The Neon Rain

by James Lee Burke

  But while the rest of us were absorbed with our minutiae, Jimmy Nightingale was on the move. He appeared on network morning shows. He was the emissary of the New South, urbane and humble and jocular, a self-deprecating glint of the rogue in his eye. The host or hostess threw him softball questions about his casinos, his oligarchical history, his association with scum like Tony the Squid. He was the aviator who flew biplanes under bridges, an oilman who warned about global warming, an advocate for rural blacks whose neighborhoods were dumping ponds for petroleum waste. One host compared him to the young Bill Clinton, another to the young John F. Kennedy. When Jimmy got finished with an interview, the audience had one reaction: thunderous heartfelt applause.

  On a dark night, the clouds crackling with dry lightning, Clete Purcel was knocking back shots in an end-of-the-line mixed-race joint in North Lafayette, the kind that had a pine-plank bar and red bulbs above the mirrors and where the clientele copulated in their cars without embarrassment. It was set back from the highway in a black neighborhood where some of the streets were still unpaved and desiccated privies still stood in backyards. Clete had a shot glass and a small pitcher of beer in front of him, and he stood rather than sat at the bar so he could watch the door. The air was thick was smoke, the restroom door open and stinking of urine and ammonia and weed. He could only guess at the race of the people around him.

  A woman in jeans and boots and a western shirt came through the front door, her black hair tied up with a bandana. He had to rub his eyes with the backs of his wrist to make sure his vision wasn’t failing him. She stood next to him and looked around. “This is where you hang out?”

  “I’m supposed to meet a skip,” he replied.

  “What’d he skip on?”

  “Felony assault, a fifty-grand bond. Were you looking for me?”

  “I went by the motor court. Homer was alone. He said you were here.”

  He felt his face burn. “I check on him every thirty minutes.”

  “He’s a nice kid.”

  “I know that, Miss Sherry. You want a drink?”

  “Just a glass.” She tinked a fingernail against the pitcher. “Let’s go over in the corner. God, what a dump.”

  They sat at a table by a painted-over window, a wood-bladed fan turning overhead. She had carried a clean glass from the bar. He poured it full, the foam running over the edge. He kept his eyes on the door, waiting for a skip who was probably a no-show.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about the Penny investigation,” she said.

  “Levon Broussard is going down for it, right?”

  “Too many people think Penny got what he deserved. Tony Nine Ball’s influences aren’t to be taken lightly, either.”

  “Tony got to somebody?” Clete said.

  “That’s why squids have tentacles.”

  “Dave Robicheaux thought the guy in red tennis shoes was going to clip Tony.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “The guy’s a cleaner.”

  “Somebody bigger than Tony Nemo is pulling the strings?”

  “Or the agenda is bigger than Nemo’s,” he said. “Do you know who was the only guy to deal successfully with the Mafia?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Mussolini. I grew up in the Irish Channel with those guys. I worked for some of them. In Vegas and Reno and Montana.”

  Her eyes searched his. “Yeah?”

  “They broke my hand with a car door. Later, some of them went off-line,” he said.

  “You’re a funny guy. I don’t mean like strange. You’re just a different kind of guy.”

  Once again Clete felt his old enemy come back. As a boy, he’d hated delivering milk off his father’s truck to the back doors of the rich in the Garden District. He’d hated the welfare store where the clothes he was given were generic and ill-fitting; he’d hated the cops who’d hauled his parents out of the house when they were drunk and fighting; he’d hated his father for beating him with a razor strop and making him kneel all night on grains of rice; he’d hated a nun who’d told him he was unwashed, and a priest who’d shut the confessional window in his face when he was twelve years old. These moments should have disappeared long ago, but every time Clete looked into the eyes of a normal person, the dead coals he had carried for decades burst alight, giving life to every dark memory in his unconscious, telling him once again he was worthless in the sight of God and man.

