The Neon Rain

by James Lee Burke

  I don’t think she had a brain seizure, but close.

  THE RAIN CAME down hard on the house and trees and yard through the night, and in the morning the bayou was running yellow and fast and high on the banks, the eddies frothy and filled with twigs and leaves. I raked a can of tuna for Mon Tee Coon on top of Tripod’s old hutch and washed my hands and made breakfast for Alafair and me. I told her about Emmeline Nightingale’s visit.

  “Jimmy Nightingale’s lawyers will make Rowena Broussard look like a meltdown or a slut,” she said. “She’ll have to convince the jury not only of Nightingale’s guilt but also of the guilt of the two black guys in Wichita. That’s the place where BTK killed people under the cops’ noses for years.”

  “What do you know about Jimmy Nightingale’s activities in Latin America?”

  “He inherited his father’s company and worked down there awhile, then sold the company.”

  “Why’d he sell it?”

  “I don’t know. He likes casinos and attractive women and working people who think he’s one of their own.” She looked into space. “I remember something a woman said at a party once, like, ‘Jimmy would be the perfect man if he hadn’t tried to be like his father. He shouldn’t have done that to those poor people.’ ”

  “Poor like sad or economic?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Don’t be fooled, Dave. He’s a chameleon.”

  “Can you check out some of this stuff?” I said. “If you’re not doing anything else.”

  “I don’t mind. Why don’t you copyedit my new book while I do that?”

  * * *

  FROM THE OFFICE, I called Levon’s home and was told by the maid that he was at a bowling alley on East Main. It was a five-minute drive. Most of the lanes were empty. Levon was bowling by himself, his sleeves rolled. I walked up behind him and sat down. He curved the ball beautifully into the pocket and exploded the pins with much more force than I associated with him. A bottle of beer was perched next to the score sheet. The time was 9:13 A.M.

  “I didn’t know you were an enthusiast,” I said.

  “It beats analysis.”

  “Emmeline Nightingale came to my house last night.”

  “Here we go.”

  “Nope. I’ll make it short. She says your wife was assaulted by two men twenty years ago in Kansas.”

  “She’s a charming girl, isn’t she? And you’re a son of a bitch.”

  “I didn’t make up the information. It’s part of the record. Maybe it’s time you start dealing with reality.”

  “How is one assault related to the other?”

  “In reality, it’s not. The courtroom is a different matter. Why didn’t you square with me?”

  “Run the tape backward. I told you she has nightmares about a black man’s hand coming through a window.”

  “I asked you about that at the time, and you changed the subject.”

  He sat down behind the score table and took a swig from the beer bottle. There were no entries on his score sheet. “How bad is this going to hurt us?”

  “Nightingale’s lawyers will use your wife’s history and her suicide attempt or her nationality or her life in Latin America or whatever bogus issue they can think up to bias the jury in his favor.”

  “You really know how to say it.”

  “What happened in Wichita?”

  “The ADA was going to run for district attorney. She didn’t want to be perceived as a dupe for a white woman who willingly left a bar with two black men and went willingly to their house. That she was trusting and young was thrown out the window.”

  “How’s Miss Rowena now?”

  “There’re mornings I have to be by myself.”

  He took another hit off the bottle. I clinked it with my fingernail. “If you’re depressed, this will screw you up proper.”

  “I’m glad to hear that from such a great source of wisdom on the subject.”

  I’d asked for it. “If I were you, I’d get together with my attorney and go to the department and make an addendum to my statement. See you around.”

  “What does ‘see you around’ mean?”

  “Let the dead bury the dead,” I said. “I’m done.”

  * * *

  I WENT BACK to the office and tried to clean out my head. It wasn’t an easy job. Being a cop rarely is, at least if you take the job seriously. My in-basket was full of paperwork. There were at least twenty messages on my machine, including two from Clete and one from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department and one from the widow of T. J. Dartez. My first call was to her.

  “They say you gonna get off,” she said.

  “Who did, Ms. Dartez?”

  “I know you done it. You gonna lie to God? You gonna tell Him you ain’t done it?”

  “I’m sorry about your husband’s death. But your husband was not sorry about the death of my wife.”

  “You going to hell, you.”

  My second call was to a female detective at the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department named Sherry Picard whom I’d never met but had heard about. She said, “Kevin Penny says you and your friend Clete Purcel are harassing him. In your case, with a pool cue.”

  “Penny is a lot of laughs,” I replied. “I’ve never figured out how he stays on the street.”

  “Is there a second meaning there?”

  “How can I be of assistance to you?” I said.

  “I doubt if you can. I’ve run Penny in two or three times. If you’ve got a problem with him, let us know. In the meantime, stay out of matters that are not in your jurisdiction.”

  Clete’s messages were about the little boy Homer and the possibility that Carolyn Ardoin was in danger at the hands of Kevin Penny or Maximo and JuJu. By the time I had cleaned up my messages, my head was splitting. I went to the water cooler and took two aspirins, then returned to my office and lowered the blinds on the door glass.

