The Neon Rain

by James Lee Burke

  “What’s the haps, Swede?” Clete said.

  Swede looked around but kept walking.

  “Wait up,” Clete said.

  “Oh, hey, what say, Purcel?” Swede replied, studying his watch. “How’s it hanging?”

  “I saw you on the set behind Albania Plantation. You were wearing a Confederate uniform.”

  “Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.”

  “They paying you okay?”

  “Yeah, union scale, all that stuff.”

  Clete waited for Swede to thank him. It didn’t happen. “You don’t have a conflict with your chauffeur job?”

  “The Nightingales are flexible. Sorry, I got to boogie.”

  “Yeah, the sky’s about to fall. Look at me.”

  “Like I said—” Swede began.

  “No, you didn’t say anything. Your eyes are going everywhere except my face. In the meantime, you’re blowing me off. It’s called rude.”

  “Thanks for what you did. I got a ton of things to do. Nice seeing you.”

  Clete stepped in his way. “Don’t talk shit to me, Swede.”

  Swede looked like an animal with a limb caught in a trap.

  “Did you know fear smells like soiled cat litter?” Clete said.

  Swede almost ran through the door.

  * * *

  THAT WEEKEND, SOUTHERN Louisiana was sweltering, thunder cracking as loud as cannons in the night sky; at sunrise, the storm drains clogged with dead beetles that had shells as hard as pecans. It was the kind of weather we associated with hurricanes and tidal surges and winds that ripped tin roofs off houses and bounced them across sugarcane fields like crushed beer cans; it was the kind of weather that gave the lie to the sleepy Southern culture whose normalcy we so fiercely nursed and protected from generation to generation.

  I could not sleep Sunday night, and on Monday I woke with a taste like pennies in my mouth and a sense that my life was unspooling before me, that the world in which I lived was a fabrication, that the charity abiding in the human breast was a collective self-delusion, and that the bestial elements we supposedly exorcised from civilized society were not only still with us but had come to define us, although we sanitized them as drones and offshore missiles marked “occupant” and land mines that killed children decades after they were set.

  These are signs of clinical depression or maybe a realistic vision of the era in which we live. During moments like these, no matter the time of day or night, I had found release only in a saloon. The long bar and brass foot rail, the wood-bladed fans, the jars of cracklings and pickled eggs and sausages, the coldness of bottled beer or ice-sheathed mugs, the wink in the barmaid’s eye and the shine on the tops of her breasts, the tumblers of whiskey that glowed with an amber radiance that seemed almost ethereal, the spectral bartender without a last name, the ringing of the pinball machine, all these things became my cathedral, a home beneath the sea, and just as deadly.

  Thoughts like these are probably a form of alcoholic insanity. But on that particular Monday morning, I preferred my own madness to what I had begun to feel, as Helen and Clete did—namely, that an inchoate sickness was in our midst, and it was as palpable in the hot wetness of the dawn as the smell of lions in the street at high noon.

  At 9:33 A.M., I received another call from Sherry Picard.

  “I need to talk to you or Clete,” she said. “Since he’s not in his office and not answering his cell phone, I called you.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “I was warned about you two.”

  “This is a business line,” I said. “If you have a personal issue, call me at home.”

  “My ass. Did you try to dime me with the FBI?”

  “That’s probably one of the craziest things I’ve heard in a while.”

  “Because an agent just left my office. I have the distinct feeling that I’m being looked at for the Penny homicide.”

  “Talk to the U.S. Justice Department,” I said. “The feds hate Clete’s guts. I don’t have contact with them. Most of them wouldn’t take the time to spit on us.”

  “Don’t give me that. They’re in contact with your boss, which means they’re in contact with you.”

  “Why would either Clete or I dime you, Detective?” I said.

  “Because I told him we’re not right for each other. It was fun and now we move on. It was nothing personal. I thought he was a sweet guy.”

  “Rejection is not personal. That’s wonderful.”

  “You’d better stay out of my life and my career,” she said.

