“Have you gotten the Lujans’ telephone records?” Lonnie interrupted.
“There were three calls to the house yesterday afternoon. One from a solicitor, one to confirm a pizza order, and one from a pay phone. The pay phone was—”
“I don’t think you’re reading me correctly, Dave. We’re going to examine every possible lead in this case, but it’s going to be done in an expeditious way, without any foot-dragging. I’m not going to let this turn into a racial issue, and everybody in this room knows that’s what’s going to happen if Monarch Little has his way. I’m not letting the do-gooders and the ACLU use us for their agenda, either.”
“Hear me out, Lonnie. Tony’s roommate was Slim Bruxal. So far I haven’t been able to find him. He was gone from the fraternity house yesterday and his father claims he hasn’t seen him since last week. Slim and some other fraternity kids followed Tony to St. John’s and found him playing pitch-and-catch with the priest. Before we start dropping the jailhouse on Monarch’s head, we need to get Slim Bruxal in here and find out what he was doing when Tony was killed.”
I could tell Lonnie didn’t like my bringing up Slim Bruxal’s name in front of Betsy Mossbacher, in all probability because he planned to launch his own investigation into Whitey Bruxal’s ties with racketeering and exclude the FBI.
“So haul his ass in here. But what you’re going to get from Slim Bruxal is shit and you know it,” Lonnie said.
“You’ll have to excuse me for being a bit dense, but can you explain to me why I’ve been invited here?” Betsy said.
“Professional courtesy, Agent Mossbacher,” Lonnie replied. “You were in the process of moving Monarch into Witness Protection. In my opinion, that process has become a moot issue. We’ll cooperate in every way we can with your investigation into racketeering inside the gaming industry, but right now we have a homicide to deal with. In case you’re interested, at age eighteen Monarch was probably involved in the shooting death of a man who was watering his lawn on Easter morning. He also set fire to the house of a city policeman.”
“That’s interesting. I wonder why he’s been on the street all this time,” she replied.
Lonnie grinned and glanced out the window, as though he were checking the weather. “You forced Monarch to file charges against the Bruxal boy in order to get at his father. That makes perfect sense. But now it looks like your confidential informant or whatever you want to call him has committed a homicide in an extortion attempt gone bad. So you’re going to have to go after Whitey Bruxal on your own, or at least without strings on Monarch Little. He’s our problem now and we’re going to handle him and it from now on out.”
He turned away from her and looked back at me and Helen. “I’d like to talk with both of you again by close of business today. Media are already all over this, and there’s at least one alternative newspaper in Lafayette that loves to throw matches at gasoline. We’re not going to let this turn into a gangbanger and race issue. This is not Los Angeles or New Orleans. Our tourism is booming and I plan to see that it stays that way. This is a good city. Our streets aren’t going to be turned into free-fire zones because of one black asshole and a spoiled white kid who probably ran over a homeless man and left him to die on the road.”
It was obvious he was proselytizing about local concerns in order to exclude Betsy Mossbacher from the conversation and encourage her to leave the meeting. But it didn’t work.
“No disrespect meant, Mr. Marceaux, but do you believe either the Bureau or the DOJ is going to change its policies because of anything said at this meeting?”
“I’m trying to be candid about our priorities, Agent Mossbacher. You and your people can do whatever you want. That’s how you usually operate anyway, isn’t it?”
Betsy Mossbacher got up from her chair, then reached down for her purse. Her bright, straw-colored hair was still damp on the tips and stuck to the back of her neck. “You don’t have your brand on that black kid’s backside. He’s still a confidential informant cooperating with a federal investigation, and he’d better be regarded as such by your office. In my opinion, you’re pushing your own investigators to come to conclusions they’re not ready to make. I’m going to take official note of all this, so don’t be surprised if you invite a civil rights beef you didn’t have before you called this meeting.”
