Last Car to Elysian Fields

  She put one hand on the arm of her chair and pushed herself erect.

  “He’s gonna run from you. He’s gonna sass you. It’s ’cause he’s a scared li’l boy inside. Don’t hurt him just ’cause he’s scared, no,” she said.

  I started to speak, but Helen touched me on the arm. The plainclothes in back was waving at us, a dirty black watch cap on a stick in his right hand.

  CHAPTER 3

  One week later an assistant district attorney, Barbara Shanahan, sometimes known as Battering Ram Shanahan, came into my office without knocking. She was a statuesque, handsome woman, over six feet tall, with white skin and red hair and green eyes. She wore white hose and horn-rim glasses and a pale orange suit and a white blouse, and she seldom passed men anywhere that they did not turn and look at her. But her face always seemed enameled with anger, without cause, her manner as sharp as razor wire. Her dedication to destroying criminals and defense attorneys was legendary. However, the reason for that dedication was a matter of conjecture. I looked up from the newspaper that was spread on my desk.

  “Excuse me for not getting up. I didn’t hear you knock,” I said.

  “I need everything you have on the Amanda Boudreau investigation,” she said.

  “It’s not complete.”

  “Then give me what you have and update me on a daily basis.”

  “You caught the case?” I asked.

  She sat down across from me. She looked at the tiny gold watch on her wrist, then back at me. “Is it always necessary that I say everything twice to you?” she said.

  “The forensics just came in on the watch cap we dug up at Tee Bobby’s place. The rouge and skin oils came off Amanda Boudreau,” I said.

  “Good, let’s cut the warrant.” As she got up to go, her eyes paused on mine. “Something wrong?”

  “This one doesn’t hang together.”

  “The victim’s DNA is on the suspect’s clothes? His prints are on a beer can at the murder scene? But you have doubts about what occurred?”

  “The semen on the girl wasn’t Tee Bobby’s. The man who called in the ‘shots fired’ said there were three people in the car. But Amanda’s boyfriend said only two men accosted him. Where was the other one? The boyfriend said he was tied up with a T-shirt. Why didn’t he try to get away?”

  “I have no idea. Why don’t you find out?” she said.

  I hesitated before I spoke again. “I have another problem. I can’t see Tee Bobby as a killer.”

  “Maybe it’s because you want it both ways,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Some people always need to feel good about themselves, usually at the expense of others. In this case at the expense of a dead girl who was raped while she had a sock stuffed down her throat.”

  I folded my newspaper and dropped it in the trash can.

  “Perry LaSalle is representing Tee Bobby,” I said.

  “So?”

  I got up from my chair and closed the Venetian blinds on the corridor windows.

  “You hate the LaSalles, Barbara. I think you asked for this case,” I said.

  “I don’t have any feeling about the LaSalle family one way or another.”

  “Your grandfather went to prison for old man Julian. That’s how he got his job as a security guard on LaSalle’s bridge.”

  “Have the paperwork in my office by close of business. In the meantime, if you ever impugn my motives as a prosecutor again, I’ll take you into civil court and fry your sorry ass for slander.”

  She threw the door open and marched down the corridor toward the sheriff’s office. A uniformed cop watched her sideways while he drank from the water fountain, his eyes glued on her posterior. He grinned sheepishly when he saw me looking at him.

  . . .

  It was Friday afternoon and I didn’t want to think anymore about Barbara Shanahan or a young girl who had probably been forced to stare into the barrel of a shotgun and wait helplessly while her executioner decided whether or not to pull the trigger. I drove south of town, down a dusty road, along a tree-lined waterway, to the house built by my father during the Depression. The sunlight looked like yellow smoke in the canopy of the live oaks, and up ahead I saw the dock and bait shop that I operated as a part-time business and a lavender Cadillac convertible parked by the boat ramp, which meant that my old Homicide partner, the bane of NOPD, the good-natured, totally irresponsible, fiercely loyal Clete Purcel, was back in New Iberia.

