Lucinda Bergeron was sanding the wood steps on the back of her house. The air was sunny and warm, and her hair looked damp and full with the heat from her body and her work. She wore flip-flops and a denim shirt that hung over her pink shorts, and blades of grass stuck to the tops of her feet. She kept glancing up at me while she sanded. The tiny gold chain and cross around her neck were haloed with perspiration against her black skin.
'You go back on duty tomorrow?' I said.
'That's right. All sins forgiven.'
'How do you feel?'
'You know, one foot in front of the other, a day at a time, all that jazz.'
I brushed off a step where she had already sanded and sat down. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and wrapped a fresh piece of sandpaper around a block of wood. She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and smoothed the paper against the grain.
'I want you to be careful, Lucinda.'
'Worry about yourself, hotshot.'
'It's a mistake to be cavalier about Buchalter, or Schwert, or whatever his name is. There's nothing predictable about this guy or the woman working with him.'
She raised her eyes to mine while her arm and hand kept a steady motion against the step, 'I can't tell you how much I'd love the opportunity,' she said.
'When you're forced to… to pop a cap in the line of duty, something happens to you, at least if you're not a sociopath yourself. The next time it goes down, you get sweaty, you hesitate, you doubt your motivations. It's a dangerous moment.'
'You think I'll freeze up?'
'You tell me.'
'I don't have doubts about the man who hurt my child, believe me.'
'When are you going to quit calling Zoot a child?'
'When I feel like it, Mr. Smart-ass.' She smiled, then worked the nozzle loose from the hose, turned on the faucet, and drank, with her body bent over, the backs of her thighs tight against her shorts, the water arching bright across her mouth. She wet a paper towel and wiped her face and neck and dropped it into a paper sack filled with garden cuttings.
'I have some tea made. Come inside,' she said.
The porcelain and yellow plastic surfaces of her kitchen gleamed in the sunlight through the windows, and the sills rang with red and blue dime-store vases. I sat at the breakfast table and watched her twist a handful of ice cubes in a towel and batter them on a chopping board with a rolling pin, then fill two tall glasses with the crushed ice and mint leaves and tea. The straps of her bra made a hard line across the wash-faded thinness of her denim shirt.
She turned toward me with the drink glasses in each hand. Her eyes looked at mine, and her expression sombered. She sat down across from me and folded her hands.
'I think you're a good person, Dave. That means some things aren't your style,' she said.
'I look like I have a clandestine agenda?'
'I've lived single for a long time. You recognize certain things in people. Even without being told.'
'I don't know if that's too complimentary.'
'Purcel was here yesterday.'
'There's a warrant on him.'
'I'm still suspended. I should worry about a warrant on Clete Purcel?'
'Why was he here?'
'He says one of the Caluccis' greasers will testify Nate Baxter's on a pad. He told me about your trouble at home.'
'Maybe some people should stay out of my private life.'
'Oh, that's perfect. Your closest friends shouldn't worry about you or try to help you?'
I felt my lips crimp together. I looked away from her unrelenting stare.
I stood up and took my seersucker coat off the back of the chair.
'Give me a call if Buchalter shows up,' I said, and walked toward the front door.
She followed me. The sun made slats of light on her face, causing her to squint as she looked up at me.
'Don't leave like this,' she said.
I took a breath. Her hair was scintillated with silver threads and curved thickly on her cheeks.
'What am I supposed to say, Lucinda?'
'Nothing. You're a good man. Good men don't need to say anything.'
The door was wide open so that nothing she did was hidden from view. She put her arms around my neck and bent my face to hers, raising herself on the balls of her feet, her knees pinching together, her thighs flexing and pressing against me unavoidably; then she kissed me on the cheeks, the bridge of the nose, the eyes, and finally once, a light adieu, on the mouth, as her hands came loose from my neck and my face felt as though it were covered with hot red dimes.
