DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  Yeah, that was the way it was going to be.

  The motor coughed once, sputtered, and died. The boat rose on its wake and glided into a fallen oak limb, the branches scratching loudly against the aluminum sides. Bertrand could feel his skin shrink on his face, his ears popping in the silence. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  “It’s out of gas. It ain’t my fault,” Eddy said.

  “You never looked at the gauge?” Bertrand said.

  “You didn’t look at it, either, man. Get off my case,” Eddy said.

  “Maybe the line just got something in it,” Andre said.

  “It’s empty, man,” Eddy said.

  Andre stood up clumsily, rocking the boat. He tugged at the gas can and slammed it back down. “What we gonna do?”

  “You gonna shut up. You gonna stop making all that noise,” Bertrand said.

  “I’m just trying to help, man. We can tow it,” Andre said.

  “There’s water out there that’s six feet deep,” Bertrand said.

  Andre started to speak again.

  “Just let me think,” Bertrand said.

  The four of them sat silently in the darkness, the branches of the downed oak limb sticking them in the eyes and the backs of their necks each time the wind blew against the boat.

  Bertrand stepped over the side into the water. “Y’all wait here. Don’t do nothing. Don’t talk. Don’t make no noise. Don’t be playing wit’ the money in the bag. Keep your ass in the boat and your mout’ shut. Y’all got that?”

  “What you gonna do?” Eddy said.

  “Hear that sound? The man over there got generators in his garage. That means he got gas cans in his garage.”

  “Why you walking bent over, wit’ your hand on your stomach?” Andre asked.

  “’Cause y’all give me ulcers,” Bertrand replied.

  “I ain’t meant nothing by it. You a smart man,” Andre said.

  No, just not as dumb as y’all, Bertrand thought to himself.

  He waded across the neutral ground and approached the driveway of the lighted house. A bulb burned on the front gallery and another inside the porte cochere. A light in the kitchen fell through the windows on part of the driveway and the backyard. His heart was hammering against his rib cage, his pulse jumping in his neck. He tripped on a curbstone and almost fell headlong into the water. In the darkness he thought he saw eyes looking at him from the tangles of brush and tree limbs in the yard. He wondered if he was losing his mind. He stopped and stared into the yard, then realized wood rabbits had sought refuge from the floodwater and had climbed into the downed limbs and were perched there like birds, their fur sparkling with moisture.

  Bertrand worked his way around the far side of the porte cochere, avoiding the light. He crossed between two huge camellia bushes, the leaves brushing back wetly against his arms, and entered the parking area by what uptown white people called “the carriage house.” Why did they call it a carriage house when they didn’t own no carriages? He asked himself. ’Cause that’s a way of telling everybody Robert E. Lee took a dump in their commode in 1865?

  He could hear at least two generators puttering beyond the half-opened door of the “carriage house.” Then he detoured through the backyard and crossed into the neighbor’s property, looked around, and removed an object from under his shirt. He bent over briefly, then retraced his steps back into Otis Baylor’s yard, his ulcers digging their roots deeper into his stomach lining. He stepped inside the carriage house and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Five jerry cans of gasoline were lined against the wall. He hefted up one in each hand and headed for the street, the St. Augustine grass by the porte cochere squishing under his shoes, the weight of the gas swinging in the cans. He had pulled it off. Right on, Bertrand. Stomp ass and take names, my brother, a voice said inside him.

  Then he was past the apron of electrical light that shone into the yard, back into the safety of the street and the warmth of the floodwater that covered his ankles and rose up the calves of his legs like an old friend. Soon he would split from Eddy and the Rochons and be home free and free at last, loaded with money for good doctors and the good life. It would be Adios, all you stupid motherfuckers, Bertrand Melancon is California-bound.

  Then he saw Eddy towing the boat from behind the pile of downed limbs, giving up their natural cover, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. Andre and Kevin were outside the boat, too, steering it around obstacles in the water, all them now in full view of the house from which Bertrand had just stolen the jerry cans of gasoline.

