My notebook was open on the desk blotter. She looked at the copy I had made of Tillinger’s attempt to identify the killer. “What do you make of that?”
“I think the Aryan Brotherhood is a player,” I said. “Maybe there’s a link between them and our jail scandal. Maybe ‘UNC’ means ‘University of North Carolina’ or ‘uncle.’ Maybe ‘PRO’ means ‘producer.’ You can go into meltdown thinking about all this.”
“Let’s go back to our jail scandal,” she said. “What’s the link between it and the murder of Lucinda Arceneaux?”
I shook my head, my eyes neutral.
“Don’t give me that,” she said. “I know you, Dave.”
“I don’t have any answers,” I said. “I wish I did.”
She waited a long time before she spoke again. “Any word from Iberia General?”
“The neurologist said the inside of Tillinger’s head is egg batter.”
She looked at the pad again. “I’d like to kick Sean McClain in the butt.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“But he messed up royally.” She paused. I knew she wanted to say more, all of it bad.
“I messed up, too,” I said.
She scratched her forearm, her face empty. Then she got up and stood behind my chair. I never knew what Helen would do when she was behind me. Sometimes her silence scared me. As I’ve said, several people lived inside her, some dangerous, some adventurous, some erotic and almost predatory. People talk about coming out of the closet. Helen had a warehouse the size of a city block to come out of. She gripped my shoulders, sinking her fingers into the tendons. I could smell the freshness in her clothes, almost feel the heat in her body.
“There are two people in this world who know every thought you have, Pops,” she said. “One of them is Clete Purcel. Guess who the other is?”
“No idea,” I replied.
“What’s Bailey think?”
“Our guy is a trophy killer in reverse. Or maybe he has boxes of panties and bras and wallets. He’ll keep doing it until we burn his kite.”
She drew a fingernail across my neck. “Go out on your own and I’ll have your head in a basket.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” I said.
• • •
I WASN’T DOING WELL with Bella’s death. I went to a noon meeting, owned up to an accidental slip—although I wasn’t sure it was entirely accidental and said so—and dropped by St. Edward’s Church, and I still wasn’t doing well. I went back to the department and talked with Bailey, who was getting nowhere on the forensics with the St. Martin authorities, primarily because there weren’t any; then I called Clete Purcel and told him everything and arranged to meet him in Red Lerille’s Health and Racquet Club at five-thirty p.m.
When I walked into the gym, Clete was hitting the heavy bag, whamming it on the chain with sky-blue bag gloves, wearing baggy knee-length red Everlasts and a sleeveless gray LSU jersey soggy with sweat. He smelled like an elephant in rut.
“Big mon,” he said, steadying the bag.
“You got something for me?” I said.
“A kid named Spider Dupree. He did a three-bit in Soledad. The AB made him give back his ink. They did a few other things to him, too. Let me hit the shower.”
“Think you need it?”
“I shower if I need it or not.”
Twenty minutes later, I met him at the juice bar. His hair was neatly combed, his face glowing and youthful, his slacks and shirt pressed. For just a moment, in the soft pastel lighting, he looked like the cop I walked a beat with in the Quarter, when both of us were sure we would never die. We ordered two fruit drinks, a sprig of mint stuck in the shaved ice.
I looked around. “Where’s your man?”
“We’re meeting him at a biker joint at seven.” Clete wiped at a nostril with one knuckle. “Dave, I got to have some assurances on this.”
“On what?”
“What you’re thinking about. It’s like you got a bee buzzing behind your eyes. You’re on lock and load, noble mon.”
“I don’t know where you get these ideas,” I said.
“If you haven’t noticed, every emotion you have is on your face.”
“Will you stop it?”
He looked around. No one was within earshot. “Here’s the real problem. The guy who killed Bella doesn’t need motivation. He does it for kicks. You knew his kind in Nam. They weren’t abused as children. Their mothers didn’t strap them on the pot. They came out of the womb perverse and meaner than a bucket of goat piss on a radiator.”
