DR15 - Pegasus Descending

by James Lee Burke

  The bottle-and-can collector was named Ripton Armentor. As Monarch had said, he looked like he had been assembled from a box of discarded spare parts. His shoulders were square, his chest flat as an ironing board, and his torso too long for his legs, so that his trousers looked like they had been taken off a midget. Worse yet, his head was not much larger than a shot put. And as though he were deliberately trying to compete with the physical incongruities fate had imposed upon him, he wore a neatly pressed blue denim shirt with a necktie that extended all the way to his belt, giving him the appearance of an inverted exclamation mark.

  He sat on the top step of his gallery and listened to Monarch explain who I was and what I wanted, the cane fields around his house swirling with wind. It was obvious he was retarded or autistic, but paradoxically his expression was electric, one of fascination with the intrigue and sense of adventure that had been brought to his front door.

  “You remember that day, Ripton, when the girl died?” I said.

  “I ain’t seen her die,” he said, eager to be correct and to please, his words rushed yet syntactical.

  “But you know she died that day you were collecting bottles and cans by the mill?” I said.

  “Yes, suh. Heard all about it. Seen it on the TV, too. That’s why I come back the next day.”

  “I’m not quite with you, Ripton,” I said.

  “I gone back by the mill. See, I was way down the street when I heard it. I t’ought maybe it was my bicycle tire. When it pop, it make a sound just like that. In the wind and all, I t’ought it was my tire going pop.”

  “You heard the shot?” I said.

  “Yes, suh. I heard it. Then I seen a car go roaring by. So I went and knocked on Mr. Cesaire’s do’ and tole him what I seen.”

  “You talked to Cesaire Darbonne?” I said.

  “Yes, suh, that’s what I’m saying. I went back and tole Mr. Cesaire about it. A silver car went streaking on by. Gone by like a rocket, whoosh.”

  “What kind of car was it?” I said.

  “A silver one, just like I said.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police about this?” I asked.

  “Mr. Cesaire said I ain’t had to. Since I’d already give him the numbers, he was gonna take care of it. Didn’t need to talk to no police.”

  A flock of crows rose from the cane field and patterned against the sky. “What numbers, podna?”

  “The first t’ree numbers on the license plate. Wrote ’em in down in my li’l book. I keep a li’l book on everyt’ing I pick up from the road ’case the taxman call me in. I still got them numbers inside. You want ’em?”

  I could hear clothes popping on a wash line, or perhaps the sound was in my own ears. Chapter 26

  I WENT EARLY to the office the next morning and ran the registration on Tony Lujan’s silver Lexus and looked once again at all my notes concerning Cesaire Darbonne’s background. But what stuck in my mind about Cesaire was not written down in a notebook. Instead, it was his absorption as a duck hunter and the fact he had told me the scars on his left hand and arm had come about from a hunting accident. I called Mack Bertrand at the crime lab.

  “I’m doing a little background work on Cesaire Darbonne. Did you tell me he’s a distant cousin of your wife?” I said.

  “That’s right,” he replied.

  “He was in a duck-hunting accident?”

  “Yeah, as I remember. He poked his shotgun barrel into the mud and almost blew his arm off.”

  “What did he do with the gun?”

  “Pardon?”

  “After the barrel exploded, what did he do with it?” I asked.

  “How should I know?”

  “You told me a couple of guys tried to rob his bar and he ran them off by firing a gun in the air.”

  “Yeah, about fifteen years back. Why you pumping me, Dave?”

  “You know why.”

  “Hasn’t the guy had enough grief?”

  “That fact won’t change what happened. What did Cesaire do with the shotgun after it exploded?”

  “Ask him. I’m signing off on this.”

  “Sorry to see you take that attitude, Mack.”

  “The guy is already down for one murder and you want to put Tony Lujan’s on him, too?” He hung up.

  I searched the department computer but found nothing on an attempted robbery at the bar run by Cesaire Darbonne. I spent the next two hours searching through our paper files with the same result. Then I called a retired plainclothes by the name of Paul LeBlanc who had worked for the department forty years before deafness and diabetes forced him to hang it up. Now he lived in an assisted-care facility by Iberia General and at first did not recognize my name.

