DR02 - Heaven's Prisoners

by James Lee Burke

  "That's like saying a black tumor on your brain will get better if you don't think about it."

  The kitchen was silent. I could hear the blue jays in the mimosa tree and the wings of the ducks beating across the pond as Alafair showered bread crumbs down on their heads. Annie turned away, finished wrapping the fried chicken, closed the picnic hamper, and walked out to the pond. The screen door banged on the jamb after her.

  That evening there was a big crowd in the park for the baseball game, and the firemen were having a crawfish boil in the open-air pavilion. The twilight sky was streaked with lilac and pink, and the wind was cool out of the south with the promise of rain. We ate our picnic supper on a wooden table under the oak trees and watched the American Legion game and the groups of high school and college kids who drifted back and forth between the bleachers and the tailgates of pickup trucks where they kept beer in washtubs of ice. Out on the bayou the paddle-wheel pleasure boat with its lighted decks slid by against the dark outline of cypress and the antebellum homes on the far bank. The trees were full of barbecue smoke, and you could smell the crawfish from the pavilion and the hot boudin that a Negro sold from a handcart. Then I heard a French string band play "Jolie Blonde" in the pavilion, and I felt as though once again I were looking through a hole in the dimension at the south Louisiana in which I had grown up.

  Jolie blonde, gardez done e'est t'as fait.

  Ta m'as quit-té pour t'en aller,

  Pour t'en aller avec un autre que moi.

  Jolie blonde, pretty girl,

  Flower of my heart,

  I'll love you forever

  My jolie blonde.

  But seldom did Annie and I speak directly to each other. Instead we talked brightly to Alafair, walked her to the swing sets and seesaws, bought snowcones, and avoided one another's eyes. That night in the almost anonymous darkness of our bedroom we made love. We did it in need, with our eyes closed, without words, with a kiss only at the end. As I lay on my back, arms across my eyes, I felt her fingers leave the top of my hand, felt her turn on her side toward the opposite wall, and I wondered if her heart was as heavy as mine.

  I woke up a half hour later. The room was cool from the wind sucked through the window by the attic fan, but my skin was hot as though I had a sunburn, the stitches in my scalp itched, my palms were damp on my thighs when I sat on the side of the bed.

  Without waking Annie, I washed my face, put on a pair of khakis and an old Hawaiian shirt, and went down to the bait shop. The moon was up, and the willows along the bank of the bayou looked silver in the light. I sat in the darkness at the counter and stared out the window at the water and the outboard boats and pirogues knocking gently against the posts on my dock. Then I got up, opened the beer cooler, and took out a handful of partly melted ice and rubbed it on my face and neck. The amber necks of the beer bottles glinted in the moon's glow. The smooth aluminum caps, the wet and shining labels, the brassy beads inside the bottles were like an illuminated nocturnal still life. I closed the box, turned on the lightbulb over the counter, and called Lafayette information for Minos P. Dautrieve's home number.

  A moment later I had him on the phone. I looked at the clock. It was midnight.

  "What's happening, Dunkenstein?" I said.

  "Oh boy," he said.

  "Sorry about the hour."

  "What do you want, Robicheaux?"

  "Where are these clubs that Eddie Keats owns?"

  "You called me up to ask me that?"

  I didn't answer, and I heard him take a breath.

  "The last time we talked, you hung up the phone in my ear," he said. "I didn't appreciate that. I think you have a problem with manners."

  "All right, I apologise. Will you tell me where these clubs are?"

  "I'll be frank about something else, too. Are you drinking?"

  "No. How about the clubs?"

  "I guess things never work fast enough for you, do they? So you're going to cowboy our Brooklyn friend?"

  "Give me some credit."

  "I try to. Believe me," he said.

  "There are a dozen people I can call in Lafayette who'll give me the same information."

  "Yeah, which makes me wonder why you had to wake me up."

  "You ought to know the answer to that."

