At 2:15 p.m. Mack Bertrand rang my extension. “It’s a match,” he said.
“Don’t tell me that,” I said.
“Cesaire’s prints are all over it. What else you want me to say? Didn’t you say his pick was missing from his toolshed? It’s obviously his.”
“The guy doesn’t need this,” I said. “Look, Mack, the motive isn’t there. I’m convinced he didn’t know Bello raped his daughter.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He was stunned when I told him.”
“Maybe that’s just the impression you had. You’re a sympathetic soul, Dave. Valerie Lujan hated her husband. She wouldn’t have been above passing on the information to Cesaire.”
“No, Mr. Darbonne looked like he’d been poleaxed. Maybe he killed Bello, but it wasn’t because he knew Bello attacked his daughter.”
“Good luck with it.”
“With what?” I asked.
“This case. It’s like trying to get cobweb out of your hair, isn’t it?” he said.
I BROUGHT HELEN up to the minute, then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to verify Cesaire Darbonne’s alibi. A clerk remembered seeing him at the Winn-Dixie and so did the clerk at the gas station by the drawbridge. But the preponderance of his alibi rested on his claim that he had changed a flat by the sugar mill entrance, and unfortunately none of the security people at the mill could recall seeing him. Cesaire had another problem as well. Bello Lujan’s horse farm was less than fifteen minutes’ drive from Cesaire’s house. Cesaire could have visited the Winn-Dixie, bought gas, changed a flat tire, and still had time and opportunity to murder Bello.
I returned to the office just before 5 p.m.
“You want to get a warrant?” Helen said.
“Not yet,” I replied.
“I think Cesaire is looking more and more like our boy,” she said.
“It’s too pat. The murder weapon was left a few feet from the body with Darbonne’s fingerprints all over it. But Mack Bertrand believes the last guy who handled the pick was wearing gloves. Why would Darbonne wear gloves, then drop his own pick at the crime scene with his fingerprints on it?”
“We’re back to Whitey Bruxal?”
“Maybe.”
“But Bruxal couldn’t hang a frame on Cesaire Darbonne unless he knew Darbonne had motivation, in other words knowledge that his daughter was attacked by Bello. Which doesn’t seem to be the case. I think Bruxal is out of the picture. What bwana say now?”
She had me.
JUST AS I WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE the department for the day, I got a call from Koko Hebert.
“I’ve got scrapings from under Bello’s fingernails,” he said. “He either had a real good piece of ass before he died or he fought with his attacker.”
“Koko, if you still feel a need to prove you’re offensive and obnoxious, I want to set your mind at ease. You don’t have to carry that burden anymore. You’ve assured everybody in the department you’re the real article.”
“Fuck you,” he said. “Pending lab analysis, I’d say the skin tissue came from a person of color. Normally we can’t tell race by looking at tissue scrapings, because it dries out quickly and becomes visually indistinguishable from the victim’s. But Bello got a roll of it under two of his fingernails and they look like they came off a black person. Gender is another matter. We’ve got to go to a lab in Florida for that. Because Bello probably porked half the black girls in this parish, I’m not sure if my tissue scrapings will be relevant. Sort that out, Robicheaux, then give me a call if you need more explanation.”
You didn’t trade shots with Koko Hebert unless you were willing to take a heavy load of shrapnel.
I WENT HOME and had a light supper with Molly, then drove up the bayou in the sunset to Loreauville and Bello Lujan’s stable. The fields were green and sweet-smelling, the clumps of oaks along the road pulsing with birds. The crime scene tape flickered and bounced in the wind. I walked behind the stable and looked at the spot where Mack had found the murder weapon, then studied the breadth of the field where the killer had run toward the steel back fence. What had I missed? Not just here, but in all the interviews involving Yvonne Darbonne and Monarch Little and Slim Bruxal and Crustacean Man and Tony and Bello Lujan. The key glimmered on the edge of my vision, like a shard of memory you take with you from a dream. It lay in an insignificant remark, an oblique reference that I had passed over, a piece of physical evidence that was like a grain of sand on a beach. But what?
On the other side of the steel fence, two little boys and a girl, all of them black, were flying a kite emblazoned with the American flag. The girl, who was not over eight or nine, was holding the kite string. They had made a fort of propped-up plywood inside a stand of persimmon trees and inside the walls had spread a blanket on the ground. A box of snack crackers, a plastic pitcher of what looked like Kool-Aid, three candy bars, and a can of tuna had been dumped out of a grocery bag onto the blanket.
“You guys doin’ all right?” I said.
“We’re camping out, least till dark,” one of the boys said.
“Y’all weren’t out here early this morning, were you?”
“No, suh,” the same boy said.
“That’s a fine fort you’ve got there,” I said.
“Yes, suh,” the same boy said.
His eyes left my face and looked up at the kite popping against the sky. The other boy seemed to concentrate unduly on the kite as well. The girl had wrapped the string around her wrist and was making a game of pulling on the string and releasing it, so that the kite rose, then sagged and rose again in the sunset. She wore elastic-waisted jeans and pink tennis shoes and a white blouse with tiny flowers printed on it. She had big brown eyes and pigtails and a round face and skin that was as dark and shiny as chocolate. Her expression was a study in innocence.