Lonnie pinched his eyes and pretended to suppress a yawn. “I hear you. Glad you dropped by. Let me get the door for you,” he said, rising from his chair.
Then I witnessed one of those rare moments, in a male-dominated environment, when a woman can wrap herself in her own integrity and create an impregnable shield around herself. Lonnie had pulled open the door and was waiting for Betsy Mossbacher to leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she stood silently, five feet from the door’s threshold, waiting for his pantomime to end, her eyes focused into the hallway. He tried to wait her out, then realized he had been trapped into making a fool of himself.
He eased the door closed. “I beg your pardon, Agent Mossbacher,” he said, and returned to his desk.
“No problem,” she said. Then she opened the door for herself and closed it behind her.
I saw a tug at the corner of Helen Soileau’s mouth.
Lonnie cleared his throat and fiddled with a ballpoint pen on his desk. “I want to say something for the record. I believe Monarch did Bello Lujan’s boy. But I’m going to leave that determination up to y’all. That said, there’s obviously a much larger story at work here. Those federal agents wouldn’t take the time to spit on us if we were burning to death. They want Whitey Bruxal in a cage and maybe Bello Lujan, too. I suspect the Mossbacher woman is a closet liberal who wants to bring down this televangelical lobbyist Colin Alridge. It’s my position we don’t need the goddamn federal government to do any of the aforementioned. Bruxal has tried to bribe two or three people to get his video poker machines into Iberia Parish. That puts him in our jurisdiction. Y’all with me on this?”
“I haven’t thought it all through, Lonnie,” I said.
“Glad to see such a positive attitude. How about you, Helen?”
“To tell the truth, I think I should have been reading Mack’s report and the post on Tony Lujan rather than attending this meeting,” she said. “I’ll get back to you ASAP.”
It wasn’t the best of days for Lonnie Marceaux.
A few minutes later, as I was checking out a cruiser to go to Lafayette, I saw Helen make a point of speaking to Betsy Mossbacher at the entrance to the courthouse. Helen saw me watching her, just before she headed back to her office.
“Don’t say a word,” she said.
“My mind was totally blank,” I said.
Then a laugh coughed out of her throat. “That Calamity Jane is something else, isn’t she?”
LATER, I INTERVIEWED the Catholic priest at St. John’s who threw baseballs through church windows. I also interviewed a collection of fraternity kids who until the previous day had believed inclusion in a whites-only non-Jewish social organization could protect them from death. I still couldn’t find Slim Bruxal. The only light moment in the afternoon came when I was leaving the interview with the priest. He asked me if I would like to catch a few grounders with him. And I said why not. Chapter 12
I WOKE AT FIVE-THIRTY the next morning to the sound of mockingbirds in the trees and a boat with a deep draft working its way downstream from the drawbridge at Burke Street. Our home was a wonderful place to wake on an early summer morning. Sometimes ground fog hung on the bayou, and inside it I would hear a gator slap its tail in the lily pads or a nutria or a muskrat roll off a cypress knee into the water. Sometimes I imagined I saw Confederate longboats, sharpshooters humped low inside, the oars muffled, floating silently with the current toward the Yankees’ skirmish line at Nelson’s Canal.
It didn’t matter what the weather was like. Morning with Molly and Snuggs and Tripod was always a grand time, and the arrival of the day had little to do with clocks. Just before first light I would he
ar the milkman crossing the lawn, fat bottles of cream clinking in his wire basket, then a solid thump on the ceiling when Snuggs dropped from an oak limb onto the roof, right above our bedroom. Molly would stir in her sleep, her hip rounded by the sheet, her hot rump brushing against me. I would put my fingers in her hair, trace them down her shoulders and back, and along the deep curve in her waist. I’d kiss her baby fat and the two red sun moles below her navel. I’d kiss her breasts and stomach and mouth and eyes, then slip her close against me, burying my face in the thick smell of her hair.
