Purple Cane Road

  In the middle of the night she thought she heard a truck engine outside and tires crunching on clamshells, then the sound disappeared in the thunder and she fell asleep again.

  When she awoke he was standing over her, his formfitting T-shirt molded wetly against his torso. His body had a fecund odor, like water in the bottom of a coulee; a nickel-plated revolver, the handles wrapped with electrician’s tape, hung from his gloved right hand.

  “I came in out of the rain,” he said.

  “Yeah, you done that. There ain’t no rain in the house,” she replied, raising herself up on her hands, a wishbone breaking in her throat.

  “You mind if I stay here? I mean, stay out of the rain?” he asked.

  “You here, ain’t you?”

  His palm opened and closed on the grips of the pistol, the edges of the tape sticking, popping on his skin. His face was pale, his mouth soft and red in the flashes of lightning outside. He wet his lips and cut his eyes at the window, where mist was drifting across the sill and dampening the baby’s mattress.

  The man pushed the window tight and gazed down at the baby, who slept with his rump in the air. A pillow was stuffed into an empty space where one of the wood runners was missing. For some reason, perhaps because of the noise the window made, the baby woke and started to cry. The man pried the pillow loose and kneaded it in his left hand and turned toward Little Face.

  “Why’d you get mixed up with a bunch of geeks? Why’d you run your mouth?” the man said. His black hair was combed back neatly on both sides, his skin glistening with water, his navel rising and falling above his jeans.

  “Write out a list of the people ain’t geeks. I’ll start hanging ‘round wit’ them,” she replied.

  “Make that baby be quiet.”

  “You done woke him up. Babies gonna cry when they get woke up.”

  “Just shut him up. I can’t think. Why don’t you have a man to take care of you?”

  “I can have all the men I want. Trouble is, I ain’t met none I want, including present company.”

  He looked at the baby again, then closed and opened his eyes. He took a breath of air through his mouth, holding it, as though he were about to speak. But no sound came out. He folded the pillow around the pistol and held both ends together with his left hand. The rims of his nostrils whitened, as though the temperature had dropped precipitously in the room.

  “You make me mad. You’re too dumb to understand what’s happening. Get that look off your face,” he said.

  “It’s my house. I ain’t axed you in it. Go back in the rain you don’t like it,” she said quietly.

  Then she saw into his eyes and her throat went dry and became constricted like a piece of crimped pipe and she remembered the word “abyss” from a sermon at a church somewhere and she knew now what the word meant. She tried to hold her gaze evenly on his face and stop the sound that thundered in her ears, that made her own words distorted and unintelligible to her.

  Her hands knotted the sheet on top of her stomach.

  “My baby ain’t part of this, is he?” she said.

  The man drew an enormous breath of air through his nose, as though he were hyperventilating. “No, what do you think I am?” He held up the pillow as though he had just discovered its presence. “Don’t put something like this in a crib. That’s how babies suffocate,” he said, and flung the pillow across the room.

  He shoved the revolver in his blue-jeans pocket, the butt protruding just above the edge of the cloth, his booted feet wide-spread, as though he were confronting an adversary that no one else saw.

  “You gonna just stand there, Rain Man?” she asked, because she had to say something or the sound roaring in her ears would consume her and the shaking in her mouth would become such that her jawbones would rattle.

  He waited a long time to answer her. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do. But you shouldn’t be messing with my head, lady. You really shouldn’t be doing that at all,” he said.

  Then he went out the screen door into the storm and drove his truck in reverse down the clamshells to the two-lane state road, the rain blowing like shattered crystal in his backup lights.

  I spent the next morning, along with my partner, Helen Soileau, interviewing Little Face and anyone else in Loreauville who might have seen the intruder into Little Face’s home. Helen had started her career as a meter maid at NOPD, then had put in seven years as a patrolwoman in the Garden District and the neighborhood around the Desire Welfare Project, an area so dangerous and violent that black city councilmen tried to persuade President Bush to clean it out with federal troops. Finally she returned to New Iberia, where she had grown up, and was hired as a plainclothes investigator by the sheriff’s department.

  Helen wore slacks and khakis and jeans to work, was thick-bodied and muscular, and looked boldly into the world’s face, her arms pumped, her waved, lacquered blond hair her only visible concession to femininity. As a rule, she had trouble with difficult people only once. She had shot and killed three perpetrators on the job.

  We stood in the parking lot of the bar the intruder had visited the night before he had wedged a screwdriver blade into the lock on Little Face’s cabin door. The sun was out, the air cool and rain-washed, the sky blue above the trees.

  “You think he’s the same guy who did Zipper Clum, huh?” Helen said.

  “That’s my read on it,” I said.

  “He tells the bartender he’s delivering dishware to a family named Grayson, who don’t exist, then casually mentions the Graysons live next to the Dautrieves, and that’s how he finds Little Face. We’re dealing with a shitbag who has a brain?”

  She didn’t wait for me to answer her question. She looked back at the bar, tapping her palm on the top of the cruiser.

  “How do you figure this guy? He must have known his contract was on a woman, but then he walks out on the job,” she said.

  “She had the baby in the room with her. It sounds like he wasn’t up to it.”