  He had dumped his cooler on a bait table at the end of the dock and was gutting a stringer of ice-flecked sac-a-lait and bream and bigmouth bass with a long, razor-edged knife that had no guard on the handle. He wore only a pair of baggy shorts and flip-flops and a Marine Corps utility cap. His whole body was oily with lotion and baked with sunburn, his body hair matted in gold curlicues on his massive arms and shoulders.

  I parked my pickup truck in the driveway to the house and walked across the road and down the dock, where Clete was now scaling his fish with a tablespoon and washing them under a faucet and placing them on a clean layer of ice in his cooler.

  “It looks like you had a pretty good day,” I said.

  “If I can use your shower, I’ll take you and Bootsie and Alafair to Bon Creole.” He picked up a salted can of beer off the dock rail and watched me over the bottom of it while he drank. His hair was bleached by the sun, his green eyes happy, one eyebrow cut by a scar that ran across the bridge of his nose.

  “You just here for a fishing trip?” I asked.

  “I got a shitload of bail skips to pick up for Nig and Willie. Plus Nig may have written a bond on a serial killer.”

  I was tired and didn’t want to hear about Clete’s ongoing grief as a bounty hunter for Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine. I tried to look attentive, but my gaze started to wander toward the house, the baskets of impatiens swaying under the eaves of the gallery, my wife, Bootsie, weeding the hydrangea bed in the shade.

  “You listening?” Clete said.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “So this is how we heard about the serial sex predator or killer or whatever the hell he is. No Duh Dolowitz got nailed trying to creep Fat Sammy Figorelli’s skin parlor, but this time Nig says he’s had it with No Duh and his half-baked capers, like putting dog shit in the sandwiches at a Teamsters convention or impersonating a chauffeur and driving away with the Calucci family’s limo.

  “So No Duh calls up from central lockup and says Nig and Wee Willie are hypocrites because they wrote the bond on some dude who killed a couple of hookers in Seattle and Portland.

  “Nig asks No Duh how he knows this and No Duh goes, ‘ ’Cause one year ago I was sitting in a cell next to this perverted fuck while he was pissing and moaning about how he dumped these broads along riverbanks on the West Coast. This same pervert was also talking about two dumb New Orleans Jews who bought his alias and were writing his bond without running his sheet.’

  “But Nig’s got scruples and doesn’t like the idea he might have put a predator back on the street. So he has me start going over every dirtbag he’s written paper on for the last two years. So far I’ve checked out one hundred twenty or one hundred thirty names and I can’t come up with anyone who fits the profile.”

  “Why believe anything Dolowitz says? One of the Giacanos put dents in his head with a ball peen hammer years ago,” I said.

  “That’s the point. He’s got something wrong with his brain. No Duh is a thief who never lies. That’s why he’s always doing time.”

  “You’re going to take us to Bon Creole?” I asked.

  “I said I was, didn’t I?”

  “I’d really enjoy that,” I said.

  But I would not be able to free myself that evening from the murder of Amanda Boudreau. I had just showered and changed clothes and was waiting on the gallery for Clete and Bootsie and Alafair to join me when Perry LaSalle’s cream-yellow Gazelle, a replica of a 1929 Mercedes, turned off the road into our driveway. Before he could get out of his
automobile, I walked down through the trees to meet him. The top was down on his automobile, and his sun-browned skin looked dark in the shade, his brownish-black hair tousled by the wind, his eyes bright blue, his cheeks pooled with color.

  He had given up his studies at a Jesuit seminary when he was twenty-one, for no reason he was ever willing to provide. He had lived among street people in the Bowery and wandered the West, working lettuce and beet fields, riding on freight cars with derelicts and fruit tramps, then had returned like the prodigal son to his family and studied law at Tulane.

  I liked Perry and the dignified manner and generosity of spirit with which he always conducted himself. He was a big man, at least six feet two, but he was never grandiose or assuming and was always kind to those less fortunate than he. But like many of us I felt Perry’s story was infinitely more complex than his benign demeanor would indicate.

  “Out for a drive?” I said, knowing better.