“So?” I said.
“So you start thinking up crazy things about Arabs and Russian oligarchs and corrupt politicians. These political cocksuckers—and Louisiana and Jersey and Florida are full of them—they don’t waste their time killing people. They’re too busy robbing the rest of us blind. Face it. We’ve got that killer in Kansas on our hands, what’s-his-name, BTK. You can’t outthink him because there’s nothing there to outthink. The guy loves power and pain and watching the light die in his victim’s eyes.”
“That wasn’t the case with Bella.”
“Because she was older and smarter and read him for the piece of shit he is.”
You didn’t slide one by Clete Purcel. “Why’d this kid have to give his ink back?” I said.
“Ask him.”
• • •
THE BIKER BAR was on the north side of Lafayette. Like most biker bars, it could have served as a laboratory dedicated to the study of misogyny, atavism, and contradiction. A Confederate battle flag was tacked by the corners to the ceiling, puffing in the breeze from an electric fan. The Reich service flag was nailed to one wall; on another wall was a black flag with two white lightning bolts. I always thought the greatest irony of the patrons was in their dress. They affected the roles of Visigoths and iconoclasts but simultaneously seemed to seek uniformity and anonymity. They dressed alike, looked alike, and spoke in the same guttural voice, as though all of them gargled with muriatic acid. The swagger and the way they hid their features inside their facial hair reminded me of actors who were terrified someone would catch on to who they really were.
This does not mean they weren’t dangerous. They were ferocious in groups and found in each other the strength they didn’t own themselves, and their leaders were not only intelligent but disarming and impressive when need be. No matter the occasion or the environment, messing with them was a mistake.
Spider Dupree was probably twenty-five at the outside, his shoulder-
length red hair washed and blow-dried. He wore zoot pants high on his hips and an oversize white long-sleeve shirt with silver thread in it and pearl snap buttons on the pockets and cuffs. The skin below his left eye had been disfigured. A biker bar seemed a strange environment for a kid who obviously had been forced to give back his ink.
Clete introduced me. Spider Dupree’s handshake was as light as air, his eyes like misaligned black stones at the bottom of a fish bowl.
“You probably wonder why I’m doing this,” he said. “I joined a church and got clean. That also means I got to stay on the square.”
“Sure,” I said. Trying to return his gaze was impossible. His eyes seemed to watch separate screens at the same time. “Good to know you, Spider.”
He touched one of the scars that dripped from his eye. “My story is on my face. I got no secrets. These guys here treat me all right. Let’s go over in the booth. You want a beer or anything?”
Before I could reply, Clete said, “Give me a Miller and give Dave a Coca-Cola with some cherries and a lime slice. Right, Dave?”
I didn’t answer.
We waited for Spider to come to the booth with the drinks. “You told me you took a hit of Jack,” Clete said. “So I jumped the gun.”
“Forget it. What’d Spider go down for?”
“Rolling gays in the Castro District.”
“Three years?” I said.
“He beat the hell out of them with a blackjack, mostly i
n the mouth. You could say he has a little bit of a denial problem. He was fresh meat as soon as he went into gen pop.”
Dupree sat down next to Clete. It was hard not to be distracted by the scars below his left eye. They resembled a pink, segmented worm someone had stepped on. He wiped at them with his wrist and grinned with half his mouth. “They make my eye water, although that don’t make sense.”
“Tell Dave why the AB wanted their ink back.”
“I took down four guys to earn my teardrops. Two in the shower, one in the yard, one in the block. Then they told me I had to come across for maybe half a dozen swinging dicks. They used a screwdriver. I would have been killed if I hadn’t gotten transferred to Atascadero.”
I let my eyes slip off his. I couldn’t imagine what his childhood must have been like. “Yesterday’s box score.”
“I lit up one guy in lockdown. That sound like somebody who should pull a train?”
I looked at Clete.
“You were stand-up, Spider,” Clete said. “Nobody is holding anything against you. Right, Dave?”
