The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
“I couldn’t see. The pillowcase was on my head. He was crushing me alive. His mouth was all over me. I can’t keep it straight.”
“Take your time.”
“I don’t want to. I’ve said it over and over.”
“The defense will twist your words. They’ll make you contradict yourself, they’ll make issues out of minuscule details that have no bearing on anything. They’ll create a scenario that has nothing to do with reality, thereby forcing the prosecution to prove that the scenario did not happen. The prosecution will have to prove a negative, which they can’t do, hence creating reasonable doubt.”
She blew her nose into a Kleenex.
“Nightingale said he tried to give you coffee,” I said. “When was that?”
“Coffee? He’s the gentleman, is he? There was no coffee. There was only his penis and his tongue. Is that a sharp enough image for you?”
“I’m sorry about this, Miss Rowena. I lost my wife Annie to some killers who used shotguns on her in our bed. I’ve never gotten over it. I never will.” Her face seemed to freeze, as though she could not assimilate what I had said. I closed my notepad. “I appreciate your help today.”
She didn’t answer. She gazed out the window at the live oaks, the wind channeling through the new leaves, the dead ones tumbling on the bayou’s surface.
“Ms. Broussard, are you okay?” I said.
Her teeth were showing when she looked in my direction, but I couldn’t be sure she saw me. I walked down the stairs and out of the house, closing the door softly behind me. I was old enough to know that insanity comes in many forms, some benign, some viral and capable of spreading across continents, but I believed I had just looked into the eyes of someone who was genuinely mad and probably not diagnosable, the kind of idealist who sets sail on the Pequod and declares war against the universe.
WHEN I GOT home, there were two messages on the machine from Babette Latiolais. I played the first one: “Mr. Dave, I got to talk wit’ you. Call me back.”
She didn’t leave her number. I copied it from the caller ID. The second message was recorded forty-five minutes later: “Mr. Dave, where you at? I t’ink maybe I seen that guy last night. Please call me. Don’t come to the bar-and-grill, no. My boss seen us talking and axed if I was in trouble. I cain’t lose my job.” I called her number and went immediately to voicemail. I tried again that evening, with the same result.
Clete Purcel returned from two days of fishing, sunburned and flecked with fish blood and smelling of beer and sunblock and weed. He told me about his conversation with Kevin Penny.
“You think he’s going to treat his boy all right?” I said.
“Probably not. It was like having a conversation with a septic tank.”
“You did your best.”
“There’s only one solution for a guy like Penny.”
I saw the look in his eyes. “Negative on that, Cletus.”
“If he hurts that boy, I’m going to bust a cap on him.”
“And stack his time. How smart is that?”
“If either one of us was smart, we wouldn’t be who we are. Maybe we’d be wiseguys. Or stockbrokers. You got to be careful what you wish for.”
I had learned long ago to stay out of Clete’s head. If you let him alone, his moods usually passed. If they didn’t, you got out of his way.
He showered and put on fresh clothes at his motor court, and he and Alafair and I went to a movie. In the morning I called Babette again. There was no answer. I gave up and this time left no message.
Monday night, just after I had drifted off to sleep, the phone rang in the kitchen. I looked at the caller ID and picked it up in the dark. The moon was up, and a light rain was clicking on the roof and the trees. “Babette?”
“I’m sorry I ain’t got back to you,” she said. “I moved my little girl to my mama’s house in Breaux Bridge.”
“Has somebody bothered you?”
“No, suh, but like I said on the machine, I t’ink I seen the man again, the one who was taking to Mr. Spade.”
“Where?”
“At the Walmart. He didn’t have a basket or nothing. He was maybe t’irty feet away, looking at me. He said, ‘Hi, you pretty thing. Come have a hot dog.’ ”
“You’re sure it was the same man?”
“He looked a little different, but I’m pretty sure it was the man in the picture you showed me, the one who was outside the bar-and-grill.”
“He was different how?” I asked.
“Like he’d been in a fight.”
“Say that again?”
“His face was swole up. I called to tell you everything is all right and you don’t need to worry no more. I got ahold of Mr. Spade.”
“Back up, Babette.”
“He ain’t in the phone book, but a waitress I know had his number. So I told him about me talking to you and me seeing the guy again and how I don’t want no trouble or to be saying anything bad about nobody.”
I could feel the floor shifting under my feet. “Listen to me, Babette. Don’t talk any more with Spade Labiche. Stay away from him. He’s not a good guy.”
“I ain’t supposed to talk to the police?”
“The man with the swollen face is a dangerous and violent career criminal. I don’t know why he was with Labiche, but I’m going to find out. What happened after you saw the man at Walmart?”
“Nothing. He just walked away.”
“What did Labiche tell you?”
“He said not to worry. He said the guy was just axing him directions and he didn’t know nothing about him. That ain’t true?”
“It could be,” I said.
“It could be? Oh, Mr. Dave, what I’m gonna do?”
“If you feel threatened, you can stay with my daughter and me.”