  “I don’t like to talk much about myself,” he said. “Not because I’m humble. On my best day, I never got more than a C-minus. That includes time in the Crotch.”

  “I checked you out. You have the Navy Cross.”

  “I got it while I was running in the wrong direction. How about we ditch yesterday’s box score?”

  He tilted the pitcher to fill her glass, but she covered it with her hand.

  “Sometimes I get the blues,” she said. “That’s when I know I shouldn’t drink too much. If I do, I really get the blues. I like Emmylou Harris’s line: ‘I got the rhythm, and I don’t need the blues.’ ”

  “You’re talking about your husband?”

  “He was a West Point graduate. He could have been an academic, but he went to Ranger school. He loved the army. He was killed by friendly fire.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He stole a look at her eyes. She was looking at the bar. A man was telling a dirty joke to two women, both of them disheveled, grinning. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I’m not too smart about these things. I’m old, too.”

  “So is the earth. Is your guy going to show?”

  Clete glanced at his watch, the same one he’d owned since the Corps. The hands had a soft green luminosity. “Probably not.”

  “I’ll buy you a fish sandwich and a cup of coffee at McDonald’s,” she said.

  “I don’t want to leave Homer alone too long.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Another thing. I was involved with this lady. I’m not now, but it wasn’t long ago, and she’s a nice lady.”

  “The social worker?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded.

  “You’re beautiful, Miss Sherry. You got guts, too. I mean, working with some of those assholes in your department.”

  “I got you. Lay off the personal inventory.”

  “I don’t want to walk out of here feeling bad,” he said. Had he just said that? Why did he never have the words that accurately described his feelings? “I didn’t mean—”

  “I’ve got to pee,” she said.

  When she returned from the women’s room, she filled her glass with beer and drank it. “I’d better get going.”

  “How about that fish sandwich?” he said.

  She followed him to McDonald’s in her car. They ate in a booth. Heat lightning flared in the clouds and died somewhere over the Gulf. She said little. He wondered about the images she had seen through the telescopic sight on a sniper’s rifle, images she had created with the slow squeeze of a trigger.

  “You go somewhere in your own head sometimes?” she said.

  “On occasion.”

  “You know what they say.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Don’t go into a bad neighborhood by yourself.”

  “It’s the only neighborhood I have,” he replied.

  She finished her sandwich and wiped her mouth. There was lipstick on the paper napkin when she crumpled it in her hand.

  “There’s a lady who stays over with Homer when I go out of town,” he said.

  “It’s your call,” she said.

  He cupped his cell phone. “I’ll be outside.”

  The motel was halfway to Opelousas on the four-lane. There was a piney woods behind it and a fountain in front that glittered with pink and blue lights. She followed him there and went into the lobby by his side.

  * * *

  DURING THE NIGHT he dreamed of a ville burning, the sparks spinning into the sky. Then t
he dream changed and he heard the 105s coming in short on his position, a whistling sound like truck tires on a wet highway. When he woke, the ceiling was shaking with thunder. He went into the bathroom in his skivvies and opened the window. The only sound he heard was the wind in the pines, their needles orange with drought and blight.

  When he went back to bed, he took his snub-nose out of its holster and slipped it under his pillow for reasons he didn’t understand. Audie Murphy did it. And probably thousands of other guys who never told anybody about it. Why not Clete Purcel? He lay awake most of the night, trying to provide himself explanations that had eluded him all his life.

  * * *

  ON A SATURDAY morning, Alafair came back early from filming outside St. Martinville. She went into the kitchen and took one of my diet Dr Peppers out of the icebox and drank it from the can.

  “Something happen with the Hollywood crowd?” I said.

  “They’re midlevel pond scum. Neither good nor bad. Just run-of-the-mill scum.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Levon Broussard.”

  “What’s wrong with Levon?”

  “He’s a closet elitist. Rather than work with conventional film people, he signed on with a bunch of simian throwbacks who hide behind sunglasses and are afraid to talk at the table because they sound like they have throat cancer and a vocabulary of fewer than a dozen words. In the meantime, he pretends.”