“Right,” I said.
There was a warm light in Spider’s eyes that reminded me of a nineteen-year-old door gunner I once knew, a mindless kid who had no idea how his rhetoric unnerved other people.
“About this guy who got suffocated in the Iberia Parish prison?” Clete said. “Two guards sat on him?”
Spider seemed to come out of a trance. “Yeah, he was AB. But deaf and a nutcase. He started fighting with the hacks and they sat on him. He was a hump for a cop named Devereaux.”
“ ‘Hump’ like a boyfriend?” I said.
“No, he worked for the cop.”
“Pimping?” I said.
“Cooze, coke, and crank. Now it’s cheese and oxy. I don’t like to talk about this too much.”
“Why not come clean?” I asked.
“That’s the point: I am clean. Trips down memory lane don’t do a lot for my serenity.”
“We totally dig what you’re saying,” Clete said. “You’re doing a solid for us, Spider. We won’t forget it.”
“The guy who got smothered cooked his head when he rode with a couple of motorcycle clubs on the West Coast.”
“Tell Dave about the tats,” Clete said.
“Around one ankle. A chain of crosses.”
“Like big fat ones?” Clete said.
“Yeah,” Spider said.
“The Maltese cross?” I said.
“The what?”
“I remember the man who died in the jail,” I said. “His name was Frank Dubois. That’s who you’re talking about?”
“Yeah, he had a coat of arms tattooed on his back. He could speak Latin or ancient Greek or some shit. He knew sign language, too.”
“Did he know Lucinda Arceneaux?” I asked.
“I don’t know who that is,” he answered.
“Are any Hollywood guys involved in this?” I asked.
“One, for sure.”
“Who?” I said.
“A guy who likes to hang girls up on coat hooks,” he said. “Least that’s what I heard. He’s got a funny name.”
“Antoine Butterworth?” I said.
“Rings a bell,” he replied. “I got to get back to work. That’s eight-fifty on the drinks. The tip is on me. If you’re gonna hang around, don’t get too intimate with the clientele. There’s a lot of abnormal people around these days.”
• • •
WE WENT OUTSIDE to Clete’s Caddy. It was parked behind the club by a stand of trees strung with dead vines. The wind had turned cold; yellow and black leaves were tumbling through the parking lot and floating in pools of rainwater greasy with oil. The bikers’ motorcycles were parked in straight lines, the wheels at the same angle, the bodies wiped down and shining in the moonlight.
Clete put an unlit cigarette in his mouth. His porkpie hat was slanted on his forehead. I removed the cigarette from his mouth and flipped it into the water. He watched it floating in the pool. “You think Butterworth is our guy?” he asked.
“We’ve run him six ways from breakfast,” I said. “He likes playing the bad boy. I get the feeling he wants to be knocked around.”
“How’s he different from those guys inside?” he said, looking at the club. “Just because they’re imitation Hells Angels doesn’t mean they don’t kill people.”
“Let’s get out of here. It’s depressing.”
“Why do they bother you?”
“Who?”
“Bikers,” he said.
“It’s not bikers. It’s these kinds of bikers. If they had their way, we’d be living in the American Reich.”
But he was no longer listening. “There’s a guy you’re not thinking about, Dave.”
“Oh yeah?”
Clete put another cigarette into his mouth. This time he lit it. The smoke came out of his mouth like a piece of cotton. “A guy you keep pretending isn’t dirty.”
I zipped up my windbreaker and buttoned the collar. I took the second cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into the water. “Stop playing games with me, Clete.”
“Who’s standing in the middle of all this and doesn’t get touched?” he said. “Who’s got a reason to do you some serious injury? In this case by degrading and then killing Bella Delahoussaye?”
“I know where you’re going. Get off it.”
“Who has an obsession with John Ford’s work and Henry Fonda and Wyatt Earp and Clementine Carter and the actress who played her and the woman here in New Iberia who looks just like the actress?”
