DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  Neither one of them looked up when Otis approached them. Six slices of white bread, with pieces of cheese on them, were browning on a refrigerator grill above the fire.

  “You know who I am?” Otis asked.

  Bertrand raised his eyes and lowered them again. Then he looked at the car parked on the street and the young woman in the passenger seat. “Yes, suh, I ain’t got no doubt who you are.”

  “Who are you, ma’am?” Otis asked the woman.

  “Who are you, standing in my drive, axing questions?” she said. Her skin was as wrinkled as old putty, her breasts nothing more than dried dugs. Her movement was erratic, as though her motor control would not coordinate with itself. One of her eyelids drooped. Her hair was so thin it looked like duck down on her scalp.

  “My name is Otis Baylor. The young woman in the car is my daughter. Her name is Thelma. I suspect you’re Miss Clemmie, Bertrand’s auntie.”

  The woman watched the cheese melt on the bread slices. She picked up a tin can from her lap, bent over, and spit snuff in it.

  “Did Bertrand tell you what happened to my daughter, Miss Clemmie?”

  “She ain’t part of this, suh,” Bertrand said.

  “You’re staying at her house. She’s giving your refuge. That makes her part of it. Where’s your grandmother?”

  “Inside, resting. It’s cool tonight. She t’ought she’d rest.”

  “Mr. Robicheaux says you came to my house and tried to make amends. How does a man like you make amends for what he did, Mr. Melancon?”

  “I wanted to give y’all some diamonds I taken from a man who taken them from somebody else.”

  “That’s an insult.”

  “Suh, I ain’t mean to hurt y’all no more. I t’ought I was—” He stopped and widened his eyes, as though smoke were in them. “I ain’t gonna say no more. Call the cops or do what you come here to do.”

  Otis wore a short-sleeved shirt that suddenly seemed too small for his chest and throat, so small and tight he couldn’t breathe. “You wait here,” he said.

  He went inside the house without knocking. It was dark inside and he could hear the hum of mosquitoes in the rooms. The floor and walls seemed to be covered with the same greenish-black sludge or mold that he had seen on the debris piled in the yard. A woman lay on a cot in the hallway, breathing audibly, a pillow stuffed behind her head. “That you, Bertrand?” she said.

  “No, my name is Otis Baylor.”

  There were bandages wrapped around the palms of both the woman’s hands. “Where’s Bertrand at?” she said.

  “Outside, in the driveway,” Otis said.

  “You one of the men shot into my li’l house?”

  “No.”

  “You a policeman?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then what you doing here?”

  “I’m an insurance man.”

  “You come here about Clemmie’s claim?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said.

  “Would you help me up?”

  Otis reached down to take her by the arm. Then he heard the screen door behind him. “That’s all right, suh. I got it,” Bertrand said. He held a small white bowl in one hand. “She burned herself on the grill. I got to help her with her soup.”

  “These women shouldn’t be here,” Otis said.

  “Ain’t no place to take them,” Bertrand said.

  Otis watched while Bertrand hand-fed his grandmother. Otis wiped the mosquitoes out of his face. When the wind changed and blew through the back door, the odor of feces struck his nostrils. “I want to talk to you,” he said.

  “I got to finish here,” Bertrand said.

  “No, you come outside and talk to me now.”

  Bertrand set the bowl down on the floor, next to the cot, and followed Otis outside.

  “I feel like tearing you apart,” Otis said.

  “I guess you do.”

  “You go over to that car and you apologize.”

  “Suh?”

  “You heard me. You look my daughter in the face and you apologize, you sonofabitch, before I do something awful.”

  Bertrand walked to Otis’s car and stood in front of the passenger door, his back to Otis, blocking Otis’s view of his daughter’s face. While he spoke, Bertrand’s arms were folded on his chest, his head turned to one side. In silhouette, his body looked like it had no arms, like a wood post painted on the air. On the far side of the street, a dog was trying to dig something loose from a pile of smoldering garbage.

  Bertrand turned away from the car and walked past Otis toward the front door of the house. He was wiping his nose with the back of his wrist.

  “You come here,” Otis said.

  “What for?”

  “Did you hear me?” Otis said. He fitted his hand under Bertrand’s arm, almost lifting him into the air.

  “What you want from me? I done all I could do,” Bertrand said. “If them men who killed Andre and tortured Eddy get their hands on my auntie and grandmother, what you think is gonna happen to them? You tell me that, Mr. Baylor.”

  The question Bertrand had asked was legitimate: What did Otis want? To somehow give new life to the spiritual cancer that had fed at his father’s heart? To use his daughter’s suffering to justify beating a man bloody with his fists?

  “Daddy?” he heard Thelma say behind him.

  He turned and stared into her face.

  “Daddy, it’s all right. Let him go,” she said.

  “Honey—” he began.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  She took his big hand in both of hers and smiled at him. “Come on, Daddy, we’re finished here,” she said.

  Bertrand Melancon remained stationary in the yard as they drove away. He was not sure what had happened between Otis Baylor and his daughter or what he should do next. In fact, he was not sure about anything. He wondered if his grandmother’s soup had grown cold. He wondered if his auntie and grandmother had any idea of the crimes he had committed. He wondered if his mother was still alive someplace and if she ever thought about him or Eddy. He wondered why every event that had transpired in his life was not what he had planned.