  “Dave Robicheaux,” I said. “I was with NOPD before I went to work for Iberia Parish. I used to own a bait shop and boat-rental business south of town.”

  “The one wit’ drinking problems?” he said.

  “I’m your man.”

  “How you doin’?” he said.

  “You remember an attempted robbery at a bar owned by Cesaire Darbonne? It was a ramshackle hole-in-the-wall joint up the bayou. We’re talking about maybe fifteen years back.”

  “No,” he said.

  “You have no memory of it?”

  “That wasn’t what I said. It wasn’t fifteen years back. It was seventeen. The spring of 1988.”

  “What happened?”

  “Wasn’t much to it. A couple of colored men tried to pry the back window while Cesaire was mopping up. He come out the back do’ and chased them out in a cane field. Fired a shell in the air. I think they were after booze instead of money. I don’t think I even wrote it up.”

  “You didn’t write it up?”

  “No, I don’t think I did.”

  “What kind of weapon did Cesaire fire in the air, Mr. Paul?”

  “Cain’t hear you. The earpiece on this phone ain’t no good.”

  “You said he fired a shell, Mr. Paul. Did Cesaire fire a shotgun over these fellows’ heads?”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “Was it a cut-down twelve-gauge?”

  The phone was silent. “Sir?” I said.

  “I’m in my years now. My memory ain’t that good.”

  “We’re not talking about an illegal gun charge, Mr. Paul. This is a homicide investigation. Was Cesaire in possession of a sawed-off shotgun?”

  “Yes, suh, he was.”

  “Thank you.” I started to lower the receiver into the cradle.

  “Mr. Robicheaux?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I been knowing Cesaire Darbonne fifty years. He’s a good man.”

  He was a good man, I said to myself.

  After I hung up, I went into Helen’s office. “I think I got taken over the hurdles. I think Cesaire Darbonne murdered Tony Lujan,” I said.

  She sat back in her chair, widening her eyes.

  “I found a witness to the Yvonne Darbonne homicide. A retarded black man by the name of Ripton Armentor saw a silver car speeding away after he heard a gunshot. He wrote down three numbers from the license tag. He gave them to Cesaire Darbonne the next day.”

  She closed then opened her eyes. “Oh, boy,” she said, more to herself than to me.

  “I did some more research into Cesaire’s history, too. Seventeen years back, a plainclothes investigated an attempted break-in at Cesaire’s bar. Cesaire was in possession of a cut-down twelve-gauge that he probably salvaged from a shotgun that exploded on him after he got some mud in the barrel.”

  “Cesaire followed Tony the night Tony was supposed to meet Monarch?”

  “That’s my guess. He blew Tony apart, then planted the weapon in Monarch’s car.”

  “Why Monarch’s?”

  “Because everyone knows Monarch was selling dope to white teenagers. The autopsy showed Yvonne was full of drugs when she died. Cesaire probably blamed Monarch for her death as much as he did Tony.”

  “We’re going to look like idiots going back t
o the grand jury on this guy for another homicide. It’s like we don’t have anyone else in the parish to charge for unsolved crimes,” she said.

  “Want me to talk to Lonnie?”

  “Screw Lonnie. We need to clean up our own mess.” She studied a legal pad on her desk, her fingers on her brow. “I just got off the phone with the FBI in New Orleans. They pulled a cell phone transmission out of the air on Lefty Raguza. They think he’s in Iberia or St. Martin Parish.”

  “Lefty wants payback for the beating he took?”

  “No, the Feds think he and Whitey Bruxal are going to try to get Whitey’s money back by peeling the skin off Trish Klein’s pretty ass.”

  She saw the look on my face. “That’s the language this FBI jerk used. Don’t blame me,” she said. “Where’s Clete Purcel, Dave? Don’t lie to me, either.”

  I didn’t have to lie. I didn’t know. Not exactly, anyway.