  “What the fuck you doing, man? Why didn’t y’all stay put?” Bertrand said.

  “What took you so long? You stop to flog your rod back there? Fill her up and let’s go,” Eddy said.

  He sparked his Zippo, the tiny emery wheel rolling on the flint—once, twice, three times.

  “Eddy—” Bertrand heard himself say.

  The Zippo’s flame flared in the darkness, crisping the end of Eddy’s cigarette, lighting an inquisitive smile on his face, as though he had not understood what his brother had said.

  Bertrand heard a single report behind him, but he could not coordinate the sound with the event taking place in front of him. A red flower burst from Eddy’s throat and a split second later, right behind Eddy, the cap of Kevin Rochon’s skull exploded from his head, scattering his brains on the water like freshly cooked oatmeal. Chapter 10

  I N ANY AMERICAN slum, two enterprises are never torched by urban rioters: the funeral home and the bondsman’s office. From Clete Purcel’s perspective, the greatest advantage in chasing down bail skips for bondsmen like Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine was the fact their huge clientele of miscreants was sycophantic by nature and always trying to curry favor from those who had control over their lives. Big-stripe Angola graduates who would take a back-alley beating with blackjacks rather than dime a friend would ratfuck their mothers in order to stay in Nig and Willie’s good graces.

  From the moment Clete Purcel had been run down in the Quarter, his porkpie hat stenciled with tire tread, the word was out: Bertrand and Eddy Melancon and their asswipe friend Andre Rochon were shark meat.

  While the Melancons and Rochon and his nephew Kevin were powerboating all over uptown New Orleans, eating white speed boosted from a pharmacy, drinking warm beer and eating rotisserie chickens courtesy of Winn-Dixie, laughing at the unbelievable amount of loot they were amassing, they were dimed on at least two occasions by fellow lowlifes who had ended up in the chain-link jail at the airport, where Nig and Willie’s representatives were doing fire-sale amounts of business.

  But ironically it was not betrayal by his colleagues that brought about Bertrand’s undoing. For probably the first time in his life he acted with total disregard for his own self-interest and loaded his brother into the boat while Andre bag-assed down the street and Eddy hemorrhaged cups of blood from his throat.

  Bertrand’s hands were trembling as he fueled the boat engine. He was sure the shooter was still out there, either in one of the yards or inside one of the houses that fronted the street. He was convinced the shooter was taking aim at him, moving the scope or the iron sights across Bertrand’s face and chest or perhaps his scrotum, taking his time, enjoying it, softly biting down on his bottom lip as he tightened his finger on the trigger. The image caused a sensation in Bertrand that was like someone stripping off his skin with pliers. His hands were not only slick with Eddy’s blood and saliva but shaking so badly his thumb slipped off the starter button when he tried to depress it.

  When the engine caught, he twisted the throttle wide open and roared across the floodwater, Kevin’s body bobbing in his wake. He thudded over a dead animal at the intersection and heard the propeller whine in the air before it plowed into the water again. He was almost sideswiped by an NOPD boat loaded with heavily armed cops. He slapped across their wake and veered up a cross street into an alley, pausing long enough to wedge the garbage and laundry bags inside a garage rafter. Up ahea
d, he could see the lights of a helicopter that was descending on a hospital rooftop. He reduced his speed and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He and Eddy had found safe harbor, a place where someone would care for his brother and save his life. It was the building in which they were both born. It was almost like coming home.

  Bertrand had never heard of Dante’s Ninth Circle. But he was about to get the guided tour.

  THE FIRST FLOOR of the hospital had three feet of water in it. The corridors were black, except for the beams of flashlights carried by the personnel. The heated smell of medical and human waste in the water made Clete pull his shirt up over his mouth so he could breathe without gagging. Twice he tried to get directions, but the personnel brushed by him as though he were not there. He gave it up and went back outside, sucking in the night air, the sweat on his face suddenly as cool as ice water.