“It’s not Desmond. That’s crazy.”
“You’re sleeping with Bailey Ribbons, Dave. In Desmond Cormier’s mind, you stole his dream. Wake the fuck up.”
• • •
ON TUESDAY MORNING, a nurse called me from Iberia General. “Hello, Mr. Robicheaux. I hope I’m not bothering you.”
“Not at all,” I said. I looked at my watch.
“I know how busy you are,” she said.
“What could I help you with?”
“I almost didn’t call. It’s about your friend. Please don’t take this the wrong way. He seems like a good person.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m not quite connecting here.”
“Oh, you know, that cuddly little fellow.”
“Cuddly?”
“He brought a box of Ding Dongs and a comic book and a teddy bear to Mr. Tillinger’s room. I had to explain to him that Mr. Tillinger is comatose and perhaps will never be otherwise. But he shouldn’t have come into the ward at five a.m. I wondered if you could speak to him. Without hurting his feelings.”
I sat forward in my chair. “He didn’t give his name?”
“It slips my mind. I’m glad I’m retiring this year. He has a lisp.”
“Wimple?”
“Sorry, that wasn’t it. Oh, wait a minute. It was a nickname. How silly of me. He said his friends call him Smiley. He said you were his friend.”
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“Alice Mouton.”
“Miss Alice, I don’t wish to upset you, but the man we’re talking about is a psychopath. If you see him or if he contacts you again, do not indicate that you know his identity. Call us. Are you following me on this?”
The line was silent.
“Miss Alice?”
“Yes.”
“You did everything correctly. You’re not at risk. His enemies are usually people who have harmed children.”
“What do you want me to do with the things he left for Mr. Tillinger?”
“Is there any receipt with them, a label that shows their origins?”
“Not that I see.”
“I’ll pick them up. In the meantime, leave them with Mr. Tillinger.”
“That’s where they are now. The man tucked the teddy bear under Mr. Tillinger’s arm.”
• • •
ONE HOUR LATER, I got the call I knew was coming. “Mr. Robicheaux?”
“I hea
r you visited Mr. Tillinger, Smiley,” I said.
“The lady told you?”
“Nobody had to tell me. Everybody knows when you’re in town.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Not me.”
“That deputy named Sean shot an innocent man.”
“You’ve got it wrong.”
“Some colored people saw it from their car.”
“Tillinger was armed. He was pointing a German Luger at both me and the deputy.”
“But you didn’t shoot. The deputy did. That means you knew Mr. Tillinger wasn’t going to shoot.”
He had me again. “Don’t go near my colleague.”
“I go where I want.”
“Not in this instance.”
“I am very angry. Mr. Tillinger was brave. He told the truth about his family. He stood up to me under very difficult circumstances. Y’all have committed an evil act, Mr. Robicheaux.”
“It’s Detective Robicheaux. But I want you to call me Dave. You know what Witness Protection is?”
“Don’t try to trick me.”
“You could be of great value to us. But you’ve got to disengage from settling scores on your own. Things aren’t always what they seem. None of us is God.”
The phone line was silent.
“Don’t hang up on me, Smiley,” I said. “The young deputy who shot Mr. Tillinger made a mistake. You’ve made mistakes, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Sean is a good kid. He’s feeling a lot of guilt right now. He needs a friend, not an enemy. I bet Mr. Tillinger would tell you that. Right or wrong?”
“Maybe.”
“We’ve got a deal?”
“About the deputy?”
“Yes, the deputy.”
“All right,” he said.
I was sweating and my heart was pounding. I got up from my desk, the phone in my hand. I felt as though I had stepped into a vortex. Down below I could see the bayou and a pirogue spinning emptily in the center of the current.
“You still with me?” I said.
“We’re on the same side now?”
“You bet.”
“But you know there’s a difference between us, don’t you?”
“I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“I don’t have restraints. I do things other people have seen only in their dreams. And I don’t feel bad about that at all.”
The New Iberia Blues Page 28