When she made love, she did it without stint or reservation or buried resentment because of a cross word or imagined slight. Molly’s charity and smile followed her into bed, and in the morning her skin gave off a warm fragrance just like flowers in a garden. In the blueness of the dawn I would hear the steady rhythm of her breath in my ear while Miss Ellen Deschamps called to her cats from her back porch, and I would start the day with the absolute knowledge that no evil could hold sway in our lives.
When I got to the office, the investigation into the murder of Tony Lujan awaited me in a way I didn’t expect. Wally had written a name and a cell number on a pink message slip and had put it in my mailbox. At the bottom of the slip he had penciled the notation: “Call him between 9:15 and 10.”
“Who’s J. J. Castille?” I said.
“Some colletch kid.”
“Which college kid?”
“He says you was at his fraternity house yesterday.”
“Wally, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t present information in teaspoons.”
His shirt pocket was fat with cellophane-wrapped cigars, which he rolled around in his mouth but never lighted because of his high blood pressure. “The kid, J. J. Castille, says he’s in class till nine-fifteen. He says you saw him at his fraternity house yesterday but you didn’t talk to him. He says he wants to talk wit’ you now. That’s how come he called the office.”
“Thank you.”
“He also said not to call him at the fraternity house. He said use the cell. That’s why I wrote down the cell number on the note. Anyt’ing else I can interpret for you?”
“No, that’s just fine.”
“You sure?”
In the army or prison, you learn not to make enemies with anyone in records or the kitchen. In law enforcement, you don’t admonish your dispatcher.
As I walked to my office, I couldn’t put a face with the name on the message slip. But I did remember a thin-chested kid at Tony’s fraternity house who had hung in the background, his expression full of conflict. At 9:20 a.m. I punched J. J. Castille’s cell number into my desk phone.
“Hello?” a voice said. In the background I could hear music and many voices talking and the clatter of dishes.
“This is Detective Dave Robicheaux with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department. I’m returning a call made by J. J. Castille. Are you Mr. Castille?”
“Yes, sir. I need to talk with you.”
“Is this about Tony Lujan?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It’s about him and Slim Bruxal. It’s about something they were saying at the house. Maybe it’s not important.” The pitch of his voice dropped when he mentioned Bruxal’s name.
“It’s important,” I said.
“I can’t talk here.”
“Do you have a car?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll come over there. Where do you want to meet?”
He didn’t reply immediately. “I just thought I should pass it on.”
“I understand that. You’re doing the right thing, partner. Just tell me where you want to meet.”
“You know the UL campus?”
“I went to school there.”
“I’ll be between Cypress Lake and the music building.”
I checked out an unmarked car, clamped a magnetized flasher on the roof, and was at the campus in under thirty minutes. I pulled into a driveway between a cypress-dotted lake and the old brick music building known as Burke Hall. I saw a kid squatted down on the bank, tossing crumbs from a hot dog bun to a school of perch that popped and roiled the surface when they took the bread. His brown hair grew on his neck and hung in his eyes, and he wore a T-shirt that was washed so thin it looked like cheesecloth hanging on his shoulders.
He rose to greet me but didn’t shake hands. Instead, he looked over his shoulder at the elevated walkway that led into the Student Union.
“You going to summer school, J.J.?” I said.
“Yeah, but I work in the cafeteria, too. A lot of guys take off for the summer, but I want to get through premed early so’s I can go on to Tulane. I got a scholarship through the Naval ROTC program there.”
He had clean features and brown eyes that were too large for his face and a pronounced Cajun accent. He looked back over his shoulder again. Through the cypress trees I could see kids walking in and out of the building.
“No one is paying any attention to us, J.J. Want to tell me what this is about? My boss doesn’t want me gone from the office too long.” I tried to smile.
“I was studying across the hallway from Slim and Tony’s room the day Tony got murdered. Our doors were open and I could hear them talking about the guy who was run over on the road. Slim kept calling him ‘the wino.’ He said the wino died ’cause he walked out in front of a car.”
