"I'm afraid we've got Tripod on a breaking-and-entering rap, Alf," I said.
"What?" she said.
"It looks like he's going to have to go into lockdown," I said.
"What?"
"That means let's put him in the rabbit hutch until tomorrow when I can fix his chain. In the meantime, Batist, let's close down the shop and think about going to the drive-in movie."
"It ain't my sto', it ain't my Milky Way. I just work here all day so I can clean up after some fat no-good coon."
Alafair was about to fire off another shot when I turned her gently by the shoulder and walked her back through the pecan trees in front of the house.
"He was mean, Dave,' she said. "He was gonna pod."
"No, he's not mean, little guy," I said. "To Batist, running the bait shop is an important job. He just doesn't want anything to go wrong while he's in charge."
"You didn't see what he looked like." Her eyes were moist in the deep shade of the trees.
"Alafair, Batist grew up poor and uneducated and never learned to read and write. But today he runs a business for a white man. He wants to do everything right, but he has to make an X when he signs for a delivery and he can't count the receipts at the end of the day. So he concentrates on things that he can do well, like barbecuing the chickens, repairing the boat engines, and keeping all the inventory squared away. Then Tripod gets loose and makes a big mess of the shelves. So in Batist's mind he's let us down."
I saw her eyes blinking with thought.
"It's kind of like the teachers at school giving you a job to do, then someone else comes along and messes it up and makes you look bad. Does that make sense?"
She shifted Tripod in her arms, so that he lay on his back with his three paws in the air, his stomach swollen with food.
"I guess so. We going to the show?"
"You bet."
"Batist is going, too?"
"I don't know, you think he should go?"
She thought about it.
"Yeah, he should go with us," she said, as though she had just reached a profound metaphysical conclusion.
"You're the best, little guy."
"You are, too, big guy."
We popped Tripod into the hutch, then I swung Alafair up on my back and we walked beneath the sparking of fireflies onto the gallery and into the lighted house, where Bootsie was deep-frying sac-a-lait and listening to a Cajun song that was playing on the radio propped in the kitchen window.
The western sky looked like a blood-streaked ink wash, and I could hear the cicadas in a distant woods, all the way across the waving field of green sugarcane at the back of my property.
The next morning Alafair helped Batist and me open the bait shop. She earned her weekly allowance of five dollars by seining the dead shiners out of the bait tailks, seasoning the chickens that we barbecued on a split oil drum for our midday customers, draining the coolers, and pouring fresh ice over the beer and soda pop. But her favorite Saturday morning job was sitting on a tall stool behind the cash register, her Astros baseball cap low on her head, ringing up worm and shiner sales with a loud bang on the keys.
It was a wonderful morning to fish. The air was still cool and windless, the early pink light muted in the cypress trees, the moon still visible in one soft blue corner of the sky. After we had rented most of our boats, I started the barbecue fire in the oil drum, then fixed coffee and hot milk and bowls of Grape-Nuts for the three of us, and we ate breakfast on one of the telephone-spool tables under an umbrella out on the dock. I had managed to push the Sonnier case completely out of my mind when the phone rang inside the shop and Alafair got up and answered it.
I could see only the side of her face through the screen window as she held the receiver to her ear, but I had no doubt that she was listening to something that she had never expected to come through our telephone. Her eyes were blinking rapidly and her tan cheeks were filled with white discolorations, and I saw her look at me with her mouth parted as though a childish bad dream had become real in the middle of her day.
I went quickly inside the shop and behind the counter and took the receiver from her hand.
"Dave, he called you real bad names," Alafair said. She was breathing hard through her mouth.
"Who is this?" I said into the receiver.
"You know who it is. Don't act stupid," a high, metallic voice, like that of a midget, said. "You cut a deal with Joey Meatballs, didn't you?"
"You're not shy about frightening a little girl. How about giving me your name?"
"You don't know my name?"
I picked up a pencil and scribbled across the top of a lined notepad: "Boots, call office, tell them to trace call in shop." Then I put the pad in Alafair's hands and pushed her toward the door.
"What's the matter, you got nothing wise to say?" the voice asked.
"What do you want, Fluck?"
"I want to know what you're giving Joey Gee so that he puts a whack out on me."
"There's no deal with Joey."
"You lying sonofabitch. He's out of the bag one day and everybody in New Orleans hears there's a five-grand open contract on me. You telling me you don't have anything to do with it?"
"That's right."
"What is it, you guys want to wipe your books clean with my ass? Or is it a personal beef because I almost cooled you out in Sonnier's house?"
"You're going down because you killed a police officer and Eddy Raintree."
"I'm shaking."
"To tell you the truth, Fluck, I'm busy right now and you're a boring man to talk to."