  Helen believed I was not responsible for Dartez’s death, but only because Baby Cakes hadn’t identified me and instead had identified Kevin Penny. In other words, I’d caught a break. The only forensic evidence against me was the smudged fingerprints on the broken window glass of Dartez’s pickup truck. I could simply say I had been at his house and touched the glass there. Except I would be lying.

  In the meantime, I had interviewed Penny and later beaten him half to death with a pool cue and almost drowned him in the commode, apparently without his being completely aware that I was the man he had followed the night Dartez died. Better put, he had probably followed my vehicle rather than me.

  I might skate, but Penny might also.

  People are shocked when they learn that cops sometimes salt the crime scene and commit perjury. Or maybe they cancel a bad guy’s ticket and fold his hand over a throw-down and squeeze off a round with his dead finger to make sure gunpowder residue is on his person. Call it situational ethics, call it murder. It’s a big temptation, particularly when it comes to guys like Kevin Penny and perhaps even Spade Labiche.

  * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER, Clete got a call made by a staff member at Lafayette General. Carolyn Ardoin had been transferred from an emergency unit in Jennings and admitted at 4:16 A.M. She was in the ICU and had asked the staff member to call Clete.

  “She was in an accident?” Clete said.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “How bad is she?”

  “Sir, we can’t give out specific information.”

  “Can you put her on the phone?”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Is she going to live?”

  “Sir, she’s getting the best of care. That’s all I can say.”

  “Put someone on with the authority to give out information. Is there a cop there?”

  “No. How far away are you?”

  “Twenty miles.”

  “Drive carefully. I’ll tell her you’re coming. I know that will make her happy.”

  “Don’t do this to me.”

  “
I’m sorry,” the staff member said.

  Clete took the four-lane into Lafayette, the needle at ninety. He parked illegally and went through the emergency room into the intensive care unit before anyone could stop him. “Where’s Carolyn Ardoin?” he asked at the desk.

  “Are you a relative?” the nurse said.

  “Her grandfather. Where is she?”

  The nurse raised her eyes from her paperwork.

  “I’m a close friend,” he said. “Was it an accident?”

  “No,” the nurse said. “Follow me.”

  Carolyn was behind a screen. When he saw her, he tried to keep his face empty, his eyes flat. “How you doin’, kid?” he said.

  There were streaks of dried blood in her hair. Both eyes were swollen as big as plums. Her bottom lip was stitched. There were finger-shaped bruises on her throat and neck and shoulders.

  “Who did this?” he said.

  “I was unloading groceries in the driveway. It was dark. Somebody hit me.”

  “Was Homer with you?”

  “He’s at my mother’s.”

  “Was it one guy or more than one guy?”

  “I just remember a fist hitting me. Then I was on the ground, and the fists kept pounding my face. I tried to speak—” She couldn’t finish.

  “I’m going to take care of Homer. I’m also going to find out who did this. What did the Jennings cops say?”

  “They just asked me questions. One was a woman. Sherry something.”

  “How’d they treat you?”

  “Fine. Everyone has been kind.”

  “I have to use the bathroom,” Clete said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “There’s one here.”

  “It’s too small for a guy my size.”

  He went down the hall to a restroom in the waiting area, but not for the reason he had given. An old Technicolor video, one that held interest for fewer and fewer people these days, had begun replaying itself on a screen inside his head. The slick hung in the air above the ville, its rotary blades throbbing. He heard the treads of the zippo track clanking out of the rice paddy and saw an orange flame arch out of its cannon and smelled a stench like burning kerosene and animal hair. People were running, the hooches bursting alight, the ammunition cached under them popping like strings of Chinese firecrackers. Clete cupped water onto his face and dried himself with paper towels, then went to Carolyn’s room, the video not finished, a navy corpsman from Birmingham hitting him with a syrette of morphine: “Hang on, gunny. Here comes the dust-off. You’re Freedom Bird–bound.”

  Carolyn had fallen asleep. He stroked her hair and felt a pain in his chest that he had nowhere to put. Two or three faces floated before his eyes like helium balloons with ugly features painted on them. As he stroked her hair, his left hand curled and uncurled and curled again. He knew where he was going and what he would do when he got there. But there was something else he had do first.

  * * *

  HE CALLED ME on his cell and told me about the assault.

  “Where are you now?” I said.

  “On the way to Lake Charles. Penny’s little boy is with Carolyn’s mother.”

  “Leave him there.”

  “The mother is an invalid.”

  “You’re not set up to take care of a child, Clete.”

  “I hired a black lady. Now butt out.”

  “Don’t do what you’re thinking about.”

  “This isn’t an act of random violence. It happened in her driveway. Either Penny, Maximo Soza, JuJu Ladrine, or any combination of the three did this.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Clete—”

  “Out,” he said.

  * * *

  I CALLED TONY nine Ball at his office and told the secretary who I was.