* * *
chapter twenty-seven
The chorus that condemns violence is multitudinous and unrelenting. Who can disagree with the sentiment? I think we're after the wrong enemy, though. It's cruelty, particularly when it's mindless and visited upon the defenseless, that has always bothered me most about human failure. But my viewpoint isn't exceptional. Anyone in law enforcement, social work, or psychiatric rehab of any kind carries with him or her a mental notebook whose pages never dim with the years.
Sometimes in the middle of the night I remember cases, or simply incidents, of twenty years ago that come aborning again like sins which elude remission, except either the guilt is collective in nature or the deed such a pitiful and naked admission of our tribal ignorance and inhumanity that the mere recognition of it leads to self-loathing.
Stephen Crane once suggested that few people are nouns; instead, most of us are adverbs, modifying a long and weary sequence of events in which the clearly defined culprit, with black heart and demonic intent, seldom makes himself available for the headsman.
I remember: a cop in the Lafayette police station laughing about how a friend rubbed his penis all over a black woman's body; a black street gang who videotaped their beating of a retarded Pakistani so they could show their friends their handiwork; an infant burned all over his body, even between his toes, with lighted cigarettes; a prosperous middle-class couple who forced the husband's parents to eat dog food; high school kids who held a drunk against a barroom picture window, then punched him through the glass; women and children sodomized, a coed shot through the face in Audubon Park (after she had surrendered her money), animals set on fire, a wounded cop flipped over on his back by his assailant, who then put a pillow under his head and slit his throat with a string knife.
I sincerely believe that we're attracted to films about the Mafia because the violence and evil portrayed in them seems to have an explanation and a beginning and an end. It's confined to one group of people, who in their fictional portrayal even have tragic proportions, and we're made to believe the problem is not endemic to the species.
But I think the reality is otherwise.
A random act of cruelty opened a door in the case I probably would not have gone through by myself.
It had started to sprinkle when I stopped at Igor's on St. Charles for a po'-boy sandwich and to call Bootsie and tell her I was headed home.
'Call Ben Motley, Dave. He's left two messages,' she said.
'What's he want?'
'Something about Tommy Lonighan.'
'How you doing?'
'Fine.'
'You want to go out to eat tonight?'
'Sure. What's the occasion?' she said.
'Nothing special.'
'Is anything wrong?'
'No, why do you think that?'
'Because you always suggest going out to dinner when you feel guilty about something.'
'Not me.' I looked out at the rain striking against the half-opened windows of the streetcar.
'I'm sorry about last night,' she said.
'See you later, kiddo.'
'Hang on to your butt in the Big Sleazy.'
That's more like it, Boots, I thought.
I called Motley at headquarters in the Garden District.
'I got a strange story for you, Robicheaux,' he said. 'We've had some fag bashers running around the city. A couple of them are UNO pukes; the others are ju
st ugly and stupid or probably latent queerbait themselves. Anyway, they're always on the prowl for fresh meat down in the Quarter. This time they picked up a transvestite on Dauphine and took him to a camp out in St. Charles Parish. I think he blew a couple of them, then they got him stinking drunk, pulled his clothes off, and poured pig shit and chicken feathers all over him. Nice boys, huh?
'Anyway, the transvestite is no ordinary fruit. He looks like Frankenstein in a dress and panty hose. He starts sobering up and realizes this isn't a Crisco party. That's when he starts ripping puke ass, I mean busting slats out of the walls with these guys. The pukes made an instant conversion to law and order and called the sheriffs office.
'Right now Frankenstein's in a holding cell, scared shitless. Guess who he called to bail him out?'
'Lonighan?'
'Right. Then twenty minutes go by, and guess who calls back on the fruit's behalf?'
'I don't know, Ben.'
'A lawyer who works for the Calucci brothers. That's when the St. Charles sheriff called us. Why do the Caluccis want to help a cross-dresser with feathers and pig flop in his hair?'
'Is the guy's name Manuel?'
'Yeah, Manuel Ruiz. The sheriff thinks he's a lobotomy case. He's probably illegal, too.'
