DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  I couldn’t argue with her. In fact, I didn’t even want to comment.

  “What did you think of Lyndon Johnson?” she asked.

  “Before or after I got to Vietnam?”

  “When Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in ’65, Johnson flew into town and went to a shelter full of people who had been evacuated from Algiers. It was dark inside and people were scared and didn’t know what was going to happen to them. He shined a flashlight in his face and said, ‘My name is Lyndon Baines Johnson. I’m your goddamn president and I’m here to tell you my office and the people of the United States are behind you.’ Not bad, huh?”

  But I wasn’t listening. There was a detail about the Otis Baylor investigation I hadn’t mentioned to Helen, because she didn’t like complexities and in particular she didn’t like them when they fell outside our jurisdiction.

  “I stopped by Sidney Kovick’s house yesterday and had an informal chat with him. The looters ripped the Sheetrock and lathwork and plaster from most of his walls and ceilings.”

  “Score one for the pukes.”

  “I think they took Sidney down in a major way. Sidney has never had an IRS beef. It wouldn’t surprise me if his walls had been loaded with cash.”

  “So what?”

  “He was trying to find out which hospital the quadriplegic looter is in.”

  “And?”

  “The quadriplegic is at Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge. I tried to warn him, but he’s not a listener.”

  Helen pulled at an earlobe. “Bwana?”

  “What is it?”

  “Whatever happens to that bunch is on them. Got it?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  CLETE PURCEL did not lose custody of Bertrand Melancon during the handover at the chain-link jail at the airport. Bertrand got loose farther up the road, by Gonzales, when the prison bus he was riding in pulled into a soaked field that had been created as a holding area during the height of the storm. Hundreds of inmates from jails in two parishes had huddled in the field, along with their guards, while lightning exploded over their heads and the rain almost tore the clothes from their bodies. Many of them, I suspect, went through the most religious moments of their lives. But when Bertrand Melancon arrived and was told to line up at a Porta Potti, the drama that his peers had experienced had already slipped into history and the field was simply a churned and trash-strewn piece of farm acreage where egrets and displaced seagulls competed for litter.

  “How long we got to be here, man?” Bertrand asked a guard.

  “The Four Seasons is kind of backed up right now. But we told the maids y’all were coming and to prepare your rooms as quick as possible,” the guard replied.

  Most of the inmates on the buses had no desire to run. Most were tired, mosquito-bitten, sunburned, and sick from bad food. Most of them wanted to be watching television in an air-conditioned mainline prison that provided clean beds and served hot meals. If most of them had their choice, they would be housed in a building with six-foot-thick walls and a foundation that Noah’s deluge couldn’t disturb.

  Bertrand had other plans. At twilight, when the bus pulled out on the highway, he pried the grillwork off a back window and dropped into a rain ditch. His absence was not noticed until the bus was halfway to Shreveport.

  Nig Rosewater personally came to Clete’s upstairs apartment on St. Ann to give him the news. Nig could not be described as having a neck like a fireplug. He had no neck. His jowls and chin seem to grow straight down into his shoulders. His starched shirt and gold collar pin did not help his appearance, either. In fact, with his gold necktie, he looked like a hog eating an upright ear of buttered corn.

  “Nig, I deliver the freight. I got a signed receipt for transfer of custody. At that point Bertrand Melancon became the property of Orleans Parish,” Clete said. “The other half of your thirty-grand skip is in Our Lady of the Lake. You owe me three grand.”

  “You didn’t have nothing to do with catching the vegetable in the hospital. So that makes your fee fifteen hundred at best,” Nig replied. “And that’s not why I’m here, either. I had two of Sidney Kovick’s people banging on my door at seven this morning. I told them I don’t know where Bertrand Melancon and Andre Rochon are, because if I knew that kind of information, I wouldn’t be out over fifteen large right now. So they want to know which hospital the vegetable is in. I tell them I don’t know that, either, since the government don’t consult with me when it’s shipping people all over the country.

