Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 02 - River Mourn

by Bill Hopkins

  He sat for a while on top of a picnic table in the glow of the street lamps, watching a black dog root through an overturned garbage can smelling of rotten bananas, a stench that brought Rosswell to the edge of vomiting. The dog cocked its floppy ears—one of them marred by a triangle sliced out, perhaps from a fight—and then stopped for a moment before growling, wheeling its head toward Rosswell, fixing its yellow eyes on him.

  When a young mother carrying a little girl arrived and began pushing the child on a swing, Rosswell’s stomach shot acid into the back of his mouth, stabbing his throat with hot forks the whole way up. The mother, a dark-complexioned woman not more than twenty-five, reminded him of Feliciana, Rosswell’s first true love, killed as she drove him home while he snored, passed out in the passenger seat. She never noticed the grain truck that plowed into her side of the car.

  Now, the woman in the park laughed. She talked and sang to the child, a dead ringer for the girl in the Middle East. The child, Rosswell estimated, had made no more than three or maybe four birthdays. Hideous memories of the girl he’d shot ate at his brain, crunching on the defenses he’d erected, trying to escape.

  The dog, its muzzle enshrouded with dirty foam, lost interest in Rosswell, slinking instead for the little girl. A low growl escaped the animal’s mouth. The girl waved to Rosswell. “Hey, Daddy.” The woman followed the girl’s gaze. “Rosswell,” she said.

  Rosswell touched the star of the necklace Maman Fribeau had given him and blinked.

  When the dog leaped, Rosswell screamed and the dog, the mother, and the child disappeared.

  Thursday Morning

  “Poverino, poverino.”

  Rosswell’s eyes were closed, yet he could see the red of the blood running through the veins of his eyelids thanks to a strong light. A hot light.

  Sunlight’s shining on me. Either that or a majorly serious spotlight. Where am I?

  “Poverino, you wake up.” Mrs. Bolzoni wiped Rosswell’s face with a cold cloth. “Poor thing, you now wake up, okay?”

  Rosswell opened his eyes. “Mrs. Bolzoni? What are you doing?” He pressed his palms to the ground. “Ouch.” Drought had consumed the area since no rain had fallen for over a month. The ground felt like concrete. Grass felt like tiny spears. The humid air smelled dry.

  “The insides, she’s upset, so I walk the park when the sun come up. You I find like this.” She bent over him, and her thick eyeglasses touched his face, a gesture that reminded him of an Italian movie he’d seen once. Both the significance of the hand movements and the movie title escaped him. “And I find also this.” Rosswell groaned when she stuck the Scotch bottle in his face. “Empty.”

  Rosswell could see that the bottle was empty. He felt it was totally unnecessary of Mrs. Bolzoni to point that out to him since he was staring down the neck of the bottle.

  A few drops splashed on Rosswell’s face. The odor caused a flip-flop in his stomach. He sucked in a few mouthfuls of air, forestalling the vomit creeping up from his insides. A thousand stinking Russian soldiers in their stinking stocking feet marched across his tongue. If his tongue swelled much more, he could choke.

  Rosswell coughed. “I did not fall off the wagon.”

  “You got no wagon. You walk over here.”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  Mrs. Bolzoni helped Rosswell stand. “You drink the espresso. Let’s go.” She tugged at him.

  Rosswell brushed ants from his shirt, then ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, hoping he didn’t discover any foreign objects, such as bugs, dead or alive.

  “Mrs. Bolzoni, let me stand for a moment. I don’t want to move quickly.”

  “You stand. I wait, poverino.”

  “Poverino. Does that mean dumb ass?”

  “Means you a poor thing what needs the help.”

  “I do not need help.” He swayed, toppling to the ground. All his muscles were in kinks and knots. “I am doing great.” He stood.

  “Then you slide to the back, as you say in the English.” Mrs. Bolzoni put her arm around Rosswell’s waist, urging him to start walking.

  “Please take a look at the wet spot there on the grass.”

  “You peed during the night?”

  “That is where I poured out the booze. I didn’t touch one drop. I had nightmares. I have bad dreams. Sometimes. Especially when I’m overcome with exhaustion.”

  “I take you to see that man who helped Alessandra. He help you, too.”

  “Alessandra?”

