DR07 - Dixie City Jam

  Beyond the duck pond, right by the remnant of my collapsed barn, I saw two fresh sets of footprints glistening in the mud, leading through the barbed-wire fence into the field. I lifted up the top strand of barbed wire and stepped into the cane. It grew so thick that the earth was still dry inside the rows. The sound of the rain on the leaves was like marbles striking dry sheets of newspaper. I saw a bolt of lightning splinter the sky and pop in the woods, and when the thunder echoed off the trees, my neighbor's cattle began lowing in terror at the bottom of the coulee.

  There was no wind inside the cane, and the air was heated and alive with insects. Ahead, I could see a winding pattern, like a faint serpentine tunnel, through the rows where somebody had either wedged the stalks sideways or cracked them at the base with his shoe. I knelt in the row and listened. At first I heard only the sound of the rain clicking on the leaves overhead, then there was a voice, one man calling out to another, just as lightning burst in a white tree all over the southern horizon and thunder rumbled across the fields.

  They must have gotten all the way to the wooded knoll, almost to the pecan orchard and the four corners down the bayou road, I thought. I stepped back outside the sugarcane and began running toward the far side of the field, toward the elevated grove of oak trees whose leaves were flickering with a silver light in the wind off the marsh.

  Long ago Clete Purcel had made his separate peace with the system of rules that govern the justifiable taking of human life. I never questioned the validity of Clete's moral vision, no more than I would have questioned his loyalty and courage and his selfless devotion to me during the worst periods in my life. In truth, I often envied the clarity of line that he used to distinguish between right and wrong. I had also harbored fears since I first became a street patrolman in New Orleans that I would one day wrongly exercise the power of life and death over an individual, through accident or perhaps fearful impetuosity or maybe even by self-righteous design.

  But Buchalter was not an ordinary player. Most of the psychological mutants with whom a police officer comes in contact daily are bumbling, ineffectual losers who sneak through life on side streets and who often seek out authority and self-validation through their adversarial relationship with police and parole officers, since in normal society they possess about the same worth as discarded banana peels.

  Psychopaths like Ted Bundy and Gary Gilmore have a way of committing their crimes in states which practice capital punishment. Then they turn their trials and executions into televised theater of world-class proportions.

  The Will Buchalters have no such plan for themselves. They don't leave paperwork behind; they stay out of the computer. When they do get nailed, they make bond and terrify witnesses into perjuring themselves; they convince psychologists that they have multiple personalities that cannot be simultaneously put on trial; their fall partners either do their time or are murdered in custody. No one is ever sure of how many people they actually kill.

  Will Buchalter belonged to that special group of people who live in our nightmares.

  I could still smell his odor; it was like animal musk, like lotions that were at war with his glands, like someone who has just had sex. I could still feel the grain and oil of his skin on mine.

  I pressed my hand tighter around the butt of the .38. The hand-worn walnut grips felt smooth and hard against my palm.

  As I neared the end of the cane field I heard a strand of fence wire twang against a post, heard someone curse, as though he were in pain or had fallen to the ground. I swung wide of the field to broaden my angle of vision; then I saw two silhouettes against the veiled moon—one man on his buttocks, holding his ankle, the other man bent over him, trying to lift him up, and I remembered the old fence that my neighbor had crushed flat with his tractor so his livestock could drink at the coulee.

  They saw me, too. Before I could squat into a shooting position and yell at them to put their hands on their heads, a small-caliber pistol popped in the darkness, then popped again, just like a firecracker. I ran for the lee of the sugarcane, out of their line of vision, and squatted close into the stalks away from the moon's glow, which streaked the rain with a light like quicksilver.

  I heard someone burrow into the cane, thrash through several rows, then stop.

  Were there one or two men inside the field now? I couldn't tell. There was no sound except the rain hitting on the leaves over my head.