“You guys didn’t go inside that yellow tape on the stable, did you?” I said.
No one answered.
“What’s your name?” I asked the girl.
“Chereen,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Dave Robicheaux. I’m a police officer. Did y’all see anybody run across this field early this morning?”
“We wasn’t out here,” she replied.
“But later maybe you guys went over to see what was going on?”
They looked at one another, then at the birds freckling the sky.
“Y’all sure you don’t want to tell me something?” I said.
“Want some crackers and Kool-Aid?” the girl said.
“Thanks just the same. Don’t you guys go on the other side of that yellow tape, okay?”
“No, suh, we ain’t. Gonna stay right here, outside the fence.”
I waved good-bye to them and walked away. When I glanced back over my shoulder, one of the boys was working open the can of tuna while the other boy filled three plastic glasses with Kool-Aid.
I DROVE BACK into New Iberia and visited Monarch Little at Iberia General. He was sitting up in bed, watching a Chicago White Sox game on the television mounted high up on the wall, the sheet drawn up over his sloping girth. I sat down on the side of his bed and picked up each of his hands and examined his skin from his wrists to his upper arms.
“What you doin’?” he said.
“Lean forward,” I said.
“What for?”
“So you don’t end up charged with murder. For once in your life, try cooperating with someone who’s on your side.”
He sat motionless while I looked closely at his face and hair and throat and the back of his neck.
“Take off your shirt,” I said.
“Mr. Dee—”
“Just do it.”
He pulled off his pajama top, held his massive arms straight out, and let me examine his chest and back.
“That’s it,” I said.
“That’s what?”
“You didn’t kill Bello Lujan.”
“That’s a big breakt’rew for you? I ain’t never kil
led nobody.”
“Why’d you put all that skag in your arm, Monarch?”
“Felt like it.”
“You almost caught the bus, partner.”
“Maybe I’d be better off.”
“What about all those soldiers in Iraq? What kind of day do you think they’re having?”
“I tried to join the army. They didn’t want me.”
My question to him had been a cheap shot and I deserved his reply. I sat in a chair next to his bed for a long time and didn’t say anything. He tried to concentrate on the televised baseball game, but it was obvious he was becoming more and more uncomfortable with both my presence and silence.
“You got some wiring loose in you, Mr. Dee,” he said.
“I want you to call me as soon as you get out of here,” I said.
“What for?”
“My wife wants you to come over for dinner.”
There was a broken smile at the corner of his mouth. “Who you kidd—” he began.
“Don’t mock her invitation. She used to be a Catholic nun. She’ll rip your arms off and beat you to death with them,” I said.
He made a show of crushing the pillow down on his own face, but I could hear him laughing under it.
THAT NIGHT the weatherman on the late news talked about another storm building in the Caribbean, one that was expected to reach hurricane velocity as it approached Cuba. I fell asleep on the couch while dry lightning flickered in the trees and leaves gusted in the street. I dreamed about baseball and summer evenings in City Park back in the 1950s, when we played pepper games in front of the old wood and chicken-wire backstop that was overhung by oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. In the dream the air smelled of boiled crabs and barbecue grease flaring on hot charcoal, and I could hear a Cajun band playing “Jolie Blon” down by the old brick firehouse. The dream seemed to reflect an innocent time in our history, an idyllic vision I have never been able to disengage from. But in reality there were many elements of the 1950s that were not so innocent, and Monarch Little was there, in the dream, to tell me that. Or at least that was what I thought.
He was standing at home plate with a bat propped on his shoulder, in an era when people of color were not allowed in the park, whacking grounders to the three black children I had seen flying a kite by Bello Lujan’s back fence. Except in the dream the children were uninterested in Monarch and his baseball bat, and were sitting on the close-cropped grass just beyond the infield, eating a picnic lunch. One of the children was opening a can of tuna.
I woke from the dream like a man breaking through a pane of glass.
THE NEXT MORNING was Saturday. I got up at seven and dressed in the kitchen so I wouldn’t wake Molly. I fed Snuggs and Tripod on the back steps, left Molly a note on the chalkboard we used for messages, took a half-carton of orange juice out of the icebox for myself, and drove down St. Peter Street to Iberia General. Monarch was just checking out of the hospital as I came through the reception area.
“I need to talk with you,” I said.
“I got a cab coming,” he said.
“After we talk, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. My truck’s outside.”
“I ain’t eat yet,” he said.
“That makes two of us,” I said.
We headed toward the McDonald’s on East Main. The clothes Monarch had been wearing when the paramedics pulled him out of the ice water at the crack house had been washed and dried at the hospital and, riding in the truck, with the windows down and the trees and shadows sliding by us, he looked cool and comfortable, strangely at peace with himself. I pulled into the line of vehicles at the take-out window.
“You lay down your sword and shield?” I said.
“What you mean, ‘sword and shield’?”
“You’re not ‘gonna study the war no more.’ Those are lyrics from a hymn. The singer is telling the listener he’s resigned from the fray, that he’s made his separate peace.”
