In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

by James Lee Burke

  I told her again.

  "You threw him in the bayou? I don't believe it," she said.

  "He's used to it. Don't worry about him."

  "Mr. Sykes started fighting with Dave on the dock, Bootsie," Alafair said. "He was drunk and making a lot of noise in front of the customers. He wouldn't come up to the house like Dave told him."

  Way to go, Alf, I thought.

  "Where is he now?" Bootsie said, wiping her mouth with her napkin and starting to rise from her chair.

  "Throwing up on the rose bushes, the last I saw him."

  "Dave, that's disgusting," she said, and sat back down.

  "Tell Elrod."

  "Batist said he drank five beers without paying for them," Alafair said.

  "What are you going to do about him?" Bootsie said. Then she turned her head and looked out the back screen. "Dave, he just went across the backyard."

  "I think El has pulled his suction cups loose for a while, Boots."

  "Suction cups?" Alafair said, her cereal spoon poised in front of her mouth.

  "He's crawling around on his hands and knees. Do something," Bootsie said.

  "That brings up a question I was going to ask you."

  I saw the recognition grow in her eyes.

  "The guy went up against Julie Balboni because of me," I said. "Or at least partly because of me."

  "You want him to stay here? Dave, this is our home," she said.

  "The guy's in bad shape."

  "It's still our home. We can't open it up to every person who has a problem."

  "The guy needs an AA friend or he's not going to make it. Look at him. He's pitiful. Should I take him down to the jail?"

  Bootsie rested her fingers on her temples and stared at the sugar container.

  "I'll make him a deal," I said. "The first time he takes a drink, he gets eighty-sixed back to Spanish Lake. He pays his share of the food, he doesn't tie up the telephone, he doesn't come in late."

  "Why's he squirting the hose in his mouth?" Alafair said.

  "All right, we can try it for a couple of days," Bootsie said. "But, Dave, I don't want this man talking anymore about his visions or whatever it is he thinks he sees out on the lake."

  "You think that's where I got it from, huh?" I smiled.

  "In a word, yes."

  "He's a pretty good guy when he's not wired. He just sees the world a little differently than some."

  "Oh, wonderful."

  Alafair got up from her chair and peered at an angle through the screen into the backyard.

  "Oooops," she said, and put her hand over her mouth.

  "What is it?" Bootsie said.

  "Mr. Sykes just did the rainbow yawn."

  "What?" I said.

  "He vomited on the picnic table," Alafair said.

  I waited until Bootsie and Alafair had driven off to the grocery store in town, then I went out into the backyard. Elrod's slacks and shirt were pasted to his skin with water from the bayou and grimed with mud and grass stains. He had washed down the top of the picnic table with the garden hose, and he now sat slack-jawed on the bench with his knees splayed, his shoulders stooped, his hands hanging between his thighs. His unshaved face had the gray color of spoiled pork.

  I handed him a cup of coffee.

  "Thanks," he said.

  I winced at his breath.

  "If you stay on at our house, do you think you can keep the cork in the jug?" I said.

  "I can't promise it. No, sir, I surely can't promise it."

  "Can you try?"

  He lifted his eyes up to mine. The iris of his right eye had a clot of blood in it as big as my fingernail.

  "Nothing I ever tried did any good," he said. "Antabuse, psychiatrists, a dry-out at the navy hospital, two weeks hoeing vegetables on a county P-farm. Sooner or later I always went back to it, Mr. Robicheaux."

  "Well, here's the house rules, partner," I said, and I went through them one at a time with him. He kept rubbing his whiskers with the flat of his hand and spitting between his knees.

  "I guess I look downright pathetic to you, don't I?" he said.

  "Forget what other people think. Don't drink, don't think, and go to meetings. If you do that, and you do it for yourself, you'll get out of all this bullshit."

  "I got that kid beat up real bad. It was awful. Balboni kept jumping up in the air, spinning around, and cracking the sole of his foot across the kid's head. You could hear the skin split against the bone."

  He placed his palms over his ears, then removed them.

