Cajun Nights

by Don Donaldson

  “Charlie, this is Kit. Are you going to be there for awhile yet?”

  “Actually, I had just locked the door and was on my way out when the phone rang. What’s up?”

  “I need to see a file and I was hoping I could come down and you’d find it for me. But if you’re…”

  “What’s the case?”

  “It’s an old one. Three or four years ago, a fellow named Shindleman killed his boss and then tried to shoot himself in the head. I’m curious about the circumstances.”

  “The case is that old and it can’t wait until tomorrow?” Franks said, good-naturedly.

  “I suppose if you’re leaving, it’ll have to,” Kit said, making no effort to hide her disappointment.

  “Where do you live?” he asked. When he found out how close it was, he said, “Tell you what. Why don’t I drop the file by on my way home?”

  “Would you? You’re a dear.”

  “Glad to help. See you in about twenty minutes.”

  Waiting was not something Kit did well. She paced the room for a few minutes, then looked out the window, knowing Franks couldn’t possibly be out there after so short a time. She sat in her wing chair, picked up Newsweek again, and tried to follow the numbered pictures showing step by step how terrorists blew up the U.S. embassy in Uruguay. Finding it all unintelligible, she tossed the article aside and went into the kitchen.

  She took a TV dinner out of the freezer and folded the foil in all the right places, wondering what kind of house Mr. Swanson lived in and whether the Morton place was bigger. She put the dinner in the oven and set the timer. Noticing a trail of ants attracted by a drop of syrup on the counter, she reached for the Mr. Clean and gave them a shot. As the little black specs were rolled and tumbled by the spray, she briefly imagined them screaming with voices so tiny they couldn’t be heard. She wiped the counter with a paper towel, tossed the towel into the grocery bag she was using for a wastebasket, and went back to the living-room window. Still no Franks.

  She switched on the TV and ran the channel selector to the right, giving each program a mere second or two. At channel thirty-six, she ran the selector all the way back to the left, shut the set off, and looked out the window. When Franks finally arrived, his third knock hit only air.

  “Jesus,” he said. “You are anxious to get hold of this file, aren’t you?”

  “I think there may be a lead in there on those statistics we generated.”

  “Sounds interesting. I’d like to stick around and talk but my daughter’s having a piano recital at…” He looked at his watch. “… Oh God, in fifteen minutes—Enjoy!”

  Without sitting, she ruffled through the file looking for photographs, soon finding a grisly series of pictures of a man with multiple gunshot wounds to the head. The oven timer went off and she put the file down, pulled her dinner out, and set it aside, seriously doubting that she would be able to eat it after seeing those pictures. David had said Shindleman was shot only once. Those first pictures then must be of his employer.

  A few pages deeper into the file, she found another picture, a profile of a man with dried blood in his hair above his right ear. She was not accustomed to looking at her Shindleman in profile, and he was now a little older, so it was difficult to decide whether this was the man she knew. There were definite similarities, though. Then she noticed a tan swelling over the right eyebrow on the man in the picture. The swelling was slightly bigger now, but this was definitely a picture of the Shindleman at Happy Years.

  CHAPTER 7

  When Kit arrived at the home the following morning to question Shindleman, she found everyone gathered in the meeting room for the once-a-week “Armchair Traveler” series. The guest speaker, a man with a red face and huge ears, was just making his opening remarks.

  “… and so, because they sent our supplies to the north face of the mountain, and we were waiting at the south face, our expedition got off to a shaky start.”

  She scanned the room looking for Shindleman and saw him over the take-up reel on the movie projector set up between the rows of chairs. When he saw her, he waved and motioned toward the empty seat in front of him. Noticing that she would be sitting next to Mrs. Overholtzer, who had recently embarked on a bathing boycott, she shook off his invitation and sat instead between the two newest residents, the Duran sisters. They were a sight not often seen; identical twin old ladies dressed exactly alike. Today they were wearing light-gray pullovers with dark-gray horizontal stripes, and gray pants. Each had a golden butterfly pinned to her sweater in precisely the same place.

  Kit soon discovered why they had left a seat between them. Mandy began to talk into one ear while Mindy did the same to the other. The speaker heard them too because he would get halfway through a sentence, then glance at the sisters and lose his thought. The sisters brought shiny droplets of perspiration to his forehead. But it was Lester Goldman, endlessly coughing into his hankie, who silenced him completely. While Mrs. Swenson helped Goldman from the room, Kit changed seats. When everyone had settled down, the speaker took a deep breath, looked quickly around the room like a cornered rodent, and tried again. “The wind…”

  “I took a trip once,” Mrs. Annafanna said, standing up and turning to face the others. “It was to someplace in Iowa.” She paused and her mouth trembled. “Or was it Nebraska? Where do they grow all the corn? Gracious me, we saw a lot of cornfields on that trip. There were four of us in the car and I got so sick…”

  Mrs. Swenson swooped into the room, seized the rambling old lady’s thin shoulders, and pushed her into her seat. “I’m sure we’d all like to hear about your trip, dear,” she said sweetly. “But someone else has the floor now.”

