life preservers hung on the wall. He picked up a oyster, sucked it out of the shell, and winked at Johnny Carp.

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Johnny said.

  “You’re a lot of fun, John,” Clete said.

  Johnny took a deep drink out of his Scotch and milk, his eyes like black marbles that had rolled together above the glass. He rubbed a knuckle hard across his mouth, then pursed his lips like a tropical fish staring out of an aquarium. “I’m asking you in a nice way, you’re giving me some kind of queer-bait signals here, you’re ridiculing me, you just being a wiseass ‘cause we’re in public, what?” he said.

  “I’m saying this was a bad idea,” Clete said. “Look, I was there. Patsy Dap violated my friend’s person, you know what I’m saying? That’s not acceptable anywhere, not with your people, not with ours. He got what he deserved. You don’t see it that way, Johnny, it’s because you’re fifty-two cards short of a deck. And don’t ever put your fucking hand on me again.”

  Five minutes later, under the porch, we watched Johnny Carp in drive his Lincoln through the light rain toward the parking lot exit. He had rolled down the tinted windows to let in the cool air, and we could see Patsy Dapolito in the passenger seat, his face and shaved head like a bleached-out muskmelon laced with barbed wire.

  “Hey, Patsy, it’s an improvement. I ain’t putting you on,” Clete yelled.

  “You’re a terrific intermediary, Clete,” I said.

  “The Giacanos are scum, anyway. Blow it off. Come on, let’s go out under the shed and throw a line in. Wow, feel that breeze,” he said, inhaling deeply, his eyes filling with pleasure at the soft twilit perfection of the day.

  Clete was probably the best investigative cop I ever knew, but he treated his relationships with the lowlifes like playful encounters with zoo creatures. As a result, his attitudes about them were often facile.

  The Giacanos never did anything unless money and personal gain were involved. The family name had been linked repeatedly to both a presidential assassination and the murder of a famous civil rights leader, and
although I believed them capable of committing either one or both of those crimes, I didn’t see how the Giacanos could have benefited financially from them and for that reason alone doubted their involvement.

  But Johnny didn’t do a sit-down with a rural sheriff’s detective to prevent a meltdown like Patsy Dapolito from getting off his leash. Dapolito was morally insane but not stupid. When his kind stopped taking orders and started carrying out personal vendettas, they were shredded into fish churn and sprinkled around Barataria Bay.

  Johnny Carp’d had another agenda when he came down to Morgan City. I didn’t know what it was, but I was sure of one thing—one way or another, Johnny had become a player in Iberia Parish.

  Jason Darbonne was known as the best criminal lawyer in Lafayette. He had the hard, grizzled body of a weight lifter and daily handball player, with thick upper arms and tendons like ropes in his shoulders. But it was his peculiar bald head that you remembered; it had the shape and color of an egg that had been hard-boiled in brown tea, and because he had virtually no neck, the head seemed to perch on his high collar like Humpty-Dumpty’s.

  A cold front had gone through the area early Wednesday morning, and the air was brisk and sunny when I ran into him and Sweet Pea Chaisson on the courthouse steps.

  “Hey, Dave,” Sweet Pea said. “Wait a minute, I forgot. Is it your first name or your last name I ain’t suppose to use?”

  “What’s your problem this morning?” I said.

  “Don’t talk to him,” Darbonne said to Sweet Pea.

  “I didn’t even know y’all sliced up my top till I went through the car wash. The whole inside of my car got flooded. Then the female attendant picks up this rubber that floats out from under the seat. I felt like two cents.”

  “What’s your point?” I said.

  “I forgot to pay my State Farm. I’m gonna be out four t’ousand dollars. It ain’t my way to go around suing people.” He brushed off Darbonne’s hand. “Just give me the money for the top and we’ll forget it.”

  “You’ll forget it? You’re telling me I’m being sued?” I said.

  “Yeah, I want my goddamn money. The inside of my car’s ruined. It’s like riding around inside a sponge.” I started inside the courthouse.