  “Be assured I will.”

  “I have a second reason for calling. Levon Broussard just came into the prosecutor’s office and confessed to torturing Penny to death. What do you think of that, slick?”

  THAT WAS NOT all Levon did. After confessing to an ADA in the Jeff Davis courthouse, he went out the side door, drove to a low-bottom joint north of Four Corners in Lafayette, got plowed out of his head, and at sunset drove across his lawn to the gallery on the front of his house and announced to his wife, “Hi, honey, I’m home.”

  Helen called me on my cell. “Get over to Levon Broussard’s place. It looks like he’s lost it.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Who knows? His wife called in the 911. He’s in the yard with a Confederate flag and a sword, ranting at the sky. He fired a flare pistol across the bayou and asked some people in a boat to come in for a drink. I think they’re still emptying out their shoes.”

  I drove to his house. The sky was a red-and-black ink wash, the oaks he had named for Confederate officers chattering with birds. A patrol car was parked in the neighbor’s drive; another was parked by the tennis courts across the two-lane highway. I got out of my pickup and walked around the side of the house and through a line of camellia bushes into the backyard. He was sitting at a folding table under a huge oak by the bayou, the faded battle flag he had kept encased in glass hanging from an overhead branch. It looked like cheesecloth against the sunset. The dried blood of the drummer boy reminded me of the coppery stains on the Shroud of Turin.

  Levon lifted a bottle of Cold Duck above his head. “Welcome to Chaucer’s blue-collar good knight. Or is it Everyman I see? Wrong evening for bromides, Davey.”

  His face was oily and dissolute with booze. He had stabbed his great-grandfather’s sword into the sod by his foot. His teeth were stained with wine.

  “Looks like you’ve had quite a day,” I said.

  “How’s that, Davey?”

  “Confessing to an ADA in Jennings. Scaring your friends in New Iberia.”

  “Not so about scaring my friends.”

  I nodded at the flag lifting in the breeze above us. “That should be in a controlled environment, shouldn’t? Protected from dust and humidity?”

  “It survived Yankee artillery at Owl Creek. That’s where the Eighteenth Louisiana got torn to pieces. In fifteen minutes, forty percent were casualties.”

  “You can’t win on yesterday’s box score. Why lose because of it?”

  “That one zipped by me.”

  “The past has no reality. The world belongs to the living.”

  “You know better. You see them in the mists out at Spanish Lake.”

  “See whom?”

  “I love you for your diction, if nothing else. The boys in butternut. You see them slogging through the cypresses.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “They did,” he replied.

  I wanted to believe he was mad. Unfortunately, I no longer knew what madness was.

  “Why did you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?” I asked.

  “You don’t believe me capable of killing the man who raped my wife?”

  “You didn’t try to kill the black guys who raped her in Wichita.”

  “I’m making up for lost time.”

  “Not with toggle bolts and an electric drill.”

  “I thought that was an inventive touch.”

  “Quit lying, Levon.�
� I pulled the sword from the ground and stuck the brass guard in his face. “Look at the names on there: Cemetery Hill, Sharpsburg, Gaines’s Mill, Chancellorsville. Would the soldier who was at these places torture a man to death, even a piece of shit like Kevin Penny?”

  “No, he would not. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t.”

  “Good show. No cigar,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I placed my hand lightly on his upper arm. He shook his head and sucked in his cheeks. “Don’t underestimate the situation, Davey.”

  “Call me Davey again, and I’ll break your jaw.”

  He grinned up at me. “You’re a good guy. Butt out of this. Let others do their job.”

  “You want one of our guys to cap you because you can’t do it yourself?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Get a card in the Screen Actors Guild. Come on. I’ll take you down to City Hall. Your lawyer will work out something. Helen isn’t going to let the guys in Jeff Davis cannibalize you.”

  I heard the French doors open on the back porch, which was built of brick, high off the ground, and hung with ceiling fans. “Leave him alone,” Rowena said.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I said.

