DR01 - The Neon Rain

by James Lee Burke

  "You provoked it."

  "So what if I did? Scratch two lowlifes that should have been fertilizer a long time ago. Save the hearts and flowers, Dave. Nobody's going to be interested in how Julio Segura bought it. I don't think you could find three people to attend the guy's funeral."

  "Don't bet on it."

  Sergeant Motley came down the corridor and stopped in our doorway. He had just come in from outside, and his round, black head glistened with perspiration. He was eating an ice cream cone, and there were flecks of ice cream in his thick mustache.

  "Somebody in the lab said they had to wash Segura's brains off the seat with a hose," he said.

  "Oh yeah? That sounds like it might make a clever Excedrin ad," Clete said.

  "Guess what else I heard?" Motley said.

  "Who cares?" Clete said.

  "You'll care, Purcel. The lab says the Cadillac was dirty. Reefer on the cigarette lighter, coke in the rug. Who would have thought Segura would let his broads be so careless?" He smiled. "You guys didn't salt the mine shaft, did you?"

  "Why are you so obnoxious, Motley?" Clete said. "Is it because you're fat and ugly, or is it because you're fat and dumb? It's a mystery to all of us."

  "Except I hear the broad says you told Segura he was going to take a big fall. Not smart of the Bobbsey Twins in homicide," Motley said.

  "Here's to the rapid spread of sickle cell," Clete said, and toasted Sergeant Motley with his coffee cup.

  "My dick in your ear," Motley said.

  "Lay off it," I said.

  "With this guy you've either got to use some humor or a can of insecticide," Clete said.

  A few minutes later Captain Guidry told me to come into his office. I wasn't looking forward to talking with the captain, but I was relieved to get away from Clete.

  Captain Guidry scratched the hair implants in his head and looked up at me from behind his horn-rimmed glasses. My report and Clete's were side by side on his desk.

  "The lab found some marijuana ash and grains of cocaine in the car," he said. His voice was flat and reserved.

  "Motley just told us."

  He picked up a pencil and began drumming it on his palm.

  "They also said a round fired from inside the car bounced off the window frame and blew glass out into the street," he said. "A second round went up through the roof, which would indicate the shooter was hit by that time. A yardman across the street says he heard a sound like a firecracker inside the Cadillac, then he saw you two start shooting. It's all working for you, Dave."

  "What's the dwarf say?" I asked.

  "Nothing. All he wants is an airplane ticket to Managua."

  "Something's not getting said here, Captain."

  "I've been over your reports. Very neat stuff. I think they'll get you by Internal Affairs."

  "That's good."

  "My own opinion is they stink. Tell me why a guy with no arrests, who Whiplash Wineburger would have had back on the street in thirty minutes, would throw down on two armed cops."

  I didn't answer.

  "Do you think he had a suicidal personality?" the captain asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Did Segura tell him to do it?"

  "No."

  "Then why did this guy pull his own plug?" His hand closed on the pencil.

  "Internal Affairs gets paid to sort that stuff out."

  "To hell with Internal Affairs. I don't like reading a report on two deaths that says 'fill in the blanks.'"

  "I can't tell you anything else, Captain."

  "I can. I think something else happened out there. I think also you're covering Purcel's butt. That's not loyalty. It's stupidity."

  "The essential fact of my report is that somebody pulled a pistol on a police officer and fired it at him."

  "You keep telling yourself that. In the meantime, let me tell you a couple of my observations. The guys in Internal Affairs will mutter around over this stuff, ask you a few hard questions, make you feel uncomfortable a little while, maybe even really try to stick a finger in your eye. But eventually they'll cut you loose and everybody around here will ask you guys out for a beer. But you're going to take the suspicion of a wrongful death with you. It's like a cloud you drag along everywhere you go. Sometimes it even grows into a legend. How about Motley and those guys on the wrist-chain that suffocated to death in the elevator?"

  I had to look away from his face.

  "It's between Purcel and other people, Captain. I didn't deal the play out there," I said.