  THAT NIGHT, Molly and I went to a movie and had dinner in Lafayette. The summer light was still high in the sky when we drove back home, and I could see fishermen in boats out on Spanish Lake, the cypress snags shadowing on the water against the late sun.

  “You worried about Clete?” she asked.

  “A little. If NOPD gets their hands on him, they’re going to put him away.”

  “He’s always come through before, hasn’t he?”

  “Except that’s not what he wants. He’s been committing suicide in increments his whole life. He tries to keep the gargoyles away with booze and aspirin and wonders why he always has a Mixmaster roaring in his head.”

  I could feel her eyes on me. Then I felt her put away whatever it was she had planned to say.

  “Buy me some ice cream?” she asked.

  “You bet,” I replied.

  The next morning was Friday. I called Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine and Clete’s offices in both New Iberia and New Orleans and was told that Clete was out of town and that his whereabouts were unknown. The only semblance of cooperation came from Alice Werenhaus, the part-time secretary and former nun at the office on St. Ann in the Quarter.

  “He’s fine, Mr. Robicheaux. He doesn’t want you to worry,” he said.

  “Then why does he keep his cell turned off?”

  “May I be frank?”

  “Please.”

  “He doesn’t want you compromised. Now stop picking on him.”

  “I think his life may be in danger, Miss Alice.”

  She was quiet a long time. “Mr. Purcel will always be Mr. Purcel. He won’t change for either of us. I’ll do what I can. You have my word.”

  So much for that.

  My other ongoing problem was Cesaire Darbonne. I had gone bond for a man who was probably innocent of the murder he was accused of committing and guilty of a homicide for which he wasn’t charged. The greater irony was that the boy Cesaire had probably murdered was not responsible for his daughter’s death and the man he had not killed was.

  After lunch I went to Lonnie Marceaux’s office and told him everything I had learned about Cesaire Darbonne’s probable guilt in the murder on Tony Lujan.

  “Nobody can screw up a case this bad. Are you drinking again?” he said.

  “Glad to see you’re handling this in the right spirit, Lonnie. No, I’m not drinking. But since you went full tilt on insisting we indict an innocent ian for Bello Lujan’s death, I thought I should drop by and give you a heads-up.”

  “Me a heads-up?”

  “Yeah, because the shitprints lead right back into your office.”

  “I think you have your facts wrong. Of course, that’s no surprise. Scapegoating others is a symptom of the disease, isn’t it?”

  “Say again?”

  “It’s what alcoholics do. Scapegoating other people, right? It’s always somebody else’s fault. My office acted on the information you provided, Dave. You want to contest the factual record, have at it. I think you’re long overdue for an I.A. review.”

  I glanced out the window at the storm clouds building in the south and the tops of trees bending in the wind. “At my age I don’t have a lot to lose. There’s a great sense of freedom in that, Lonnie,” I said.

  “Care to explain that?”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  I BELIEVED WHITEY BRUXAL had set up Cesaire Darbonne for the murder of Bellerophon Lujan. But my speculation, and that’s all it was, posed a problem I had not yet resolved: If Whitey had indeed framed Cesaire, how did Whitey know that Bello had probably raped Cesaire’s daughter, giving Cesaire motivation to take his life?

  I went to see Valerie Lujan for an answer. She was obviously preparing to go somewhere when I pushed the bell and the maid opened the front door.

  “I won’t take much of your time,” I said.

  She was in her wheelchair, wearing a yellow dress that matched her hair, a lavender corsage pinned on her shoulder. A picnic basket containing a pink cake and two bottles of champagne and two glasses rested on the tabletop behind her. “Let him in,” she said to the maid.

  I sat down in a deep white chair, leaning forward, my back stiff, so as not to look relaxed or accommodating. “Cesaire Darbonne didn’t kill your husband, Mrs. Lujan,” I said.

  “Just a moment,” she said, and turned to the maid. “Finish up in the kitchen and tell Luther to bring around the car.” Then she addressed me again. “To be honest, I really don’t care who killed my husband.”

