DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  When would this bad weather end? When would all the problems wrought by the hurricanes just go away?

  A car leaking oil smoke went by the house and turned around by the drawbridge. A moment later the car’s headlights went out. Melanie set down her drink and book and went to the window, unconsciously closing her robe at the throat.

  The car was barely discernible in the darkness created by the overhang of the trees. She strained her eyes but could not tell if the driver was still inside or not. In the background, up on the drawbridge, a vehicle she never expected to see in a rural area of southern Louisiana suddenly appeared in the glow of the bridge’s overhead lights. A lavender Rolls-Royce clattered across the grid, turned by the plantation house next door, and headed down the bayou road, in the opposite direction from the parked car and the Baylor house.

  She checked the lock and chain on the front door and lowered the blinds. Then she sat quietly in her chair and finished her drink. The bourbon went down into her stomach like an old friend, in a way that made her feel warm and confident and erotically empowered at the same time. Then it spread throughout her body and deadened all her nerve endings, like someone closing her eyes with his fingers, like someone whispering in her ear that the world was a safe and good place and that one’s mistakes would be healed by the anodyne of time.

  What better friend could one have?

  space

  BERTRAND MELANCON finished writing his letter of amends to the Baylor family and read through it one more time. He wondered if they would be bothered by the fact it was written on a paper towel. More important, he wondered if they would be repelled by his visitation at their home. But rain or shine, it was time to boogie down the bayou. He drank from the bottle of chocolate milk his grandmother had bought for his stomach, folded the paper towel with a neat crease, and stuck it inside his shirt.

  Rain swept in sheets across the Loreauville Quarters and the cane fields and pecan trees and danced in a yellow mist on the bayou’s surface. He ran through his grandmother’s flooded yard and started her car, feeding it the gas, waiting for the spark plugs in all the cylinders to get hot enough to run in sync so the engine would stop backfiring and belching clouds of smoke out of the broken muffler.

  He drove onto the state road and headed toward New Iberia, the rain beating so hard on his roof and windows, the rubber on his windshield wipers was coming off. As he turned onto Old Jeanerette Road and followed the bayou toward the Baylors’ house, he discovered he had another problem as well: the brakes were not responding until the pedal was almost to the floor.

  His grandmother had said something about low brake fluid earlier, but he had been working on his letter of amends and hadn’t paid attention to her. Now he was in the midst of another rainstorm with a defective brake system and layers of oil smoke rising up his nose. How much else could go wrong?

  He pumped the pedal and felt the resistance level firm up, but a moment later it went soft again and he almost drove through the stop sign at the four-corners in a rural slum by the bayou. There were self-serve gas pumps at the convenience store on the highway, across the bridge, but it was doubtful he could buy brake fluid there. So he pushed on toward Jeanerette and the Baylors’ house, the rain sluicing down his windshield, his ulcers blaring like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

  Finally he passed Alice Plantation and saw the lights of the Jeanerette drawbridge glowing in the mist. He passed the Baylors’ house and made a U-turn at the bridge and parked in the shadows of trees. The rain had turned to fog and a soft drizzle that seemed to adhere to every surface in sight. The gallery light was on at the Baylor house, and so were the lights in the living room and the kitchen. Maybe the whole family was there. Briefly he saw a silhouette at a window, just before somebody dropped the blinds.

  Bertrand had always wondered how paratroopers mustered the courage to jump out of airplanes. What kind of fool would leap out a door thousands of feet above the earth, hoping a bunch of cloth streaming out of his back didn’t shred into rags, hoping he wasn’t going to become a keyhole in a barn roof? In the St. John the Baptist jail he got the chance to ask a paratrooper just that question.

  The paratrooper picked at his nails and said, “You just don’t think about it before you do it and you don’t think about it after it’s over.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah, more or less,” the paratrooper replied.

  Bertrand tried to use the paratrooper’s words to muster the courage he needed to approach Thelma Baylor’s home. But they were of no help to him and he wondered if in fact there were certain words you never adequately understood until you had earned the right to understand them.

  He took a breath and headed for the Baylors’ front door, his letter of amends still inside his shirt. Behind him, he heard a heavy vehicle clatter across the drawbridge’s grid. He turned and saw a luxurious lavender automobile of a kind he had never seen before. The chrome radiator cap was on the outside of the hood. The bodywork was so smooth it looked like plastic that had been poured into a mold. Then the automobile disappeared down the back road toward the ragged outline of the old sugar mill.

  Bertrand walked across the Baylors’ front yard and mounted the steps. He hesitated a moment, then he pulled open the screen door and went inside.

  space

  MELANIE HEARD THE rain slacken, then become nothing more than a whisper of tree branches across the tin surface of her roof. The side yard was strung with fog, the sky still flickering with electricity that made no sound. She had poured her glass half full of bourbon and had added more ice but no water. When she drank from the glass, the bourbon was cold enough and strong enough to anesthetize everything it touched. It was particularly effective in preempting or editing images from the night Katrina had made landfall and changed her life forever.