  "I'm sorry to see you take that position, Dave." He opened his palm and dropped his pencil on the top of his desk blotter. "I'll make one other suggestion before you go. Take Purcel with you to some meetings. Also, if you're going to cover for a partner who's going out of control, you'd damn well better be able to take the consequences."

  It wasn't the best of all possible mornings.

  A half hour later the phone in our office rang.

  "Guess who," the voice said.

  "The Howdy Doody Show."

  "Guess what I'm doing."

  "I'm not interested."

  "I'm looking at the photographic art on the front page of the Picayune," Fitzpatrick said. "I underestimated your flair for the dramatic. These are the kinds of pictures we used to see in The Police Gazette—grainy black and white stuff, car doors thrown open, bodies hanging out on the street, pools of black blood on the seats. Congratulations, you greased the one solid connection we had."

  "If you want to get on my case this morning, you'll have to stand in line. As far as I'm concerned, your meter is already on overtime. In fact—"

  "Shut up, Lieutenant."

  "What did you say?"

  "You heard me. I'm mad as hell right now. You've done a lot of damage."

  "You weren't out there, bud."

  "I didn't have to be. I had a real strong tingle down in the genitals that it might go like this, and you didn't disappoint me."

  "You want to explain that?"

  "I'm not sure you can handle it. I thought you were a bright guy. Instead, it doesn't look like you can put one foot after another without somebody painting Arthur Murray dance steps on the floor for you."

  I didn't answer. My hand was clenched on the telephone receiver and starting to perspire. Clete was looking curiously at my face.

  "Are you where you can talk?" Fitzpatrick said.

  "I'm in my office."

  "Who's there with you?"

  "My partner, Purcel." ;

  "Yeah, sure you can talk," he said irritably. "I'll pick you up in front of the Acme Oyster Bar on Iberville in ten minutes. I'll be driving a blue Plymouth rental."

  "I don't think so."

  "You either be there or I'll come up to your houseboat tonight and knock out your goddamn teeth. That's a personal promise."

  I waited ten minutes for him in front of the Acme, then went inside and bought a Dr Pepper in a cup of crushed ice with a sliced lime and drank it outside in the sunlight. I could see the spires of St. Louis Cathedral, where I sometimes went to Mass, shining in the clear morning air. By the time Fitzpatrick drew up to the curb, my anger had subsided to the point that I was no longer going to pull him out of his automobile by his necktie. But when I sat down in the passenger's seat I did reach across and turn off his ignition.

  "Before we go anywhere, let's sort out a couple of things," I said. "I don't think you've paid enough dues to be telling people to shut up or making threats to them over the phone. But if you think you're a serious rock-and-roller, we can go over to the Y and slip on the gloves and see what develops."

  He nodded and clicked his fingernails indifferently on the steering wheel.

  "Don't worry, they've got a first-aid man there in case you're a bleeder," I said.

  "Okay, you've made your point."

  "You're not too big on hanging tough, are you?"

  "I wanted you out of your office. If you'll notice your present geography, you're sitting in my automobile and not a
t the First District. Is it all right if I start the car now?"

  "I think you federal guys just have to do everything with three-cushion shots. Wouldn't it be easier for you and me to go into Captain Guidry's office and talk about this stuff in a reasonable way? We don't want guys like Philip Murphy and his trained psychopaths running around New Orleans any more than you do. The captain's a good man. He'll help you if he can."

  He started the engine and pulled into the traffic. The sunlight fell across his freckled face and candy-striped Arrow shirt.

  "Is Purcel a good man?" he asked.

  "He's got some problems, but he's working on them."

  "You think he's clean?"

  "As far as I know."

  "Six weeks ago we had reason to be in a trick pad. His name was in the girl's book. He was a weekly banger. There was no entry about charge, either."

  I took a deep breath.

  "He's had marital trouble," I said.

  "Come off it. We're talking about a compromised cop who started popping caps yesterday on a possible government witness. Which of you nailed Segura?"

  "I did. He was trying to get out the door, and he raised up right in front of me."