  “Just a moment,” she said. I looked at the second hand on my watch. Thirty-three seconds passed. “I’m sorry, he’s still in a meeting.”

  “Tell him to pick up or I’ll be over there in ten minutes and shove that phone up his ass.”

  One minute later, Tony was on the line. “What’d you say to my secretary?”

  “Not to lie.”

  “So what’s so important you got to upset people with bad language?”

  “Nothing had better happen to Clete Purcel. We had a deal.”

  “What deal?”

  “I gave you an intro to some producers and agents. That means nobody lays a hand on Clete.”

  “Those guys in Hollywood like me. Why should I be mad at Purcel or you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you take my call?”

  “I was indisposed. She’s leaving now. Out the back door. The best piece of ass in New Orleans. Thanks for ruining one of the few good moments in my current life.”

  * * *

  THREE DAYS PASSED with no word from Clete. Then I got a call from Detective Sherry Picard in the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department.

  “What can I do for you?” I said.

  “I’m at a crime scene south of Jennings. Can you come over here?”

  “In our previous conversation, you told me to stay out of your jurisdiction.”

  “I’m at Kevin Penny’s trailer. The coroner won’t get here for a couple of hours. I want you to see this.”

  “See what?”

  “Use your imagination,” she replied.

  * * *

  IT WAS RAINING and the sun was shining when I got there. Wildflowers were blooming in a field across the road. The crime scene tape was up; an ambulance and two cruisers were parked by Penny’s trailer. A tall woman with jet-black hair, wearing dark slacks and a short-sleeve denim shirt and western boots, the kind with rounded steel tips, stood with an umbrella by the motorcycle shed. She bent over and picked up a Styrofoam fast-food container and put it into an evidence bag. Three cops in uniform lounged in the cruisers, smoking, tipping the ashes outside the windows.

  I parked my cruiser outside the tape and put on my rain hat and walked to the shed. She looked at her watch. “Good timing. The coroner will be here earlier than he thought.”

  “This had better be worth it, Detective,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Giving parts of information over the phone.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Because I worry about Kevin Penny’s child,” I said.

  She looked away and then back at me, as though making a reevaluation. She had pale skin and lean features, like an Indian’s, and a mole by the side of her mouth. “Get your latex on and be careful where you step. One of the uniforms puked on the porch.”

  The body was on the floor, dressed only in sweatpants, the naked stomach white and mottled and bloated like a frog’s, the wrists pulled taut above the head and fastened to the floor with toggle bolts. There were pools of black blood under both knees and elbows. The left ear was clogged with blood and brain matter. In the corner was an electric drill matted with spray, the extension cord still plugged in the socket.

  “Ever see anything like this?” Picard said.

  “Overseas.”

  “Vietnam?”

  I shook off her question. “Who found him?”

  “One of Penny’s chippies. He was supposed to take her shopping today.”

  “Why’d you want me over here, Detective?”

  “You and Penny go back.”

  “Not a good choice of words,” I said.

  “He and Clete Purcel go back.”

  “Clete tried to help Penny’s kid.”

  “Who would you make for this?” she said.

  “For a vic like this, half the planet.”

  “Let’s go outside,” she said.

  The rain had quit. The swaths of flowers in the field looked like twisted rainbows surrounded by green grass. I wanted to walk among them and keep walking, over the edge of the earth. “Why were you picking up trash by the shed?”

  “Somebody was eating fried chicken there and throwing
the bones on the ground. I don’t think it was Penny.”

  “Penny was a slob.”

  “The pond is full of trash, but there’s none out here. The chrome and paint on the motorcycle are clean.”

  Not bad.

  “Clete’s not your guy,” I said.

  “How about you? The word is you might be up on a murder beef.”

  “You must know an Iberia detective named Spade Labiche.”

  “I try to stay upwind from dog shit,” she said.

  The coroner’s car turned off the asphalt road onto the dirt track that led to the trailer.

  “You need me for anything else?” I said.

  “Nope.” Her mouth formed into a button.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  “You haven’t bagged anything from inside?”

  “Not till the coroner gets here,” she said.

  “There’s a gold cigarette lighter in a corner, right by the mop.”

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “I’d handle it with special care,” I said.

  She looked at me blankly.

  “You might have to get downwind from dog shit after all,” I said.

  I WENT TO helen’s office and told her what I had seen at Kevin Penny’s trailer. I didn’t mention the gold lighter. She leaned back in her chair. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “We lost the one guy who could cut me loose on Dartez’s murder.”

  “Who would have that kind of motivation?” she said.

  “Take your choice.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “The person who did it is a psychopath. Penny was tortured for reasons of information or revenge. That leaves lots of possibilities.”

  “How about Tony Nemo’s nematodes?” she said.

  “I think Maximo Soza might be a candidate,” I said.

  “How about JuJu?”

  “He does what he’s told.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “I wanted Penny for the Dartez killing. We’re going to have trouble with the DA. This stinks.”

  “There was a gold cigarette lighter on the floor of Penny’s trailer.”