  “One of these guys says, ‘Your fifteen large is toilet paper. You deliver up the boons who broke into Mr. Kovick’s house or Mr. Kovick is gonna figure whatever they done or they took is on you.’”

  Clete’s apartment was located above his office. The day was bright and sunny outside, and the bodies of birds that had been driven by storm wind against the side of his building were piled on his balcony, their feathers fluttering in the wind.

  “I don’t see how any of this falls on me, particularly when you’re already trying to stiff me on my recovery fee,” Clete said.

  “Buy yourself a better brand of wax removal, Purcel. These guys took Sidney down for something he can’t claim as an insurance or business loss. His guys said my fifteen large is toilet paper. What’s that tell you? These morons blundered into a big score, maybe something they can’t unload. What if it’s bearer bonds or high-tech military stuff? Whose interest would it be in to let a couple of street pukes skate on the bail? Who would have the connections to fence or launder whatever the pukes took from Sidney?”

  Clete honked his nose into a handkerchief, concealing his expression. “I say brass it out and tell them to screw themselves. Don’t let Sidney push you around.”

  “You’re pissing me off.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry about that.”

  The power was off in the apartment and Nig was sweating inside his sports coat. “Why don’t you clean the dead birds off your balcony? It stinks in here,” Nig said, the sheen of fear in his eyes unmistakable.

  BEFORE THE HURRICANE, Clete had filled his bathtub, lavatory, and sink with tap water. Now he was using it on a daily basis to sponge-bathe, shave, brush his teeth, and to refill his toilet tank. After Nig was gone, Clete put on fresh clothes, combed his hair, and slipped on his nylon shoulder holster and blue-black Smith & Wesson revolver. He went downstairs to the courtyard and fired up his latest Cadillac acquisition, a powder-blue vintage convertible that was pocked with paint blisters, the top spotted with mold. As soon as the engine caught, a huge cloud of oil smoke exploded from the tailpipe. His porkpie hat canted on his head, Clete swung out onto the street, chewing on the corner of his lip, wondering how far to push a man whose potential no one in either the New Orleans underworld or New Orleans law enforcement ever accurately assessed.

  Across the river in Algiers, whole neighborhoods had survived the storm with no flooding and only a temporary loss of power. From the bridge, with his convertible top down, Clete could look back and see the glassy shine of brown water that still covered most of New Orleans and the miles of roofless houses and the rivers of mud that had filled automobiles like concrete. The image was so stark and irrevocably sad he involuntarily mashed on the accelerator and almost rear-ended a gasoline truck.

  In Algiers, he parked in front of a flower shop that was tucked neatly inside a purple-brick building on a residential street. Two of Sidney Kovick’s employees were playing gin rummy at a table in the shade of a green-and-white-striped canopy that extended from the top of the display window. The two men were leftovers from the old Giacano crime family and for a brief time had thought their day in the sun had come and gone, until 9/11 landed on them like a gift from heaven and the governmental bête noire shifted from pukes dealing crack in the projects to Mideastern young males loading up with cell phones at the local Wal-Mart.

  Clete got out on the sidewalk, opened his coat, and lifted his .38 from his shoulder holster with the ends of his fingers. He held it up in th
e air so the two men could see it, then dropped it on the passenger seat of the Caddy. “Keep an eye on that for me, will you, Marco?” he said.

  “No problem,” Marco said.

  “Hey, Purcel, your convertible looks like it’s got herpes,” the other man said.

  “Yeah, I know. I told your sister not to sit on it. But what are you gonna do?” Clete replied as he entered the shop, a bell ringing over his head.

  The temperature inside was frigid, the glass lockers smoky with cold. The tall man behind the counter was dressed in seersucker slacks and a long-sleeved blue shirt open at the collar, exposing the thick curls of black hair on his chest.

  “What’s the haps, Sidney?” Clete said.

  Sidney began placing roses a stem at a time into a green vase. “Nig Rosewater sent you here?”

