DR11 - Purple Cane Road

by James Lee Burke

  "It's all about a racetrack. Outside of Luna Mescalero, New Mexico," he said.

  "Pardon?"

  "Mr. Gable got her to buy a spread out there. He's building a racetrack. He's been trying to do it for years. That's where I'm from. I was a drunkard, a carnival man, what they call the geek act, before that woman come into my life."

  "She seems like a special person," I said.

  He turned his face into the glow of the electric lights and looked me directly in the eyes.

  "I did nine months on a county road gang, Mr. Robicheaux. One day I sassed a hack and he pulled me behind the van and caned knots all over my head. When I tried to get up he spit on me and jabbed me in the ribs and whipped me till I cried. Ms. Perez seen it from her front porch. She called the governor of New Mexico and threatened to walk in his office with a reporter and slap his face unless I was released from jail. She give me a job and an air-conditioned brick cottage to live in when other people would hide their children from me."

  "I don't know what I can do, Micah. Not unless Jim Gable has committed a crime of some kind."

  He chewed the skin on the ball of his thumb.

  "A man who doesn't respect one woman, won't respect another," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  He looked out into the shadows again, his head twisting back and forth on his neck, as though searching for words that would not injure.

  "He speaks disrespectfully of Ms. Perez in front of other men. She's not the only one. Is your wife's first name Bootsie?"

  "Yes," I replied, the skin tightening around my temples.

  "He said dirty things about her to a cop named Rit-ter. They laughed about her."

  "I think it's time for you to go."

  He splayed open his hand, like a fielder's glove, and stared at it and wiped dirt off the heel with the tips of his fingers.

  "I've been told to get off better places. I come here on account of Ms. Perez. If you won't stand up for your wife, it's your own damn business," he said, and brushed past me, his arm grazing against mine.

  "You hold on," I said, and lifted my finger at him. "If you've got a beef to square with Jim Gable, you do it on your own hook."

  He walked back toward me, the teeth at the corner of his mouth glinting in the purple dusk.

  "People come to the geek act so they can look on the outside of a man like me and not look at the inside of themselves. You stick your finger in my face again and I'll break it, policeman be damned," he said.

  It stormed that night. The rain blew against the house and ran off the eaves and braided and whipped in the light that fell from the windows. Just as the ten o'clock news came on, the phone rang in the kitchen.

  The accent was East Kentucky or Tennessee, the pronunciation soft, the "r" sound almost gone from the words, the vowels round and deep-throated.

  "There's no point in trying to trace this call. I'm not using a ground line," he said.

  "I'm going to take a guess. Johnny Remeta?" I said.

  "I got a hit on me. Maybe you're responsible. I can't be sure."

  "Then get out of town."

  "I don't do that."

  "Why'd you call me?"

  "Sir, you told folks I was a snitch. What gives you the right to lie like that? I don't even know you."

  "Come in. It's not too late to turn it around. Nobody's mourning Zipper Clum."

  "You've got to set straight what you've done, Mr. Robicheaux."

  "You're in the wrong line of work to demand redress, partner."

  "Demand what?"

  "Listen, you wouldn't go through with the job at Little Face Dautrieve's place. Maybe you have qualities you haven't thought about. Meet me someplace."

  "Are you kidding?"

  I didn't reply. He waited in the silence, then cleared his throat as though he wanted to continue talking but didn't know what to say.

  The line went dead.

  A hit man who calls you "sir"?

  11

  AT EIGHT O'CLOCK Monday morning the sheriff stopped me just as I walked in the front door of the department. A small square of blood-crusted tissue paper was stuck to his jawbone where he had cut himself shaving.

  "Come down the hall and talk with me a minute," he said.

  I followed him inside his office. He took off his coat and hung it on a chair and gazed out the window. He pressed his knuckles into his lower spine as though relieving himself of a sharp pain in his back.

  "Close the door. Pull the blind, too," he said.

  "Is this about the other day?"

  "I told you I didn't want Clete Purcel in here. I believe that to be a reasonable request. You interpreted that to mean I have problems of conscience over Letty Labiche."

  "Maybe you just don't like Purcel. I apologize for implying anything else," I said.

  "You were on leave when Carmouche was killed. You didn't have to put your hand in it."

  "No, I didn't."

  "The prosecutor asked for the death penalty. The decision wasn't ours."

  "Carmouche was a pedophile and a sadist. One of his victims is on death row. That one just won't go down, Sheriff."

  The color climbed out of his neck into his face. He cut his head to speak, but no words came out of his mouth. His profile was as scissored as an Indian's against the window.

  "Don't lay this off on me, Dave. I won't abide it," he said.

  "I think we ought to reopen the case. I think a second killer is out there."