“That don’t sound right. I cain’t live off other people.”
I didn’t know what to say. Who is usually the victim of a criminal? The most innocent of the innocent, and usually those who can least afford the attrition.
“Are you there, Mr. Dave?”
“I’m going to talk to my friend Clete Purcel. He’s a private investigator. If you’re with him, no one will ever hurt you. Give me your address.”
* * *
I WENT INTO labiche’S office the next morning. “How you doin’, Spade?” I said.
He was drinking coffee from a white mug with Wonder Woman on it. “What’s on your mind, Dave?”
“You know Babette Latiolais? She works at the bar-and-grill.”
“What about her?”
“She call you?”
He set the mug down. “Yeah, she did. What do you want to know?”
“She’s a nice lady, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Nice. Good-looking tits. Probably a sweet piece of barbecue. What else you want to know?”
“Why don’t you show some respect?”
“I don’t know what it is with you, Robicheaux. You’ve got a two-by-four with nails in it shoved up your ass every time I see you.”
“She saw you with a guy who sounds a lot like Kevin Penny. She doesn’t know Penny. She has no connection with Penny. She didn’t dime you about Penny. She simply described a man who looks like him. You were talking to him in the parking lot outside the bar-and-grill where she works. What about it? Is Penny a confidential informant?”
“Number one, I never heard of this guy. Number two, if he was my snitch, I wouldn’t meet him in a public place.”
“I’m glad you’ve cleared all that up, Spade. I heard you were undercover in Liberty City. How’d you get along with the Jamaicans?”
“Fine. They love the color green.”
“You ever see their transporters land in the Glades?”
“A few times.”
“Did you know the guys transporting coke on I-10?”
“Most of them were blacks the Colombians used like Kleenex.”
“They sure did a number on us. In three years this whole area was full of
“What’s your point?”
“I was just thinking about the systemic nature of the problem. It’s like a virus. Those women who were killed in Jeff Parish all had some relationship to the drug culture. The sales are five-and-dime stuff. All those lives were snuffed out for chump change.”
He toasted me with his cup before he drank, his fingers spread across Wonder Woman’s patriotically dressed body. “Close the door on your way out, will you?”
Be seeing you later, you lying motherfucker, I thought.
* * *
BUT LABICHE HAD little to do with the origins of my anger. Maybe he was on a pad, maybe not. I suspected he was a sociopath. Every organization or institution has sociopaths. The objective is always power. People like Labiche function because they’re useful idiots.
Prostitution and drug trafficking cannot exist in a community without sanction. Vice is symbiotic and, like a leech, must attach itself to a cooperative host. That’s not hard to do. Once it’s established, digging it out of the tissue takes years, maybe generations. The majority of victims are people no one cares about. Even though the street sales seem nickel-and-dime in nature, the aggregate can be enormous. The coke is stepped on half a dozen times before it reaches the projects; the skag might have roach powder in it; the speed comes out of labs at Motel 6. But the number of addicts always grows; it never declines. The health and psychiatric problems of the afflicted are pushed off on social services. The big bonus for the dealers is the female trade. They’re compliant and easily managed; they provide freebies for corrupt cops; they’re never more than one day away.
Since Prohibition, vice on America’s southern rim has been run by individuals and families in Tampa, Miami, New Orleans, and Galveston. When Huey Long gave the state of Louisiana to Frank Costello, slot and racehorse machines appeared in every hotel lobby, drugstore, and saloon in the state, followed by an invasion of pimps, hookers, and even commercial fishers (they worked for the Mob in New Orleans and drained the lakes of crappie and sold them by the hundreds of thousands in Chicago). The system was like a pyramid. Everything at the bottom contributed to the top of the structure. In the life, it’s called piecing off the action. A working girl who didn’t understand that could get a cupful of acid in the face. I knew a black girl who was soaked with gasoline by two pimps and set on fire.
The minions at the bottom of the organization are myriad and need lead shoes on a windy day. But there is always one person at the top, and only one. In this case, the head guy was a steaming pile of gorilla shit known as Tony Nine Ball. All the elements in this story started with Fat Tony and the Civil War sword he planned to give to Levon Broussard, probably to involve Levon in one of Tony’s movie productions.
I told Helen I was checking out a cruiser and also where I was going with it.
“What for?” she said, hardly able to conceal the ennui in her voice.
“I think the deaths of the Jeff Davis Eight are indirectly on Nemo. I think the dope in Iberia Parish is, too.”
“What you’re really saying is somehow he’s connected to the murder of T. J. Dartez. That’s what you want to believe, isn’t it?”
“If you bruise Tony’s ego, he never forgets.”
“Do what you need to,” she said. “Watch your ass. Tony Nemo is a cruel man.”
“Does Spade Labiche have any reason for being around Kevin Penny?”
“Not to my knowledge. You know something I don’t?”
I told her how Babette Latiolais had tried to return Labiche’s lighter to him in the parking lot outside the bar-and-grill and had seen Penny talking with Labiche.
