I had to hand it to him. Dressed in white slacks and a black short-sleeved shirt with a silver monogram on the pocket, his white hair clipped and neatly combed, he was the image of an athletic, self-confident man in his prime. The fact I had stomped the shit out of his right-hand man seemed inconsequential to him. He hit me on the shoulder and told me to come into the living room with him.
“So what’s on your mind?” he said, walking ahead of me.
“I’ve got a dilemma,” I said.
“Yeah?” he replied, sitting down in a chair upholstered in red velvet.
Through the front window I could see the driveway, a big live oak in the yard, and the four-lane highway that led to Opelousas. “The Iberia Parish D.A. is an ambitious guy. He wants to wrap up Tony Lujan’s homicide and maybe make a lot of black voters happy at the same time. Get my drift?”
“No, I don’t get your drift.”
“Monarch Little skates. Your boy takes the bounce. I don’t know if Lonnie is going to ask for the needle or not.”
“Say that again.”
“Lonnie Marceaux wants to be governor or a United States senator. He’s not going to get there by convicting a black dirtbag nobody cares about. Lonnie wants to screw you, Mr. Bruxal. By screwing you, he can also bring down Colin Alridge. That will buy him the national attention he needs.”
“Call me Whitey. Slim didn’t kill Tony. Tony was his friend. Where you get off with this?”
“Tony was going to give up Slim on the hit-and-run death of the homeless man. There’s another theory about Slim’s motivation as well.”
“Theories are like skid marks on the bowl. Everybody’s got them. I think you’re here to squeeze my balls.”
I glanced out the window at the highway, then grinned at him. “You’re not going to own anything to squeeze, Whitey,” I said.
For the first time his brow wrinkled.
“The Feds have you and Bellerophon Lujan on racketeering charges. Lonnie wants a piece of you, too. That’s where your son comes in,” I said. “Second in line does the time. From Lonnie’s perspective, your ass is grass.”
“You saying Bello is rolling over on me?”
“I’m saying it’s a done deal. Come on, you’re a smart man. Bello’s a coonass, born and bred in South Louisiana. You’re from Brooklyn. People here think New York is a place where homosexuals go to get married and every other woman has an abortion.”
“Why you keep looking out the window?”
I ignored his question. “This is the short version. They’re about to freeze your assets. As you probably know, a RICO conviction will allow the Feds to seize everything you own. In the meantime, you’ve got other issues and other enemies to deal with.”
“Issues? I don’t like that word. Everybody is always talking about issues.” Then, paradoxically, he said, “What issues? What enemies?”
He saw me looking out the window again, this time at a vintage Cadillac convertible with a fresh pink paint job coming up the driveway from the four-lane. “Who’s that guy?” he said.
“He does scut work for us. I told him I’d be here. You mind?”
“What’s his name?”
“Clete Purcel.”
“That fat guy is Purcel? Yeah, I do mind. His squeeze is this Trish Klein broad. What are you guys working here?”
I got up and opened the side door to the terrace. “Hey, Cletus, over here,” I said.
“Hey, you answer my question,” Whitey said.
But again I didn’t reply. Clete walked through the dappled shade of the live oak, his face affable and handsome behind his yellow-tinted aviator’s glasses. I could feel the air-conditioned coolness from the living room rushing past me into the heat and humidity of the afternoon.
“Hey, how’s it hangin’?” he said to Whitey as he came through the door, uninvited.
But I had underestimated Whitey. He might have been a creature of his times, his psychological makeup as hard as the concrete he grew up on, but he was nevertheless capable of mustering a level of dignity, even if it was feigned, that men of his background seldom possess.
“It’s lunchtime and I was going to ask Mr. Robicheaux to join me,” he said. “Because you’re his friend, you’re welcome, too. But this is still my home, the place where my family lives. Any guest in my house has to respect that.”
“You got it, Whitey. But I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your employee Lefty Raguza. He’s not a family-type guy,” Clete said.