  He widened his eyes and said, "You guys in A.A. have an expression, what is it, 'dry drunks'? You've got a situation you can't work your way out of, so you create another problem and get emotionally drunk on it. I'm talking about your mother's death. That's the only reason I'm not putting you on suspension."

  "Is that it?" I said.

  "No. A New Orleans homicide cop named Don Batter is waiting in your office," he replied. "Bitter's Vice."

  "Good. Clear that up with him," the sheriff said, and leaned against the windowsill on his palms, stretching out his frame to ease the pain in his lower back.

  Don Bjtter.the plainclothes detective Helen called the gel head, was sitting in a chair in front of my desk, cleaning his nails over the wastebasket with a gold penknife. His eyes lifted up at me. Then he went back to work on his nails.

  "The sheriff says you're Homicide," I said.

  "Yeah, I just changed over. I caught the Zipper Clum case."

  "Really?"

  "Who told you and Purcel to question people in New Orleans about Johnny Remeta?"

  "He's a suspect in a house invasion."

  "A house invasion, huh? Lovely. What are we supposed to do if you scare him out of town?"

  "He says that's not his way."

  "He says?"

  "Yeah, he called me up last night."

  Ritter brushed the detritus from his nails into the basket and folded his penknife and put it in his pocket. He crossed his legs and rotated his ankle slightly, watching the light reflect on his shoe shine. His hair looked like gelled pieces of thick twine strung back on his scalp.

  "The home invasion? That's the break-in at Little Face Dautrieve's place?" he said.

  "Little Face says you planted rock on her. She's trying to turn her life around. Why don't you stay away from her?"

  "I don't know what bothers me worse, the bullshit about talking to Remeta or the injured-black-whore routine. You want to nail this guy or not?"

  "You see Jim Gable?"

  "What about it?"

  "Tell him I'm going to look him up on my next trip to New Orleans."

  He chewed with his front teeth on something, a tiny piece of food perhaps.

  "So this is what happens when you start over again in a small town. Must make you feel like staying in bed some days. Thanks for your time, Robicheaux," he said.

  I signed OUT of the office at noon and went home for lunch. As I drove down the dirt road toward the house, I saw a blue Lexus approach me under the long line of oak trees that bordered the bayo
u. The Lexus slowed and the driver rolled down her window.

  "How you doin', Dave?" she said.

  "Hey, Ms. Deshotel. You visiting in the neighborhood?"

  "Your wife and I just had lunch. We're old school chums."

  She took off her sunglasses, and the shadows of leaves moved back and forth on her olive skin. It was hard to believe her career in law enforcement went back into the 1960s. Her heart-shaped face was radiant, her throat unlined, her dark hair a reminder of the health and latent energy and youthful good looks that her age didn't seem to diminish.

  "I didn't realize y'all knew each other," I said.

  "She didn't remember me at first, but. . . Anyway, we'll be seeing you. Call me for anything you need."

  She drove away with a casual wave of the hand.

  "You went to school with Connie Deshotel?" I asked Bootsie in the kitchen.

  "A night class at LSU-NO. She just bought a weekend place at Fausse Pointe. You look puzzled."

  "She's strange."

  "She's a nice person. Stop being psychoanalytical," Bootsie said.

  "She was having lunch in Baton Rouge with an NOPD cop named Don Ritter. He's a genuine lowlife."

  She hung a dishrag over the faucet and turned toward me and let her eyes rove over my face.

  "What did he do?" she asked.

  "He twists dials on black hookers. Helen says he used to extort gays in the Quarter."

  "So he's a dirty cop. He's not the only one you've known."

  "He's buds with Jim Gable."

  "I see. That's the real subject of our conversation. Maybe you should warn me in advance."

  "Gable has personal knowledge about my mother's death. I'm absolutely convinced of that, Boots."

  She nodded, almost to herself, or to the room, rather than to me, then began slicing a roast on the counter for our sandwiches. She cut harder, faster, one hand slipping on the knob of bone she used for a grip, the blade of the butcher knife knocking against the chopping board. She slid the knife in a long cut through a flat piece of meat and halved and quartered a blood-red tomato next to it, her knuckles whitening. Then she turned around and faced me. "What can I tell you? That I loathe myself for the fact I slept with him? What is it you want me to say, Dave?"

  At the end of the week I received a call from Connie Deshotel at the office.

  "Dave, maybe we've had some luck. Do you know of a recidivist named Steve Andropolis?" she said.

  "He's a spotter, what used to be called a jigger."

  "He's in custody in Morgan City."

  "What for?"

  "Possession of stolen weapons. He says he knows you. This is his fourth time down. He wants to cut a deal."

  "Andropolis is a pathological liar."