"The only reason somebody from the AB didn't take you out is you're not worth the trouble. But I'm going to give you a deal, one that'll make you big shit in your little town. I get immunity on that dead cop in the Sonnier house, I don't know anything about Eddy Raintree's problems next to a train track, and I give you everything you want on Joey Meatballs. I'm talking about guys he's whacked, the marshmallow Jack Gates shoved into the plane propeller, the crack they're selling to the niggers in the projects, gun deals with spics, you name it, I'll give it to you.... Are you listening to me, man?"
"I hear you just fine."
"Then you set it up. I want protective custody, too. Maybe in another state."
"I think you're overestimating your importance, Fluck. You're not the kind of witness that prosecutors get excited about."
"Look, I can take you to two graves down by Terrebonne Bay. Two guys that Joey made kneel down on the edge of a trench and suck on a barrel of a.22 mag before he dumped a big one down their throats."
"It's not a sellers' market these days."
"What's with you, man? You want to see Joey Gee go down or not?"
"Where are you?"
"Are you kidding?"
"What I mean is, you're probably not too far from a police station of some kind. Turn yourself in. It's the only deal you're going to get from me or probably anybody else. You executed a police officer. You get caught by the wrong guys and you'll never make the jail, Fluck."
"You're getting off on this, aren't you?"
Through the screen window I saw Bootsie wave at me from the gallery of the house.
"Nope, I'm tired of talking to you," I said.
"I'm messing up your morning, huh?"
"No, you just made a big mistake today."
"What mistake, what are you talking-"
"You phoned me at my house. You frightened my little girl. You did it because inside you're a small, scared man, Fluck. That's why you wanted Garrett to see it coming. For just a second you felt you were as big a man as he was."
"You're talking yourself into something real bad."
"Call the DEA. They cut deals with snitches all the time."
I could hear him breathing into the receiver.
"Where you from, outer space? You're fucking with the AB. We're everywhere, man. There ain't anybody we can't clip. Even if I go down, even if I'm in a max unit somewhere, I can have your whole family tak
en out."
"For five grand your AB buddies will have you in a soap dish."
I could almost hear a wet, gastric click in his throat. Then he hesitated a moment, as though he were squeezing his anger back into a small box down in his chest.
"I want you to remember everything you said to me," he said. "Keep running the words over and over in your head. I'm gonna think up something for you, something special, something that you didn't think could ever happen in your life. I was in Parchman, man. You don't know how much pain a wise-ass fuck like you can go through before he dies."
Then the line went dead. I looked at my watch. I didn't know if there had been enough time for the dispatcher at the office to get a successful trace on the call or not. I dipped a wad of paper towels into the floating ice in the beer cooler and rubbed my face with it, then wiped my skin dry and flung the towels into the trash basket, as though I could somehow rinse and clean the voice of Jewel Fluck out of my day.
I waited ten more minutes, then called the dispatcher.
"They traced it to a pay phone on Decatur in New Orleans," he said. "We called First District headquarters, but the guy was gone when they got there. Sorry, Dave. Who was it?"
"The guy who killed Garrett."
"Fluck? Oh man, if we'd just been a little bit faster-"
"Don't worry about it."
I walked up through the shade of the pecan trees to the gallery. Bootsie was sitting in the swing with Alafair beside her. Alafair looked up at me from under the brim of her ball cap, her face filled with a pinched light.
"It was just a drunk man, little guy," I said. "He thought I was somebody else."
"His voice, it was-" she began. "It made me feel bad inside." She swallowed and looked out into the deep shadows of the trees.
"That's the way drunk people sound sometimes. We just don't pay any attention to them," I said. "Anyway, Bootsie had the call traced to New Orleans, and the cops went to pick this guy up. Hey, let's don't waste any more time worrying about this character. I need you to help me get ready for our lunch customers."
I felt Bootsie's eyes searching my face.
I went inside the house, took my.45 out of the dresser, slipped it down into my khakis, and pulled my shirt over it.
At the dock I put Alafair in charge of turning the sausage links and split chickens on the barbecue grill. Her shoulders barely came above the top of the pit, and when the grease and sauce piquant dripped onto the coals her head and cap were haloed in smoke.
I put the.45 on a top shelf behind a stand-up display of Mepps spinners. I wouldn't need it, I told myself, not here, anyway. Fluck had too many problems of his own to worry about me. His kind took revenge only when they had nothing at risk, when it came to them as a luxury they could savor. I was sure of that, I told myself.
CHAPTER 14
The sheriff learned of Fluck's phone call early Monday from the dispatcher. As soon as I walked into my office, he tapped on the doorjamb and followed me in.
"Jewel Fluck called you at your house?" he said.
"That's right." I opened the blinds and sat down behind my desk.
"Why do I have to hear that from the dispatcher?"
"I didn't see any point in disturbing you on the weekend."
"What'd he say?"
"Most of it was douche water. His clock's running out."
"Come on, Dave, why'd he call you?"