  “Nig says you want the pukes who took you down. That’s understandable. But that makes four of us—you, me, Nig, and Wee Willie Bimstine. What I need to explain to you is we got no idea where these guys are.”

  “Don’t lie to me. You already found one guy at the hospital. But he’s not there anymore.”

  “That’s right, I did find him and he got moved to ‘whereabouts unknown.’ So don’t be telling me I’m lying.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Because your messengers evidently made an implied threat when they visited Nig this morning. I thought that showed a lack of class.”

  “Lack of class?”

  “Is there an echo in your store?”

  Sidney nodded toward a table that was set against a side wall. “Sit down. I’m about to eat. You want a coffee?”

  “I wouldn’t touch a chair that Charlie Weiss or Marco Scarlotti sat in unless it was sprayed for crab lice.”

  Sidney put his hand inside his shirt and scratched an insect bite on his shoulder and looked at the tips of his fingers. “It’s true you smoked a federal informant when you were with NOPD? A guy who never saw it coming?” he said.

  “What about it?” Clete said, his eyes slipping off Sidney’s face.

  “Nothing. You’re just an unusual guy, Purcel.”

  Clete cleared an obstruction in his throat and let the moment pass. “Here’s what it is. One way or another, I’m going to put Andre Rochon and Bertrand Melancon back in the system. That’s because I have a personal beef with these guys and it doesn’t have anything to do with you. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do business. If I recover cash or goods from your house, you pay me a twenty percent finder’s fee. If that’s not cool, see what you can get from your insurance carrier.

  “In the meantime, you leave Nig and Willie and me alone. I know all about that chain-saw story and the guy in Metairie. Personally I think it’s Mafia bullshit. Regardless, I take care of the pukes, and Heckle and Jeckle out there stay out of it. Sound reasonable, Sidney?”

  “Ten percent on the recovery.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Screw you,” Clete said.

  Sidney’s gaze drifted out the front window, where his two men were playing cards in the shade. “What makes you think you can deliver?”

  “It’s like prayer, what do you got to lose?”

  One at a time, Sidney placed three more rose stems in the vase. “Don’t mess it up,” he said. He fixed his eyes on Clete’s, a blade of sunlight slicing like a knife across his face.

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?” I said to Clete after he telephoned and told me what he had done.

  “What was I supposed to do? Let an animal like Kovick threaten me and my employer?” he said.

  In the background I could hear a sound like a rack of bowling pins exploding. “Why don’t you just sprinkle broken glass in your breakfast food? Save yourself the time and effort of fooling with Kovick?” I said.

  “What’s that line in Machiavelli about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer?”

  “Yeah, it’s Machiavelli and it’s crap,” I replied.

  “Look, I need a place to stay. My power is still off and something with black tendrils on it is growing out my drains.”

  “What about your room at the motor court?”

  “It got rented to some evacuees.”

  “Stay with us,” I said, trying to keep my voice flat, imagining any number of nightmarish events associated with Clete as houseguest.

  “Molly won’t mind?”

  “No, she’ll be happy.”

  “I’m at the bowling alley on East Main. I’ll motor on over. Tell Molly not to fix anything. I’ve got it covered. Everything is copacetic, big mon.”

  And motor over he did, at 6:00 p.m. Sharp, with a bucket of Popeyes fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits and a big carton of fried oysters and dirty rice. He also brought a separate bag of paper plates, plastic forks and knives, paper napkins, and a six-pack of Dr Pepper. He went about setting the table while Molly and Alafair tried to hide their smiles.

  “Clete, we have plates and silverware,” I said.

  “No need to dirty things up,” he said.

  Molly shook her head behind his back to stop me from admonishing him. Alafair wasn’t as diplomatic. “You have any salad in there, Clete?” she said.

  “You bet,” he replied, and proudly lifted a quart of potato salad from the sack.