  "You stay away from Balboni," I said. "He's not your problem. Let the law deal with him."

  "Are you kidding? The guy does whatever he wants. He's even getting his porno dirt bag into the film."

  "What porno dirt bag?"

  "He brought up some guy of his from New Orleans, some character who thinks he's the new Johnny Wadd. He's worked the guy into a half dozen scenes in the picture. Look, Mr. Robicheaux, I'm getting the shakes. How about cutting me a little slack? Two raw eggs in a beer with a shot on the side. That's all I'll need. Then I won't touch it."

  "I'm afraid not, partner."

  "Oh man, I'm really sick. I've never been this sick. I'm going into the D.T.s."

  I put my hand on his shoulder. His muscles were as tight and hard as cable wire and quivering with anxiety. Then he covered his eyes and began weeping, his wet hair matted with dirt, his body trembling like that of a man whose soul was being consumed by its own special flame.

  I DROVE OUT TO SPANISH LAKE TO FIND JULIE BALBONI. No one was in the security building by the dirt road that led into the movie location, and I dropped the chain into the dirt and parked in the shade, close by the lake, next to a catering truck. The sky was darkening with rain clouds, and the wind off the water blew leaves across the ground under the oak trees. I walked through a group of actors dressed as Confederate infantry. They were smoking cigarettes and lounging around a freshly dug rifle pit and ramparts made out of huge stick-woven baskets filled with dirt. Close by, a wheeled canon faced out at the empty lake. I could smell the drowsy, warm odor of reefer on the breeze.

  "Could y'all tell me where to find Julie Balboni?" I said.

  None of them answered. Their faces had turned dour. I asked again.

  "We're just the hired help," a man with sergeant's stripes said.

  "If you see him, would you tell him Dave Robicheaux is looking for him?"

  "You'd better tell him yourself," another actor said.

  "Do you know where Mr. Goldman is?"

  "He went into town with some lawyers. He'll be back in a few minutes," the sergeant said.

  "Thank you," I said.

  I walked back to my truck and had just opened the door when I heard someone's feet in the leaves behind me.

  "I need a moment of your time, please," Twinky Lemoyne said. He had been walking fast, holding his ballpoint pens in his shirt pocket with one hand; a strand of hair hung over his rimless glasses and his face was flushed.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I'd like to know what your investigation has found out."

  "You would?"

  "Yes. What have you learned about these murders?"

  I shouldn't have been surprised at the presumption and intrusiveness of his question. Successful businessmen in any small town usually think of policemen as extensions of their mercantile fraternity, dedicated in some ill-defined way to the financial good of the community. But previously he had stonewalled me, had even been self-righteous, and it was hard to accept him now as an innocuous Rotarian.

  "Maybe you should call the sheriff's office or the FBI, Mr. Lemoyne. I'm suspended from the department right now."

  "Is this man Balboni connected with the deaths of these women?"

  "Did someone tell you he was?"

  "I'm asking you an honest question, sir."

  "And I'm asking you one, Mr. Lemoyne, and I advise you to take it quite seriously. Do you have some personal knowledge about Balboni's invol
vement with a murder?"

  "No, I don't."

  "You don't?"

  "No, of course not. How could I?"

  "Then why your sense of urgency, sir?"

  "You wouldn't keep coming out here unless you suspected him. Isn't that right?"

  "What difference should it make to you?"

  The skin of his face was grained and red, and his eyelashes fluttered with his frustration.

  "Mr. Robicheaux, I think . . . I feel . . ."

  "What?"

  "I believe you've been treated unfairly."

  "Oh?"

  "I believe I've contributed to it, too. I've complained to others about both you and the FBI woman."

  "I think there's another problem here, Mr. Lemoyne. Maybe it has to do with the price of dealing with a man like Julie Balboni."

  "I've tried to be honest with you."

  "That's fine. Get away from Balboni. Divest yourself of your stock or whatever it takes."

  "Then maybe he was involved with those dead girls?" His eyes were bright and riveted on mine.