'How long has he been in custody?'
'Two hours.'
'I'll get back to you. Thanks, Ben.'
An hour later Manuel Ruiz was still in the holding cell, a narrow, concrete, barred room with a wood bench against one wall and a drain hole and grate in the floor. There were dried yellow stains on the grate and on the cement around the hole. He was barefoot and wore a black skirt with orange flowers on it and a torn peasant blouse with lace around the neck; his hair was matted and stuck together in spikes. His exposed chest looked as hard and flawless in complexion as sanded oak.
'You remember me, Manuel?' I asked.
The eyes were obsidian, elongated, unblinking, lidless, his wide, expressionless mouth lipsticked like a fresh surgical incision.
'I just talked with the prosecutor's office,' I said. 'The boys aren't pressing charges. You can go home with me if you want.'
The skin at the corner of one eye puckered, like tan putty wrinkling.
'Or you can wait for the Caluccis' lawyer to get here. But he left word he's running late.'
'Caluccis no good. No want.' His voice sounded as though it came out of a cave.
'Not a bad idea. The other problem we might have is the INS, Manuel.'
He continued to stare at me, as though I were an anomaly caged by bars and not he, floating just on the edge of memory and recognition.
'Immigration and Naturalization,' I said, and saw the words tick in his eyes. 'Time to get out of town. Hump it on down the road. ¿Vamos a casa? Tommy's house?'
He hit at a fly with his hand, then looked at me again and nodded.
'I'll be back in a minute,' I said.
I walked back to the jailer's office. The jailer, a crew-cut man with scrolled green tattoos and black hair on his arms, sat behind his desk, reading a hunting magazine.
By his elbow, a cigar burned in an ashtray inset in a lacquered armadillo shell.
'He's agreed to leave with me,' I said. 'How about a towel and a bar of soap and some other clothes?'
'He hosed down when he come in.' He looked back at his magazine, then rattled the pages. 'All right. We want everybody tidy when they leave. Hey, Clois! The Mexican's going out! Walk him down to the shower!' He looked back down at his magazine.
'What about the clothes?'
'Will you mail them back?'
'You got it.'
'Clois! Find something for him to wear that don't go with tampons!' He smiled at me.
It was cool and raining harder now as we drove toward New Orleans on old Highway 90. Manuel sat hunched forward, his arm hooked outside the passenger's door, his jailhouse denim shirt wet all the way to the shoulder. We crossed a bridge over a bayou, and the wind swirled the rain inside the cab.
'How about rolling up the window?' I said.
'Don't want smell bad in truck,' he said.
'You're fine. There's no problem there. Roll up the window please.'
He cranked the glass shut and stared through the front window at the trees that sped by us on the road's edge and the approaching gray silhouette of the Huey Long Bridge.
'Do you do some work for the Calucci brothers, Manuel?' I said.
'Trabajo por Tommy.'
'Yeah, I know you work for Tommy. But why do Max and Bobo want to get you out of jail, partner?'
His jug head remained motionless, but I saw his eyes flick sideways at me.
'Max and Bobo don't help people unless they get something out of it,' I said.
He picked up the paper sack that held his soiled clothes and clutched it in his lap.
'Where you from, Manuel?'
His face was dour with fatigue and caution.
'I'm not trying to trap you,' I said. 'But you're living with bad people. I think you need help with some other problems, too. Those boys who took you out in the marsh are sadists. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?'
But if he did, he gave no indication.
I shifted the truck into second and began the ascent onto the massive steel bridge that spanned the Mississippi. Down below, the water's surface was dimpled with thousands of rain rings, and the willow and gum trees on the bank were deep green and flattening in the wind off the gulf.
'Look, Manuel, Tommy Lonighan's got some serious stuff on his conscience. I think it's got to do with dope dealers and the vigilante killings in the projects. Am I wrong?'
Manuel's hands closed on the sack in his lap as though he were squeezing the breath out of a live animal.
'You want to tell me about it?' I said.
