DR08 - Burning Angel by James Lee Burke
”You look sharp, big mon. How about I take y'all to Possum's for lunch?“ he said.
”Not today .. . I'm going to New Orleans in a few minutes. I told Bootsie you might hang around a little bit.“
He got to his feet and washed his hands under a faucet by the rail.
”What are you up to, Streak?“
”I'm tired of living in a bull's-eye.“
”Who's going to cover your back, mon?“ he said, drying his hands on a rag.
”Thanks for watching the house,“ I said, and walked back up the dock to my truck. When I looked in the rearview mirror, he was leaning against the dock rail, his face shadowed by his hat, one hand propped on his hip. The wind was hot blowing across the swamp
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and smelled of beached gars and humus drying in the sunlight. Just as I started my truck, the shadows of large birds streaked across the surface of the bayou. I looked into the sky and saw a circle of buzzards descending out of their pattern into the cypress, their wings clattering for balance just before they lighted on their prey. There are a lot of ways to see New Orleans. At the right time of day the Quarter is wonderful. A streetcar ride up St. Charles Avenue through the Garden District, past Audubon Park and Tulane, is wonderful anytime. Or you can try it another way, which I don't recommend. Those who feed at the bottom of the food chain-the hookers, pimps, credit card double-billers, Murphy artists, stalls and street dips-usually work out of bars and strip joints and do a relatively minor amount of damage. They're given to the classical hustle and con and purloined purse rather than to physical injury. One rung up are the street dealers. Not all of them, but most, are black, young, dumb, and carry a Jones themselves. The rock they deal in the projects almost guarantees drug-induced psychosis; anything else they sell has been stepped on so many times you might as well try to get high huffing baby laxative or fixing with powdered milk. In another category are people who simply deal in criminal finance. They're usually white, older, have few arrests and own legitimate businesses of some kind. They fence stolen property, operate chop shops, and wash stolen and counterfeit money, which sells for ten to twenty cents on the dollar, depending on its origins or quality. Then there is the edge of the Quarter, where, if you're drunk or truly unlucky, you can wander out of a controlled and cosmetic libertine environment into a piece of moral moonscape-Louis Armstrong Park or the St. Louis cemeteries will do just fine-where kids will shoot a woman through the face at point-blank range for amounts of money you could pry out of a parking meter with a screwdriver. The murders receive national attention when the victim is a foreign tourist. Otherwise, they go on with unremarkable regularity, to the point that Louisiana now has the highest murder rate per capita in the United States.
Those at the top of the chain-dealers who form the liaison between Colombia and the wetlands, casino operators who front points for a Mafia-owned amusement company in Chicago-seldom do time or even have their names publicly connected with the forces they serve. They own newspaper people and literally employ the governor's children. Floating casino owners with state legislators on a pad work their shuck on morning television shows like good-natured Rotarians; Mafiosi who some think conspired to kill John Kennedy tend their roses and dine unnoticed in downtown restaurants.
It's not exaggeration.
I took the tour, thinking I could find information in the streets of New Orleans that had eluded me at home, and came up empty. But what should I have expected? Back alley hypes, graduates of City Prison, and prostitutes with AIDS (one of whom, with a haunted look in her eyes, asked me if the stories were true about this place called Lourdes) were people whose idea of a successful scam was to drill holes in their electric meters and pour honey inside so ants would foul and retard the mechanism or, more indicatively of the fear that defined their lives, wondered daily if the Mexican tar and water they watched bubbling in a heated spoon was not indeed the keyhole to the abyss where all the hungry gargoyles and grinding sounds of their childhoods awaited them.