“Tony’s car?”
J.J. thought about it. “No, he said ‘a car.’ Slim said winos walked out in front of cars all the time and got killed and nobody cared. Then Tony said, ‘That’s not what happened, Slim.’”
He blew out his breath.
“What else did they say?”
“Nothing. Slim closed the door. Slim’s a rough guy. He’s not supposed to have the top room, but nobody says anything about it.”
I gave him my business card. “If you remember anything else, call me again, will you? But right now it’s important to remember you did the right thing. You don’t have any reason to feel guilty or ashamed or afraid. Do you know where Slim Bruxal is now?”
“He was back at the house this morning. He said he’d been in New Orleans with a girl.”
“Slim’s at the house now?”
“Far as I know. Am I going to have to testify in court?”
“I’m not sure. Would you be willing to do that?”
He cleared his throat and didn’t answer.
“Did you know Yvonne Darbonne?” I asked.
“She came to the house with Tony once or twice. At least I think it was with Tony. I really didn’t know her.” He looked at me briefly, then his eyes left mine. The wind was cool blowing through the cypress trees on the lake, but his skin was flushed, his forehead shiny with perspiration.
“What are you not telling me?” I said.
“They say she pulled a train.”
“She did a gang bang?”
“They call it ‘pulling a train.’ They say she was wiped out of her head and took on a bunch of guys upstairs in the house. It was after a kegger or something. There was a lot of Ecstasy and acid floating around. The way these guys talked, Tony didn’t know about it. I heard she was messed up in the head and committed suicide.”
“Yeah, she did. But she wasn’t messed up before she met Tony Lujan. Did she pull the train the day she died?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I work and study all the time. I don’t know who the guys were, either. There’s stuff goes on at the house I don’t get mixed up in.”
The lake was dark in the shade, wrinkled by the wind, the hyacinths blooming with yellow flowers out in the sunlight. “You seem like a good guy, J.J. Why do you hang around with a collection of shits like this bunch?”
“They’re not all bad.”
“Maybe not. But enough of them are. Come see me in New Iberia if you want to go fishing sometime. In the meantime, hang on to my business card, okay?” I said.
I DROVE DIRECTLY to the fraternity house. Two k
ids were raking leaves in the front yard when I walked up to the porch. “Is Slim here?” I said.
“Out back,” one of them replied, hardly looking up from his work.
“Did he just get back from New Orleans?” I said, checking J. J. Castille’s story.
“Search me,” the same kid said.
I walked around the side of the house into the backyard. The St. Augustine grass was uncut, the yard enclosed by thick hedges, the sunshine filtered by pecan and oak trees. Slim Bruxal stood below a speed bag that was mounted on the crossbar of two iron stanchions. He wore a workout shirt that had been scissored into strips and gym shoes and a pair of string-tie gym shorts low on his hips. His fists looked as hard and tight as apples inside his red gloves as he turned the speed bag into a blur, tada-tada-tada-tada, the exposed skin on his back crisscrossed with sweat.
“You’re a hard man to find,” I said.
He turned and looked at me, his eyes hot, his brow knitted, like someone pulling himself out of an angry thought. He removed his right glove by clamping it under his left arm, then extended his hand. “How you doing, Mr. Robicheaux?”
I turned away from him, as though I were distracted by the blowing of a car horn on the street, my hand at my side. “You were with your girl the last couple of days?”
“Girl? I was seeing my therapist in New Orleans. She’s also a grief counselor,” he replied, lowering his hand.
“Can I have her name and number?”
“What for?”
“We’re trying to exclude everyone we can in our investigation into Tony’s death. That’s so we can concentrate on nailing the right guy.”
He gave me a woman’s name and a phone number in the Garden District, up St. Charles Avenue.
“You want the right guy?” he said. “He looks like a pile of soggy meat loaf with warts on it. I hear he’s sitting on his fat black ass in your jail.”