DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m eating breakfast right now,” Clete said. He started to close the door.

  “I just moved in across the way and wanted to introduce myself.”

  “That’s funny. A family that got blown out of cameron Parish was staying there.”

  “My agency helped them relocate. I’m a private investigator.”

  “Is that why you were checking out my tag?”

  “No, it’s just a habit I have. I see dirt and I wipe it off. Early up-bringing, I guess.”

  “Maybe you can recommend a place that restores old caddies.”

  The man who called himself Ronald Bledsoe stared thoughtfully at the bayou. “As a matter of fact, I do know a local gentleman. Let me write his name down for you on my business card.” he wrote on the back of a card and handed it to Clete. “Tell him I sent you.”

  “Thanks a lot. I appreciate this,” Clete said, holding up the card, sticking it into his shirt pocket.

  CLETE FINISHED HIS BREAKFAST, then called me on his cell phone. “A guy with a hush-puppy accent and the name Ronald Bledsoe was messing around my Caddy. He’s hinky as a corkscrew. Can you run him through the NCIC?”

  “I already did.”

  “What’d you get back on him?”

  “The same guy was out to Otis Baylor’s house. Baylor thought he was weird, too. The National Crime Information Center has nothing on him.”

  “Why was this guy talking to Baylor?”

  “He seemed to think Bertrand Melancon might have stashed stolen goods on Baylor’s property. He claims to be working for the state.”

  “His business card says he’s out of Key West. I called the number, but the phone is disconnected. He also referred me to a car detailer in Lafayette. The guy didn’t recognize the name. You think he’s working for Sidney?”

  “Maybe.”

  “This guy is a real creep, Dave.”

  “How many PIs are normal people?”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m glad you explained that. Otherwise I would think you’re insulting as hell.”

  CLETE HAD SAID that since Katrina he had heard the sounds of little piggy feet clattering to the trough. I think his image was kind. I think the reality was far worse. The players were much bigger than the homegrown parasites that have sucked the life out of Louisiana for generations. The new bunch was educated and groomed and had global experience in avarice and venality and made the hair-oil and polyester crowd in our state legislature look like the Ecclesiastical College of Cardinals. Think of an inverted pyramid. Staggering sums of money were given to insider corporations who subcontracted the jobs to small outfits that used only nonunion labor. A $500 million contract for debris removal was given to a company in Miami that did not own a single truck, then the work was subcontracted to people who actually load debris and haul it away. Emergency roof repairs, what are called “blue roof jobs,” involved little more than tacking down rolls of blue felt on plywood. FEMA provided the felt free. Insider contractors got the jobs for one hundred dollars a square foot and paid the subs two dollars a square foot. In the meantime, fifty thousand nonunion workers were brought into the city, most of them from the Caribbean, and were paid an average of eight to nine dollars an hour to do the work.

  Why dwell on it? It’s unavoidable. It became obvious right after Katrina that the destruction of New Orleans was an ongoing national tragedy and probably an American watershed in the history of political cynicism. I knew early on that the events taking place in New Orleans now would lay large claim on the rest of my career if not my life. If I had been able to convince myself otherwise, the call I was about to receive from Special Agent Betsy Mossbacher would have quickly disillusioned me.

  “Sorry to bother you again, but I’ve got some conflicting information here regarding a Felix Ramos, street name Chula Ramos. This guy and his buddy were supposed to be transferred from the Iberia Parish Prison into our custody,” she said.

  “That’s right. He and his fall partner got nailed at a meth lab. I interviewed both of them. That was right before Katrina. You guys were supposed to pick them up.”

  “Two informants, independently of each other, say Chula is working as an electrician and plumber in New Orleans. I’ve talked to five different people in Iberia Parish, including your jailer. No one seems to know where Ramos is or what happened to him or if he ever existed. Can you explain that?”

  “How about his partner?”

