The New Iberia Blues

by James Lee Burke

  I watched the bayou rise and the ducks huddling in the cattails and the steam rising off the graves in the cemetery between the great oak and a church built in 1836. But the past is the past, and you don’t get it back. Unfortunately, I’ve never learned that lesson. Maybe no one does. Or maybe you have to murder your heart in order to extract yourself from your own memories. If that’s the case, I’ve never had the courage.

  I knew where I was going. Even before I went to the lounge, I knew. Maybe it was wrong and I’ll be judged for it. But the world I came from is dead and the land I’ve loved all my life is strewn with litter and our water is polluted and our principles are for sale. At least these are the things I told myself as I walked through the rain to Bella Delahoussaye’s house.

  It took her a long time to answer the door. She was wearing hoop earrings, and her hair was tied on top of her head. “You look like you went down with the ship.”

  “The ship wouldn’t have me.”

  She studied my face. “I ain’t no Polk Salad Annie, baby.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Ain’t got nothing to offer you but the blues.”

  “That would be more than enough,” I said.

  She hooked her finger into my shirt and raised her face to mine, her lips parting.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I WOKE ON THE couch at four in the morning. The rain was sluicing off the roof. Bella’s acoustic guitar was propped facedown on a stuffed chair. Her bedroom door was open. She was sleeping on her side, the covers half on the floor.

  I had dried my clothes in front of a fan and put them back on. I barely remembered coming to her house and believed for a moment that I was losing my mind. I had heard about dry blackouts but had never experienced one. I closed her door and went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Through the window I could see the first glimmer of light in the east, water pooling in the alley, raindrops sliding off a banana frond that was bumping against the glass.

  “You ain’t leaving wit’out saying goodbye, are you?” she said.

  I turned around. She was wearing a bathrobe. A thick strand of her hair hung across the scar on her throat. The Maltese cross given to her by Hilary Bienville was tied around her neck. Her lipstick was purple, the features of her face like carved ebony.

  “Sorry for barging in on your life, Bella.”

  “Nobody barges in on my life. They get invited.”

  “You’re the best.”

  “You wouldn’t let me do nothing for you. You hurt me a little bit.”

  “It’s not because of you. I’m bad news.”

  She stepped closer and fitted her hand around the back of my neck, sinking her nails into my hairline. She kissed me on the mouth, pushing her tongue inside. Then she stared into my eyes. “They gonna kill you, baby.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “You don’t get it. It’s what you’re looking for.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You won’t blow out your own wick because you’re a churchgoing man. You think Mr. Death don’t know what you’re doing?”

  I stepped back from her, hitting the stove.

  “Stay wit’ me,” she said.

  “I have to work.”

  “We’re alike. You know the world ain’t real. You know what most people believe ain’t real.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  She kneaded my throat with her thumbs, pressing on my windpipe, her eyes searching inside my head. “You don’t need to come back. You don’t need to feel guilty, neither.”

  “Don’t say that. I mean about not coming back.”

  “Take care of yourself. You’re stacking time on the hard road. You just ain’t heard that ball and chain clanking.”

  • • •

  I WENT OUT THE door and walked to my truck. The hood was open, my battery gone.

  The streets and the town square were almost empty, the gutters running. A cherry-red convertible, the top up, pulled alongside me. The driver rolled down his window. “Engine trouble?”

  It was Lou Wexler. His thick body, his craggy good looks and tangle of sun-bleached hair, his physicality, if you will, seemed too large for the car he drove. He reminded me of other mercenaries I had known. At heart they were secular Calvinists and believed their fellow man was born in a degraded state; consequently, they oversaw atrocities with equanimity and substituted pragmatism for compassion and slept the sleep of the dead.

  I don’t know why I had all these thoughts about Lou Wexler. I was unshaved, unshowered, my body clammy, my self-respect tattered. There’s nothing like having a scapegoat show up when you need him.

  “Somebody helped himself to my battery,” I said. “I didn’t know you lived in St. Martinville.”

  “I rented a place just up the bayou. I’ll treat you to breakfast and we’ll get a Triple A fellow out here.”

  “I’m not a member, but I’ll take a ride back to New Iberia.”

  “Hop in,” he said.

  I got into the passenger seat. The rain had quit, and the leather felt warm and snug and comfortable. I looked back at the Evangeline Oak and the small church and the cemetery next to it and the bayou running smooth and high and yellowish brown in the gloom, and for some reason I felt a large piece of my life slipping away from me, this time forever.

  As we drove toward the black district, I saw Bella in her yard, still in her bathrobe, waving my wallet at us.

  “Pull over, will you?” I said. “This will take just a minute.”

  “Got a car behind me,” Wexler said. “I’d better pull into the drive.”

  I looked behind us. The car behind us was halfway down the street. We bounced into Bella’s driveway. I looked hard at Wexler’s profile. He showed no reaction. I rolled down my window. Bella leaned down and handed me my wallet. “You dropped this on the floor.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “This is Lou Wexler, Bella. He’s a movie producer.”

  “Can I have a role?” she asked.

  “Anytime,” he said.