  “All we need is another piece of shit from New Orleans floating up the bayou. What do you want to do now, boss man?”

  “Good question.”

  Just as we started to get in the cruiser, the bartender opened the screen door and leaned outside. He held up a brightly colored brochure of some kind in his hand.

  “Is this any hep to y’all?” he asked.

  “What you got there?” I said.

  “The man you was axing about? He left it on the counter. I saved it in case he come back,” the bartender said.

  Helen’s usual martial expression stretched into a big smile. “Sir, don’t handle that any more than you need to. There you go. Just let me get a Ziploc bag and you can slip it right inside … That’s it, plop it right in. Lovely day, isn’t it? Drop by the department for free doughnuts any time. Thank you very much,” she said.

  It’s called the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS. It’s a miracle of technology. A latent fingerprint can be faxed to a computer at a regional pod and within two hours be matched with a print that is already on file.

  If the fingerprint has a priority.

  Priorities are usually given to homicide cases or instances when people are in custody and there is a dramatic need to know who they are.

  The man who had prized open Little Face Dautrieve’s cabin door was de facto guilty of little more than breaking and entering. The possibility that he was the same man who killed Zipper Clum was based only on my speculation. Also, the Clum homicide was not in our jurisdiction.

  No priority for the latent print we took off the dishware brochure the bartender had saved. Get a number and wait. The line in Louisiana is a long one.

  I called the office of Connie Deshotel, the attorney general, in Baton Rouge.

  “She’s out right now. Can she call you back?” the secretary said.

  “Sure,” I replied, and gave her my office number.

  I waited until quitting time. No call. The next day was Saturday.
>
  I tried again Monday morning.

  “She’s out,” the secretary said.

  “Did she get the message I left Friday?” I asked.

  “I think she did.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “Anytime now.”

  “Can you have her call me, please?”

  “She’s just been very busy, sir.”

  “So are we. We’re trying to catch a murderer.”

  Then I felt stupid and vituperative for taking out my anger on a secretary who was not to blame for the problem.

  Regardless, I received no return call. Tuesday morning I went into Helen’s office. Her desk was covered with paperwork.

  “You want to take a ride to Baton Rouge?” I asked.

  Connie Deshotel’s office was on the twenty-second floor of the state capitol building, high above the green parks of the downtown area and the wide sweep of the Mississippi River and the aluminum factories and petroleum refineries along its shores. But Connie Deshotel was not in her office. We were told by the secretary she was in the cafeteria downstairs.

  “Is there a line to kiss her ring?” Helen asked.

  “Excuse me?” the secretary said.

  “Take it easy, Helen,” I said in the elevator.

  “Connie Deshotel was born with a hairbrush up her ass. Somebody should have straightened her out a long time ago,” she replied.

  “You mind if I do the talking?” I asked.

  We stood at the entrance to the cafeteria, looking out over the tables, most of which were occupied. Connie Deshotel was at a table against the back wall. She wore a white suit and was sitting across from a man in a blue sports coat and tan slacks whose thinning hair looked almost braided with grease.

  “You make the gel head?” Helen said.

  “No.”

  “Don Ritter, NOPD Vice. He’s from some rat hole up in Jersey. I think he’s still in the First District.”

  “That’s the guy who busted Little Face Dautrieve and planted rock on her. He tried to make her come across for him and Jim Gable.”

  “Sounds right. He used to shake down fudge packers in the Quarter. What’s he doing with the attorney general of Louisiana?”

  “Go easy, Helen. Don’t make him cut and run,” I said.

  “It’s your show,” she said, walking ahead of me between the tables before I could reply.

  As we approached Connie Deshotel, her eyes moved from her conversation onto my face. But they showed no sense of surprise. Instead, she smiled good-naturedly.

  “You want some help with access to AFIS?” she said.

  “How’d you know?” I asked.

  “I called your office this morning. But you’d already left. The sheriff told me about your problem. I had him fax the latents to the pod. The ID should be on your desk when you get back to New Iberia,” she said.

  The confrontation I had been expecting was suddenly gone. I looked at her in dismay.

  “You did it,” I said.

  “I’m glad my office could help. I’m only sorry I couldn’t get back to you earlier. Would you like to join us? This is Don Ritter. He’s at the First District in New Orleans,” she said.

  Ritter put out his hand and I took it, in the way you do when you suppress your feelings and know that later you’ll wish you hadn’t.

  “I already know Helen. You used to be a meter maid at NOPD,” he said.

  “Yeah, you were tight with Jim Gable,” she said, smiling.

  I turned and looked directly into Helen’s face. But she didn’t allow herself to see my expression.

  “Jim’s working liaison with the mayor’s office,” Ritter said.

  “How about that Zipper Clum getting wasted? Remember him? You and Jim used to leave him hooked up in the cage,” Helen said.

  “A tragic event. Everybody laughed for five minutes at roll call the other day,” Ritter said.

  “We have to go. Thanks for your help, Ms. Deshotel,” I said.

  “Anytime, Mr. Robicheaux,” she replied. She looked lovely in her white suit, her olive skin dark with tan, the tips of her hair burned by the sun. The silver angel pinned on her lapel swam with light. “Come see us again.”