  “His partner is in the stockade. There’s no problem with his partner. Not unless you guys lose him before we can get down there.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  I called the parish prison and the district attorney. Then I went into Helen’s office. “The FBI thinks we’ve lost Felix Ramos, one of those guys who—”

  “Yeah, the one who called me a queer in Spanish.”

  “Yeah, that one,” I said, my eyes slipping off hers. “The ADA who caught the case says he was marked for transfer to federal custody, so she put everything on hold. In fact, she thought the FBI had already picked him up.”

  “Maybe they did. Maybe they lost him in their own system.”

  “Betsy Mossbacher isn’t one to screw up like that. She says Ramos may be drawing paychecks in New Orleans. A lot of MS-13 guys are in the trades.”

  “Give me a few minutes,” she said.

  I went back to my office. It was almost quitting time. I felt like I was in a bad dream, unable to extract myself from New Orleans and the Melancon-Rochon shooting and the probable homicide of Jude LeBlanc. I wanted to go home and eat a hot supper with my family and perhaps walk down Main Street with them in the twilight and have a dessert on the terrace behind Clementine’s restaurant. I wanted to have a normal life again.

  My extension buzzed. “Ramos’s name got misspelled on the arrest report,” Helen said. “The misspelling went into the computer. We have three other inmates in custody who have similar names. One of them finished his sentence during Rita. The day he was supposed to get out he was at Iberia General for treatment of a venereal infection. Felix Ramos walked out in his stead. To top it off, the ADA says the bust probably won’t hold anyway. Ramos was a hundred feet from the lab when it was raided and there’s no evidence or witness statements to put him inside it. Nothing like drinkin’ rum and Coca-Cola on the bayou, huh, boss?”

  IN THE MORNING I decided the only way to deal with the Melancon-Rochon file was to hit it head-on and to stop giving a free pass to people who had lied to me. There was no conventional telephone service in New Orleans and I doubted there would be any for a long time. I called Otis Baylor and asked if he had a cell number for his next-door neighbor, Tom Claggart. “There might be one in my Rolodex,” he said.

  “Do you mind looking it up?”

  After a pause, he said, “Just a minute.”

  He came back to the phone and gave me the number, but he did not hide his impatience well. “Does your call to Tom Claggart concern us?”

  “I’m not sure. But it’s a police matter, Mr. Baylor. We’re not obligated to inform the public about the content of an investigation or the procedures we follow. I think it’s important we all understand that.”

  He eased the telephone back into the cradle, breaking the connection.

  I punched in Claggart’s cell number. He answered on the third ring. “Tom Claggart,” he said.

  “This is Dave Robicheaux again. I need to check a discrepancy between—”

  “How’d you get this number?”

  “That’s not the issue, Mr. Claggart.”

  “It is to me. My cell number is private.”

  “Would you like to conduct this interview in handcuffs?”

  “I’m sorry. We’re under a lot of pressure here. I should have gone with Otis Baylor. He can be a pain in the ass, but at least he’s honest.”

  “Say again?”

  “I should have bought my insurance p
olicy from Otis. My carrier is sticking it to me. I hear Otis has been approving his clients’ water-damage claims on the spot. I bet his company is shitting their pants.”

  I tried to get the conversation back on track. “There’s a discrepancy between your statement to me and the account you gave a private investigator regarding the shooting of the looters. You told me you were asleep and you heard and saw nothing. Do you stand by that statement?”

  “I had a few drinks that night. Things got kind of mixed up.”

  “Did you tell the private investigator one of the looters was in the Baylor driveway, that maybe he left stolen goods there?”

  “I don’t remember saying that. I mean, I don’t remember saying that last part.”

  “The investigator’s name is Ronald Bledsoe. Do you remember that name?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can you come into my office?”

  “No, I can’t do that. I’m all tied up here. I don’t know what all this is about.”

  Why had he lied? Was it because he had done nothing to stop the looters? Was he simply trying to hide the fact he was a blowhard? People lie over less.

  “You told Bledsoe the truth?”

  “Maybe I saw one of those black guys in the shadows. But I didn’t see the shooting. Look, I just want out of this.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Everything. I didn’t hurt anyone. Leave me alone.”