  “Mia bella figlia.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My beautiful daughter.”

  “Mrs. Bolzoni, did you…uh…see anyone over here. Besides me?”

  “I saw you before the sun down and before the bottle up. No one but you. Why you say that?”

  “I thought I saw someone. But it was only a bad dream. It seemed so real.”

  “My daughter she sees the things not there. But the man helped my daughter.”

  “What man is that?”

  “The pale man with the rusty hair.”

  Chapter 15

  Thursday Morning, continued

  Rosswell’s headache dulled and his stomach calmed by the time he recessed court, mostly due to the small drugstore in the green bottle he carried everywhere. Sleeping outside on dry and dusty grass was a formula for both a major allergy attack and an eruption of his acid reflux. After rummaging through the pills and dry swallowing a couple, he gathered his suit jacket, tugged off his tie, and trudged to Mabel’s.

  No one in town had noticed him lying in the park all night. Or, if they had, nothing surfaced during the day. No one at the courthouse had shot him a sideways glance nor had he overheard any snide comments. Courthouse gossip in Ste. Gen was as vicious as in any other courthouse in the world. It’s always Shark Week at the courthouse. Surely, someone would’ve reported a judge sleeping near the swing sets. The cops would’ve investigated and discovered him. Although it was a matter of collapsing from exhaustion and not booze that had led him to camp out, by the time the rumor mongers got through with the story, Rosswell would’ve been roaring drunk and scaring kids and grabbing their mothers.

  Yet he couldn’t take any chances. He needed to tell Ollie he’d come close to lurching off the wagon. Ollie shouldn’t hear that from anyone but Rosswell. The restaurant was deserted. A lull. Even Mabel had left the building.

  Beckoning to Ollie, Rosswell chose a booth in a dark corner, where he briefly sketched his near lapse. The news failed to impress Ollie. “You almost fell off the wagon? I’ve actually jumped off lots of times. But I always got back on.” Ollie’s gaze darted. A smile twitched at the sides of his mouth. “It’s especially interesting when you regain consciousness lying next to a naked woman you can’t remember.”

  “That would be bad.” Rosswell breathed deeply. His gut rumbles strengthened again and threatened revolution. Puking was the last thing he wanted to do right now, especially in Mabel’s restaurant. He found a decongestant tablet and a gas pill in the green bottle and took them. “A woman. Naked. A stranger.”

  “Was there a woman involved?”

  “Mrs. Bolzoni.”

  Ollie yelped, shut his eyes, and rubbed them with his closed fists. “Oh, Mylanta. I don’t want to hear any more.”

  Rosswell snickered. “Not like you think. She’s the one who found me in the park this morning.”

  Ollie opened his eyes. “Mrs. Bolzoni wasn’t naked in your bed?”

  Rosswell ignored Ollie’s question. “Mrs. Bolzoni told me something interesting. Nathaniel has been running a rehabilitation center in the mansion for several years. And Mrs. Bolzoni’s daughter Alessandra is there for treatment. Mrs. Bolzoni thinks Nathaniel is doing a great job with her daughter. According to Mrs. Bolzoni, Nathaniel is a great guy.”

  “Unadulterated bullshit.”

  A pounding at his forehead started. “Don’t say that anymore.”

  “Okay.” Ollie flapped his arms. “Then I can fly
to the moon.”

  “Nathaniel bought the fancy house for drying out drunks. It’s even got two towers so he can post guards. It’s a terrific cover. Dope pushers can move a lot of cash through there without leaving a trace.”

  “He spends a wad of dough dragging drunks off the street. But if he does it out of the goodness of his heart, then I’m the Queen of Sheba coming to visit King Solomon.”

  “Mrs. Bolzoni’s own story sounds odd. She moves down here from Saint Louis to be near her daughter who’s in rehab at a place run by Nathaniel? She hates French people, yet she lands smack dab in the middle of a whole county full of frogs? That makes no sense at all.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Rosswell smacked and swallowed a couple of times. “Maybe he’s laundering money from his dope operation.” His breath stunk of the gallon of coffee he’d sucked down. He’d been careful to stand far away from anyone in the courthouse. A couple of pieces of Big Red couldn’t hurt, so he stuck four pieces in his mouth. Cinnamon flavoring bit his tongue with the viciousness of a pair of pliers clamping down, yet he kept on chewing.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Of course Nathaniel is laundering money.” Ollie tilted his head. “You sure you didn’t swig a couple of slugs last night?”