“What might have happened outside this house has no application inside it, you follow? You want to eat, there’s a spread laid out for us in the dining room. You want to act rude, it’s time for you to go,” Whitey said.
“Here’s a story for you,” Clete said. “We’ve got a congressman here who was asked to describe Louisiana on CNN. He goes, ‘Half of it is underwater and half of it is under indictment.’ Right now, in your case, that means you’re anybody’s hump. Forget the lunch. Let’s talk business.”
“What business I got with you?”
“The word is your kid’s a closet bone smoker. The Iberia D.A. has got the handle he needs to jam him and you both. Dave didn’t tell you?”
The transformation that took place in Whitey’s face was like none I had ever seen in another person. The eyes didn’t blink or narrow; the color in them did not brighten with anger or haze over with hidden thoughts. The jawbone never pulsed against the cheek. Instead, his expression seemed to take on the emotionless solidity of carved wood, with eyes as dull and cavernous as buckshot. I believe I could have scratched a match alight on his face and he wouldn’t have blinked.
“What’d you call my boy?” he asked.
Clete pressed the palm of his hand against his chest. “I didn’t call him anything. That’s his rep in a couple of drag joints in Lafayette. I thought you and Dave had talked. The D.A. thinks the Lujan kid came on to your son and your son blew up his shit. The point is when piranhas smell blood, they clean the cow to the bone. You want your casino interests let alone? Maybe I can make that happen. I’m getting through to you, here?”
“Yeah, you’re both working with this twat Trish Klein,” Whitey said.
Clete looked at me. “You heard the man, Streak. I told you it was a waste of time. Hey, Whitey, this isn’t Miami. Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum. Dave knocked a tooth out of the D.A.’s mouth and he’s still got his shield. What does that tell you? You think we’re here to shake you down for chump change? While you’re in the slams, what do you think Bello Lujan is going to be doing—protecting your assets till you get out? He’ll turn your pad into a cathouse and your horses into canned dog food.”
We left Whitey standing in his living room. Outside, as we crossed the thick, carpetlike texture of his St. Augustine grass, I heard the red Morgan running in the pasture. Her neck and flanks were dark with sweat, her mouth strung with wisps of saliva. She clattered against a rail and I would have sworn she nickered at me.
Clete got in his Caddy and headed down the driveway. Just as I started my engine, I saw Whitey come out the front door.
“Hey, Robicheaux, wait up,” he called.
I rolled down the window. “What?” I said.
“What he said about my boy?”
“Yeah?”
“People are saying that, or your friend was just working my crank?”
“Your kid has problems. Homosexuality is probably the least of them.”
“You got a kid?”
“An adopted daughter.”
“How would you like it if somebody talked about her like you talk about my boy? How would you like it if my lawyers came after you through your family?”
“We’re not like you, Whitey. Dallas Klein’s blood is on your soul. On the day you die, I believe his specter will stand by your bedside. Nothing you do from now until then will change that fact. Your son is a monster. I have a feeling you know it, too.”
For a moment I saw a look in Whitey’s eyes that made me believe there
are some people who are truly damned. Then the moment passed and he squinted into the haze and pinched the humidity out of his eyes. “I went to school under the Catholic nuns,” he said. “They taught us after we pissed not to shake off more than two times. Know what we did? We all ran down to the john and shook it off three times to see what would happen. Good try, Robicheaux, but you and your friend belong here. Like you say, it’s a place for jerk-offs.”
Upstairs, Slim Bruxal pushed open a window and leaned outside, his upper torso naked. “Hey, Dad, can somebody give Carmen a ride back to the dorm? I’ve got a softball game,” he said.
MY LIFE IS NOT GIVEN to prescient moments. But occasionally I have them, particularly with the advance of age. When they occur, they leave behind a sensation like a cold burn on the heart.
The sky was painted with horsetails, the trees blowing hard along the highway as I followed Clete out of Lafayette. Then he pulled into a truck stop and went inside, not glancing back to see if I was behind him.