  A black NOPD patrolman who must have weighed at least 275 pounds shined a flashlight in Clete’s face. In his other hand he held a cut-down twelve-gauge Remington pump propped on his hip. His unshaved jaws looked filmed with black grit, and an odor like moldy clothes and locker-room sweat emanated from his body. His name was Tee Boy Pellerin, and as a state trooper he had once lifted a cruiser with his bare hands off his partner’s chest.

  “What you looking for, Purcel?” he said.

  “A gunshot victim by the name of Eddy Melancon,” Clete replied.

  “Is he alive or dead?”

  “I wouldn’t know. The hospital is storing dead people?” Clete said.

  “I wish. I got four of them in a boat. I been trying to dump them all over town. Nobody’s got any refrigeration. You talking about Eddy Melancon from the Ninth Ward?”

  “Yeah, Bertrand Melancon’s brother. Nig Rosewater heard Eddy got capped looting a house this side of Claiborne.”

  “Try the third floor. The trauma victims who made it through the ER are getting warehoused up there. You got a flashlight?”

  “I lost it.”

  “Take this one. I got an extra. You haven’t been upstairs?”

  “No.”

  Tee Boy gazed into space, as though a long day and a long night had just caught up with him.

  “So what’s upstairs?” Clete asked.

  “The geriatric ward is on the third floor. If it was me, I wouldn’t go in there,” Tee Boy said.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “There ain’t no good stories in that building, Purcel. After tonight, I’m gonna pray every day God don’t let me die in bed.”

  Clete took the stairs to the third floor. The temperature was stifling, like steam from cooked vegetables that had flattened against the ceilings, and broken glass crunched under his shoes. He entered a ward where the elderly had been rolled into the corridors to catch a meager breeze puffing from the windows that had been blown out on the south side of the building. The people on the gurneys wore gowns that were stiff with dried food and their own feces. Their skin seemed to glow with a putrescent shine that he associated with fish that had been stranded by waves on a hot beach. A woman’s fingers caught Clete’s shirt as he passed her. Her face was bloodless, her eyes the liquid milky-blue of a newly born infant looking upon the world for the first time.

  “Is my son coming?” she said.

  “Ma’am?” Clete said.

  “Are you he? Are you my son?”

  “I think he’ll be here any minute now,” Clete said, and moved quickly down the corridor, a lump in his throat.

  The intensive care area looked like a charnel house. Pockets of water had formed in the ceiling and were dripping like giant paint blisters on the patients, most of whom still wore their street clothes. The patients who had been brought up from the ER had been shot, stabbed, cut, beaten, electrocuted, hit by automobiles, and pulled half-dead from storm drains. Some had broken bones that were still unset. A woman with burns on eighty percent of her body was wrapped in a sheet that had become glued to her wounds. A man who had been struck by the propeller of an airboat made sounds that Clete had not heard since he lay in a battalion aid station in the Central Highlands. Almost all of the patients were thirsty. Most of them needed morphine. All of those who were immobile had to relieve themselves inside their clothes.

  Clete grabbed an intern by the arm. The intern had the wirelike physique of a long-distance runner, his eyes jittering, his pate glistening with moisture. “Get your hand off me,” he said.

  Clete raised his palms in the air. “I’m a licensed bail agent. I’m looking for a fugitive by the name of Eddy Melancon. An informant said his brother dropped him off at this hospital.”

  “Who cares?”

  “The victims of his crimes do.”

  The intern seemed to think it over. “Yeah, Melancon, I worked on him. Third bed over. I don’t think you’ll find him too talkative.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “Hey, Doc, I know y’all are having a rough go of it up here, but I’m not exactly having the best day of my life, either. How about getting the mashed potatoes out of your mouth?”

  “His spinal cord is cut. If he lives, he’ll be a sack of mush the rest of his life. You want to talk to his brother?”