  She laughed and went back inside. Wexler backed into the street and drove through the black district to the state road that led to New Iberia. He looked straight ahead. He turned on the radio and turned it off.

  “Bella is a friend of mine,” I said.

  “She’s a musician?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Antoine Butterworth is always talking about blues musicians. I think he mentioned her name. She’s attractive.”

  “She is.”

  “I keep it simple and take care of my side of the street, Mr. Robicheaux. Where would you like to eat?”

  “What do you mean, you take care of your side of the street?”

  “I have no quarrel with the world and the way it operates.”

  “That still begs the question, partner.”

  His teeth were white, maybe capped. “Not for me. One thing intrigues me, though: the Maltese cross on her neck. You don’t see many of those around here.”

  “Desmond has one tattooed on his ankle,” I said.

  “He made a documentary on some bikers. Desmond doesn’t know the first thing about the subculture.”

  “I think he can handle his own.”

  “Des likes to be a man of the people. I could take him to places that would make him puke his guts. I suspect you could, too.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “You didn’t get a whiff of the tiger cages or Charlie when he soiled himself after someone hooked him up to a telephone crank?”

  “I never saw anything like that.”

  “Lucky man.”

  The ride was becoming an expensive one. I wondered how committed Alafair was in her relationship with Wexler. The images I had in my mind were the kind no father likes to look at.

  “Hope I didn’t say anything offensive,” he said.

  “Not a bit.”

  We entered the tunnel of oak trees that led into the north end of New Iberia, and passed a home
that had been built by a man of color who owned slaves and operated a brick factory prior to emancipation. The wood was desiccated, eaten from within by Formosa termites, painted over, the building stained an ugly off-white by dust clouds and smoke from stubble fires. To change the subject, I mentioned the origins of the house to Wexler.

  “That’s nothing,” he replied. “You should have seen what the wogs could do with a burning tire. They’re at their worst when they turn on their own kind.”

  I had him drop me off at a filling station on the edge of town, and I called Alafair for a ride home.

  • • •

  AT FOUR-THIRTY P.M. the same day, Helen called Bailey and me into her office. She was walking up and down in front of the window, her hands on her hips, her face conflicted. A yellow legal pad scrawled with blue ink lay on her blotter. “The sheriff of Cameron Parish called. Early this morning a couple of guys driving an expensive car with a Florida tag went into a motel room and fired two rounds through a shower curtain. The water was running, but the motel guest must have gone out the window. The shooter probably used a silencer. The sheriff thought it looked like a professional hit, so he dusted the sill and sent the latents to AFIS. Guess whose name popped up.”

  “Tillinger?” I said.

  “It gets better. Somebody in another room saw a weird-looking guy leave Tillinger’s room several hours earlier.”

  “Weird-looking in what way?” Bailey asked.

  Helen read from her legal pad: “ ‘A guy who looks like he was squeezed out of a toothpaste tube.’ ”

  “Smiley?” I said.

  “I don’t get the guys with the Florida tag,” Helen said. “Why would Smiley be with Tillinger? Why do the Florida guys want to pop Tillinger?”

  “I think it has something to do with money laundering,” I said.

  “But what the hell does Tillinger have to do with it?” Helen said.

  “Maybe he’s a thorn in their side,” I said. “He’s got an obsession with Lucinda Arceneaux’s death. He also wants to have a documentary made about his life.”

  Helen looked at Bailey. “What do you think?”

  “None of this explains the tarot,” Bailey said. “Or the way Hilary Bienville died. I think our killer is driven by rage and the motivation is sexual. The implications of the baton down Devereaux’s throat are hard to ignore.”

  “The mayor’s office and the chamber of commerce say our tourism has dropped probably fifty percent,” Helen said. “The mayor asked me this morning about our ‘progress.’ I didn’t tell him Smiley is back. Are you sure you saw him, Dave?”

  “What kind of question is that?” I said.

  “Frenchie Lautrec was in my office this morning. He says you beat the crap out of him.”

  “Why’s he telling you that now?” I said.

  “He’s dumping in his pants.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “He’s not big on sharing.”

  “We gave him a uniform and a badge and power over defenseless people,” I said. “He’s a coward. That’s why he’s afraid. Not because of me.”

  “You don’t look like you had a lot of sleep last night,” she said.

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “What if Bailey and I go down to Cameron Parish?”

  “Have at it,” she replied.

  • • •

  BAILEY CHECKED OUT a cruiser and lit it up, and we were at the motel in less than two hours. The sky was lidded with rain clouds, lead-colored, the wind blowing out of the south, the waves filled with yellow sand and seaweed and swelling over a dock that resembled a torn spinal cord. The motel owner took us to Tillinger’s room. The lock had been jimmied, and the interior of the room was crisscrossed with footprints, probably from cops at the scene. The owner pushed open the bathroom door. He was a small, nervous man who wore a tie and a white shirt and stank of cigarettes smoked in a closed room.

  “You can see the two holes in the curtain,” he said. “The bullets hit the wall by the window. They left the shower running. It almost ran my tank empty.”