  I waited until we were in the parking lot before I turned my anger on Helen.

  “That was inexcusable,” I said.

  “You’ve got to make them wince sometimes,” she said.

  “That’s not your call, Helen.”

  “I’m your partner, not your driver. We’re working the same case, Dave.”

  The air rising from the cement was hot and dense with humidity and hard to breathe. Helen squeezed my upper arm.

  “In your mind you’re working your mother’s case and you think nobody’s going to help you. It’s not true, bwana. We’re a team. You and I are going to make them religious on this one,” she said.

  If indeed the man who had broken into Little Face’s cabin was the same man who murdered Zipper Clum, the jigger named Steve Andropolis had been halfway right about his identity. The National Crime Information Center said the print we had sent through AFIS belonged to one Johnny O’Roarke, who had graduated from a Detroit high school but had grown up in Letcher County, Kentucky. His mother’s maiden name was Remeta. At age twenty he had been sentenced to two years in the Florida State Penitentiary at Raiford for robbery and possession of burglar tools and stolen property.

  While in prison he was the suspect in the murder of a six-and-one-half-foot, 280-pound recidivist named Jeremiah Boone, who systematically raped every fish, or new inmate, in his unit.

  Helen sat with one haunch on the corner of my desk, reading from the sheets that had been faxed to us by the Florida Department of Corrections in Tallahassee.

  “The rapist, this guy Boone? He was Molotoved in his cell. The prison psychologist says O’Roarke, or Remeta, was the regular punch for eight or nine guys till somebody turned Boone into a candle. Remeta must have made his bones by torching Boone,” she said, then waited. “You listening?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied. But I wasn’t. “Connie Deshotel seemed to be on the square. Why’s she hanging around with a wrong cop, the gel head, what’s his name, Ritter?”

  “Maybe they just ran into each other. She started her career at NOPD.”

  “She stonewalled us, then fell over backwards to look right,” I said.

  “She got us the ID. Forget it. What do you want to do about Remeta, or O’Roarke, or whatever he calls himself?” Helen said.

  “He probably got front money on the Little Face hit. Somebody besides us isn’t happy with him right now. Maybe it’s a good time to start jacking up the other side.”

  “How?” she said.

  I glanced out the window just as Clete Purcel’s maroon Cadillac pulled to the curb, with Passion Labiche in the passenger’s seat.

  9

  I walked down the hallway toward the building’s entrance, but the sheriff cut me off.

  “Purcel’s out there,” he said.

  “I know. I’m going to meet him,” I said.

  “Keep him out of here,” he replied.

  “You’re too hard on him.”

  “You want my job, run for office. I don’t want him in the building.”

  I looked at his back as he walked away, his words stinging in my face. I caught up with him.

  “It’s not Purcel. It’s who he’s with. I think she bothers a few people’s conscience around here,” I said.

  “You’re out of line.”

  “With respect, so are you, sir,” I replied, and went outside.

  Clete was walking toward me from the curb. He wore a light suit and a tan silk shirt and a dark tie with tiny flowers on it, and his porkpie hat had been replaced by a Panama with a green-tinted visor built into the brim.

  “What are you doing with Passion?” I asked.

  “I took her to the clinic over in Lafayette.”

  “What for?”

  “She sees a dermatologist there or something. She
didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing with her?”

  “None of your damn business, Streak.”

  We stood there like that, in the heat of the afternoon, the shadows of the huge white courthouse falling on the lawn behind us. Then Clete’s face relented and his eyes went away from me and came back again.

  “I took her for a drive because I like her. We’re going to dinner and a movie. You want to tag along?” he said.

  “I want to talk to you in private.”

  “Yeah, anytime I can be useful. Thanks for the hospitality,” he said, and got back into the Cadillac and drove away. Passion smiled at me, brushing her hair out of one eye with the ends of her fingers.

  Clete came into the bait shop when I was closing up that night. He opened a bottle of Dixie beer and drank it at the counter. I sat down next to him with a Dr Pepper.

  “I’m sorry about today. I just worry about you sometimes, Cletus,” I said.

  “You think I’m over-the-hill for Passion?”

  “You carried me down a fire escape with two bullets in your back. I don’t like to see you get hurt.”

  “She makes me feel young. What’s wrong in that?”

  I cupped my hand on the back of his neck. The baked scales on his skin were as stiff as blistered paint.

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” I said.

  “So why did you want to talk in private?”

  “We think the Zipper Clum shooter is a Kentucky product by way of Michigan. His real name is Johnny O’Roarke but he goes by Remeta. He did a two-bit in Raiford. He also got to be an expert in jailhouse romance.”

  “Same guy who was going to do Little Face?”

  “That’s the way I see it.”

  “The jigger said Remeta didn’t have a sheet.”

  “You ever know a gumball yet who had the whole story right?”

  “So Remeta blew off the hit and now he’s in the shit-house with whoever gave him the contract. Is that what you were going to tell me?”

  “That’s about it.”

  He grinned and drank out of his beer. “And you think we should make life as messed up as possible for all bad guys involved?”