Robicheaux: A Novel

by James Lee Burke

  It was an easy slide into the basement. The things I did next were not done in a blackout. I knew exactly what I was doing. I had put a sawed-off pool cue on the backseat before I left home, one that was weighted heavily at the base. I started the engine and got on I-10 and headed west, the speedometer maxed out.

  MAYBE PENNY WAS sleeping one off. It’s hard to say. I knotted a bandana around my face and set fire to the shed with the dirt bike in it, and tapped on the door and waited by the rear of the trailer. There was no reaction inside. A raincloud burst directly overhead, and the fire went out. I smashed on the door with my fist and was standing directly in front of it when Penny jerked it open.

  “What’s the haps?” I said, swinging the pool cue at a forty-five-degree angle across his face.

  He stumbled backward, a hand pressed against one eye and the other eye bulging, so his face looked like it had been sawed down the middle. “Who the—”

  I stepped inside, pulled the door shut, and caught him with the weighted end of the cue on the ear. He crashed on the breakfast table, his mouth wide with either pain or surprise. I swung the cue on his neck and back and spine as though I were chopping wood. When he tried to stand, I shoved him onto the floor of the toilet cubicle. He was wearing only his socks and Jockey shorts. Blood was leaking from his ear. “Why you doing this? Who the fuck are you, man?”

  I kicked him in the face and dropped a full roll of toilet paper in the bowl and drove his head into the water and kept it there. I could feel him struggling, his forehead wedging the roll into the bottom of the commode, the water rising to his shoulders. I pushed down the handle to refill the bowl. Water was sloshing over the sides. My arm and shoulder were trembling with the pressure it took to keep him down.

  I began to count the seconds under my breath. One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi. I stepped on his calf so he couldn’t get purchase on the linoleum. Four-Mississippi, five-Mississippi, six-Mississippi. I shoved harder and saw bubbles the size and color of small oranges rise to the surface with a gurgling sound. Thirteen-Mississippi, fourteen-Mississippi, fifteen-Mississippi. His arms had turned as flaccid as noodles and were flipping impotently at his sides.

  I pulled him dripping from the bowl and threw him onto the floor. He gasped and made a sound like a sheet of tin being ripped out of a roof. He gagged and cupped his mouth.

  “When your son comes home, you’ll act like a decent father. If you hurt him in any way, I’ll be back.”

  I stomped on his stomach. His mouth opened, and I shoved a bar of soap into it and mashed it down his throat with my shoe.

  I got into my rental and drove away. In the rearview mirror, I could see white smoke rising from the shed, as though the fire I had started wanted to have another go at it.

  By six A.M., I was teetering on the edge of delirium tremens. By seven they’d passed and I was sound asleep in my skivvies, facedown on the sheets, as though I had gone through a painless evisceration. Strangely, I felt at peace. I had no explanation. I went to Mass that evening in Lafayette and caught a meeting before returning to New Iberia.

  * * *

  HELEN WAS ON my case early the next morning. “You told Labiche to get out of your office?”

  “I didn’t know he was a snitch.”

  “He was trying to do his job,” she said.

  “He’s a street rat.”

  “I’m not going to put up with this, Dave.”

  “Then don’t.”

  We were standing by the water cooler out in the hall.

  “Step inside my office,” she said.

  I tried to play the role of the gentleman and let her walk ahead of me.

  “Get inside!” she said. She slammed the door behind us. “Somebody pounded Kevin Penny into hamburger. The sheriff in Jeff Davis says Penny believes it was you.”

  “He ‘believes’ it was me?”

  “The assailant had a kerchief on his face.”

  “Let’s see: Penny has been in Quentin, Raiford, and Angola. He was in the AB, but his wife was half black. He’s a pimp and a child abuser. Nobody besides a cop would want to hurt him, huh?”

  “Where were you early Sunday morning?”

  “Helen, I don’t blame you because you have to treat me as a suspect in the Dartez homicide. But Labiche is a bum. You shouldn’t have put him in charge of the investigation.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject. Did you bust up Penny?”

  “Somebody should have done it years ago. End of statement.”

  “You’re going to end up in prison.”

  “Not because of Penny,” I said.

  She touched at her nose and sniffed. “Maybe you’re right about Labiche.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m not comfortable with Labiche’s history, either. I never knew a guy in vice who didn’t get the wrong kind of rise out of his job. But he caught the case on his own hook, and to give it to somebody else because you don’t like him would be obvious bias.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “You’re a poor liar.” She punched me in the chest, hard. “I’m mad at you, Dave.”

  * * *

  AT FIVE, I’D left the office and begun walking down the long driveway to East Main, when I saw Levon Broussard turn out of the traffic and park his Jeep under the big live oak by the grotto devoted to the mother of Jesus. He opened the car door and held up his hand. “I need to talk.”

  “I’m on my way home,” I said. “Take a walk with me.”

  “No, right here.”

  “It’s been a long day,” I said.

  “It’s fixing to get longer.”

  “If it’s business, I’ll see you tomorrow at eight A.M.”