  "You tell me, Mr. Lemoyne. Would you like Julie for your next-door neighbor? Would you like your daughter around him? Would you, sir?"

  "I find your remark very offensive."

  "Offensive is when a stunt man gets his nose and ribs broken and an ear torn loose from his head as an object lesson."

  I could see the insult and injury in his eyes. His lips parted and then closed.

  "Why are you out here, Mr. Lemoyne?"

  "To see Mr. Goldman. To find out what I can."

  "I think your concern is late in coming."

  "I have nothing else to say to you. Good day to you, sir." He walked to his automobile and got in.

  As I watched him turn onto the dirt road and head back toward the security building, I had to wonder at the self-serving naiveté that was characteristic of him and his kind. It was as much a part of their personae as the rows of credit and membership cards they carried in their billfolds, and when the proper occasion arose they used it with a collective disingenuousness worthy of a theatrical award.

  At least that was what I thought—perhaps in my own naiveté—about Twinky Hebert Lemoyne at the time.

  When I reached the security building Murphy Doucet, the guard, was back inside, and the chain was down in the road. He was bent over a table, working on something. He waved to me through the open window, then went back to his work. I parked my truck on the grass and walked inside.

  It was hot and close inside the building and smelled of airplane glue. Murphy Doucet looked up from a huge balsa-wood model of a B-17 Flying Fortress that he was sanding. His blue eyes jittered back and forth behind a pair of thick bifocals.

  "How you doing, Dave?" he said.

  "Pretty good, Murph. I was looking for Julie Balboni."

  "He's playing ball."

  "Ball?"

  "Yeah, sometimes he takes two or three guys into town with him for a pepper game."

  "Where?"

  "I think at his old high school. Say, did you get Twinky steamed up about something."

  "Why's that?"

  "I saw you talking to him, then he went barreling-ass down the road like his nose was out of joint."

  "Maybe he was late for lunch."

  "Yeah, probably. It don't take too much to get Twinky's nose out of joint, anyway. I've always suspected he could do with a little more pussy in his life."

  "He's not married?"

  "He used to be till his wife run off on him. Right after she emptied his bank account and all the money in his safe. I didn't think Twinky was going to survive that one. That was a long time ago, though."

  He used an Exacto knife to trim away a tiny piece of dried glue from one of the motors on his model airplane. He blew sawdust off the wings and held the plane aloft.

  "What do you think of it?" he asked.

  "It looks good."

  "I've got a whole collection of them. All the planes from World War II. I showed Mikey Goldman my B-17 and he said maybe he could use my collection in one of his films."

  "That sounds all right, Murph."

  "You kidding? He meant I should donate them. I figured out why that stingy Jew has such a big nose. The air's free."

  "He seems like an upfront guy to me," I said.

  "Try working for one of them."

  I looked at him. "You say Julie's at his old high school?" I said.

  "Yeah, him and some actor and that guy named Cholo."

  He set his bifocals on the work table and rubbed his hands on the smooth blond surface of his plane. His skin was wrinkled and brown as a cured tobacco leaf.

  "Thanks for your time," I said.

  "Stop by more often and have coffee. It's lonely sitting out here in this shack."

  "By the way, do you know why Goldman might be with a bunch of attorneys?"

  "Who knows why these Hollywood sonsofbitches do anything? You're lucky, Dave. I wish I was still a real cop. I do miss it."

  He brushed with the backs of his fingers at the starch-white scar on his throat.

  A HALF HOUR LATER, AS RAIN CLOUDS CHURNED THICK AND black overhead, like curds of smoke from an oil fire, I parked my truck by the baseball diamond of my old high school, now deserted for the summer, where Baby Feet and I had played ball as boys. He stood at home plate, wearing only a pair of spikes and purple gym shorts, the black hair on his enormous body glistening with sweat, his muscles rippling each time he belted a ball deep into the outfield with a shiny blue aluminum bat.