  “He’s sick,” she said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  I looked at her hands. They were empty. I walked toward her. “Don’t be a problem for me, Miss Rowena. Go back inside. We’ll take good care of him. You have my word.”

  “He’s innocent.”

  “I believe that.”

  “So leave him here. Talk to him when he’s sober.”

  “There’s a bigger question we need to deal with. Why is he confessing to a crime he’s not capable of committing?” There was a shine in his eyes. I looked at her a long time. “The question stands, Miss Rowena.”

  “I’ll bring him to City Hall with our attorney in the morning.”

  “You can bring yourself, but he’s going to jail. Right now.”

  “Hold up there, Dave,” Levon said behind me. “No need for this.” He lifted the flag off the tree with the tip of his great-grandfather’s sword. “Let me put this away and we’ll be toggling off,” he said.

  I looked back at Rowena. For the first time in the case involving the Jeff Davis Eight and Tony Nine Ball and Jimmy Nightingale and Levon Broussard and Kevin Penny, I knew what had happened.

  * * *

  CLETE PURCEL BELIEVED in straight lines. “Bust ’em or dust ’em” was his mantra. But there was a caveat. Clete was never what the Mob called a cowboy. He could be a violent man, but with few exceptions, his violence was committed in defense of others. Consequently, his greatest virtue became his greatest vulnerability, and his enemies knew it.

  He told me about his encounter with Swede Jensen at Walmart, and about Jensen’s guilt and fear, or at least Clete’s perception of it. Then Clete stopped answering my calls. I should have known what was coming next.

  * * *

  CLETE KEPT A custom-made extra-long foot locker in the garret above his office. In it were a cut-down Mossberg semi-auto twelve-gauge he’d taken off a hit man in Las Vegas, a Glock, two Berettas, a .44 Magnum, a derringer a deranged prostitute had pulled on him during a vice raid, a sap and a blackjack and a baton, a slim-jim, brass knuckles, a gun that fired a bean bag, Mace, a tear gas pen, a carton of flash grenades, handcuffs, wrist and waist chains, and the most unusual drop I’d ever seen, an engraved snub-nose gold-over-silver Colt Police .32 with ivory grips that only a collector or a rich man would own.

  The drop came from the safe of a mobster who operated a lodge and casino above Lake Tahoe. Because the gun was a collectible, its serial numbers, all of them intact, were obviously registered, and the discovery of the pistol at a crime scene would lead the authorities back to the mobster, long dead, and more important, to the casino culture he represented.

  Tuesday afternoon, Clete showered and shaved and put on fresh sport clothes and had his hair cut and drove to the Nightingale plantation outside Franklin. He carried the drop in an ankle holster and a scoped 1903 Springfield rifle in the trunk. The azaleas were still in bloom when he turned in to the driveway, the St. Augustine grass a deep blue-green, the four-o’clocks open in the shade of the oak trees. He could feel a surge of adrenaline come alive in his chest and wrists and hands, not unlike the high of going up the Mekong in a swift boat behind twin fifty-calibers, the stern dipping and swaying in the trough.

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T GET far. Security came out of the carriage house, from the patio, and a state police car and a parked SUV with tinted windows. The men in suits were wearing shades. As Clete slowed the Caddy, he unstrapped the ankle holster and let it fall to the floor, then braked and lowered the window. A close-cropped man wearing shades stared into his face. “This is a security area.”

  “Y’all got the nuclear codes inside?” Clete said, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

  “Is there someone in particular you’re looking for?”

  “Jimmy Nightingale. I’m Clete Purcel. I’m a PI out of New Orleans and New Iberia.”

  “I’m afraid you’re not on our visitors list for today.”

  “How about telling Mr. Nightingale I’m here, and then we’ll take it from there?”

  The man at Clete’s window looked over his shoulder. “You can turn your vehicle around in front of the house. Then get back on the road, please.”

  “That doesn’t sound too cool,” Clete said.

  “Is that a firearm inside your jacket?”