  Just then Spade Labiche came up the drive in an unmarked car. He leaned out the window. “Good news, Robicheaux. A dent on your back bumper, but no paint from the Dartez vehicle. You’re clean on the truck. It’s at the pound. Catch!” He threw my keys at me. They landed in a puddle of muddy water. “Sorry,” he said, and drove away.

  I picked up the keys and wiped them with my handkerchief.

  “What was that about?” Levon said.

  “Departmental politics. What did you want to tell me?”

  “My wife has been raped.”

  The words didn’t fit the scene. The wind was blowing through the branches overhead, the moss drifting in threads to the asphalt, votive candles flickering in the grotto.

  “Say again?”

  “She had a flat tire. Jimmy Nightingale talked her into having a drink and got her drunk.” He saw the expression in my eyes. “What?”

  “People get themselves drunk,” I said. “Where is she?”

  “At home.”

  “Did she go to the hospital?”

  “Our doctor came to the house. Why do you ask about a hospital?”

  “Can she come to the department?”

  “She doesn’t want to.”

  “I can understand that, Levon. But we don’t do home calls. A female officer will interview her. The surroundings will be private.”

  He looked around. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I couldn’t be sure if he was talking to himself or to me. “Tell me what happened.”

  “She was at the grocery last night. She came outside and saw she had a flat tire. Nightingale put her spare on. They went out to the highway and had a drink.”

  I could already see what a defense lawyer would do with Rowena’s story.

  “I’m sorry to hear about this,” I said.

  “You don’t believe her?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “She trusts people when she shouldn’t,” he said. “She thinks y’all won’t believe her. She was doing work among the poor when I met her in Venezuela. She gave her paintings to the Indians, people no one cared about.”

  He waited for me to reply. I hate to handle sexual assault and child molestation cases because
the victims seldom get justice, and that’s just for starters. Adult victims are exposed to shame, embarrassment, and scorn. Often they are made to feel they warranted their fate. Defense attorneys tear them apart on the stand; judges hand out probation to men who should be shot. Sometimes the perpetrator is given bail without the court’s notifying the victim, and the victim ends up either dead or too frightened to testify. I’ve also known cops who take glee in a woman’s degradation, and it’s not coincidental that they work vice.

  “I’m in the cookpot these days, Levon. I’ll do what I can for y’all.”

  “You’re having some kind of trouble?”

  “I’m a suspect in a homicide.”

  His lips moved without sound.

  “Yeah, it’s a bit unusual,” I said.

  He looked up and down the street. “You don’t believe Rowena’s account, do you?”

  “I don’t know all the circumstances.”

  “She’s never been unfaithful,” he said.

  The last statement was the kind no investigative cop ever wants to hear. “Has Jimmy tried to contact you or your wife?”

  “Jimmy?”

  “I’ve known him most of my life.”

  “Yes, and you introduced him to us, and now we know him, too.”

  Sometimes you just have to walk away. And that’s what I did.

  “I apologize,” he said at my back.

  * * *

  THE PHONE WAS ringing as I came through the front door. “Hello?” I said.

  It was Alafair. “Clete called. He says you’re in trouble.”

  “I’ll get out of it.”

  “He said you were in the bag.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean I’m not drinking now.”

  “You stopped going to meetings?”

  “I went last night.”

  “What’s this about the guy who hit Molly’s car?”

  “I was in a blackout. The guy was beaten to death out by Bayou Benoit. Maybe I did it.”

  The phone went silent. In the backyard, the sun and the smoke from meat fires in the park looked like spun gold in the trees. In my mind’s eye, I saw Alafair at age five, after I pulled her from a submerged plane piloted by a Maryknoll priest who was helping illegals escape the death squads in Central America. I thought about the wonderful life we’d had on the bayou.

  “You never hurt anyone except in defense of yourself or someone else,” she said. “I’m flying into New Orleans tomorrow.”

  “That’s not necessary, Alfenheimer.”

  “Don’t call me that stupid name.”

  “How’s your screenplay coming?”

  “I’m writing it for people who think William Shakespeare was too wordy. How do you think it’s coming?”

  “What time does your flight come in?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll rent a car. Just hold tight till I get back to New Iberia.”

  “I owned up at a meeting. I’m fine.”

  “That’s when people slip, isn’t it? When they say they’re fine. Why’d you drink, Dave?”

  “The same reason as everyone who goes out. I wanted to.” The line was silent. I felt my heart stop. “Alafair?”

  “You don’t know how much it hurts when you say something like that.”

  My ear felt as though it had been stung by a wasp.

  * * *

  VICTOR’S CAFETERIA ON Main Street, right across from Clete’s office, opened at six A.M. every weekday. It was a grand place to eat and start the day, and usually crowded with businesspeople and tourists and cops and parish politicians. If there was any better food on earth, I hadn’t found it. Clete and I went in at seven on Tuesday, and Clete loaded up with his healthy breakfast of four biscuits, scrambled eggs sprinkled with grated cheese, green onions, and bacon bits, a pork chop smothered in milk gravy, orange juice, a bowl of stewed tomatoes, and multiple cups of coffee.