  “What kind of vehicle did your guest drive?” I said.

  “A truck like a painter or plumber uses. Full of dents.”

  “Where is it?” Bailey said.

  “The cops come back and towed it off,” he said. “They say this guy broke out of a prison hospital. He killed his family.”

  I showed him a picture of Tillinger.

  “That’s him,” the owner said. “Who’s gonna pay for all this?”

  “All what?” Bailey said.

  “The holes in the wall. The rug. The shower curtain. The door. My water bill.”

  “How long was our guy with you?” I asked.

  “Two weeks and three days. This is the state’s fault.”

  “What is?” I said.

  “The guy running loose. Vandalizing people’s property. The three guests that checked out when they saw cops all over the place.”

  “We’ll look around a bit and let you know when we leave,” I said.

  “Look at that lock,” he said, glaring at the doorjamb as he walked out. “Don’t mess up this room any more than it is.”

  “You got it,” I said.

  He slammed the door.

  “What a happy guy,” Bailey said.

  I pushed the door snug with the jamb and wedged a chair under the knob. “He’s going to be even unhappier.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Tillinger was in the room for over two weeks. He left behind everything he owns.”

  “The Cameron deputies or cops from Texas probably bagged it,” she said.

  “They bagged what they saw. Tillinger has outsmarted all of us at every turn.”

  The desk and closet and chest of drawers were empty except for a Gideon’s Bible in the desk drawer. A copy of Time magazine and a soiled shirt lay on the floor in the bathroom. I pulled the sheets and blanket and bedspread off the bed and upended the mattress against the wall. Nothing. I stood on the bed and unscrewed the vent high on the wall and reached inside. When I removed my hand, it was covered with cobwebs and dust. I climbed back down and ran the pages of the Bible against my thumb. They were heavily annotated with a ballpoint. The ink did not look old.

  “What are you looking for, Dave?”

  “Tillinger has his own frame of reference. He thinks he’s more intelligent and insightful than other people. He may be a religious fanatic, but he also wants to be onstage. That kind of guy always keeps a diary or a collection of drawings or notes about the world. He’s like all megalomaniacs; he wants to scratch his name on history.”

  “Maybe we should talk to the Cameron sheriff.”

  “We’ll be fooling around here for two days,” I said.

  I rolled up the mattress and felt along the edges. Then I saw a slit in the side and a rectangular lump under the case. I worked my hand deep inside, but the object had slid to the center. I pulled my arm free and opened my pocketknife and ripped open the case and tore it loose from the stuffing. A notebook with thick cardboard covers lay among the stuffing.

  I clicked the light switch, but the power was off. I had the feeling the owner had hit the circuit breaker to make our job harder. I went to the window and opened the notebook and held it to the light. The handwriting was cramped, like Tillinger’s mind, a place that I suspected was filled with images generated by biblical accounts of genocide and divine wrath. The first page read: “The Story of Hugo Jefferson Tillinger and His Search for Justice and the Killer of Lucinda Arceneaux.” The narrative was rambling, much of it dedicated to his trial and conviction and removal to death row. There appeared to be water stains on the page that contained his account of the house fire and the death of his family. I think the emotion was real. Then the narrative took a turn, with several entries written in red ballpoint rather than blue.

  Here’s the first:

  Found the jackpot in the old records of Charity Hospital in Lafayette. Desmond Cormier was brought there when he was
one day out of the womb. The man who brought him was named Ennis Patout. Patout wouldn’t admit to being the father. He said the mother was Corina Cormier and came from the Chitimacha Indian Reservation. She left the baby in the back of a semi in Opelousas and went wherever her kind go.

  The second entry in red:

  The Cormier grandparents ran a little store but have been dead many years. Looks like Desmond dumped his folks and went to Hollywood. Wonder if he knew Charlie Manson’s crowd. Wonder if he ever kept his joystick in his pants. The whole place is deserving of a firestorm, if you ask me.

  These words were written by the same man who wanted a Hollywood documentary made about his life.

  He had made notations about Antoine Butterworth and Lou Wexler and several actors I had not met, as well as Joe Molinari, the victim hanged in a shrimp net; he also mentioned the names of the dirty cops, Frenchie Lautrec and Axel Devereaux. But there was no question about the person at the center of his investigation: The emphasis was on Desmond Cormier. I had no idea why. Maybe Tillinger was simply a celebriphile. Or a potential assassin. Desmond was everything Tillinger was not. There was another consideration I couldn’t ignore: Tillinger had known Lucinda Arceneaux well, and the rest of us had not known her at all.

  The notebook ended with these words, again in red ballpoint:

  There’s an Ennis Patout in Opelousas. Maybe this is the father of Desmond Cormier. Or maybe he’s the son of the father. I think time is running out for me. I think the men from Huntsville are going to find me and take me back and fill my veins with poison and drive the light from my eyes. I’ve got news for them. If they want to take me alive, they’d better bring a lunch. “The day is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff and the day that is coming will set them ablaze.” Malachi 4:1.

  I closed the book. The western sun was blue and red and strung with clouds that looked like industrial smoke as it descended into the Gulf.