“What the FBI do to me, what y’all do to me, it don’t matter one way or the other. I just ain’t gonna fight wit’ it no more. I’m t’rew wit’ dope, t’rew wit’ gangs, t’rew wit’ the life. If I stack time, that’s the way it be.”
“That’s what I was talking about.”
“Then why you got to say everyt’ing in code?” he said.
The electronic order box came on and I ordered eggs, sausage, biscuits, and coffee and milk for both of us. “T’row a couple of fried pies in there,” Monarch said.
“Two fried pies,” I said to the box.
I got our order at the second window in the line, then parked under the big oak tree by the front. I couldn’t believe how much food Monarch could stuff into his mouth at one time.
“What you want to know?” he asked, pieces of scrambled egg falling off his chin.
“When I questioned you about Tony Lujan’s death, you said you were supposed to meet him out by the Boom Boom Room, but you changed your mind.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“I was gonna jack him for money. It was a bad idea. So I didn’t go. He ended up shotgunned to deat’, but I didn’t have nothing to do wit’ it.”
“Yeah, I know all that. But why was it a bad idea?”
“I just tole you. I was gonna jack him—”
“No, that’s not the explanation you gave me originally. You were afraid something was going to happen.”
“Yeah, I said what if Tony called up Slim Bruxal and Slim and them other colletch boys showed up wit’ ball bats.”
“Why baseball bats?”
“’Cause they done it before. I checked them out. They had a beef behind a nightclub in Lake Charles wit’ a couple of soldiers from Fort Polk. They got ball bats out of their car and busted up a soldier and smashed all the windows out of his car.”
“Slim and Tony did this?”
“And about ten more like them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier?” I said.
“’Cause you ain’t axed me,” he replied, biting into a fried pie.
I drove Monarch to his house up on Loreauville Road, then went to the department and in the Saturday-morning quietness of my office pulled out all my files and notes and photographs dealing with the unsolved vehicular homicide of Crustacean Man.
Just before noon I called Koko Hebert at his home. Strangely enough, he acted halfway normal, making me wonder if much of his public persona wasn’t manufactured.
“Do I think the fatal wound is consistent with a blow from a baseball bat?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“It could be.”
“Come on, Koko. I need a warrant. Give me something I can use.”
“The bone was crushed, the damage massive. All kinds of shit can happen in a high-speed hit-and-run we can’t reconstruct. It’s like somebody getting caught inside a concrete mixer.”
“I’ll bring you the photos. The wound is concave and lateral in nature, the indentation uniform along the edges.”
“Stop telling me what I already know. Yeah, a baseball bat could have done it. I’ll come down and make an addendum to the file if you need it.”
“Thanks, partner.”
“Who’s the warrant on?”
“Some kids who would like to pour the rest of us into soap molds,” I said.
I DOUBTED IF I’d be able to get the warrant until Monday morning, but there were other things to be done that weekend, other elements in the dream that had caused me to sit up as though a piece of crystal had shattered in my sleep.
I drove to Loreauville and crossed a drawbridge and passed a shipyard where steel boats that service offshore oil rigs are manufactured. I drove down an undulating two-lane road through water oaks and palmettos and asked an older black man clipping a tangle of bougainvillea from the trellised entrance to his yard if he knew a little girl by the name of Chereen. The house behind him was made of brick and well maintained. A speedboat mounted on a trailer was parked in his porte cocher
e.
“That’s my granddaughter’s name. Why you want to know?” he said.
I opened my badge holder and hung it out the window. “My name is Dave Robicheaux. I’m with the Iberia Sheriff’s Department. I thought she might have some information that could be helpful to us,” I said.
The black man wore old slacks and tennis shoes, but his shirt was pressed, his back erect. The distrust in his eyes was unmistakable. “She’s nine years old. What information she gonna have?”
“It concerns evidence she and two other children may have found at a crime scene,” I said.
“You talking about the Lujan farm?”
“I need to talk to your granddaughter, sir.”
“Maybe I need to call my lawyer, too.”
I pulled my truck in his driveway and cut the engine. I opened the door and stepped out on the grass. “She and her friends were playing in a plywood fort by Bello Lujan’s back fence. Mr. Lujan was murdered. Where’s your granddaughter?”
“She don’t know nothing about no murder.”
I could feel my patience draining and my old nemesis, anger, blooming like an infection in my chest. Like most southern white people, I did not like paying the price for what my antecedents may have done.
“The man who killed Bello Lujan is still out there. You want him prowling around your neighborhood? You want him looking for your granddaughter, sir?” I said.
He spiked his clippers into the lawn and blotted his neck with a folded handkerchief. “Come wit’ me. They in the backyard,” he said.
I followed him around the side of the house. The three children I had seen flying a kite behind Bello’s property were playing croquet in the shade of oak trees. “You guys remember me?” I said.
They looked at one another, then at Chereen’s grandfather. “Tell him what he want to know,” he said.
I squatted down so I was eye level with the children. “When y’all were having your picnic at your fort, you opened a can of tuna fish, didn’t you?” I said.
All three of them nodded, but their eyes didn’t meet mine. I pointed to the little boy who had opened the can. “What’s your name?” I asked.
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