  I could almost smell his fear on the other side of the connection. “Mr. Claggart?”

  He clicked off his cell.

  In my mind’s eye I saw a man whose eyes were tightly shut, his hand clenched around his cell phone as he tried to rethink every misstep he had just made. I saw a man who despised himself for his own weakness and who now carried the extra burden of knowing that through his own volition he had revealed himself to others as a liar and a fraud if not a coward. Also he had blurted out that he had not “hurt anyone,” when in fact no one had accused him of doing so. There was a very good chance Tom Claggart was speaking of another incident, perhaps another crime, of which I had no knowledge. For whatever reason, he had done all these things to himself, without external provocation. I believe that Tom Claggart had just discovered that stacking time on the hard road is a matter of definition and not geography.

  AFTER I HUNG UP, I assembled three photo lineups. A photo lineup is composed of six mug shots inserted in a cardboard holder. Among the six photos only one is of the suspect. Ideally the other photos should be of people in the same age range and of the same race as the suspect. The photo lineup has several advantages. The viewer, who is often a victim of a violent crime, is spared public embarrassment and is less fearful of retaliation from the suspect’s friends and relatives and hence less apt to be influenced by the presence of either prosecutors or defense attorneys in a police station environment. Secondly, jailhouse photography indicates by its nature that the suspect has been put away previously and hence can be put away again.

  I inserted mug shots of Andre Rochon, Eddy Melancon, and Bertrand Melancon among their peers, dropped all three lineups in a brown envelope, and drove up Old Jeanerette Road to Otis Baylor’s house while a sun shower chained the bayou with rain rings.

  I cannot say what I thought I would accomplish. I was tired of people lying to me, that was obvious, but I wanted to confront Otis Baylor for another reason. As Americans we are a peculiar breed. We believe in law and order, but we also believe that real crimes are committed by a separate class of people, one that has nothing to do with our own lives or the world of reasonable behavior and mutual respect to which we belong. As a consequence, many people, particularly in higher income brackets, think of police officers as suburban maintenance personnel who should be treated politely but whose social importance is one cut above that of their gardeners.

  Ever watch reality cop shows? Check out the guys who are always streaking through wash lines and across darkened yards, their tennis shoes flopping on their feet, their crime of the day possession of a dime bag. What conclusion does the viewer arrive at? Crimes are committed by shirtless pukes. Slumlords and politicians on a pad get no play.

  It was time that someone put a human face on the men who ate a high-velocity round directly opposite Otis’s front door.

  I had assumed Otis Baylor would still be home. But he wasn’t. “Can you tell me where he is?” I asked his daughter on the gallery.

  “He’s probably down in Vermilion Parish, down by the coast. His company covered a lot of the houses down there.”

  “I understand your old man is standing up for his clients.”

  “Standing up, like?” she replied, her eyelids fluttering as though she could barely deal with my impaired abilities.

  “Your dad is making good on his clients’ water-damage claims. I hear a lot of people aren’t that lucky.”

  “Maybe my father will end up working as a route manager for the newspaper, too.”

  “Could we sit down somewhere?”

  “I have a class at one.”

  “Is your mother home?”

  “I told you, she’s my stepmother. And no, she’s not here.”

  “I don’t want to be rude, Miss Thelma, but I’m pretty tired of your bad manners. Step out in the light, please.”

  “What for?”

  “We’d like to make sure we have a positive ID on the men who were looting your neighborhood. One of these guys is dead and one is a vegetable who was kidnapped and possibly tortured because he knows where some stolen property is hidden. I don’t want any more sarcastic remarks from you. In truth, I think your family is about to drown in its own shit. Maybe you can do them a favor by being honest for a change.”

  We were standing in the yard now. She was trying to blow off the lecture she had just gotten, but her face was white inside the black rectangle of her hair, her bottom lip twitching. I seemed to tower over her and I didn’t like the feeling it gave me.