  Helen was two tables from us; it was obvious she didn’t want to acknowledge us.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Clete said.

  “You didn’t talk to anyone in Jefferson Davis Parish about an incident there, did you?”

  He stopped eating. “Involving you?”

  “Involving a graduate of Raiford and Angola and Quentin we both know.”

  “Something happened to Penny?”

  “You could say that.”

  He took his cell phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “I’ve got four missed calls from the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Better answer them.”

  “This isn’t funny, big mon.”

  “Penny didn’t think so, either.”

  He started eating again, then put down his knife and fork and drank his coffee cup empty. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To the park.”

  “How about your office?”

  “You know how many times I’ve been bugged?”

  We walked to the drawbridge at Burke Street and crossed the bayou and went into City Park and sat in one of the picnic shelters by the water, a few feet from a row of camellia bushes, the petals still wet with dew. I told him everything.

  “You almost drowned him in the toilet?”

  “Yep.”

  “He’ll come at you.”

  “No, he won’t. He’s a gutless shit.”

  “You’re letting your past distort your thinking, Streak. The people who hurt you and me as kids are nothing compared to Penny.”

  “They’re all cut out of the same cloth.”

  “My old man wasn’t. He was just a drunk who figured himself a failure and didn’t know where to put his anger.”

  People make peace with themselves in different ways, sometimes being more generous than they should. But you don’t pull life preservers away from drowning people or deny an opiate or two to those who have taken up residence in the Garden of Gethsemane.

  “Did you get enough to eat?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I looked at my watch. “We have time for a refill.”

  * * *

  CLETE HAD ALLUDED to my childhood experience with a man named Mack. I didn’t argue with him about the influence of Mack on my life. In fact, I don’t think about Mack anymore. Eventually, he turned into a specter who drifted off into the mist, a dirty smudge not worth remembering. But there was never a man I hated as much, and I carried my hatred to Indochina and put his face on many an enemy solider, none of whom deserved to be a surrogate for this evil man. For that reason alone I did not willingly discuss my experience in the Orient, or the deeds I committed there, or the ribbons and wounds I brought home. Evil is evil, and you don’t give the son of a bitch a second life.

  AT 10:41 A.M., Helen came into my office and looked out the window on the bayou. She had a manila folder clamped under her arm. “Rowena and Levon Broussard just left,” she said.

  “Were they here for what I think?”

  “I took her statement. He says he talked with you late yesterday.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s your opinion?” she asked.

  “I didn’t get many details. Alcohol seemed to be involved. No medical report. What’d they tell you?”

  “She and Nightingale went to a lounge. They had four rounds of Manhattans. Then he wanted to show her his boat down at Cypremort Point. That’s where he did it.”

  “What time of day?”

  “About ten P.M.”

  When I didn’t answer, she said, “Not good, huh?”

  “I wonder if it’s going to be prosecutable. She’s married. It sounds like a tryst.”

  “I pushed her on that. She said she and her husband had a fight and she used bad judgment.”

  “Where was her car?”

  “At the supermarket.”

  “How’d she get back to it?”

  “Nightingale drove her. Don’t make that face.”

  “The defense will put a scarlet letter on her brow,” I said.

  “We won�
��t let that happen, though,” Helen said. “Will we?”

  “We?”

  She put the folder on my desk.

  “No,” I said.

  “I’ve got the video in my office. Let’s get started.”

  “I’m not right for this,” I said.

  “How about you go on leave without pay instead?”

  “I know all the involved parties, Helen.”

  “Like everybody in this building doesn’t?”

  I flipped open the folder and flipped it closed again. “What’s her emotional state?”

  “Like a vase somebody dropped on a concrete floor,” she said.

  “I never heard of Jimmy Nightingale abusing women.”

  “His casinos clean out the pockets of pensioners and poor people. He hangs with Bobby Earl. He’s business partners with Tony the Nose. Remember when Tony and Didoni Giacano used to stick people’s hands in an aquarium full of piranhas?”

  “Those were the good old days,” I said.

  “Time to kick butt and take names, Streak.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  I WATCHED THE video. As in most interviews with sexual assault victims, the dialogue, the violation of privacy, and the demeanor of the victim were excruciating. For anyone who has a cavalier attitude about predation, he need only watch its influence on the victims in order to change his attitude. They cannot scrub the stain out of their skin. Over and over again, the assault flickers like a sado-porn film on a screen inside their heads, sometimes for months, sometimes years. This goes on until they turn over the fate of their assailant to a power greater than they are. I’ve known nine or ten rapists who beat the system. I was convinced every one of them carried an incubus that eventually pissed on their graves.

  As I watched Rowena Broussard give her account on the video, I began to wonder if I was possessed of the male bias I never felt myself guilty of. She did not seem to be a person who could be lured easily into a vulnerable situation. She had lived in the third world, where moral insanity, social cannibalism, and violence against the poor are part of the culture. Her paintings were testimony to her anger at dictatorial regimes and imperious personalities and people who sought dominion over others.