  She thought she felt a vibration caused by footsteps on the gallery. But the footsteps couldn’t belong to Thelma or Otis, could they? Melanie would have seen the headlights in the driveway. Besides, Thelma and Otis always unloaded the groceries under the porte cochere and entered the house through the side door, just as they had in New Orleans.

  She set down her book and listened. Then any doubts she had about the presence of someone on the gallery were removed by a sharp knock. She got up and approached the door at an angle, so she could see through one of the warped panes at the top without being seen by the person outside.

  Suddenly she was looking at the profile of a black man. He was of medium height, unshaved, his hair uncut, his face beaded with moisture. He kept looking back at the road, where a vehicle’s headlights were burning on the road’s shoulder. Then the headlights went out and the young black man turned back toward the door.

  Melanie stepped back quickly. The whiskey that had nestled in every corner of her system, warming and comforting her, seemed to evaporate like water on an overheated woodstove. Her hands trembled and her breath caught in her throat. She went to the kitchen and punched in 911, then realized there would not be time for the police to get there. She would have to deal with the black man herself, either by confronting or ignoring him.

  But if she ignored him, he would assume no one was home and perhaps break in. She closed her eyes and thought she heard a gunshot, then realized the sound was not real, that the whiskey had betrayed her and was now re-creating and amplifying memories it was supposed to protect her from.

  She heard the voice of a black woman speaking from the phone receiver: “What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “What did you say?” Melanie asked.

  “What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “A man is at my door. Send someone out.”

  “Is he breaking in?”

  “He’s a black man. I don’t know who he is. He has no business here.”

  “We’ll send someone out, ma’am. Is there someone else at your house?”

  “No, you won’t send somebody out. You’ll give priority to auto accidents. I know you people.”r />
  “What do you mean by ‘you people,’ ma’am? Do you need medical assistance? You sound like you’ve been drinking.”

  “No, I don’t need medical assistance, you ignorant thing,” Melanie said. She dropped the receiver on the table, rejecting the dispatcher but not breaking the connection.

  She pulled a butcher knife from one of the slits in the wood block where she kept all her sharpest knives. Then she went back to the front door and flung it open, the butcher knife concealed behind her.

  The black man stood in front of her, clutching a flattened brown paper towel in both hands, like someone who had come Christmas caroling.

  “Are you miz Baylor?” he asked.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Is Miss Thelma or Mr. Baylor here?”

  “I asked you what you want.”

  “So I guess they ain’t here. Let me read this to you, ma’am, then I’m gone.”

  He positioned himself so the overhead light fell on the paper towel.

  “Are you crazy?” she said.

  “‘To Miss Thelma and the family of Miss Thelma,’” he read. “‘I am sorry for what I have did to her. I wasn’t always that kind of person. Or maybe I was. I am not sure. But I want to make it right even though I know it is not going to ever be right with her or anybody who was hurt like she been hurt.

  “‘Andre and my brother Eddy and me was the ones who attacked her by the Desire. We done the same thing to a young girl in the Lower Nine. I want to tell her I’m sorry, too, but I cain’t find her. So if you know who she is, please tell her what I said.

  “‘The night of the storm I went in your garage and stole gas. We also stole what is called “blood stones” from a man who stole them from somebody else. I hid them where the map on the bottom shows. They are yours. They won’t make up for what we done. But Eddy is ruined and Andre is dead and I think I have already lost my soul. So that’s all I got to say, except I apologize for what we done.

  “‘Thank you, Bertrand Melancon.’”

  She stared at him, stupefied. “You raped Thelma?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You piece of shit, you come to our house offering us blood diamonds? You goddamn piece of shit.”

  “I ain’t meant to upset you.”

  The cream he used in his hair had started to run and she could smell it on his skin. It smelled like aloe and body grease and candle wax. In her mind, she saw a bullet punch through a black man’s throat and, behind him, the skullcap of a teenage boy explode in a bloody spray. She thought she was going to be sick to her stomach but she wasn’t sure why. One thing was clear, however. She viscerally hated the black man standing on her gallery.

  “You’ve ruined our lives. You destroyed my husband’s career. We’re losing everything we own because of you. You ask for forgiveness? You have the arrogance to ask that from us?”

  He saw the knife in her hand. The blade was short, deep at the hilt, tapering triangularly to a honed point. “I’m sorry I bothered y’all, ma’am. I t’ought it was the right thing to do. I ain’t gonna do it again.”

  He tried to offer her the letter he had written on the paper towel. She tore it from his hand and threw it in his face. He backed away from her, through the screen, then fell down the steps into the yard.

  “Take this with you,” she said. She picked up the paper towel from the gallery, crumpling it into a ball, and threw it at him. “Did you hear me? I hope you do go to Hell.”

  But Bertrand was already running for his grandmother’s car, looking back over his shoulder, wondering if redemption would ever be his or if insanity was the rule in human beings and not the exception.

  Then he saw the lavender automobile again, the one with the chrome radiator cap on the outside of the engine. The driver was standing by the front headlight, watching Bertrand, his polished, elongated head unmistakable against the glow of the drawbridge.