  “Here,” I said, putting the lineup holders in her hand. “Do any of these guys look like the ones you saw in front of your house the night of the shooting?”

  She began sifting the holders, sliding one stiffly against the other, perfunctorily, her eyes not quite focused, as though she already knew she would not recognize any of the men. But I did not expect what happened next. She widened her eyes, not in surprise but in an attempt to control the water welling into them.

  “Look, kiddo, I was a little hard on you there. Sit down in the glider and take your time. You and your family are decent people. Y’all got hit by a wrecking ball, but eventually you’ll get this behind you.”

  She sat down heavily in the glider and I realized that something far more serious was on her mind than seeing again the faces of men who had been looting her neighborhood.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “What is what? I’ve never seen any of these people. It was dark. I was still half asleep. How could I recognize these people?”

  Her fingers were pinched tightly on the photo holders. Then, almost as an afterthought, she pushed them at me. I didn’t offer to take them. “You don’t recognize anybody in those mug shots?” I said.

  “No, I just told you. I don’t know who they are.”

  I sat down next to her. I could hear the chains on the glider biting into the oak bark overhead. “Look at me, Thelma.”

  “I don’t want to look at you. Please go, Mr. Robicheaux. I have an anthropology class. I have to get ready.”

  I took the photos from her hands. “Why do you want to lie? Why not admit you recognize someone in these photos? Was it you who fired the rifle?”

  “No. I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I hate guns.”

  Then she pressed the palm of her hand over her mouth and began to gag. I placed my hand on her back. Her shirt was damp with perspiration and it flattened and stuck against her skin. I could feel her muscles constricting with each breath she drew. A tremor rippled through her body and she began to sob and shake all over.

&nb
sp; Suddenly I knew her secret. Only one kind of injury produces the level of injury and misery she was experiencing. It’s of a kind that never goes away, that carries with it an unearned sense of shame and dishonor and humiliation and rage that the worst of my own memories cannot compete with.

  “These are the guys who raped you, aren’t they?”

  “No,” she said, swallowing, drawing it back inside herself, wiping the tears off her cheeks with her fingers.

  “Yes, they are, Thelma.”

  “No, you mustn’t say that.”

  “Somehow they blundered into your life again. You recognized them and you told your old man. You won’t admit that because you’re afraid you’ll provide us with the motivation for his shooting them.”

  “Don’t do this to us, Mr. Robicheaux.”

  “You’re a stand-up kid. But you’re not thinking clearly. As soon as you told your father these were the guys who attacked you, he had every right to use violent force to protect his home and family. Get a good lawyer and tell him the truth, then come into our office and do the same.”

  But she was already running for the inside of her house, like a little girl who has just been tricked into betraying the only friend she has. Chapter 16

  C LETE PURCEL’S ADVICE on dealing with mainline perps and full-time dirtbags was simple: When they deal the play, you bust them or dust them. But what about a guy who didn’t have a category? Or worse, one who operated without handles?

  Early Saturday morning, Alafair went to City Park with Clete, jogging with him down a serpentine asphalt path that led through live oaks still deep in shadow. Somehow she had convinced herself she could wean him from his diet of booze and fried food and the self-delusion that clanking iron three times a week while he drank a pitcher of vodka Collins would control his weight and reduce his blood pressure.

  Rain clouds had sealed the sky and inside the trees the air was warm and almost luminescent with humidity. Clete and Alafair jogged past the old brick firehouse, then across close-cropped St. Augustine grass that was emerald green from the rains, past camellia bushes and islands of hyacinths floating in the bayou and a cypress pond set in the center of the park. They thumped across a wood pedestrian bridge and caught the asphalt again, their eyes stinging with sweat, the smell of burning leaves clinging to their skin. Up ahead they saw a man sitting in a picnic shelter, tying his tennis shoe, his mouth twisted in a self-amused smile. He was overdressed for the morning, his navy blue workout pants dark with sweat below his waist, his matching windbreaker open on a T-shirt that was glued to his breastbone.