  "I don't. I'm really at a loss. You're truly a mystery to us. You don't hear what you're told, you make up your own rules, you think your past experience as a police officer allows you to mess around in federal business."

  "I'm talking to you because you're the only guy around here with the brains and juice to put these people away," I said.

  "I'm not flattered."

  "So it's no dice, huh?"

  He paused.

  "Look, Robicheaux, I think you have a cinder block for a head, but basically you're a decent guy," he said. "That means we don't want you hurt anymore. Stay out of it. Have some faith in us. I don't know why you went out to Bubba Rocque's house this afternoon, but I don't think it was smart. You don't—"

  "How'd you know I was out there?"

  "We have somebody who writes down licence tags for us. You don't flush these guys by flipping lighted matches at them. If you do, they pick the time and the place and you lose. Anyway, go to bed and forget Eddie Keats, at least for tonight."

  "Does he have a family?"

  "No, he's a gash-hound."

  "Thanks, Minos. I'm sorry I woke you up."

  "It's all right. By the way, how'd you like Bubba Rocque's wife?"

  "I suspect she's ambitious more than anything else."

  "What a romantic. She's a switch-hitter, podna. Five years ago she did a three-spot for shanking another dyke. That Bubba can really pick them, can't he?"

  I called an old bartender friend in Lafayette. Minos had given me more information than he thought. The bartender told me Keats owned two bars, one in a hotel off Canal in New Orleans, the other on the Breaux Bridge highway outside of Lafayette. If he was at either bar, and if what Minos had said about him was correct, I knew which one he would probably be in.

  When I was in college, the Breaux Bridge highway contained a string of all-night lowlife bars, oilfield supply yards, roadhouses, a quarter horse track, gambling joints, and one Negro brothel. You could find the pimps, hoods, whores, ex-cons, and white-knuckle crazies of your choice there every Saturday night. Emergency flares burned next to the wrecked automobiles and shattered glass on the two-lane blacktop, the dance floors roared with electronic noise and fistfights. You could get laid, beat up, shanked, and dosed with clap, all in one night and for less than five dollars.

  I parked across the road from the Jungle Room. Eddie Keats had kept up the tradition. His bar was a flat, wide building constructed of cinder blocks that were painted purple and then overprinted with green coconut palms that were illuminated by the floodlights that were hung in the oak trees in front. But I could see two house trailers in the back parking lot, which was kept dark, that were obviously being used by Keat's hot-pillow action. I waited a half hour and did not see the white Corvette.

  I had no plan, really, and I knew that I should have listened to Minos's advice. But I still had the same hot flush to my skin, my breath was quicker than it should have been, my back teeth ground together without my being aware of it. At 1:30 a.m. I stuck the .45 down in the front of my khakis, pulled my Hawaiian shirt over the butt, and walked across the road.

  The front door, which was painted fingernail-polish red, was partly open to let out the smoke from inside. Only the bar area and a pool table in a side room were lighted, and the dance floor in back that was enclosed by a wooden rail, where a red-headed girl who had powdered her body heavily to cover her freckles was grinning and taking off her clothes while the rockabilly band in the corner pounded it out. The men at the bar were mostly pipeliners and oilfield roughnecks and roustabouts. The white-collar Johns stayed in the darkness at the tables and booths. The waitresses wore black cutoff blouses that exposed the midriff, black high heels, and pink shor
ts so tight that every anatomical line was etched through the cloth.

  A couple of full-time hookers were at the bar, and with a sideways flick of their eyes, in the middle of their conversation with the oilfield workers, they took my inventory as I walked past them to one of the booths. Above the bar a monkey in a small cage sat listlessly on a toy trapeze among a litter of peanut shells and his own droppings.

  I knew I was going to have to order a drink. This wasn't a place where I could order a 7-Up without either telling them I was a cop or some other kind of bad news. I just wasn't going to drink it. I wasn't going to drink it. The waitress brought me a Jax that cost three dollars. She was pretty, and she smiled at me and poured from the bottle into my glass.