  I worked my way down a furrow, deeper into the cane. I could smell something dead in the trapped air, a coon or possum, an odor like that of a rat that has crawled inside a wall and died. My eyes stung with salt, and the dirt cut into my knuckles and knees like pieces of flint. I saw a wood rabbit bolt across the rows, stop and look at me, his ears flattened on his head, then begin running again in a zigzag pattern. He crashed loudly through the edge of the cane and was gone.

  Not twenty feet from me a man rose from his knees in the midst of the cane, his body almost totally obscured by the thickly spaced stalks and long festoons of leaves around him. He tried to ease quietly through the rows to the far side of the field, which opened onto a flat space and the wooded knoll and the pecan orchard.

  I pulled my shirt up and wiped my face on it, then aimed as best I could at the man's slowly moving silhouette. I cocked the hammer on the .38 and brought the sight just below an imaginary line that traversed his shoulder blades.

  Now! I thought.

  'Throw your weapon away! Down on your face with your hands out in front of you!' I yelled.

  But he wanted another season to run.

  He tore through the sugarcane, flailing his arms at the stalks, stumbling across the rows. I was crouched on one knee when I began shooting. I believe the first shot went high, because I heard a distant sound in a tree, like a rock skipping off of bark and falling through limbs. And he kept plowing forward through the cane, trying to hack an opening with his left hand, shielding a weapon with his right.

  But the second shot went home. I know it did; I heard the impact, like a cleated shoe connecting with a football, heard the wind go out of his lungs as he was driven forward through the cane.

  But he was still standing, with a metallic object in his right hand, its flat surfaces blue with moonlight, and he was turning on one foot toward me, just as a scarecrow might if it had been spun in a violent-wind.

  Clete had loaded only five rounds in the cylinder and had set the hammer on an empty chamber. I let off all three remaining rounds as fast as I could pull the trigger. Sparks and fine splinters of lead flew from the sides of the cylinder into the darkness.

  His left arm flipped sideways, as if jerked by a wire, his stomach buckled, then his chin snapped back on his shoulder as if he had been struck by an invisible club.

  The hammer snapped dryly on the empty sixth chamber. Then something happened that I didn't understand. As he crumpled sideways to the earth, breaking the stalks of cane down around him, he yelled out in pain for the first time.

  I walked across the rows to where he lay on his back, his crossed eyes opening and closing with shock. He kept trying to expel a bloody clot from his mouth with the tip of his tongue. My last round had hit him in the chin and exited just above the jawbone. His left arm was twisted in the sleeve like a piece of discarded rope. He had taken another round in the side, with no exit wound that I could see, and blood was leaking out of his shirt into the dirt. Then I saw his right hand quivering uncontrollably above the feathered shaft of the aluminum arrow that had discharged from his crossbow when he fell. The flanged point had sliced down into the thigh and emerged gleaming and red through the kneecap.

  I knelt beside him, loosened his belt, and brushed the dirt out of his eyes with my fingers.

  'Where's Buchalter?' I said.

  He swallowed with a clicking sound and tried to speak, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. I turned his head with my hands so his mouth could drain.

  'Where did Buchalter go, Chuck?' I said. 'Don't try to protect this guy. He
deserted you.'

  'I don't know,' he said. His voice was weak and devoid of all defense. 'Get the arrow out.'

  'I can't do it. You might hemorrhage. I'm going to call an ambulance.'

  His crossed eyes tried to focus on mine. They were luminous and black with pain and fear. His tongue came out of his mouth and went back in again.

  'What is it?' I said.

  'I need a priest. I ain't gonna make it.'

  'We'll get you one.'

  'You gotta listen, man…'

  'Say it.'

  'I didn't have nothing against y'all. I done it for the money.'

  'For the money?' I said as much to myself as to him.

  'Tell your old lady I'm sorry. It wasn't personal. Oh God, I ain't gonna make it.'

  'Give me Buchalter, Chuck.'

  But his eyes had already focused inward on a vision whose intensity and dimension probably only he could appreciate. In the distance I heard someone start a high-powered automobile engine and roar southward, away from the drawbridge, down the bayou road in the rain.