  How could that be? he asked himself. For just a moment, he wondered if the priest he had killed could give him an answer. That thought set his stomach on fire and caused him to spit blood in his auntie’s yard. Chapter 29

  T HE PROBLEM WITH an adrenaline high, unlike one driven by booze, is that you cannot sustain it. When the heart-thundering rush subsides, when the clean smell of ignited cordite is blown away by the wind, you find yourself in the same kind of dead zone that a drunkard lives in. You wake in the morning to white noise that is like a television set turned up full volume on an empty screen. The streets seem empty, the sky brittle, the air stained with industrial odors you do not associate with morning. The sun is white overhead, the way a flashbulb is white, and the trees offer neither birdsong nor shade. Whatever you touch has a sharp edge to it, and ineptitude and remorse seem to wrap themselves around all your thoughts. The world has become an unforgiving prison where the images from a mistaken moment have not disappeared with sleep and instead pursue you wherever you go. You spend your time rationalizing and justifying and eventually you take on the persona of someone you don’t recognize. It’s like stepping around a corner onto a street on which there are no other people. It’s not an experience you come back from easily.

  Monday morning Helen came into my office and sat down across from me. “You feeling okay, bwana?”

  “Right as rain,” I replied.

  I could hear her chewing gum, her jaws working steadily.

  “Why do you figure Bobby Mack Rydel came after you?”

  “Bledsoe was behind it. He played Rydel just like he plays everybody.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t see Bledsoe in the Humvee up on the levee?”

  I knew what she wanted me to say.

  “I didn’t see the guy in the Humvee,” I said.
>
  “Too bad. Look, you’re supposed to be on the desk till IA clears the shoot, but we should have that out of the way by close of business. We need Bledsoe in a cage. I’m with you on this one, Streak. I don’t care how we do it. This creep has spit on us again and again and gotten away with it. Let’s run at it from a different angle.”

  “How?”

  “Who was it who said, ‘When people say this is not about money, it’s about money’?”

  “H. L. Mencken.”

  “This is about those blood stones or whatever. Put all the scorpions in a matchbox and shake it up.”

  “With Bledsoe it’s personal. He enjoys it. If someone didn’t pay him to hurt other people, he’d pay to do it.”

  “Start over again. Go after Otis Baylor,” she said.

  “Waste of time.”

  “Really? I wonder why he’s downstairs,” she replied.

  I BUZZED WALLY and asked him to send Otis Baylor up. I expected Wally to make a wisecrack. But he surprised me. “Glad you and your family are okay, Dave. I’m glad you capped that dude, too. That was a righteous shoot. Everybody here knows that. You hearing me?”

  “Yeah, I do, Wally. Thanks,” I said.

  Two minutes later Otis knocked on my glass pane and I waved him inside. He was wearing a navy blue suit and white shirt and tie, and his shoes were brushed to a soft luster. He put a piece of lined notebook paper on my desk. “That’s Bertrand Melancon’s address in the Ninth Ward. If you want him, he’s yours.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Baylor.”

  He didn’t argue. He took a chair in front of my desk and gazed around my office.

  “I’ll pass this information on to NOPD. I’ll also pass it on to the FBI in Baton Rouge. Maybe they’ll get around to picking him up one day, but I don’t believe that’s going to happen soon. I think others will get their hands on Bertrand first, and when they do, they’ll boil the meat off his bones.”

  “Then it’s on y’all. My family and I are finished with him.”

  “I have a feeling something happened since I last saw you. Want to tell me about it?”

  He did just that, in detail, leaving nothing out, describing his temptation to tear Bertrand Melancon into pieces in front of his auntie and the act of intervention and mercy on his daughter’s part.

  “I admire what you’ve done, sir, but yesterday I shot and killed a man by the name of Bobby Mack Rydel. I killed him because he tried to kill my daughter, my wife, and me. He did this because Ronald Bledsoe put him up to it. Are you aware of all this? Because you don’t seem to be.”

  “No, I wasn’t aware. We got back from New Orleans late last night. I didn’t watch the news or read the paper this morning. I came straight to your office. I’m sorry to hear about your trouble.”

  I thought it was time to use the information Deputy Catin Segura had given me regarding Otis Baylor’s wife.

  “You didn’t shoot those looters, Mr. Baylor. I think your wife did. I think before you two met, she was sexually abused, probably by someone with sadistic tendencies, maybe someone addicted to sado-porn. I think she saw the looters approaching your house and got frightened and opened up on them.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Who told you this stuff about Mrs. Baylor?”

  “Who cares? Your wife picked up the Springfield and probably fired it out the front door. She was probably scared. Who wouldn’t be? A jury should be able to understand that. I think it’s pretty dumb to protect someone who perhaps doesn’t need protecting.”

  His eyes stayed on mine and I knew he was thinking about the statement I had just made. I had said a jury “should understand.” Like most intelligent people, Otis knew equivocation and nuance in language when he heard it. He also knew that a prosecutor would emphasize to the jury that the shooter had been deadly accurate and had managed to take down not just one but two looters with a single shot. It was obvious the shooter had not fired simply to frighten them away.