  "There's a two-drink minimum for the floor show," she said. "I'll come back when you're ready for your second."

  "Has Toot been in?" I said.

  "Who?"

  "Eddie's friend, the black guy."

  "I'm new. I don't guess I know him," she said, and went away.

  A few minutes later three of the oilfield workers went out and left one of the hookers alone at the bar. She finished her drink, picked up her cigarette from the ashtray, and walked toward my booth. She wore white shorts with a dark blue blouse, and her black hair was tied off her neck with a blue bandanna. Her face was round and she was slightly overweight, and when she sat next to me I could smell her hair spray, her perfume, and a nicotine odor that went deep into the lungs. In the glow of the light from the bar, her facial hair was stiff with makeup. Her eyes, which never quite focused on my face, were glazed with alcohol, and her lips seemed to constantly suppress a smile that had nothing to do with either of us.

  The waitress arrived right behind her. She ordered a champagne cocktail. Her accent was northern. I watched her light a cigarette and blow smoke up into the air as though it were a stylised art.

  "Has Toot been around lately?" I said.

  "You mean the space-o boon?" she said. Her eyes had a smile in them while she looked abstractly at the bar.

  "That sounds like him."

  "What are you interested in him for?"

  "I just haven't seen him or Eddie for a while."

  "You interested in girls?"

  "Sometimes."

  "I bet you'd like a little piece in your life, wouldn't you?"

  "Maybe."

  "It you don't get a little piece, it really messes you up inside, doesn't it? It makes everything real hard for you." She put her hand on my thigh and worked her fingers on my knee.

  "What time is Eddie going to be in?"

  "You're trying to pump me, hon. That's going to give me bad thoughts about you."

  "It's just a question."

  Her lips made an exaggerated pout, and she raised her hand, touched my cheek, and slid it down my chest.

  "I'm going to think maybe you're not interested in girls, that maybe you're here for the wrong reasons," she said.

  Then her hand went lower and hit the butt of the .45. Her eyes looked straight into mine. She started to get up, and I put my hand on top of her arm.

  "You're a cop," she said.

  "It doesn't matter what I am. Not to you, anyway. You're not in trouble. Do you understand that?"

  The alcohol shine had gone from her eyes, and her face had the look of someone caught between fear and an old anger.

  "Where's Eddie?" I said.

  "He goes to dogfights sometimes in Breaux Bridge, then comes in here and counts the receipts. You want some real trouble, get in his face, and see what happens."

  "But that doesn't concern you, does it? You've got nothing to gain by concerning yourself with other people's problems, do you? Do you have a car?"

  "What?"

  "A car." I pressed her arm slightly.

  "Yeah, what d'you think?"

  "When I take my hand off your arm you're going on your break. You're going out the door for some fresh air, and you're not going to talk to anybody, and you're going to drive your car down the road and have a late supper somewhere, and that phone on the bar is not going to ring, either."

  "You're full of shit."

  "Make your choice, hon. I think this place is going to be full of cops tonight. You want to be part of it, that's cool." I took my hand away from her arm.

  "You sonofabitch."

  I looked at the front door. Her eyes went angrily over my face again, then she slid off the vinyl seat and walked to the bar, the backs of her legs creased from sitting in the booth, and asked the bartender for her purse. He handed it to her, then went back to washing glasses, and she went out a side door into the parking lot.

  Ten minutes later the phone did ring, but the bartender never looked in my direction while he talked, and after he hung up he fixed himself a scotch and milk and then started emptying ashtrays along the bar. I knew, however, that I didn't have long before her nerves broke. She was afraid of me or of cops in general, but she was also afraid of Eddie Keats, and eventually she would call to see if a bust or a shooting had gone down and try to make the best of her situation.

  I had another problem, too. The next floor show was about to start, and the waitress was circling through the tables, making sure everyone had had his two-drink minimum. I turned in the booth and let my elbow knock the beer bottle off the table.

  "I'm sorry," I said when she came over. "Let me have another one, will you?"