  "I'll bet one of Purcel's rounds was already in him. What did the autopsy say?"

  "I don't know."

  "Great."

  "You're telling me Clete wanted to kill Segura?"

  "It's a possibility."

  "I don't buy it."

  "You don't buy lots of things, Lieutenant. But there's people just like you in my bureau. That's why they're sending me back to Boston next week."

  "You're off it?"

  "I will be. I haven't made my case and there's other work waiting."

  He looked across at me, and for the first time I felt a liking for him. Under all the invective he was a full nine-inning pitcher. We bought a bucket of fried shrimp and two cartons of dirty rice and ate it in a small, shady park off Napoleon Avenue. A bunch of black and white and Chicano kids were playing a workup game in front of an old chicken-wire backstop. They were rough, working-class boys and they played the game with a fierce physical courage and recklessness. The pitcher threw spitters and beanballs; the base runners broke up double plays with elbows and knees, and sanded their faces off in headlong slides; the catcher stole the ball out from under the batter's swing with his bare hand; and the third baseman played so far in on the grass that a line drive would tear his head off. I thought it no wonder that foreigners were awed by the innocent and naive nature of American aggressiveness.

  "Does anything about elephants figure in all this?" I asked.

  "Elephants? No, that's a new one. Where'd you get it?"

  "I heard Lovelace Deshotels was giggling about elephants when Segura's people shot her up. I dropped it on Segura, and his face twitched like a plumber's helper."

  "Well, we've got a second chance. I found her roommate, a Mexican girl from the same massage parlor, and she wants to stick it to all these bastards."

  "Why is she talking to you instead of me?"

  "She seems to think you guys are cretins. Is there a vice sergeant down there named Motley?"

  "Yep."

  "She says his zipper's open."

  "Sounds accurate."

  "She's a dancer in a nude bar out by the airport now. For three hundred dollars she says she can turn a couple of interesting people for us, then she wants to take her little girl back to San Antonio and study to be a hairdresser."

  "It sounds like a shuck to me."

  "I think she's straight. Her boyfriend was a Nicaraguan ex-national guardsman who worked for Segura. Then he beat her up and stole her money. They're a class bunch, those guys. Now she wants to blow Dodge. It seems reasonable to me."

  "I think she's selling the same information Didi Gee already gave me."

  "She's hip about Bobby Joe Starkweather. She says he's a latent bone-smoker and can't make it with women. He threw a waitress out of a hotel window, and some local hood got fried for it up at Angola."

  I looked away at the boys playing workup.

  "What's the matter?" Fitzpatrick asked.

  "I knew him. His name was Johnny Massina."

  "Were you tight with him or something?"

  "I tried to help him get off the hooch once. Does she know where Starkweather might be?"

  "She's vague on that."

  "I thought so," I said. "Write her name and address down for me, would you, but I'm going to pass on her right now. They've got me on a short leash, anyway."

  "Lieutenant, can I broach something personal?"

  I started to say "Why not?" since he had never shown any restraint about anything before, but he kept right on talking before I could speak.

  "It's obvious you're a good cop and a private kind of man, but you're a Catholic and you must have feelings about what's going on down there," he said.

  "Where?" I already knew the answer, but I wasn't ready to pursue the discussion.

  "Central America. They're doing some bad shit to our people. They're killing priests and Mary knoll nuns and they're doing it with the M-16s and M-60 machine guns we give them."

  "I don't think you ought to take all that responsibility on yourself."

  "It's our church. They're our people. There's no way to get around the fact, Lieutenant."

  "Who's asking you to? You've just got to know your limits, that's all. The Greeks understood that. Guys like you and me need to learn from them."

  "You think that's good advice, huh?" he said.

  "It beats walking around with a headful of centipedes."

  "Since you're fond of classical metaphors, try this one: Why do we admire Prometheus and have contempt for Polonius? Don't try to tilt with a Jesuit product, Lieutenant. We've been verbally demolishing you guys for centuries."

  He grinned at me the way a high school pitcher would after throwing you a Carl Hubbell screwball that left you twisted in your own swing.