  “I’m licensed to carry.”

  “You need to leave, sir.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Step out of your vehicle, please.”

  With the back of his foot, Clete pushed the drop under the seat. “I’m at your service.” He got out of the Caddy and lifted his hands and smiled. He towered over most of the security personnel. “What’s next?”

  “I’m going to reach inside your jacket for your piece,” the man in the suit said. “Are you comfortable with that?”

  “As long as you give it back.”

  The man in shades removed the snub-nose from Clete’s shoulder holster and handed it to a St. Mary’s Parish sheriff’s deputy. “Could I have your keys?”

  Clete pulled the keys from the ignition and dropped them into the security man’s palm. The St. Mary deputy popped the trunk with them. “He’s got a scoped rifle and an M1 in here.”

  “They’re legal,” Clete said. “I shoot at a target range. How about giving this stuff a rest?”

  “Stop dancing around with this guy,” a voice in the background said.

  The voice belonged to a tall man wearing western-cut pants and a tight cowboy shirt and mirror-shined, needle-nosed Tony Lamas and a straw cowboy hat with a thin black bejeweled band around the crown. His gray mustache was clipped and as stiff as a toothbrush. “Remember me?”

  “No,” Clete said.

  “Angola in the eighties. I herded some of the Big Stripes.”

  Clete saw a hazy image in his mind, a gunbull mounted on horseback atop the Mississippi levee, silhouetted against a dull red sun, his expression lost in the shadow of his hat. A sweat-soaked black convict was mule-jerking a stump from the silt, ripping it loose in a shower of dirt.

  “Wooster,” Clete said.

  “Good memory.”

  “You shot a kid.”

  “I made a Christian out of a nigger.”

  “You went to work for Tony Squid,” Clete said.

  “Who?” Wooster said.

  “Is Nightingale here or not?” Clete said.

  “It’s none of your goddamn business,” Wooster said.

  Clete blew air out of one nostril and looked sideways. “How y’all think this is going to play out?”

  “With you hauling your ass out of here,” Wooster said.

  Clete opened and closed his hands at his sides. They felt stiff and thick, the veins in his forearms cording. “You guys deal the play.”

  Then Jimm
y Nightingale came around the side of the house in tennis clothes, a racquet over his shoulder, his skin shiny, not a strand of his bronze-colored hair out of place. “Hey, slow down out there.”

  “We’ve got it under control, Mr. Nightingale,” Wooster said.

  “Clete’s my friend. What are you doing out here, big fellow?”

  “Long time no see. Not since I ran into you and Bobby Earl at the casino.”

  “How could I forget? You took a drain in poor Bobby’s car.”

  “I called you a cunt, and you had me taken out in handcuffs.”

  “We all have our off nights,” Nightingale said.

  “You’ve got quite a place here.”

  “Why don’t you join us out back for a drink?”

  Clete wondered how the buried images of the Indians dying in the explosions of the satchel charges did not crack through the perfection of Nightingale’s perfect egg-shaped face, and leave it like pieces of porcelain at his feet.

  “Somebody tried to blow up my shit,” Clete said.

  “I didn’t know about that.”

  “If he’d pulled it off, he would have killed a young boy I take care of. That’s a big problem for me.”

  “Let me know if I can help. A little influence never hurts.”

  “The authorities usually see me as the problem. They’re often right. See, I’m going to square this on my own.”

  “Give ’em heck,” Nightingale said.

  “I love that kind of language. ‘Give ’em heck.’ ‘You betcha.’ It’s folksy.”

  “Let me take him out of here, Mr. Nightingale,” Wooster said.

  “I want to be your friend, Clete,” Nightingale said.

  “You know that old expression ‘I don’t have an enemy in the world’? As long as I’m alive, you’ll always have one.”

  Nightingale laughed. “God, you’ve got the guts of a beer-glass brawl, Purcel. Come work for me.”

  “I need my piece back.”

  “Give it to him,” Nightingale said to the security man.