  “Positive. Mrs. Bolzoni wants me to admit myself there. I’d last fifteen minutes before Nathaniel killed me.”

  The gum burned his mouth even more. He spit it out into a napkin and stuck it into his pocket.

  “You might not last much longer unless you go home.”

  “I’m not leaving Sainte Gen without Tina.”

  Lazar Fribeau moseyed through the front door and cast his gaze over the whole restaurant before he spoke to Ollie. “You got office here?” The old man surveyed the restaurant some more. “Somewheres private?”

  Ollie motioned to Lazar and Rosswell, who followed him into Mabel’s office. He reached up and tugged a chain to chase the darkness from the former storage room. “Talk.”

  Rosswell couldn’t see Lazar and Ollie clearly, the only light being a single bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the ceiling. Ollie hated wasting electricity.

  “Scarface wants to sing.” Lazar touched Ollie’s chest with his thumb.

  “Scarface?” Ollie stepped back. “Who’s that?”

  “Charlie Heckle says he palavers, but you and no one else.”

  Ollie’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

  Rosswell figured Lazar had been watching too many gangster and Western movies on cable television. Rosswell also figured he needed to kick this talk into gear since he’d never seen Ollie speechless before.

  “How do you know this?”

  Lazar grunted. “You know nothing, you. You paying no mind to Maman.”

  “Following her advice, I literally tripped over a body. How can you say I’m not paying her any mind?”

  “You don’t know what she said, her.”

  Rosswell repeated Maman’s advice. “ ‘Cave of one eye have much treasure. Cave of blind eye, she holds a treasure but not what you seek.’ ”

  “You don’t know what she said because you don’t listen good. You hear words but you don’t hear meanings.”

  Ollie found his tongue. “Sure. We can talk. In the alley. One hour.” He stepped between Rosswell and Lazar.

  Lazar grunted and left.

  “You’re back on the case?” Rosswell said.

  “For the time being. I want to know who the woman was who was thrown off the ferry.”

  “I’ve reviewed all the pictures of missing women who look like Tina, but I can’t connect any of them to Sainte Gen. That’s your only reason? You want to know who she is?”

  “She deserves justice.”

  Rosswell, moved by the reason for Ollie’s reversal, argued with himself whether to notify Ollie that his decision verged on altruism. Rosswell decided against it and instead asked, “Is this going to cost me another $500?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  “Start at six hundred.”

  “Was this some kind of pretty song and frisky dance? How does Lazar know Charlie Heckle wants to talk to us?”

  “He didn’t say us. He said me.”

  “All right, then how did Lazar know that Charlie wanted to talk to the world famous Ollie Groton?”

  “You asked me if the Fribeaus ran this county. Gustave doesn’t. I’m beginning to think Maman and Lazar do. Behind the scenes.”

  “And Lazar runs around the county setting up meetings between crooks and snitches.”

  “Research assistants.”

  “Right.” Rosswell paced for a few moments before he stumbled over a box and fell. “I’ll trust you to be a faithful reporter. I’m not going to listen to your meeting.” Brushing himself off, he stood.

  “A wise choice. What if you heard something that you needed to report?”

  “That problem won’t arise because I’m not going to listen. But if I did, and I heard something I shouldn’t, I’d dance along the line. I’d be okay as long as what I hear isn’t too far on the dark side.”

  After Rosswell had forked over $600 for another pile of silver coins at Discovered Treasures, they trudged to the alley. The price had gone up. Inflation, he supposed.

  Ollie leaned against a brick wall on one side, folding his beefy arms across his chest. “I’ll wait here. You skedaddle.”

  “Let me know what he said as soon as possible.” Rosswell edged down the alley away from the street. Close to the back end of the alley, he spied a large wooden crate. His head whipped around. Ollie wasn’t watching. The crate should hold him safely out of view. He peered in.

  A stray black cat, disturbed by his intrusion, meowed belligerently, then wandered away. Small places held terror for Rosswell. At least there were no snakes. He hoped. Cats ran off snakes, didn’t they? The commotion hadn’t drawn Ollie’s attention, still focused on the mouth of the alley.