  She picked up the bottle from the floor and started to wipe down the table. The glow from the bar made highlights in her blond hair. Her body had the firm lines of somebody who had done a lot of physical work in her life.

  "You didn't want company?" she said.

  "Not now."

  "Expensive booze for a dry run."

  "It's not so bad." I looked at the side of her face as she wiped the rag in front of me.

  "It's the wrong place for trouble, sugar," she said quietly.

  "Do I look like bad news?"

  "A lot of people do. But the guy that owns this place really is. For kicks, he heats up the wires in that monkey's cage with a cigarette lighter."

  "Why do you work here?"

  "I couldn't get into the convent," she said, and walked away with her drink tray as though a door were closing behind her.

  Later a muscular, powerful man came in, sat at the bar, had the bartender bring him a collins, and began shelling peanuts from a bowl and eating them while he talked to one of the hookers. He wore purple suede cowboy boots, expensive cream-colored slacks, a maroon V-necked terry-cloth shirt, and gold chains and medallions around his neck. His long hair was dyed blond and combed straight back like a professional wrestler's. He took his package of Picayune cigarettes from his pants pocket and set it on the bar while he shelled peanuts from the bowl. He couldn't see me because I was sitting far back in the gloom and he had no reason to look in my direction, but I could see his face clearly, and even though I had never seen it before, its details had the familiarity of a forgotten dream.

  His head was big, the neck as thick as a stump, the eyes green and full of energy; a piece of cartilage flexed behind the jawbone while he ground peanuts between his back teeth. The tanned skin around his mouth was so taut that it looked as if you could strike a kitchen match on it. His hands were big, too—the fingers like sausages, the wrists corded with veins. The hooker smoked a cigarette and tried to look cool while he talked to her, watching the red tracings of her cigarette in the bar mirror, but whenever she replied to him her voice seemed to come out in a whisper.

  However, I had no trouble hearing his voice. It sounded like there was a blockage in the nasal passages; it was a voice that didn't say but told things to people. In this case he was telling the hooker that she had to square her tab, that she was juicing too much, that the Jungle Room wasn't a trough where a broad got free soda straws.

  I said earlier I didn't have a plan. That wasn't true. Every drunk always has a plan. The script is written in the unconscious. We recognise it when the moment is convenient.

&
nbsp; I slipped sideways out of the vinyl booth. I almost drank from the filled beer glass before I did. In my years as a practicing alcoholic I never left an unemptied glass or bottle on a table, and I always got down that last shot before I made a hard left turn down a one-way street. Old habits die hard.

  I took down one of the cues from the wall rack by the entrance to the poolroom. It was tapered and made of smooth-sanded ash and weighted heavily at the butt end. He didn't pay attention to me as I walked toward him. He was talking to the bartender now, snapping peanut shells apart with his thick thumb and popping the nuts into his mouth. Then his green eyes turned on me, focused in the dim light, his glance concentrating as though there were a stitch across the bridge of his nose, then he brushed his hands clean and swivelled the stool casually so that he was facing me directly.

  "You're on my turf, butthole," he said. "Start it and you'll lose. Walk on out the door and you're home free."

  I kept walking toward him and didn't answer. I saw the expression in his eyes change, the way green water can suddenly cloud with a groundswell. He reached over the bar for a collins bottle, the change rattling in his slacks, one boot twisted inside the brass foot rail. But he knew it was too late, and his left arm was already rising to shield his head.

  Most people think of violence as an abstraction. It never is. It's always ugly, it always demeans and dehumanises, it always shocks and repels and leaves the witnesses to it sick and shaken. It's meant to do all these things.

  I held the pool cue by the tapered end with both hands and whipped it sideways through the air as I would a baseball bat, with the same force and energy and snap of the wrists, and broke the weighted end across his left eye and the bridge of his nose. I felt the wood knock into bone, saw the skin split, saw the green eye almost come out of its socket, heard him clatter against the bar and go down on the brass rail with his hands cupped to his nose and the blood roaring between his fingers.