When Clete made choices, even minuscule ones, that geographically separated him from his friends, he was usually embarking on an odyssey that invariably brought harm to only one person—himself.
I pushed open the door in the café area and saw him at the end of the counter, his aviator glasses in his pocket, the lines at the corners of his eyes like pieces of white thread, a bottle of beer and a foaming glass and a saltshaker in front of him. I cupped my hand on his shoulder.
“It’s twenty minutes after one,” I said. “You haven’t eaten, either.”
“I’m on a diet,” he replied.
I sat down on the stool next to him and asked the waitress for coffee. “You did great back there, Cletus.”
“Remember when we caught Augie Giacano jackrolling an old lady and threw him down a fire escape? Then we dimed him with Didi Gee so he’d get in trouble with his own people?”
“When you threw Augie down the fire escape.”
“Whatever. We didn’t get pushed around by Brooklyn skells like Whitey Bruxal.” He salted his beer and drank from it. He touched at his mouth with a paper napkin, then put the napkin aside, finished the glass in one swallow, and filled it again.
“Eat a hamburger with me,” I said.
“Everything is muy copacetico, Streakus. No problemas here.” His eyes drifted to the television anchored on the café wall. “Check out those tropical storms in the Atlantic. The Florida Straits are starting to look like a turnstile.”
“I’ve got to get back to the department.”
“See you later.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“What? I’m supposed to feel like the walking wounded?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t get it, Dave. You never did. We’re dinosaurs. This isn’t the same country we grew up in. The scumbags own it, from top to bottom. Except they’re legal now and have college degrees and wear two-thousand-dollar suits. Back in our First District days, we would have fed these motherfuckers into an airplane propeller.”
A truck driver down the counter wearing a greasy bill cap looked at us, and the waitress studied the television screen with undue attention, then turned up the volume. A CNN announcer was talking about a hurricane that was strengthening off the Bahamas.
“The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide are forever,” I said.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Snap out of it, Clete.”
This time he didn’t argue with me. But reticence in Clete Purcel was rarely a sign of acquiescence. Instead, it was the exact opposite. He put on his yellow-tinted shades and looked at the television screen, his face composed.
“You’re going to see Trish today?” I said.
“What about it?”
She’s too young for you. You’re going to get hurt real bad, perhaps irrevocably, I thought.
He stared into my eyes. “Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah, what?” I said, trying to smile innocuously.
“Yeah, keep your thoughts to yourself,” he replied.
It was one of the moments when the truth serves no purpose other than to keep our wounds green. Was Clete right? Were we at the end of our string, flailing at forces that had societal and governmental sanction, convincing ourselves, like fools popping champagne corks aboard a sinking liner, that our violence could extend our youth forever into the future and that the party would never come to an end?
He felt my eyes on the side of his face. “Why you giving me that weird look?”
“Because you’re the best, Clete. Because I love you.”
The trucker down the counter was cutting up a steak on his plate. He glanced sideways at us, then at our reflection in the mirror. Clete leaned over so he could see past me.
“What’s up, bud?” Clete asked.
“Not a whole lot,” the trucker said, returning to his steak. He had created a puddle of ketchup sprinkled with pepper on his plate, and he was dipping each piece of meat in it before he forked it into his mouth.
“That steak looks righteous. You want a beer?” Clete said.
“I got to drive. Another time,” the trucker said.
“I’m Clete Purcel. This is Dave Robicheaux.”
“I’m Joe Vernon Mack.”
“You’re looking at the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide, Joe Vernon,” Clete said.
“Pleased to meet y’all,” the trucker said, chewing contentedly.
Clete picked up both our checks and paid for them at the cash register, then the two of us walked outside into the wind.
I ARRIVED BACK at the department shortly before 3 p.m. A note from Helen on a pink memorandum slip was waiting for me in my mailbox. It said: “See me.” When I walked down to her office, her door was ajar and I could see her standing behind her desk, talking on the phone. She waved me inside.