  “I hear Battering Ram Shanahan thinks you’re soft on the Amanda Boudreau investigation. I hear she wants to use a nail gun on your co-jones,” he said.

  “News to me,” I replied.

  “Her case sucks and she knows it.”

  “Seen any good movies lately?” I asked.

  “Tee Bobby’s innocent. He wasn’t even at the murder scene.”

  “His beer can was.”

  “Littering isn’t a capital crime.”

  “It was good seeing you, Perry.”

  “Come out to the island and try my bass pond. Bring Bootsie and Alafair. We’ll have dinner.”

  “I will. After the trial,” I said.

  He winked at me, then drove down the road, the sunlight through the trees flicking like gold coins across the waxed surfaces of his automobile.

  I heard Clete walking through the leaves behind me. His hair was wet and freshly combed, the top buttons of his tropical shirt open on his chest.

  “Isn’t that the guy who wrote the book about the Death House in Louisiana? The one the movie was based on?” he said.

  “That’s the guy,” I replied.

  Clete looked at my expression. “You didn’t like the book?” he asked.

  “Two kids were murdered in a neckers’ area up the Loreauville Road. Perry made the prosecutor’s office look bad.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess some people need to feel good about themselves,” I answered.

  The next morning there was fog in the trees when Alafair and I walked down the slope and opened up the bait shop and hosed down the dock and fired up the barbecue pit on which we prepared links and chicken and sometimes pork chops for our midday customers. I went into the storage room and began slicing open cartons of canned beer and soda to stock the coolers while Alafair made coffee and wiped down the counter. I heard the tiny bell on the screen door ring and someone come into the shop. He was a young man and wore a white straw hat coned up on the sides, a pale blue sports coat, a wide, plum-colored tie, gray pants, and shined cordovan cowboy boots. His hair was ash-blond, cut short, shaved on the neck, his skin a deep olive. He carried a suitcase whose weight made his face sweat and his wrist cord with veins.

  “Howdy do,” he said, and sat down on a counter stool, his back to me. “Could I have a glass of water, please?”

  Alafair was a senior in high school now, although she looked older than her years. She stood up on her tiptoes and took down a glass from a shelf, her thighs and rump flexing against her shorts. But the young man turned his head and gazed out the screen at the trees on the far side of the bayou.

  “You want ice in it?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am, I dint want to cause no trouble. Out of the tap is fine,” the young man replied.

  She filled the glass and put it before him. Her eyes glanced at the suitcase on the floor and the leather belt that was cinched around the weight that bulged against its sides.

  “Can I help you with something?” she asked.

  He removed a paper napkin from the dispenser and folded it and blotted the perspiration on his brow. He grinned at her.

  “There’s days I don’t think the likes of me is meant to sell sno’balls in Hades. Is there people up at that house?” he said.

  “What are you selling?” she asked.

  “Encyclopedias, Bibles, family-type magazines. But Bibles is what I like to sell most of. I aim to go into the ministry or law enforcement. I been taking criminal justice courses over at the university. Could I have one of them fried pies?”

  She reached up on the shelf again, and this time his gaze wandered over her body, lingering on the backs of her thighs. When I stepped out of the storage room, his head jerked toward me, the skin tightening around his eyes.

  “You want to rent a boat?” I asked.

  “No, sir. I was just taking a little rest break on my route. My name’s Marvin Oates. Actually I’m from herebouts,” he said.

  “I know who are you. I’m a detective with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Well, I reckon that cuts through it,” he said.

  My memory of him was hazy, an arrest four or five years back on a bad check charge, a P.O.’s recommendation for leniency, Barbara Shanahan acting with the charity that she was occasionally capable of, allowing him to plead out on time served.

  “We’ll be seeing you,” I said.

  “Yes, sir, you got it,” he replied, cutting his head.

  He tipped his hat to Alafair and hefted up his suitcase and labored out the door as though he were carrying a load of bricks.

  “Why do you have to be so hard, Dave?” Alafair said.

  I started to reply, then thought better of it and went outside and began laying out split chickens on the grill.