“Did you bring this up with Labiche?” Helen said.
“He denies knowing Penny or having any connection with him.”
“Did you tell him the barmaid informed on him?”
“She had already called Labiche. She knows him from the bar-and-grill. I was trying to put out the fire and indicate to Labiche that the girl wasn’t conspiring against him.”
“Take a breath.”
“It’s frustrating, Helen. This guy is a son of a bitch, and you’re pretending he’s not.”
“I’ll have a talk with him.” She got up from her desk and bit a hangnail, avoiding my eyes. “I’m worried about where the Dartez investigation is going. Your prints were on the broken window glass. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t.”
She cleared her throat. “This is eating a hole in my stomach.”
“Then turn everything over to the prosecutor’s office. I’ll go on leave without pay or resign.”
She looked sideways at me, her face so hot it was almost glowing. “The case isn’t prosecutable. Not as it stands. A defense attorney would keep you off the stand and present a dozen ways the prints could have gotten on the glass. That makes me glad. It also puts me in conflict with myself. You’re not the only person twisting in the wind, Pops.”
“I’m sorry you’re caught in this.”
“There may be another explanation about the prints,” she said. “Latents can be transferred. A microscopic examination can detect a forgery, but not always.”
“Labiche is manufacturing evidence?”
“He’s a mixed bag,” she replied. “He’s too nice around me. Always with the grin.”
“I’d better get going. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
“Keep Clete out of this. No more Wild West antics at the O.K. Corral.”
“You have to admit Doc and Wyatt had clarity of line.”
“White man who think with forked brain not speak anymore. White man keep nose clean and not smart off unless white man want slap upside head. White man now get his ass out of my office.”
She wiggled her fingers at me.
* * *
I HADN’T THOUGHT about the possibilities with Clete. After I signed out the cruiser, I stopped in the shade by the grotto and called his office on my cell. “Want to take a ride to the Big Sleazy?”
“What for?”
“To share a few oysters with Tony Squid.”
“I’ll be out front.”
Two minutes later, I pulled to the curb in front of his office. He was wearing his powder-blue sport coat and porkpie hat and freshly ironed gray slacks and tasseled loafers shined as bright as mirrors. His eyes were clear, his face ruddy, his youthfulness temporarily restored, as always when he went twenty-four hours without booze.
“Let’s rock,” he said. When he pulled open the door, his coat was heavier on one side than the other.
“What’s in your pocket?” I asked.
“Lint,” he replied.
* * *
EVERY WEEKDAY AT noon, Tony could be found at one of two oyster bars in the Quarter, primarily because both had accommodations that could seat a gargantuan blob who had to spread his cheeks across a padded bench or two chairs pushed together. The restaurant also had to accommodate his oxygen cylinder and sometimes a nurse and a retinue of hangers-on and, of course, his bodyguards, Maximo Soza and JuJu Ladrine.
JuJu was half coon-ass and half Sicilian and could do squats with a five-hundred-pound bar across his shoulders. He wore blue suits and ties and starched white shirts, regardless of the heat, and in public always seemed embarrassed and popping with sweat and about to burst out of his clothes.
Maximo was another matter. He had a twenty-two-inch waist and the diminutive features of a child; he had been a jockey in Cuba. He wore a flat-topped gray knit cap with a bill and unironed slacks that flapped like rags and a suit coat buttoned tight at the waist and flared on the hips. He took orders from Tony as if there were no moral distinction between chauffeuring a limo and sticking an ice pick into one of Tony’s enemies.
I parked the cruiser in a garage on Royal, and Clete and I walked to the oyster bar and went inside. It was 12:05 P.M. Tony was sitting at a long table in a back corner, the checkered tablecloth set with a pitcher of sangria and baskets of sourdough bread
Bobby Earl was his name, and manipulation was his game. During the peak of his career, women who affected the dress of Southern belles lined up to be photographed with him. Then the plastic surgeon’s handiwork began to soften and deteriorate and slip from the bone, and Bobby Earl’s face took on the appearance of wax held to a flame. His hair fell out, too, and he wore a wig that resembled barbershop sweepings glued to a plastic skullcap. While attending an anti-America/anti-Israel convention in Iran, he was interviewed on CNN and reduced by Wolf Blitzer to a raging idiot while spittle flew from his lips.
The hostess started to seat Clete and me at a small table.
“We’re with Mr. Nemo,” I said.
“Are you sure? He didn’t tell me others would be joining him,” she said.
Clete waved at Tony. “Sorry we’re late, big guy,” he said.
The hostess took us to the table and walked away quickly.
“You don’t mind, do you, Tony?” I said.
He looked up from his shrimp cocktail. “We’re eating, here.”
Clete and I opened our menus. Clete turned to JuJu and Maximo. “What do you guys recommend?”
Neither answered.
“You drink your breakfast, Purcel?” Tony said.
“Actually, I did. A protein shake with bananas and strawberries,” Clete said. “You ought to try it.”