  * * *

  chapter twelve

  The next morning I went down to the sheriffs office and got my badge back.

  Chuck, whose full name was Charles Arthur Sitwell, made it through the night and was in the intensive care unit at Iberia General, his body wired to machines, an oxygen tube taped to his nose, an IV needle inserted in a swollen vein inside his right forearm. The lower half of his face was swathed in bandages and plaster, with only a small hole, the size of a quarter, for his mouth. I pulled a chair close to his bed while Clete stood behind me.

  'Did Father Melancon visit you, Chuck?' I said.

  He didn't answer. His eyelids were blue and had a metallic shine to them.

  'Didn't a priest come see you?' I asked.

  He blinked his eyes.

  'Look, partner, if you got on the square with the Man Upstairs, why not get on the square with us?' I said.

  Still, he didn't answer.

  'You've been down four times, Chuck,' I said. 'Your jacket shows you were always a solid con. But Buchalter's not stand-up, Chuck. He's letting you take his fall.'

  'You're standing on third base,' Clete said behind me.

  I turned in the chair and looked into Clete's face. But Clete only stepped closer to the bed.

  'Chuck was in max at Leavenworth, he was a big stripe at Angola. He wants it straight,' he said to me. 'Right, Chuck? Buchalter'll piss on your grave. Don't take the bounce for a guy like that.'

  Chuck's defective eyes looked as small as a bird's. They seemed to focus on Clete; then they looked past him at the swinging door to the intensive care unit, which had opened briefly and was now flapping back and forth.

  His mouth began moving inside the hole in the bandages. I leaned my ear close to his face. His breath was sour with bile.

  'I already told the priest everything. I ain't saying no more,' he whispered. 'Tell everybody that. I ain't saying no more.'

  'I don't want to be hard on you, partner, but why not do some good while you have the chance?' I said.

  He turned his face away from me on the pillow.

  'If that's the way you want it,' I said, and stood up to go. 'If you change your mind, ask for the cop at the door.'

  Out in the corridor, Clete put an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  'I never get used to the way these fuckers think. The sonofabitch is on the edge of eternity and he's scared he'll be made for a snitch,' he said, then noticed a Catholic nun with a basket of fruit two feet from him. 'Excuse me, Sister,' he said.

  She was dressed in a white skirt and lavender blouse, but she wore a black veil with white edging on her head. Her hair was a reddish gold and was tapered on her neck.

  'How is he doing?' she said.

  'Who?' I said.

  'That poor man who was shot last night,' she said.

  'Not very well,' I said.

  'Will he live?' she said.

  'You never know, I guess,' I said.

  'Were you one of the officers who—'

  'Yes?'

  'I was going to ask if you were one of the officers who arrested him.'

  'I'm the officer who shot him, Sister,' I said. But my attempt at directness was short-lived, and involuntarily my eyes broke contact with hers.

  'Is he going to die?' she said. Her eyes became clouded in a peculiar way, like dark smoke infused in green glass.

  'You should probably ask the doctor that,' I said.

  'I see,' she said. Then she smiled politely. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound rude. I'm Marie Guilbeaux. It's nice meeting you.'

  'I'm Dave Robicheaux. This is Clete Purcel. It's nice meeting you, too, Sister,' I said. 'You're not from New Iberia, are you?'

  'No, I live in Lafayette.'

  'Well, see you around,' I said.

  'Yes, good-bye,' she said, and smiled again.

  Clete and I walked out into the sunlight and drove back toward my house. It was the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, and the convenience stores were filled with people buying beer and ice and charcoal for barbecues.

  'Why didn't the nuns look like that when I was in grade school?' Clete said. 'The ones I remember had faces like boiled hams… What are you brooding about?'

  'Something you said. Why's Chuck Sitwell stonewalling us?'

  'He wants to go out a mainline, stand-up con.'

  'No, you said it earlier. He's scared. But if he's scared Buchalter will be back to pull his plug, why doesn't he just give him up?'