  But Clete’s gay mood was often an indicator of worries and memories that he shared with few people. To the world he was the trickster and irresponsible hedonist, sowing mayhem and destruction wherever he went. But in his sleep he still dreamed of two adults fighting in their bedroom late at night and of kneeling in short pants on grains of rice his father sprinkled on the floor, and of liquid flame arching into a village of straw hooches. If sometimes he looked disconcerted, he would never admit he had just glanced out a window into the darkness and had seen a dead mamasan staring back at him.

  After we ate, he took a long walk into City Park by himself, then returned to the house and went to bed early in our guest bedroom. Shortly after 4:00 a.m., I heard Tripod running up and down on the clothesline where we hooked his chain. I put on my khakis without waking Molly and opened the back door. Clete was sitting at our redwood table in his skivvies, his skin netted with moonlight. When he heard the screen open, he removed a pint bottle of bourbon from the tabletop and set it by his thigh.

  “You don’t have to hide that,” I said.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I heard thunder. But the sky is clear.”

  I sat down next to him. “What’s eating you, podna?”

  “I went back to my old neighborhood in the Irish Channel. I always hated the house where I grew up. I hated my old man. But I went back there and saw what the storm had done, and I had feelings I’ve never had before. I missed my old man and the rattling sounds his milk truck made when he drove off at four in the morning. I missed my mom cooking pancakes in the kitchen. It was like everything in my childhood was finally over, but I didn’t want it to be over. It was like I had died and nobody had told me about it.”

  He picked up the pint bottle from the bench and unscrewed the cap. The bottle was wrapped in a brown paper bag and the moonlight glinted on the neck. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and tilted it up to drink. I could smell the bourbon as it rolled back over his tongue. I envisioned its amber color inside the yellow staves of the curing barrel, the bead it made inside the bottle’s neck when it was air-locked under the cork, the splash it made when it was released again and poured over ice and mint leaves inside a glass. Unconsciously I swallowed and touched at my brow as though a vein were tightening in my head.

  “It’s called a vision of mortality,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “The feelings you experienced when you went back to your old house.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to die?”

  “You saw the Big Sleazy die, Clete. It’s like having an affair with the Great Whore of Babylon. When you finally come to your senses and get her out of your life, you find out she was the only woma
n you ever loved.”

  Clete upended the bottle again, his throat working rhythmically, watching me with one eye, as though someone had spoken to him from one of his dreams.

  BUT CLETE WAS not the only friend or acquaintance from New Orleans seeking refuge in Iberia Parish. Two weeks after I had been sent to help investigate the shooting death of Kevin Rochon and the crippling of Eddy Melancon, Helen Soileau called me into her office. She spit a piece of her thumbnail off her tongue. “Otis Baylor just moved back to town with his family. Evidently they still own a home on Old Jeanerette Road,” she said.

  I waited for her to go on.

  “You think he dropped those two looters or not?” she said.

  “You mean is he that kind of guy? No, I don’t think he is. But—”

  “What?”

  “His daughter had a terrible experience at the hands of three street pukes. I don’t know what I would do if I were in his shoes.”

  “I didn’t hear that last sentence.”

  “Maybe Baylor thought they were going to break into his house. Maybe his nerves were fried.”

  “If this guy is dirty on a homicide, he’s not going to use our parish as a sanctuary. Talk to his wife and daughter.”

  “I’d rather drop this one.”

  “I’d rather not be present at my own death. Get out of here.”

  Baylor’s home was a dark green nineteenth-century one-story house with tall windows and high ceilings and a peaked tin roof streaked with rust that had a purple cast in the shadows, not unlike my own. It had a wide screened-in gallery and was set back from Bayou Teche under pecan and palm trees and a solitary live oak dripping with Spanish moss. A glider hung on chains from one of the oak limbs, and a tan Honda was parked in the shale driveway, its paint spotted with bird droppings. A girl of about nineteen answered the door.

  “I’m Dave Robicheaux, from the sheriff’s department,” I said, opening my badge. “Is Mr. Baylor here?”