  “Pretends what?”

  “That he’s on a mission. He insists on hiring only union people. The food has to be of a certain organic quality. The actors should be included in our script meetings. The black actors have to be given more lines. I think this is all a cover-up for what’s really in his head.”

  “What’s in his head?”

  “Guilt. Hatred of the truth about his ancestors.”

  “You knew this, Alf,” I said.

  “I didn’t know Levon would show up every morning unshaven with booze on his breath and crazy changes in the script.”

  “Maybe it’s time to cut loose from these guys,” I said.

  “I don’t want to lose my work.”

  “Then don’t worry about it.”

  “Levon claims he didn’t kill Kevin Penny. I think he’s capable of it. I also think he’s capable of doing Jimmy Nightingale harm.”

  “You’re suggesting Levon might want to kill him?”

  “Levon says Nightingale airdropped explosives on an Indian village in South America and killed women and children. That’s not true, is it?”

  “I’m afraid it is, Alf. Jimmy told me about it.”

  She couldn’t hide the look on her face. At age five she had survived an army massacre of her Salvadoran village. The soldiers had used machetes to hack open the bodies of pregnant Indian women.

  “Why doesn’t the media say something about it?” she said.

  “If people don’t care about eight poor women murdered in Jefferson Davis Parish, why would they care about some oilmen bombing Indians in Latin America?”

  “Maybe Nightingale deserves a bullet in the face,” she said.

  “I think he’s remorseful.”

  “After the fact,” she said. “What a piece of shit.”

  “Have another diet Doc with me,” I said.

  “At least I had one laugh this morning.”

  “At what?” I said, glad that we were through with the subject of Jimmy Nightingale and Tony Nemo and Levon Broussard.

  “This cute little man was behind the cordon when we were filming a scene in St. Martinville. He had on a pale blue baseball cap and clothes out of the box from Penny’s. The tags were still on. He looked like a big ceramic doll. He’d read two of my novels.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, my interest fading.

  “He was eating a fudge bar. He made me think of Truman Capote without the blubber.”

  Mon Tee Coon was waddling through the backyard, side by side with our old warrior cat, Snuggs.

  “Are you listening?” Alafair asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I’d love to use him as a character. He was such a cuddly little guy. He said his nickname was Smiley.”

  “Cuddly?” I popped a Dr Pepper and went outside.

  * * *

  CHESTER DROVE A compact he had stolen down the bayou road, until he saw the refurbished antebellum home of the Nightingales. He passed the driveway and the tunnel of oaks that led to the spacious porch and the second-story balconies and dormers and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave the main house the look of a baroque paddle wheeler on the Mississippi. He crossed a drawbridge and parked by a canebrake and lifted the sniper rifle from the trunk and entered an empty boathouse that had a walkway built along one wall. Across the Teche, he could see the sloping green yard of the Nightingale home and a swimming pool and a bathhouse spangled with sunlight sifting like spiritual grace through the oak limbs and Spanish moss.

  Chester also carried a hand-crafted leather folder with pockets and braided borders and a bucking horse and cowboy rider stenciled on it. The folder had been given to him years ago by a friend he’d met at a state mental hygiene clinic. The friend had told Chester he’d murdered three people while hitchhiking across the country; the friend had considered Chester a man who would understand.

  “You shouldn’t hurt people who give you a free car ride,” Chester had said.

  “I needed their car,” the friend had said.

  “Did you hurt a child? If you lie, you know what will happen.”

  “I’m sorry, Chester. Don’t be mad. I didn’t hurt no kids.”

  “Let’s have no more ugly talk.”

  “No more. I promise.”

  “That’s a good boy,” Chester had said. His nostrils were flaring, his breath out of control.