  Just won’t give it up, will you, motherfucker? Okay, let’s see if you got a pair of peaches or a pair of acorns on you, Bertrand said to himself.

  He fired up his grandmother’s car, dropped the transmission clanking into reverse, and floored the accelerator. The tires spun a shower of mud and water into the air, and oil smoke bloomed in black clouds from under the hood as the car sped toward the front of the strange-looking vehicle with the radiator cap outside the engine.

  Here I come, Toot’brush Face.

  Bertrand was twisted all the way around in the seat as he steered, aiming through the back window at the man who called himself Ronald, the bald tires slick with mud, spinning serpentine lines on the asphalt and the shoulder. Ronald tried to hold his ground, but at the last moment he leaped aside and took cover behind the trunk of a live oak.

  Figured you for gutless, Bertrand said to himself.

  He took his foot off the accelerator and jammed on the brakes, expecting to slide within an inch of the lavender automobile with the outside radiator cap.

  Instead, the brake pedal went all the way to the floor, as though it were totally disconnected from the rest of his grandmother’s car. The rear bumper crashed into Ronald’s restored Rolls-Royce, exploding the front end, scattering the asphalt with bits of headlight glass and wiring and pieces of chrome.

  oh shit.

  Bertrand dropped the transmission into drive, floored the accelerator again, and spun back out on the road, taking pieces of Ronald’s collectible with him. When he looked in the mirror, he saw Ronald staring in horror at the destruction that had just been done to his vehicle.

  Tough luck, chuck. Sorry to skin your hide, Clyde. But you been sacked, Jack. So adios, Toast.

  Bertrand’s mouth was wide with laughter as he roared down the road. There was only one problem. He had left behind his grandmother’s bumper as well as her license tag. Chapter 26

  F RIDAY MORNING I called Bo Diddley’s office in Lafayette. The receptionist answered, the same one who was a master at saying as little as possible.

  “This is Detective Dave Robicheaux, with the Iberia Sheriff’s Department. Has Mr. Wiggins returned from his business trip to Miami?”

  “He’s in a meeting right now,” she replied.

  “Is his secretary there, the lady with the white-gold hair?”

  “She’s on vacation.”

  “Put Mr. Wiggins on.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. Go do it,” I said.

  I marked the time on my watch. Almost two minutes went by before Bo picked up. “What’s the problem, Dave?”

  “I have the feeling you don’t want to see me.”

  “Where would you get an idea like that?”

  “Did your receptionist tell you I was in your office Wednesday?”

  “I probably didn’t see the message slip. Don’t take it out on her.”

  I waited a beat before I spoke again. “I’ll be at your office in about forty minutes. If I were you, I’d be there. If you’re not, we’ll have you picked up by Lafayette PD.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  I thought it was time for Bo to experience a little anxiety. “You’re about to find out,” I said, and hung up.

  The traffic was thin and I made it to the Lafayette Oil center in a half hour. Bo’s office was spacious and full of windows that gave a sense of airiness to an environment that was purely utilitarian. He was standing at his desk behind his glass partition, talking on the phone. He peered at me over his reading glasses and gestured for me to come in, as though he were anxious to see me.

  “You tie one on last night?” he said.

  “Where’s your secretary, the woman who was at the casino with Bobby Mack Rydel?”

  “She’s out sick.”

  “That’s funny. Your receptionist said she’s on vacation.”

  Bo made an exasperated expression, as though his newly acquired Christian charity were indeed being tested. “Why do you want to treat me like this, Dave? Something I did back in co
llege? Maybe I punched you when I was drunk? I always got the sense you thought I was hard on black people, hard on folks that maybe had more than I did. Well, if that’s how you felt, you were right. But I’m not like that today.”

  He grinned, his eyes on mine, waiting for me to respond. His modesty, his candor, his vulnerability were a study in manipulation. But to portray him as a hypocrite would not be fair. James Boyd Wiggins had learned his value system from the oligarchy that had created him. In Louisiana, as in the rest of the South, the issue was always power. Wealth did not buy it. Wealth came with it. Televangelist preachers and fundamentalist churches sold magic as a way of acquiring it. The measure of one’s success was the degree to which he could exploit his fellow man or reward his friends or punish his enemies. In our state’s history, a demagogue with holes in his shoes forced Standard Oil to kiss his ring. Bo Diddley might have valued money, but I suspected he would fling it into an incinerator a shovelful at a time rather than take down the name of James Boyd Wiggins from the entrance of his office building.

  “Why you looking at me like that?” he said, a grin still on his mouth.

  I shook my head. “How long has Bobby Mack Rydel been working for you?”

  “A security guy?”

  “Among other things.”

  “I retain a security service out of Baton Rouge for all my shipyards. They subcontract some of the work. I think Rydel might be a subcontractor for them, but I’m not sure. He’s out of Morgan City, isn’t he? Is this about the fight between him and your friend at the casino?”

  As with all fearful people, Bo’s agenda always remained the same: Every action he took, every word he spoke, was an attempt to control the environment and the people around him. He filled the air with sound and answered questions with questions. Most disarming of all was his ability to include an element of truth in his ongoing deceptions.