  Inside the box smelled like piss. It was hot. He was going to die in there but decided to crawl in. The need to hear the conversation firsthand outweighed his repugnance. He stepped on a smaller box, then climbed into the large crate, and pulled the lid over the top. Scant light leaked through the cracks, enough to make it dim inside, although he could see part of the alley.

  Rosswell heard Ollie speaking to himself in a low voice, “Showtime, boys and girls. Showtime!”

  Chapter 16

  Thursday Afternoon

  Although sounds were muffled by the wooden crate, Rosswell heard someone he assumed was Charlie Heckle shuffle into the alley.

  “You Ollie?”

  Ollie planted his carcass directly in front of Rosswell’s line of sight. He groaned in frustration. He didn’t want to see Ollie’s butt, he wanted to see Charlie’s face.

  “I am Ollie Groton.”

  “You got something for me?”

  “Who are you?”

  Ollie shunted to the side so Rosswell, if he placed his eyeglasses on a spot between a couple of slats, could see a man about five and a half feet tall, brown hair, with a big scar on his face. Ollie had earlier told Rosswell that Captain LaFaire’s description of all the men on the ferry were vanilla. This one was vanilla with a scar.

  “Charlie Heckle.”

  The man had hesitated a couple of seconds. Aha! Using an alias! When asked their name, people generally respond quickly or not at all. But waiting for a microsecond too long meant that the person had something to hide.

  Ollie held out the sack of coins. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Ollie blocked the view again. Rosswell heard the crinkle of a paper bag and the jingling of coins. Charlie checking to make sure all his money was there. More crinkling. More jingling. Charlie stuffing the bag in his pocket. Charlie was dead if he stayed in Ste. Gen after this meeting. The money would be enough to get him out of town. Six hundred dollars might take him to New Orleans or Detroit or Denver or Louisville. Rosswell couldn’t deduce Charl
ie’s plan. Why was Charlie even talking to Ollie? Was the scar-faced man that desperate to get away from Nathaniel? Obviously. Charlie realized that the paper bag had enough money to get his sorry ass out of Nathaniel’s sight.

  Ollie said, “What is it you want to tell me?”

  “Nathaniel is running River Heights Villa.”

  “I know. It’s in the phone book. County records show him buying the place ten years ago.”

  “He’s smuggling dope.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “He killed Ribs Freshwater and he’s after Judge Carew.”

  “Give me the silver back, Charlie. You haven’t told me anything I don’t already know.”

  “No, wait.” Rosswell detected a change in Charlie’s breathing. He panted. Charlie was in the throes of a major stress attack.

  Rosswell’s suspicions were confirmed. Heckle needed that silver to run away.

  Ants proceeded to climb up Rosswell’s leg, the biggest ants he’d ever seen. Red, big ants. Fire ants. Did Ste. Gen have fire ants? There was a rumor going around that fire ants had hitched a ride on hay shipped from Florida a couple of years ago. Rosswell tried to quiet himself. He’d heard that if you were real still, fire ants wouldn’t bite. That quickly proved to be an old wives’ tale. A couple of the nasty critters injected hot needles into him. Rosswell bit his tongue to keep the moan forming deep in his chest from spilling out of his mouth. As an additional measure, he slapped his palm across his mouth. The box stank. He was burning up. Fire ants devoured him.

  Rosswell moaned. He clamped his hand harder across his mouth. Had they heard him? Another look through the slats confirmed they had not.

  “Come on, Charlie. It’s hot and you’re wasting my time. Hand over the money.”

  Ollie held out his hand.

  “The dead woman’s in a cave.”

  Ollie dropped his hand.

  Holy crap! Rosswell held his breath, not wanting to miss a single syllable of what Charlie said. A couple of ants explored his face. He couldn’t believe something so little could make him burn like the devil. He mashed as many of the little bastards as he could. The slightest noise must be avoided. Charlie teetered on the verge of giving Ollie enough info to find the dead woman. If they found her body, Sheriff Fribeau would want Rosswell to stay and help investigate. Right? Rosswell brushed at the ants he’d missed killing, hoping he wasn’t making any noise. The stench of the ant’s defensive formic acid bit his nose and made his mouth feel like he was chewing copper.