It rained at dusk and I sat under the pavilion at the Cafe du Monde and ate a plate of beignets with powdered sugar and drank coffee au lait. I was tired and wet and there was a hum, a pinging sound in my head, the way your eardrums feel when you've stayed under water too long at a depth beyond your tolerance. St. Louis Cathedral and the park in Jackson Square were gray in the rain, and a cold mist was blowing under the eaves of the pavilion. A young college couple with a portable stereo crossed against the light and ran breathlessly out of the rain into the cafe and sat at a table next
to me. They ordered, and the boy peeled the cellophane off a musical tape and stuck it in his machine. Anybody who grew up in south Louisiana during the fifties would remember those songs: ”Big Blue Diamond,“
”Shirley Jean,“
”Lawdy Miss Clawdy,“
”I Need Somebody Bad Tonight,“
”Mathilda,“
”Betty and Dupree,“ and ”I Got the Rockin'
Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie, Too.“ I hadn't realized I was staring. ”You like those songs?“ the boy said. ”Sure, you bet,“ I said. ”They're hard to beat.“
”We bought them over on the corner. It's great stuff,“ he said. ”I saw those guys. Cookie and the Cupcakes, Lloyd Price, Warren Storm. They used to play around here.“
They smiled and nodded, as though they were familiar with all those names, too, then tried to return to their own conversation without seeming impolite. I felt suddenly old and foolish. I wanted to drive back home, mark off the day, forget all the faces I had looked into, erase the seared voices that could have been those of William Blake's lost souls on Lower Thames Street. But I knew what I had to do. I was no longer a cop. My family was at risk as long as Johnny Carp thought I was a threat to one of his enterprises. I had told Moleen pride was a pile of shit. I wondered how good I would be at accepting my own admonition. I walked back toward Esplanade, got in my truck, and headed up the entrance ramp to I-io and Jefferson Parish. I thought I saw a chartreuse Cadillac convertible in my rearview mirror; then it disappeared in a swirl of rain. The Giacano family had successfully controlled New Orleans for many reasons, one of which was the fact that they loved the appearance of normalcy and lived in upper-middle-class homes that didn't draw attention to their wealth. Johnny's limo stayed in a garage downtown; when he drove home from work, it was in his Lincoln. Johnny knew if there was one emotion that could overcome fear-which he instilled in his enemies with regularity-it was envy.
When whites began to flee New Orleans for Jefferson Parish and Metairie, the political base of David Duke, Johnny went with them. He joined any club he could buy his way into, pushed a basket around in the supermarket on Saturday mornings, played softball in the neighborhood park, and on Saturday nights threw huge dinners, where the tables with checkered cloths groaned with platters of pasta, sausage, meatballs, and baked lasagna, at a working-class Italian restaurant by the lake. It was a strange evening. The rain was blowing harder now, and the swells in the lake were dark green and dimpled with rain, the causeway haloed with mist and electric lights all the way across the water to Covington, but the late sun had broken free of the clouds on the horizon and filled the western sky with a red glow like flames inside oil smoke. It was a happy, crowded place, with wide verandas and high windows, private banquet rooms, a long railed bar, potted palms and plush maroon sofas by the cash register. I took off my seersucker coat in the men's room, dried my hair and face with paper towels, straightened my tie, tried to brush the powdered sugar from the Cafe du Monde off my charcoal shirt, then combed my hair and looked in the mirror. I didn't want to go back outside; I didn't want to say the words I would have to say. I had to look away from my own reflection.
Johnny was entertaining in a back room, with lacquered pine paneling and windows that gave onto the lake and the lighted sailboats that rocked in the swells. He was at the bar, in fine form, dressed in tailored, pegged gray slacks, tasseled loafers, plum-colored socks, a bright yellow dres
His mar celled hair gleamed like liquid plastic, his teeth were pink with wine. The hood at the door was in a jovial mood, too, and when I said, ”I got no piece, I got no shield, Max,“ he smiled and answered, ”I know that, Mr. Robicheaux. Johnny seen you outside. He wants you come on in and have a good time.“
I ordered a Dr. Pepper and drank it five feet from where Johnny was holding a conversation with a half dozen people. My presence never registered in his face while he grinned and beamed and told a joke, rocking on the balls of his feet, his lips pursed as he neared the conclusion of his story, a clutch of fifty-dollar bills folded in a fan between his ringed fingers.
Again, I could hear a peculiar creaking sound in my head, like the weight of a streetcar pinging through steel track. I looked out the rain-streaked side window and thought I saw Clete Purcel staring back at me. When I blinked and widened my eyes, he was gone.