  I walked past the oak trees that were carved with the games of high school lovers, past the sagging, paintless bleachers, across the worn infield grass toward the chicken-wire backstop and the powerful swing of his bat, which arched balls like tiny white dots high over the heads of Cholo and a handsome shirtless man whose rhythmic movements and smooth body tone reminded me of undulating water. A canvas bag filled with baseballs spilled out at Julie's feet. There were drops of moisture in his thick brows, and I could see the concentrated, hot lights in his eyes. He bent over effortlessly, in spite of his great weight, picked up a ball with his fingers, and tossed it in the air; then I saw his eyes flick at me, his left foot step forward in the batter's box, just as he swung the aluminum bat and ripped a grounder like a rocket past my ankles.

  I watched it bounce between the oak trees and roll into the street.

  "Pretty good shot for a foul ball," I said.

  "It looked right down the line to me."

  "You were never big on rules and boundaries, Feet."

  "What counts is the final score, my man."

  Another ball rang off his metal bat and arched high into the outfield. Cholo wandered around in a circle, trying to get his glove under it, his reddish-gray curls glued to his head, his glove outstretched like an amphibian's flipper. The ball dropped two feet behind him.

  "I hear you've been busy out at the movie set," I said.

  "How's that?"

  "Tearing up a young guy who didn't do anything to you."

  "There's two sides to every story."

  "This kid hurt you in some way, Julie?"

  "Maybe he keeps bad company."

  "Oh, I see. Elrod Sykes gave you a bad time? He's the bad company? You're bothered by a guy who's either drunk or hungover twenty-four hours a day?"

  "Read it like you want." He flipped a ball into the air and lined it over second base. "What's your stake in it, Dave?"

  "It seems Elrod felt he had to come to my defense with you. I wish he hadn't done that."

  "So everybody's sorry."

  "Except it bothers me that you seriously hurt a man, maybe because of me."

  "Maybe you flatter yourself." He balanced himself on one foot and began tapping the dirt out of his spikes with his bat.

  "I don't think so. You've got a big problem with pride, Julie. You always did."

  "Because of you? If my memory hasn't failed me, some years ago a colored shoe-shine man was about to pull real hard on your light
chain. I don't remember you minding when I pulled your butt out of the fire that night."

  "Yesterday's box score, Feet."

  "So don't take everything so serious. There's another glove in the bag."

  "The stunt man left town. He's not going to file charges. I guess you already know that."

  He rubbed his palm up and down the tapered shank of the bat.

  "It was a chicken-shit thing to do," I said.

  "Maybe it was. Maybe I got my point of view, too. Maybe like I was with a broad when this fucking wild man starts beating on the side of my trailer."

  "He's staying at my house now, Julie. I want you to leave him alone. I don't care if he gets in your face or not."

  He flipped another ball in the air and whanged it to the shirtless man deep in left field. Then he took a hard breath through his nostrils.

  "All right, I got no plans to bother the guy," he said. "But not because you're out here, Dave. Why would I want to have trouble with the guy who's the star of my picture? You think I like headaches with these people, you think I like losing money? . . . We clear on this now? . . . Why you keep staring at me?"

  "A cop over in Lafayette thinks you set me up."

  "You mean that shooting in front of Red's Bar? Get serious, will you?" He splintered a shot all the way to the street, then leaned over and picked up another ball, his stomach creasing like elephant hide.

  "It's not your style, huh?" I said.

  "No, it's not."

  "Come on, Julie, fair and square—look back over your own record. Even when we were kids, you always had to get even, you could never let an insult or an injury pass. Remember the time you came down on that kid's ankle with your spikes?"

  "Yeah, I remember it. I remember him trying to take my eyes out with his."

  The sky had turned almost black now, and the wind was blowing dust across the diamond.

  "You're a powerful and wealthy man. Why don't you give it up?"

  "Give what up? What the fuck are you talking about?"

  "Carrying around all that anger, trying to prove you're big shit, fighting with your old man, whatever it is that drives you."

  "Where do you think you get off talking to me like this?"

  "Come on, Julie. We grew up together. Save the hand job for somebody else."

  "That's right. That's why maybe I overlook things from you that I don't take from nobody else."