  That night I drove to the Tulane campus to hear Annie Ballard's string quartet play. She was pretty on the lighted stage in her dark skirt and jacket and frilly white blouse. Her face was both eager and concentrated while she read the music sheet on the metal stand in front of her and drew her bow back and forth on her cello. In fact, her face had a lovely childlike quality in it while she played her music, the kind you see in people who seem to go through a photogenic transformation when they do that private thing that they hold separate for themselves. Afterwards, we were invited to a lawn party in the Garden District. The trees were strung with Japanese lanterns; the swimming-pool lights glowed smokily below the emerald surface; the air smelled of jasmine and roses and the freshly turned, watered dirt in the flower beds; and Negro waiters carrying trays of champagne glasses and cool tropical drinks moved deferentially among the groups of laughing people in evening dresses and summer tuxedoes.

  She was having a good time. I saw that her eyes were empty now of the fear and self-loathing that Bobby Joe Starkweather had put in them, and she was doing her best, also, to make me forget what had happened in the back of Julio Segura's Cadillac yesterday. But I was selfish.

  I couldn't let go of those ten seconds between the time the gatekeeper pulled the automatic out of the door pouch and the moment when the .45 roared upward in my hand and Segura's head exploded all over the inside of the car. I'm convinced that, unlike most of the hapless and pathetic people whom we usually dealt with, he was truly an evil man, but anyone who has ever fired a weapon at another human being knows the terrible adrenaline-fed sense of omnipotence and arrogance that you feel at that moment and the secret pleasure you take in the opportunity being provided you. I had done it in Vietnam; I had done it twice before as a police officer, and I knew that simian creature we descend from was alive and well in my breast.

  I was also bothered by Sam Fitzpatrick and his admonition to me about my religion and my humanity. I wanted to dismiss him. He was a kid, an idealist, a federal hotdog who probably broke a lot of bureau rules and w
ould eventually blow out his doors. If he hadn't become a Treasury agent, he would probably be pouring chicken blood on draft files. A half-dozen like him could have a whole city in flames.

  But I couldn't get rid of him. I liked him and he had gotten to my pride.

  I genuinely tried to enjoy myself that night. The people at the lawn party came from another world than mine, but they were pleasant and friendly and went out of their way to be courteous to me. Annie was a fine girl, too. When she saw my expression wandering away from the conversation, she would touch the back of my hand with hers and smile at me with her eyes. But it wasn't any good. I gave it up, made an excuse about having to go to work in the morning, and drove her home. On her porch I saw the faint look of hurt in her face when I said I couldn't come in.

  "Do you like to be alone, Dave?" she asked.

  "No. It's not a good life."

  "Another time, huh?"

  "Yes. I'm sorry about tonight. I'll call tomorrow."

  She smiled and then she was gone, and I drove home more depressed than I had been in years.

  Why? Because the truth was that I wanted to drink. And I don't mean I wanted to ease back into it, either, with casual Manhattans sipped at a mahogany and brass-rail bar with red leather booths and rows of gleaming glasses stacked in front of a long wall mirror. I wanted busthead boilermakers of Jack Daniel's and draft beer, vodka on the rocks, Beam straight up with water on the side, raw tequila that left you breathless and boiling in your own juices. And I wanted it all in a rundown Decatur or Magazine Street saloon where I didn't have to hold myself accountable for anything and where my gargoyle image in the mirror would be simply another drunken curiosity like the neon-lit rain striking against the window.

  After four years of sobriety I once again wanted to fill my mind with spiders and crawling slugs and snakes that grew corpulent off the pieces of my life that I would slay daily. I blamed it on the killing of Julio Segura. I decided my temptation for alcohol and self-destruction was maybe even an indication that my humanity was still intact. I said the rosary that night and did not fall asleep until the sky went gray with the false dawn.

  That afternoon I still had Sam Fitzpatrick on my mind. I called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and was told by the Assistant Special Agent in Charge that Fitzpatrick was not in.