  Clete looked out into the hot glare of the day from under the brim of his porkpie hat and puffed on his cigarette. His face was pink in the heat.

  'You're a good guy, Streak, but you don't always think straight about yourself,' he said.

  'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'You parked four-rounds in the guy.'

  I looked at him.

  'Come on, Dave, be honest,' he said. 'You only stopped popping caps when you ran out of bullets. You were trying to blow him all over that cane field. You don't think the guy knows that? What if he or Buchalter tell you what they had planned for you and Bootsie, Bootsie in particular, maybe even Alafair if she walked in on it? I'd be scared of you, too, mon.'

  He glanced sideways at me, then sucked once on his cigarette and flipped it in a spray of sparks against the side of a red stop sign.

  The weekend was hot and dry and uneventful. A guard remained on duty twenty-four hours at the door of Charles Arthur Sitwell's hospital room. Sitwell kept his promise; he refused to answer questions about anything.

  I got up Tuesday morning at dawn, helped Batist open the bait shop, then walked up the slope through the trees to have breakfast with Bootsie before going to the office. The house was still cool from the attic and window fans that had run all night, and the grass in the backyard was thick with mockingbirds who were feeding on bread crumbs that Bootsie had thrown out the screen door.

  'A deputy will be parked out front again today,' I said.

  'How long do you plan to keep one here, Dave?' Bootsie said. She sat across from me, her shoulders straight, her fingers resting on the sides of her coffee cup. She had put aside her piece of toast after having eaten only half of it.

  'It gives the guy something to do,' I said.

  'We can't live the rest of our lives with a deputy parked out front.'

  'We won't have to.'

  She had just washed her face, but her eyes looked tired, still not quite separated from the sleep that came to her with certainty only at first light.

  'I want to buy a gun,' she said.

  'That's never been your way.'

  'What kind of pistol is best for a woman? I mean size or whatever you call it.'

  'A thirty-two, or maybe a thirty-eight or nine millimeter. It depends on what a person wants it for.'

  'I want to do that this evening, Dave.'

  'All right.'

  'Will you show me how to use it?'

  'Sure.' I watched her f
ace. Her eyes were flat with unspoken thoughts. 'We'll take the boat down the bayou and pop some tin cans.'

  'I think we ought to teach Alafair how to shoot, too,' she said.

  I waited a moment before I spoke. 'You can teach kids how to shoot a pistol, Boots, but you can't teach them when to leave it in a drawer and when to take it out. I vote no on this one.'

  She gazed out the back screen at the birds feeding in the grass under the mimosa tree.

  Then she said, 'Do you think he's coming back?'

  'I don't know.'

  Her eyes went deep into mine.

  'If I get to him first, he'll never have the chance,' I said.

  'I didn't mean that,' she said.

  'I did.'

  I felt her eyes follow me into the hallway. I changed into a pair of seersucker slacks, loafers, a brown sports shirt, and a white knit tie, then went back into the kitchen, leaned over Bootsie's chair, hugged her across the chest, and kissed her hair.

  'Boots, real courage is when you put away all thought about your own welfare and worry about the fate of another,' I said. 'That was my wife the other night. A fuckhead like Buchalter can't touch that kind of courage.'

  She stroked the side of my face with her fingers without looking up.

  The phone rang on the wall above the drain board.

  'I hear you're back on the clock,' a voice with a black New Orleans accent said.

  'Motley?'

  'Do you mind me calling you at your house?'

  'No, not at all. How'd you know I was back on duty?'

  'We're coordinating with your department on this guy Sitwell. Did you know he and the space-o speed freak who electrocuted himself were cell mates at Angola?'

  'No.'

  'They were both in a rock 'n' roll band in the Block. So if they did everything else together, maybe they both muled dope for the AB.'

  'I already talked to the warden. Sitwell didn't have any politics; there're no racial beefs in his jacket. He was always a loner, a walk-in bank robber and a smash-and-grab jewel thief.'

  'I think you should come to New Orleans this morning.'