  But right now I was no longer interested in whether or not Otis worked out his family problems.

  “Bertrand told me he tried to make amends to you. I think he tried to give you part or all of the blood diamonds stolen from Sidney Kovick’s house. I need to know where they are.”

  “We have nothing to do with that.”

  “Does you wife know where they are?”

  “No.”

  I remained silent, turning a pencil in a circle on my blotter with my finger, leaving the burden of evidence on him.

  “Look, Melancon brought a letter to the house,” he said. “He had handwritten an apology to our family and tried to read it to her. He told my wife the location of the diamonds was on the bottom of the letter. But she threw it in his face. I found the letter in the yard. It was written on a paper hand towel. The ink had dissolved in the water. It’s unreadable.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Probably still in the can I use for yard cleanup.”

  “With your permission, I’m going to send someone out there to pick it up,” I said.

  “Do whatever you want,” he replied.

  I got the exact location of the trash can from him and called the Acadiana Crime Lab. After I got off the phone, I looked at Otis for a long time. “I wish you had told me this before,” I said. “Your lack of cooperation hasn’t been good for any of us, Mr. Baylor, least of all for yourself. If I can share a little bit of police wisdom with you, it’s a fool’s errand to take other people’s weight.”

  “I’m not up on police terminology. You want to rephrase that?”

  “When we allow others to victimize us in order to prove our own worth, we invite a cancer into our lives.”

  “We through here, Mr. Robicheaux?”

  I felt my old enemy, anger, flare in my chest. My daughter and wife had almost lost their lives the previous day and I had been forced to shoot and kill their assailant. Regardless of what he had suffered himself, I was tired of Otis Baylor’s recalcitrant attitudes.

  He was studying my face, perhaps finally aware that other people have their limits.

  “No, we’re not through. And it’s Detective Robicheaux. Why do you think we came down on you with both feet?” I said.

  “Bad luck?”

  “Because your neighbor gave you up.”

  “Tom Claggart?”

  “He said the night the looters were shot, you made a statement about ‘hanging black ivory on the wall.’ You remember saying that?”

  “Yeah, I do. But I don’t blame Tom for telling you that. He’s a simpleminded man who wants to please authority. He went to the Virginia Military Institute or the Citadel or one of those military colleges. I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

  It has to do with the fact you’re unteachable, sir, I thought. But I kept my feelings to myself.

  MY GUESS WAS that Ronald Bledsoe had already left town. Wrong again. Two other detectives went to his motor court early Monday morning and were told by the manager that Mr. Bledsoe could be found at an assisted-care facility next door to Iberia General.

  One of the detectives, Lukas Cormier, called me on his cell phone from the parking lot outside the facility. He had a bachelor’s degree in business administration, with a minor in psychology, and was a good investigator. “You want to come over here?” he said.

  “I’m supposed to be on the desk till IA cuts me loose,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “When we went inside, this guy who looks like he was squirted out of a toothpaste tube was reading a Harry Potter book aloud to a roomful of Alzheimer patients. He goes, ‘Hi, my name is Ronald. What’s yours?’”

  “What’s his alibi for yesterday?”

  “He says he was in Barnes and Noble in Lafayette, buying books for his Alzheimer friends.”

  “Does he have any purchase receipts?”

  “No, I asked him.”

  “How about the Humvee? You got anything on it?”

  “Zip. We tried all the rentals and talked to a couple of dea
lerships. But without a tag number I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere on the vehicle. You want us to bring him in?”

  “No, let him think he’s slid one past us.”

  “He’s got no sheet at all? Mental institutions, stuff like that?”

  “None. Bledsoe is a blank. Not so much as a traffic violation.”

  There was a beat and I knew what was coming.

  “Dave, I don’t want to seem casual about your experience with this character, but are you sure we’ve got the right guy? I don’t see this guy as New Iberia’s answer to BTK. Guys who try to whack a cop and his family don’t hang around. They also have histories. By your own admission, Bledsoe doesn’t fit the job description.”

  “BTK had a university degree in criminal justice and worked as an animal control officer in Wichita, Kansas. He also installed security systems in people’s homes. He was also an officer at his church. He also tortured people to death, including children, for twenty years. Happy motoring, Lukas.”

  I hung up, more angry than I should have been, I suppose. But when you are on the receiving end of a fist, you are less inclined to be sympathetic toward those who are disingenuous at your expense.

  I called Sidney Kovick’s flower shop. Eunice answered the phone.

  “Is Sidney back from New Iberia?” I asked.

  “I never said he was in New Iberia,” she replied.

  “Right, I forgot that. Since I talked to Sidney on Saturday, a friend of Ronald Bledsoe tried to kill my family and me. I tried to stoke up Sidney so he’d take down Bledsoe for me. But I want Bledsoe alive and I want the people he works for. Please ask your husband to call me.”

  It took a moment for my statement to sink in. “You tried to get Sidney to do your dirty work?”

  “Not exactly. But I wouldn’t have objected.”