'¿Quién es usted?'
'My name's Dave Robicheaux. The man you saw at Tommy's house.'
'No. Where work? Who are?'
'I live in New Iberia. I'd like to help you. That's on the square. Do you understand me?'
'I go to jail because of boys?'
'Forget those guys. They're pukes. Nobody cares about them.'
'No jail?'
'That's right. What do you know about the vigilante, Manuel?'
He twisted his face away from me and stared out the passenger window, his lips as tight as the stitched mouth on a shrunken head. His leathery, work-worn hands looked like starfish clutched around the sack in his lap.
It was still raining a half hour later when I drove down Tommy Lonighan's drive, past the main house to the cottage where Manuel lived. Steam drifted off the coral-lined goldfish ponds; the door to the greenhouse banged like rifle shots in the wind. I cut the engine. Manuel sat motionless, with his hand resting on the door handle.
'Good luck to you,' I said.
'Why do?'
'Why do what?'
'Why help?'
'I think you're being used.' I took my business card out of my wallet and handed it to him. 'Call that telephone number if you want to talk.'
But it was obvious that he had little comprehension of what the words on the card meant. I slipped my badge holder out of my back pocket and opened it in front of him.
'I'm a police officer,' I said.
His hairline actually receded on his skull, like a rubber mask being stretched against bone; his nostrils whitened and constricted, as though he were inhaling air off a block of ice.
'All cops aren't bad, Manuel. Even those guys at the jail wanted to help you. They could have called Immigration if they had wanted.'
Bad word to use. The top of his left thigh was flexed like iron and trembling against his pants leg. I reached across him and popped the door open.
'Adios,' I said. 'Stay away from the pukes. Stay off Dauphine Street. Okay? Good-bye. Hasta whatever.'
I left him standing in the rain, his black hair splayed on his head like running paint, and drove back down the driveway. The gateman, a rain hat pulled down on his eyes, open
ed up for me. I rolled my window down as I drew abreast of him.
'Where's Tommy?' I said.
'He went out to the St. Charles Parish jail to pick up the Indian. He's gonna be a little pissed when he gets back.'
'It's not Manuel's fault.'
'Tell me about it. I'm working his shift. The guy's a fucking savage, Robicheaux. He eats mushrooms off the lawn, he's got a fucking blowgun in his room.'
Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought. You frighten and confuse a retarded man, then leave him to the care of a headcase like Tommy Lonighan.
'Leave the gate open,' I said.
I made a U-turn in the street and headed back up the drive. I got out of the truck, a newspaper over my head, and walked toward Manuel's cottage. Then I stopped. At the rear of the greenhouse, kneeling in the rain, Manuel was chopping a hole through the roots of a hibiscus bush with a gardener's trowel. When the hole was as deep as his elbow, he dropped the trowel inside and began shoving the mound of wet dirt and torn roots in on top of it. The, hibiscus flowers were red and stippled with raindrops, puffing and swelling in the wind like hearts on a green vine.
Ten minutes later I called Ben Motley from a pay phone outside a drugstore. A block away I could see the water whitecapping out on Lake Pontchartrain and, in the distance, the lights glowing like tiny diamonds on the causeway.
'Get a warrant on Tommy Lonighan's place,' I said.
'What for?'
I told him what I had seen and where they should dig.
'The vigilante is some kind of headhunter or cannibal?' he said.
'I don't know, Ben. But if you bust him, don't let the Caluccis or their lawyer bond him out.'
'The poor ignorant fuck.'
Welcome to Shit's Creek, Manuel.
* * *
chapter twenty-eight
The word death is never abstract. I think of my father high up on the night tower, out on the salt, when the wellhead blew and all the casing came out of the hole, the water and oil and sand geysering upward through the lights just before a spark flew from metal surface and ignited a flame that melted the steel spars into licorice; I think of his silent form, still in hobnailed boots and hard hat, undulating in the groundswell deep under the gulf, his hand and sightless face beckoning.