  The speaker never finished his point about the wind but went directly to the film he’d brought. Things then went nicely until one of the mountain climbers swung out on his “peetons” to scale a nasty overhang. The “peeton” pulled out of the crevice into which it had been pounded and… The picture suddenly darted from the screen and flashed across the wall as Mrs. Woolridge, who had fallen asleep, toppled off her chair and fell onto the table holding the projector. As the projector hit the floor, the lamp shattered and the take-up reel popped loose and rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of film as it went. In the ensuing scuffle, the film was damaged rather badly by chairs and feet. Mrs. Swenson apologized for the short program, and the gathering broke up amid much muttering.

  Shindleman went over to Kit and said, “Good program. Best one this year in fact. How come you’re here today? Isn’t tomorrow your regular day?”

  “I came early just to see you.” No one had ever looked happier than the old man did just then. “Let’s go into my office where it’s quiet.”

  As he followed her down the hall, Shindleman said, “Did you hear about Minnie? She’s in the hospital. Tried to kill herself, they say. And for a while, it looked like maybe she had. But I heard she was going to be all right. Have you seen her?”

  Kit’s face reddened. “No, I haven’t.” Ashamed once again of her sloppy handling of Minnie’s case and embarrassed at not having visited her, she added, “My new job is keeping me terribly busy.” That was certainly the truth, but the primary reason she hadn’t gone to see the old woman was that she just didn’t know what to say to her. She had no answer for Minnie’s wish to die and had simply taken a coward’s way out.

  “I’m going to see her later today,” Shindleman said. “You can get a bus out front that goes right by the hospital. Anything you want me to tell her?”

  She had begun to wonder whether the old man was needling her, but his face was innocence itself and she decided he wasn’t. “Just say, I hope she’s better soon.”

  Instead of sitting behind her desk as usual, she sat next to him and said, “I realize what I’m about to ask you to discuss may be painful, but I want you to know that I wouldn’t bring it up if it wasn’t extremely important.”

  The happiness on his face was immediately replaced by suspicion. “What is
it you want?”

  “I want you to tell me what happened the night you… the night your employer was shot.”

  The old man clapped his hands over both ears as though trying to shut out a loud noise. “No,” he said through clenched teeth. “That’s over. I won’t talk about it, I won’t. It ain’t right for you to remind me of this.” The old man dropped his eyes to his lap and continued to hold his head in both hands.

  She pulled her chair closer and put a hand on his knee. “I thought we were friends. And friends share their troubles with each other.”

  The old man slowly raised his head. “You’d still be my friend, knowing what I did?”

  “That’s another part of friendship, understanding when no one else does.”

  “They said I was insane, and maybe I was, ’cause I don’t remember any of it. If someone does a terrible thing without knowing it, is he crazy?”

  “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you do remember about the day it happened.”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “The same kind of thing has been happening to others and I’d like to find out why.”

  “You mean there’s a chance that I never was crazy?”

  “I think that during those brief few minutes you were… being driven by some urge beyond your control, one whose origins could have been entirely external.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I… yet. But after you tell me your story, I may.”

  The old man nodded in agreement. “It was December ninth. I remember that ’cause it was one of the coldest nights ever in New Orleans. When I started my rounds, I looked at the illuminated temperature sign over on the billboard across the street and saw the number twelve and wondered if the thing was broke. But as I worked my way around the plant… did I say I was a night watchman?”

  “No, but I was aware of that.”

  “Well, after about ten minutes, my fingers and toes began to ache, so I figured the billboard was right. On the back of the building there was this big vent, and on that night, there was a nice warm breeze coming out of it, so I took off my gloves and warmed my hands a while. Then I decided to have a smoke. ’Course I don’t smoke anymore. Can’t afford it. Do you smoke?”

  “No, I don’t. You took off your gloves and decided to have a smoke and then?”

  “I lit up, leaned against the vent, and smoked about half a cigarette. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in the hospital with a dull ache in my head and three men in suits sitting on chairs around the bed. Want to hear about the trial and the place they sent me?”

  “At the trial, your attorney said that you heard voices that night… singing to you. Can you tell me about that?”

  “Sorry about leaving that out; I ain’t got the memory I used to have. Used to be, I could remember everything. Now though…”

  She put her hand on his knee again. “You were hearing voices and…”

  “That’s what really convinced ’em I was crazy. Actually it wasn’t all that big a deal. It was nice and warm next to the vent and I was feeling pretty good. I didn’t hear them voices like I hear what you say, but more like they was inside my head. Pretty little-girl voices singing ’Rock-A-Bye-Baby.’ I remember singing along with them for awhile and from then on, it’s all a blank.”

  “Do you have any idea what part of the plant that vent served?”

  “No.”

  There was no doubt in Kit’s mind that she was going over to Crescent City Industries and check out that vent. It was equally clear that it would not be wise to take the old man along. It might be too much for him emotionally, or they might run into a relative or friend of the man he shot and there would be an unpleasantness. She went to her desk, withdrew a legal tablet and a pencil, and handed them to Shindleman. “Would you draw me a diagram of the plant and mark the location of the vent?”