  "Maybe. He says he has information on the Zipper Clum murder. He also says he knows how your mother died."

  The sun was high and bright in the sky, the tinted windows of the cars in the parking lot hammered with white daggers. I felt my hand tighten on the telephone receiver.

  "How did he come by his information?" I asked.

  "I don't know. Two detectives from NOPD are going to interview him this afternoon. You want to meet them there?"

  "Is one of them Ritter?"

  "Probably. He caught the case."

  "What's Andropolis' bond?"

  "None. He's a flight risk."

  "I'll make arrangements to go over there in the next two or three days. Thanks for passing this on, Ms. Deshotel," I said.

  "You seem pretty casual."

  "His crime isn't in our jurisdiction. I don't have the legal power to do anything for him. That means he wants to use me against somebody else. Let him sweat awhile."

  "You should have been a prosecutor," she said.

  "What's he have to offer on Remeta?" I said as an afterthought.

  "Ritter thinks he might have sold Remeta the weapon used in the Clum killing. Maybe he knows who ordered the hit."

  "The piece came from a sporting goods break-in. The thieves were black kids from the St. Thomas Project. Andropolis is taking Ritter over the hurdles."

  "I thought I might be of help. Good luck with it, Dave. Give my best to your wife," she said, and quietly hung up.

  That evening the sky was filled with yellow and red clouds when Clete Purcel and I put a boat in the water at Lake Fausse Pointe. I opened up the outboard down a long canal that was thickly wooded on each side. Green logs rolled against the bank in our wake and cranes and snow egrets and great blue herons lifted into the light and glided on extended wings out over the bay.

  We passed acres of floating lilies and lotus flowers that had just gone into bloom, then crossed another bay that flowed into a willow swamp and anchored the outboard off a stand of flooded cypress and tupelo gums and watched our wake slide between the trunks that were as gray as elephant hide.

  Clete sat on a swivel chair close to the bow, his porkpie hat low on his eyes, his blue denim shirt damp with sweat between the shoulder blades. He flipped his casting rod with his wrist and sent his treble-hooked balsa-wood lure arching through the air.

  "How's it going with you and Passion?" I asked.

  "Very solid, big mon," he replied, turning the handle on his spinning reel, the lure zigzagging through the water toward the boat.

  I took a cold can of beer from the ice chest and touched the back of his arm with it. He took it from my hand without turning around. I opened a Dr Pepper and drank it and watched the breeze blow through the cypress, ruffling the leaves like green lace.

  "Why don't you say what's on your mind?" Clete said.

  "I went through the transcript of Letty Labiche's trial. Both Letty and Passion testified that Passion was auditioning at a Lake Charles nightclub for a record company scout the night Vachel Carmouche got it."

  " 'Cause that's where she was," Clete said.

  "They always performed together. Why would she audition by herself?"

  Clete retrieved his lure and idly shook the water off it, rattling the two treble hooks against the tip of the rod.

  "What are you trying to do, Streak? Drag Passion into it? What's to be gained?"

  "I think both sisters are lying about what happened that night. What's that suggest to you? Letty is already on death row. She has nothing to lose."

  "The state's executioner got chopped into sausage links and somebody's going to pay for it. You remember the Ricky Ray Rector case up in Arkansas? The guy had been lobotomized. He looked like black mush poured inside a prison jumpsuit. But he'd killed a cop. Clinton refused to commute the sentence. Rector told the warden he wanted to save out his pecan pie on his last meal so he could eat it after he was executed. Clinton's president, Rector's fertilizer. I bet nobody in Little Rock gave up their regular hump the night he got it, either."

  Clete lit a Lucky Strike and set his Zippo on the top of his tackle box and blew smoke out across his cupped hand.

  "I thought you quit those," I said.

  "I did. For some reason I just started again. Dave, it's grim shit. Passion says her sister's scared of the dark, scared of being alone, scared of her own dreams. I came out here to get away from listening about it. So how about lightening up?"

  He lay his rod across his thighs and stuck his hand behind him into the crushed ice for another beer, his face painted with the sun's dying red light, his eyes avoiding

  mine.

  According to his obituary, Robert Mitchum, when released from jail after serving time for marijuana possession, was asked what it was like inside the slams.

  He replied, "Not bad. Kind of like Palm Springs without the riffraff."

  It's gone downhill since.

  Unless you're a black kid hustling rock and unlucky enough to get nailed under the Three Strikes and You're Out law, your chances of doing serious time are remote.

  Who are all these people in the jails?

  Meltdowns of every stripe, pipeheads and intravenous junkies who use public institutions to clean their systems out so they c
an re-addict, recidivists looking for the womb, armed robbers willing to risk ten years for a sixty-dollar score at a 7-Eleven.