  Marvin Oates paused at the end of the dock, set his suitcase down, and walked back toward me. He gazed reflectively at an outboard plowing a foamy yellow trough down the bayou.

  “Is that your daughter, sir?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  He nodded. “You saw me looking at her figure when her back was turned. But she’s good-looking and the way of the flesh is weak, at least it is with me. You’re her father and I offended you. I apologize for that.”

  He waited for me to speak. When I continued to stare into his face, he cut his head again and walked back to his suitcase and hefted it up and crossed the dirt road and started up my driveway.

  “Wrong house, partner,” I called.

  He lifted his hat in salute and changed direction and headed toward my neighbor’s.

  Monday morning I called before I drove out to the LaSalles’ island to see Tee Bobby’s grandmother. When she let me in, she was wearing a beige dress and white shoes that had been recently polished and her hair was brushed and fastened in back with a comb. Her living room had throw rugs on the floor and a wood-bladed fan that turned overhead, and the slipcovers on the upholstery were printed with flowery designs. The wind was blowing off the bay, and the red bloom of mimosa and poinciana trees flattened softly against the screens. From the couch Ladice looked at me and waited, her face cautionary, her chest rising and falling. “Tee Bobby doesn’t have an alibi. Or at least not one he’ll give me,” I said.

  “What if I say he was here when that girl died?” she said.

  “Your neighbors say he wasn’t.”

  “Then why you bother me, Mr. Dave?”

  “People around here are in a bad mood about that girl’s death. Tee Bobby is a perfect dartboard for their anger.”

  “This all started way befo’ he was born. Ain’t none of this that boy’s fault.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

  I heard the back screen door open and saw a young woman walk across the kitchen. She wore pink tennis shoes and an oversize blue dress that hung on her like a sack. She took a soda pop that was already opened from the icebox, a paper straw floating in the bottle’s neck. She stood in the doorway, sucking on the straw, her face the twin of Tee Bobby’s, her expression vacuous, her
eyes tangled with thoughts that probably no one could ever guess at.

  “We going to the doctor in a li’l bit, Rosebud. Wait on the back porch and don’t be coming back in till I tell you,” Ladice said.

  The young woman’s eyes held on mine a moment, then she pulled the drinking straw off her lips and turned and went out the back screen door and let it slam behind her.

  “You look like you got somet’ing to say,” Ladice said.

  “What happened to Tee Bobby and Rosebud’s mother?”

  “Run off wit’ a white man when she was sixteen. Left them two in a crib wit’out no food.”

  “That’s what you meant when you said none of this was Tee Bobby’s fault?”

  “No. That ain’t what I meant at all.”

  “I see.” I stood up to leave. “Some people say old man Julian was the father of your daughter.”

  “You come into the house of a white lady and ax a question like that? Like you was talking to livestock?” she said.

  “Your grandson may end up in the Death House, Ladice. The only friend he seems to have is Perry LaSalle. Maybe that’s good. Maybe it isn’t. Thanks for your time.”

  I walked outside, into the yard and the smell of flowers and the sun-heated salty hint of rain out on the Gulf. Across the road I could see peacocks on the lawn of the scorched three-story stucco ruins that had been Julian LaSalle’s home. I heard Ladice open the screen door behind me.

  “What you mean, it ain’t good Perry LaSalle’s the only friend Tee Bobby got?” she said.

  “A man who’s driven by guilt eventually turns on those who make him feel guilty. That’s just one guy’s observation,” I said.

  The breeze blew a strand of her hair down on her forehead. She brushed it back into place and stared at me for a long time, then went back into her house and latched the screen door behind her.

  At sunset an elderly black man named Batist helped me close up the bait shop and chain-lock our rental boats to the pilings under the dock. Heat lightning flickered over the Gulf and I could hear the distant rumble of thunder, but the air was dry, the trees along the road coated with dust, and a column of acrid smoke blew from a neighbor’s trash fire and flattened in a gray haze on the bayou. This was the third year of the worst drought in Louisiana’s history.