  He took the paper and his speckled hand set about the task. When he finished, she looked at the rough sketch and said, “Where’s the street in relation to the drawing?” He reached over and drew two wobbly lines perpendicular to the long rectangle that represented the plant. “And where’s north?” He took the drawing back, rotated it a few times, then drew an arrow and put an “N” at its sharp end. “This ’X’ is the vent?” He nodded. “Were there vents in any other position around the plant?”

  “One on the roof, I think.”

  “But no others opening through the walls?”

  “No.”

  She tore the diagram out of the tablet, folded it, and put it in the pocket of her slacks. “Thank you for trusting me,” she said.

  “Will you be coming in at your regular time?” Shindleman asked. “I mean, does this count as our talk for this week?”

  “No, this one doesn’t count.”

  “You… won’t tell the others about this, will you? No one here knows what happened and I don’t want them to know.”

  “Of course I won’t tell them. It will be our secret.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The phone book listed Crescent City Industries at 6023 Waring. Around the three-thousand block, the character of the structures lining the street began to change from fast-food joints and gas stations to small manufacturing plants. Soon Kit was surrounded by industrial blight. On one side, the towers of a petroleum cracking plant spewed out clouds of gray smoke and streamers of flame. On the other, the view was dominated by the silos and treadmills of the place where they make Delta Cat Chow. The smell resulting from these two endeavors so close together was awful. It seemed like a good excuse for exceeding the speed limit.

  Eventually, the bleak landscape on her left was replaced by a long meadow. Even here, industry superseded tranquility as a road-construction crew poured sweat and concrete into forms for an additional lane. At the end of the meadow, a wall of fieldstone with CRESECENT CITY INDUSTRIES spelled out in big white letters came into view. Behind the sign and cupping it on each side was a cool stand of pines. In front was a well-tended bed of red geraniums. The most eye-catching feature was the dense green lawn that surrounded the sign and stretched along the plant itself, a four-story, white-over-beige, corrugated-metal building set well back from the road. On the aesthetic down side, the plant had an ugly smokestack big enough to do the air some real damage but presently was sending out only a thin, nearly transparent discharge. On the opposite side of the street was a billboard that still told the temperature.

  The parking lot had recently been relined, and the yellow paint marking off each space was crisp and bright. The lot was half-full, probably with employees’ cars since they were all clustered in the back. Scattered through the lot, unpaved rectangular patches of ground had been planted with small fir trees and variegated monkey grass. At the rear, beyond a wide grassy expanse, was a drive that came from behind the plant and ran to a small one-story concrete-block structure painted to match the main building. Beyond this drive were two huge metal storage tanks with the words AMMONIUM NITRATE stenciled on them. Behind the tanks was another meadow. The plant site, being higher than the surrounding meadows, looked as though it had been built on a landfill.

  The parking lot was separated from the plant by a ribbon of grass. Next to the wide steps leading to the plant’s main entrance, the grass was marred by a small sign reserving the best parking space for someone named Weston. Pulling into the second-best space, Kit studied the corrugated-metal wall stretching away to her left. Except for a row of tiny windows under the eaves, it was smooth and unbroken. There were no vents to be seen. Getting out, she walked to the rear of the lot and, with a definite feeling of guilt, stepped onto the grass. She was so deep into the property, she failed to hear the red Porsche that pulled into the space she had avoided.

  Rounding the corner, she found only more grass, more corrugated metal, and more of those small windows under the eaves. She took Shindleman’s drawing from her pocket and turned it round and round, finally deciding that this was definitely the spot indicated on the dia
gram. The vent just wasn’t there. But Shindleman was old and confused. He could easily have forgotten the exact layout of the place. He had admitted his memory was poor.

  She continued on, her finger trailing lightly over the building. Around the next corner, she came upon a loading dock beyond which the main road could be seen. The dock was the only difference between this side and the back. She had now been completely around the building and there simply was no vent.

  A forklift carrying a black barrel came out of the plant and deposited its burden on the tailgate of a small pickup. After wrestling the barrel against a dozen others, the forklift operator secured the tailgate and gave it a loud slap. The truck went off toward the small building near the ammonium nitrate tanks. From somewhere deep inside the plant, there was a bellow of laughter.

  “Shit,” Kit muttered in disappointment.

  “No, Turfglo,” a voice said.

  She drew a sharp breath and hiccoughed in surprise. When she looked behind her, she saw a gorgeous man. He was a head taller than she and the head had wavy brown hair on it that looked as though it might spring into tight little curls if you bumped him. His features were craggy and his teeth were straight and white. His mustache didn’t droop or curl up at the ends, or continue into muttonchop whiskers, or look like it would get in his food, but was full and neatly trimmed. His eyes were soft and brown with deep creases in the corners. He was ruggedly handsome in a way that Kit could appreciate even though she was not personally drawn to such types.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?” She asked.

  “I said, ’Turfglo’… You said ’shit’ and I said ’Turfglo.’ It’s not shit that makes our grass so green, it’s Turfglo, although I expect your way would work just as well. I wouldn’t be telling you this, but Turfglo is our best-selling product. I’m Bert Weston, company president.”