  In the pouches of his folder were his index cards wrapped with a rubber band. The cards were in numerical order. Each one had a drawing on it depicting the stages of the job he had been assigned. The system never failed him. If you had no connection to the target, and if the target deserved his fate—which they all did—it was easy to walk up on the target with a smile on your face and click the off switch on the side of the target’s head and walk away. He’d done it with an ice pick to a rapist on a subway in New York City, and had covered the dead man’s face with a raincoat and sat in the next car until the train pulled in to the station and the body tumbled out of the seat.

  Of course there were occasions when he did it in self-defense, when people decided he was a half-grown man they could tease and torment, like the two drug dealers in Algiers or the deputy who gave him a bad time for simply walking down a backroad by the bayou. Chester didn’t like to think about those kinds of people. They made him grind his teeth, which were as small and rounded as pearls and loose in his gums because of the untreated abscesses that were his constant companions in the orphanage. When a dentist warned him about grinding his teeth in his sleep and his obvious need to wear a guard during the nocturnal hours, Chester told the dentist he ground his teeth in the daylight, and the dentist had better watch his greedy mouth and concentrate on keeping his fingernails clean and washing his hands after he went to the bathroom.

  Chester sat down on a rolled tarp and rested the rifle across his thighs. The sun was white in the sky, the bayou a dirty chocolate color, dragonflies hanging over the cattails. A dead catfish floated upside down past the boathouse, its stomach as bloated as a softball. Then he saw a woman emerge from the back of the house. She was wearing a bathing suit that was as black as her hair; it fit her as tightly and smoothly as molded rubber. He released the box magazine from the rifle’s frame and lifted the telescopic sight to his eye. Suddenly, the face of the woman was a few feet from his. Her body was an artwork, a landscape of valleys and hills and mysterious places that yearned to be discovered and touched. He felt an erection tightening against his underwear.

  She walked slowly down the tile steps into the pool, one hand gliding along the hardness of a chromium rail, the water sl
ipping over her knees and thighs and the secret place he knew it was wrong to think about. Through the telescopic sight, he could see the sweat on her neck and the tops of her breasts, and he had to rest the rifle butt-down and clench the stock and kiss the barrel to stop his hands from shaking.

  He closed his eyes and began counting backward from a hundred to make his erection go down. Inside his head, he saw himself strapped to a bed, his underwear soaked with urine, his bare chest and legs crisscrossed with welts from a switch the operators of the orphanage had made him cut for himself. Then the kindly face of someone not much older than he was appeared above him. Her loving hands unbuckled the straps and removed his soiled underwear and washed his body and stroked his forehead.

  He forced himself to breathe slowly until he regained control. He wiped his saliva off the gun barrel, his desire reduced to little more than a guttering flame. He must not have impure thoughts, he told himself. They made him want to hurt people. Others enjoyed forbidden things, and he could not. The thoughts followed him around, and the more he tried to keep them out of his head, the more they enticed him. When nothing else worked, he wanted to hurt someone the way his friend the hitchhiker did, and he never wanted to be like the hitchhiker.

  He waited for the quivering in his shorts to subside completely, then he dared look at the swimming pool again.

  A man in a yellow bikini and flip-flops emerged from the house and walked toward the pool. A towel hung around his neck. Chester lifted the telescopic sight to his eye again. The man’s hair was peroxided, his artificially tanned torso plated with muscle, his phallus shaped like a fat banana inside the bikini. Chester put the crosshairs on the man’s face. There was something wrong with it. It was sunken in the center, the eyes and nose and mouth too small. It was a stupid face. Chester did not like people with stupid faces. He felt himself grinding his teeth again.

  Naughty boy, he thought gleefully.

  The man with the perfect body and stupid face dove into the pool and swam on his back. The woman joined him, then the two of them rested by the gutter in the deep end, closer than they should have been, perhaps their legs or stomachs touching. Chester fantasized about parking a big one at the base of the man’s brain. It would leave his head floating in chunks, dissolving like red smoke in the turquoise depths. Chester ran his tongue across his lips at the thought.