  “But we do. Whitey Bruxal thought Bello was going to roll over on him and he used a stable mucker by the name of Juan Bolachi to take him out.”

  “Then you must arrest him.”

  “Except there’s another problem. Whitey decided to frame Cesaire Darbonne for the homicide, but that means Whitey knew we’d eventually discover that Bello raped Yvonne Darbonne and that her father would be a perfect suspect when a pickax stolen from Cesaire’s toolshed was used to tear Bello apart.”

  She looked at a tiny gold watch on her wrist. The color of her skin and the veins in her arms made me think of milk and pieces of green string. “I’d like to be of assistance, but I’m on my way to the cemetery,” she said. “It’s Tony’s birthday. He always loved strawberry cake with pink icing.”

  “Who told Whitey that Bello probably raped Yvonne?” I asked.

  “I certainly didn’t, and I resent your suggesting I did.”

  “That wasn’t my intention. But there is one man you do confide in. He’s your friend and spiritual counselor, someone who claims to be a man of God, someone you trust, a man you believe would never betray you.”

  Her eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that seemed far greater than her failing powers were capable of generating. I knew I had hit home.

  “You’re saying Colin Alridge passed on information about my husband to Whitey Bruxal?” she said.

  “You bet I am. No matter what he tells you, Alridge’s vested interest is with the gambling industry and the lobbyists who support it. He sold both you and Bello down the drain.”

  At this stage in her life, she probably believed nothing else could be taken from her. But I had just proved her wrong. She looked out the front window at the turbulence in the sky and the oak leaves flying from the trees in the yard.

  “My car is waiting outside, Mr. Robicheaux. I’ll be at Tony’s graveside the rest of the afternoon,” she said. “I hope you’ll be gracious and decent enough not to disturb me there. I believe the dead can hear the voices of the living, although we cannot hear theirs. I’ll ask my son to forgive you for not finding his killer and for concentrating your efforts instead on tormenting his mother.”

  I stood up to go, but I didn’t want to leave her with the impression that I accepted her victimhood. She wore her infirmity and her personal loss as a shield against the system, and chances were she would take on the permanent role of martyr and saint and be venerated as an icon of bereavement and moral courage until the day of her death. But I believed Valerie Lujan’s contract with the devil had been signed many years ago, and
she knew that every dollar in her possession had come into Bello’s hands through the deprivation of others.

  I started to say these things and perhaps other things even more injurious to her. But what was the point? Saints are made of plaster and they neither bleed nor hear. So I simply said, “I was drunk for many years, Mrs. Lujan. But I finally learned everybody has to pay his tab. Good luck to you. The Garden of Gethsemane is a tough gig.”

  BUT RHETORIC IS rhetoric and a poor substitute for putting away people who belong in jail. That afternoon, as I drove home, I realized that all my investigative efforts since the spring would result in few if any meaningful convictions. Without a confession, I doubted if Cesaire Darbonne would ever do time for the murder of Tony Lujan. The same with Slim Bruxal. I believed he had killed Crustacean Man with a baseball bat, but the case had already grown cold and there was no forensic connection between Slim and the hapless man who had been struck by the Lujan family’s Buick. Worse, Whitey Bruxal and Lefty Raguza would never be punished for the executionlike slaying of my friend Dallas Klein, a murder I had been too drunk to prevent.

  I helped Molly prepare supper, then I fed Snuggs and Tripod on the back steps. It was shady and cool under the trees, and the wind blowing from the bayou stiffened their fur while they ate. I pulled Snuggs’s tail playfully and bounced him gingerly on his back paws. “How you doin’, soldier?” I said.

  He glanced back at me, his head notched with pink scars, then returned to his food.

  “How about you, Tripod? You doin’ okay, old-timer?” I said.

  Tripod smacked his chops and had no comment.

  I wished life consisted of just taking care of animals, the earth, and one’s family and friends. In fact, that’s what it should be. But it’s not, and the explanation for that fact is not one I have ever been able to provide.