I finished my Dr. Pepper and ordered another. I kept looking directly into Johnny's face. Finally I said it, gave recognition to his power, acknowledged my dependence on his mood and the enormous control he had over the lives of others: ”Johnny, I need a minute of your time.“
”Sure, Dave,“ he said, and moved toward me along the bar, pointed toward his Manhattan glass for the bartender. ”How you doin'? You didn't bring that Irish ape, did you? Hey, just kidding. Purcel don't bother me. You ever know his mother? She was a wet-brain, used to sell out of her pants when her old man run off. Ask anybody in the Channel.“
”Can we talk somewhere?“ I said.
”This is good.“ Two of his hoods stood behind him, eating out of paper plates, salami and salad hanging off their lips. Their steroid-pumped upper arms had the diameter and symmetry of telephone poles inside their sports coats. ”Don't be shy. What's the problem?“
”No problem. That's what I'm saying, Johnny. I'm no threat to you guys.“
”What am I listening to here? I ever said you were a problem?“ He turned to his men, a mock incredulous look on his face.
”My daughter saw a guy hanging around our house, Johnny. You think I have information, which I don't. They pulled my shield, I'm out of the game, I don't care what you guys do. I'm asking you to stay away from me and my family.“
”You hear this crazy guy?“ he said to his hoods. Then to me, ”Eat some dinner, drink some wine, you got my word, anybody bother you with anything, you bring it to me.“
”I appreciate your attitude, Johnny,“ I said. My palms felt damp, thick, hard to fold at my sides. I was sweating inside my shirt. I swallowed and looked away from the smile on his face. ”I accused you of something that was in the imagination.
I'm sorry about that,“ he said. His men were grinning now. ”Excuse me?“ I said. ”A redheaded guy, looked like Sonny Boy Marsallus, out at my house, walking around downtown, I asked you and Purcel if you'd hired an actor, remember?“ he said. I nodded. ”There he is,“ he said, and pointed to a man in a white jacket busing a table. ”He's Sonny's cousin, a retard or something, I got him a job here. He looks just like him, except his brains probably run out his nose.“
”He looks like a stuffed head,“ one of Johnny's men said. ”He'd make a great doorstop,“ the other man said. ”Why was he at your house?“ I said.
The skin of my face burned and my voice felt weak in my throat. ”He was looking for a job. He'd been out there with Sonny once. Now he's making six bucks an hour and tips cleaning slops. So I done a good one for Sonny.“ One of the men behind Johnny gargled with his drink. ”Salt water's good for the throat,“ he said to me. ”Take a glass-bottom boat ride, Robicheaux, ask Sonny if that ain't true.“
Johnny stripped a folded fifty out of the fan in his hand and dropped it on my forearm. ”Get something nice for your daughter,“ he said. ”You done the right thing here tonight.“ He reached out with one hand and adjusted the knot in my tie. I saw the balloon of red-black color well up behind my eyes, heard a sound like wet newspaper ripping in my head, saw the startled and fearful look in his face just before I hooked him above the mouth,
hard, snapping my shoulder into it, his nose flattening, his upper lip splitting against his teeth. I caught him again on the way down, behind the ear, then brought my knee into his face and knocked his head into the bar.
I kept waiting for his men to reach inside their coats, to pinion my arms, but they didn't move. My breath was heaving in my chest, my hands were locked on the lip of the bar, like a man aboard ship during a gale, and I was doing something that seemed to have no connection with me. He fought to get up, and I saw my shoe bite into his chin, his ear, his raised forearm, his rib cage, I felt Johnny Carp cracking apart like eggshell under my feet.
”Mother of God, that's enough, Dave!“ I heard Clete shout behind me.
Then I felt his huge arm knock me backward, away from Johnny's body, which was curled in an embryonic position next to the brass bar rail, his yellow shirt streaked with saliva and blood, his fists clenched on his head.