"He wanted to give up Joey Gouza for immunity on Garrett and Eddy Raintree. I told him the store's closed."
"You did what?"
"I indicated that cop killers don't get any slack, sheriff."
He sat down in the chair across from me and brushed one hand across the top of the other. He puffed out his cheeks.
"Maybe that's not yours to decide, Dave. There're a halfdozen agencies that want Joey Gouza salted away. The DEA, U.S. Customs, the FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms-"
"Cut a deal with the lowlifes and in the long run you always lose."
"In law enforcement every man's vote doesn't count the same. Wyatt Earp belongs in the movies, Dave."
"I tried to keep him on the phone so we could trace the call. You lose the edge on these guys as soon as you let them think they have something you want. That's the way it works, sheriff."
"What else did he say?"
"He believes Gouza's got a five-grand open contract on him. If you want, you can tell NOPD about it, but I don't think they'll wring their hands over the news."
"It's still Bobby Earl, isn't it?" he said.
"What?"
He scratched his clean-shaven soft cheek with a fingernail.
"Fluck, Gouza, this button man Jack Gates, I think they're all secondary players for you, Dave. It's Bobby Earl who's always on your front burner, isn't it?"
"Fluck frightened my little girl, sheriff. He also threatened me. You figure who's on my mind."
"You sound a little sharp, podna."
"This is the second time you've told me maybe it's me who's got a problem."
"It wasn't my intention to do so."
"Look, sheriff, we haven't turned the key on one guy in this case, except Gouza, and that was on a bum charge. When something like that happens, everybody gets impatient. Then a guy like Bobby Earl marshals a little pressure and convinces a few political oil cans that he's a victim, a federal agency decides that it's more interesting to throw a net over a mainline wiseguy like Gouza than a termite like Jewel Fluck, we local guys go along with it, and before you know it, half the cast is on the beach in the Virgin Islands and we're trying to figure out why people think we're schmoes."
"Maybe after this one's over, you should take a little vacation time."
"It won't change who's out there."
He did a ratatat-tat on his thighs with his palms, then stood up, smiled, and walked out of my office without saying anything else.
I drove to Baton Rouge that afternoon to question the burned man who called himself Vic Benson. It wasn't to be the kind of interview that I had planned. I parked my truck at the end of Lyle's brick driveway on Highland and walked up onto the columned porch to lift the brass door knocker that rang a set of musical chimes deep in the interior of the house, when Lyle walked out of the side yard with a garden rake in his hand, wearing a T-shirt and jeans that hung off his hips. There were flecks of dirt and leaves in his mussed hair.
"Hey, Dave, what's happening?" he said. "You're just in time to fang down some barbecued pork chops. Come on around back."
"Thanks anyway, Lyle. I just need to ask Vic Benson a few questions. Is he staying over at your mission?"
"No."
"He took off?"
"No." He was smiling now.
"He's here?"
"In the backyard. We just put in some pepper plants. It's a little late but I think they'll take."
"He's living with you?"
"Out in the garage apartment."
"I think what you're doing isn't smart."
"I've never done anything smart in my life, Dave. Like Waylon says, 'I might be crazy but it's kept me from going insane."
"I'm not sure you want to hear everything I have to say to this man."
"The words ain't been made that's gonna upset me, son... I mean Loot. Come on around back."
The sweeping expanse of backyard was dotted with live oaks, lime trees, myrtle bushes, and circular weedless beds of roses and purple hydrangeas. Meat smoke from a stone fire pit drifted across the lawn and hung in the trees, and the Saint Augustine grass was so thick, so deeply blue and green in the evening shadows, that you felt you could dive into it as you would a deep pool of water.
Vic Benson was cutting back a clump of banana trees with a pair of garden shears. The blades of the shears were white and gummy with pulp. Each time he snapped the blades on a dead frond, the muscles in his face and neck flexed like snakes under his red scar tissue.
A thick-bodied black woman in a maid's uniform began setting a table on the flagstone patio.
"Let
's sit down to eat, then you can ask the old man whatever you want," Lyle said.
"This isn't what I had in mind, Lyle."
"Quit trying to plan everything. What the Man on High plans for you is better than anything you could plan for yourself. Isn't that what y'all learn in AA? Look out yonder." He pointed across the brick wall and bamboo that bordered his property. "See it, just above the trees out on Highland, my cross, right up there on top of my Bible college. Look, it's silver and pink in the sunlight. Inside all that chrome is a charred wooden cross that was burned by Klansmen to terrorize black folk. Then the Reverend Jimmy Bob Clock made it his so me and him could run scams on a bunch of north Mississippi country people who didn't have two quarters to rub together in their overalls. Now it's on top of a Bible college where kids go to school free and study for the ministry. You think that's all accident? I read a poem once that had a line in it about a white radiance that stains eternity. That's the way I like to think about that cross up there."