  “He’s here?” Clete said, dumbfounded.

  “Five minutes ago he was.” The intern shined his flashlight down the corridor at a man sitting in an open window. “See? Enjoy.”

  Clete threaded his way between the gurneys and tapped Bertrand Melancon on the shoulder with his flashlight. “Hello, asshole. Remember me? The last time you saw me it was through the front windshield of your car,” he said.

  “I know who you are. You work for them Jews at the bail bonds office,” Bertrand said.

  “I also happen to be the guy you ran your car over.”

  “I don’t own a car. Say, you’re blocking my breeze, you mind?”

  Clete could feel his mouth drying out and tiny stitches beginning to pop loose inside his head. “How would you like to go the rest of the way out that window?”

  “Do what you gonna do, man.”

  For Clete, Bertrand Melancon seemed to personify what he hated most in the clientele he dealt with on a daily basis. They were raised by their grandmothers and didn’t have a clue who their fathers were. They got turned out in jail and thought of sexual roles in terms of prey or predator. They lied instinctively, even when there was no reason to. Trying to find a handle on them was impossible. They were inured to insult, indifferent to their own fate, and devoid of guilt or shame. What bothered Clete most about them was his belief that anyone from their background would probably turn out the same.

  “Turn around. We going to meet a black cop named Tee Boy Pellerin,” Clete said, pulling his cuffs loose from the back of his belt. “You’ll dig this guy. He grew up in the Lower Nine himself. He’s got a soft spot for gangbangers who strong-arm rob their own people and sell meth to their children. Just don’t step on his shoeshine. He hates guys who step on his shoeshine.”

  Clete crimped the cuffs tight on both of Bertrand’s wrists and spun him back around so he could look him squarely in the face. “Did I hear you laugh?”

  “I ain’t laughed, man.”

  “Yeah, you did. I heard you.”

  “Troot is, I don’t care what you do, fat man. You ought to take a bat’. Get this over. I’m tired of listening to you.”

  Clete wanted to hit him. No, he wanted to tear him apart, seam and joint. But what was the real source of his anger? The reality was he had no power over a man who had tried to do a hit-and-run on him. There was no place to take him. Clete had bummed a ride to the hospital on an airboat full of cops who had continued on down the avenue to the Carrollton District. Central Lockup was underwater, and he had no way to effectively transport Bertrand to the chain-link jail at the airport. With luck he could surrender custody of Bertrand to Tee Boy and collect a bail-skip fee from Nig and Willie, plus collect for finding Eddy Melancon among the living dead at the hos
pital, but chances were Bertrand would utilize the chaos of Katrina to slip through the system again.

  Also, Andre Rochon was still out there, and Clete had a special beef to settle with him.

  Clete worked Bertrand down a stairwell and shoved him outside.

  “I ain’t fighting wit’ you, man. Quit pushing me around,” Bertrand said.

  “Shut up,” Clete said, walking him toward Tee Boy, who was sitting on a low wall that separated the parking lot from the hospital. Tee Boy was eating a sandwich partially wrapped in aluminum foil.

  “What you got here?” he asked.

  “Bertrand Melancon, three bench warrants, strong-arm robbery, intimidating witnesses, and general shit-head behavior since he was first defecated into the world. I’m surrendering custody of Bertrand to you. I already warned him about what happens to people who step on your shoeshine.”

  “This ain’t funny, Purcel.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t. Bertrand and his brother Eddy ran me down with their car on Saturday evening. They did this while I was searching the panel truck of their fellow scum wad Andre Rochon. In the back of that panel truck I saw a stuffed animal and a coil of polyethylene rope. Just before shit-breath here ran me over, I remembered an article I saw in the newspaper about three black guys who abducted a fifteen-year-old girl. She was walking back from a street fair in the Lower Nine. She was carrying a stuffed bear. These guys dragged the girl into a panel truck and tied her up and raped her. You still live in the Lower Nine, don’t you, Tee Boy?”