“He’s here now,” she said into the receiver. “Look, Lonnie, you made some ugly remarks about both him and me. He was defending me and this department as much as himself. You want to make trouble over this, you’ll have me to deal with as well. My advice is that you be a man and accept the fact you shot off your mouth and that you got what you deserved.”
I could hear Lonnie Marceaux’s voice coming out of the receiver like a piece of wire being pulled through a metal hole.
“Stop shouting,” Helen said. “He’s a good cop and you know it. If you want, I’ll contact the Daily Iberian and the wire services in Baton Rouge and we can both make a statement about what happened. It’s your call.”
She held the receiver away from her head and looked at it.
“He hang up?” I said.
“Or shot himself. Except we don’t have that kind of luck around here. Somebody at Lafayette P.D. told him you busted up Lefty Raguza. He thinks you’re running your own program, one that probably conflicts with his. Lonnie wants it all, Dave.”
“All what?”
“He’s going to indict Monarch Little for the Lujan homicide and bring racketeering charges against Whitey Bruxal. He’s also got Colin Alridge in his bomb sights. Alridge is running for lieutenant governor. Lonnie says he’s going to drive a nail through one of his testicles.”
“Why don’t you use a more severe image?”
“Those are his words, not mine.” She placed her hand on the windowsill and gazed out at the cemetery, and I knew she was no longer interested in talking about Lonnie. “I got a call earlier from the sheriff of Orleans Parish. He says a warrant is being cut for Clete Purcel’s arrest.”
“For flooding the casino?”
But my question didn’t register. “The Orleans sheriff says there’re rumors Clete is mixed up with the people who did the savings and loan job in Mobile. This parish isn’t going to be a haven for people who think they don’t have to obey the law.”
“I’ll talk with Clete.”
“You tell him I said he gets this shit off our plate or he leaves town.”
“I understand you perfectly. Thanks for standing up for me with
Lonnie,” I said.
She looked me dead-on, her expression caught again in that strange androgynous moment when she seemed to linger between two identities, her face both beautiful and intimidating, a Helen I didn’t really know. “Don’t try to jerk me around, Dave. Fun and games are over,” she said.
I WALKED BACK to my office, unsure of my next move. I was convinced I had gotten nowhere with Whitey Bruxal. Worse, all my investigative work into the deaths of Crustacean Man, Yvonne Darbonne, and Tony Lujan had produced only circumstantial evidence and theories. Most depressing of all was the fact that, regardless of what I did, Lonnie Marceaux was going to use the evidence selectively to advance his own career, even if he had to prosecute Monarch Little, an innocent man, for the murder of Tony Lujan.
I’d had a run at Bruxal earlier, hoping to sow seeds of suspicion about his business partner, Bello Lujan. But why quit now? I asked myself. Some activities are like prayer. After you’ve been shelled off the mound, what do you have to lose?
I waited until quitting time to drive to his horse farm outside Loreauville. From the state road I saw him in front of a long white stable, dressed in strap overalls, working on a faucet that fed a galvanized water tank. He looked up when he heard my truck thumping across the cattle-guard, his Stilson wrench suddenly motionless.
How do you deal with a man like Bellerophon Lujan? Do you hate him? He certainly deserved the odium attached to his name. He was ignorant, driven, corrupt, racist, superstitious, and violent, his wealth ill-gotten, his libidinous appetites legendary. I believed he had probably raped Yvonne Darbonne. And long before he had destroyed her and her faith in her fellow human beings, he had ruined his son’s life with control and verbal abuse that disguised itself as love.
But as much as I despised Bello’s deeds, I could not hate the man. As my truck approached the horse tank, I saw him grin slightly at the edge of his mouth, and for just a moment I remembered the kid who had waited in the cold with a shine box at the Southern Pacific depot, hoping to catch a few customers before they checked in to the Frederic Hotel.
“You going to take a swing at me?” I said as I got out of my truck.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, twisting the wrench on a three-inch nut. “I’m putting in a frost-free faucet this year, me. All these storms and droughts and hurricanes we been having? That means we gonna have some bad winters, yeah.”