Then Clete laced his fingers under my arm, a paper bag crushed against the contour of his palm, and drew me back toward the door with him, a pistol-grip, sawed-down double-barrel twelve-gauge pointed at Johnny's men. The only sound in the room was the service door to the kitchen flipping back and forth on its hinges. The faces of the diners were as expressionless as candle wax, as though any movement of their own would propel them into a terrible flame. I felt Clete push me out into the darkness and the cold odor of an impending electric storm that invaded the trees like a fog. He shoved the sawed-down twelve-gauge into the paper bag and threw it on the seat of his convertible.
”Oh Dave,“ he said. ”Noble mon .. .“ He shook his head and started his car without finishing his sentence, his eyes hollow and lustrous with a dark knowledge, as though he had just seen the future.
Chapter 25
MONDAY MORNING nothing had happened. No knock at the door from New Orleans plainclothes, no warrant cut. To my knowledge, not even an investigation in progress.
The sky was clear and blue, windless, the day warm, the sun as bright as a shattered mirror on the bayou's surface. After the early fishermen had left the dock and I had started the fire in the barbecue pit for the lunches Batist and I would sell later, I called Clete at the office on Main.
”You need me for anything?“ I said.
”Not really. It's pretty quiet.“
”I'm going to work at the dock today.“
He s coming, JJave. ”I know.“
The priest sits next to me on the weathered planks of the bleachers by the baseball diamond at New Iberia High. The school building is abandoned, the windows broken by rocks, pocked with BB holes. The priest is a tall, gray, crewcut man who used to be a submarine pitcher for the Pelicans back in the days of the Evangeline League and later became an early member of Martin Luther King's Southern
Christian Leadership Conference. Today he belongs to the same AA group I do.
”Did you go to the restaurant with that purpose in mind?“ he asks.
”No.“
”Then it wasn't done with forethought. It was an impetuous act. That's the nature of anger.“
It's dusk and the owner of the pawn and gun shop on the corner rattles the glass in his door when he slams and locks it. Two black kids in ball caps gaze through the barred window at the pistols on display.
”Dave?“
”I tried to kill him.“
”That's a bit more serious,“ he says.
The black kids cross the street against the red light and pass close to the bleachers, in the shadows, oblivious to our presence. One picks up a rock, sails it clattering through a tree next to the school building.
I hear a faint tinkle of glass inside.
”Because of your friend, what was his name, Sonny Boy?“ the priest says.
”I think he put the hit on Sonny. I can't prove it, though.“
His hands are long and slender, with liver spots on the backs.
”What bothers you more than anything else in the world, Dave?“
”I beg your pardon?“
”Vietnam? The death of your wife Annie? Revisiting the booze in your dreams?“
When I don't reply, he lifts one hand, gestures at the diamond, the ruined school building that's become softly molded inside the fading twilight. A torn kite, caught by its string on an iron fire escape, flaps impotently against a wall.
”It's all this, isn't it?“ he says. ”We're still standing in the same space where we grew up but we don't recognize it anymore. It's like other people own it now.“
”How did you know?“
”You want absolution for what you did to this guy?“
”Yes.“
”Dave, when we say the Serenity Prayer about acceptance, we have to mean it. I can absolve sins but I can't set either one of us free from the nature of time.“
”It has nothing to do with time. It's what we've allowed them to do-all of them, the dope traffickers, the industrialists, the politicians. We gave it up without even a fight.“
”I'm all out of words,“ he says, and lays his hand on my shoulder. It has the weightlessness of an old man's. He looks at the empty diamond with a private thought in his eyes, one that he knows his listener is not ready to hear.
”Come on down to the office and talk to somebody for me, will you?“
Clete said when I answered the phone early the next morning. Then he told me who.
”I don't want to talk to him,“ I said.
”You're going to enjoy this. I guarantee it.“
Twenty minutes later I parked my truck in front of the office. Through the window I could see Patsy Dapolito sitting in a wood chair next to my desk, his brow furrowed as he stared down at the BB game that he tilted back and forth in his hands. His face looked like stitched pink rubber molded against bone.
I walked inside and sat behind my desk. The new secretary looked up and smiled, then went back to typing a letter.