by Chris Wiltz
“But who is he?” I raised my voice, though I wasn't anywhere near yelling. Suddenly Jeffrey appeared somewhere in my peripheral vision.
“He's the head henchman.”
“Does he have a name?” I asked. Jeffrey was wiping off the already gleaming black tables nearest us. I slid further into the booth and sat against the carpeted wall so I could watch him.
“Rodney Nutley, but the girls call him Godzilla. It suits him better.”
These people sounded like sleazeballs from a Mel Brooks movie about the Mafia. I retreated back to reality. Jeffrey retreated back to the bar.
“Why did you go to Brevna for the money?”
“Bubba was the only person I knew who had enough money"—she stopped to laugh bitterly—"except my father. Hell, maybe I should have asked him. I wanted to divorce Larry. We were already separated. He might have given me twenty thou.”
“How do you know Bub—Brevna?”
“Larry knew him, probably from the barroom over in Marrero that the Impastatos own. He got Larry to invest in a fishing boat, too. Larry used to make good money before the accident.”
Then she told me a sad story. Larry Silva had been doing some deep-sea diving out in the Gulf of Mexico, oil pipeline work, and something went wrong. A bubble of air forced its way through his lungs into his bloodstream. Jackie referred to it as a bubble on the brain because, she said, that's where it lodged. At any moment it could move and cause a brain hemorrage or, more likely, travel to his heart and kill him. It had been nearly four months since the accident. Jackie dropped the divorce proceedings, and Larry moved back in with her, but she'd kicked him out again a couple of weeks ago.
“I told him I'd think about letting him move back in after he'd been to court and was rich.” The left side of her mouth curved up. “I know that sounds terrible, but you have no idea how awful it is to live with someone who thinks he's going to croak any minute. He's either scared, depressed, getting reborn, or gambling like there's no tomorrow. One way or another, death is always on his mind, which I suppose is understandable, but he also talks about it constantly. I can't stand it.”
No, Jackie was much too alive, but nevertheless I felt sorry for Larry Silva.
She leaned across the table toward me. “Look, Neal, Bubba knows I'm going to have the money to pay him every cent I owe him, plus the interest, once Larry goes to court. He's just harassing me.”
I asked her why.
“Because I shot him off the saddle, that's why.”
Jackie took the last sip of her beer, and a cigarette out of the suede case. Before I could get my lighter out, Jeffrey had a flame to the end of her Kool and had put a whiskey on the rocks down in front of her.
“You're a sweetheart, Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey ate that up, then he turned to me and asked if I'd like anything else. He didn't seem at all happy to hear I'd have another beer, but he went off to fetch it.
“Jackie,” I said, “Jeffrey is hovering.”
“He's psychic. He knows what I want before I do.”
“I mean he's acting like a jealous lover.”
“He is—he's crazy in love with me,” she told me as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
“Oh. And Brevna?”
“Bubba thinks he is. What Bubba is really in love with is power. He thinks he should have everything he wants because that makes him more powerful. And he thinks he wants me. I made the mistake of seeing him while Larry and I were separated the first time. He took it pretty well when I told him I was taking Larry back, but when I booted Larry out again, he thought I should take him in. I told him trading Larry Silva for him was like trading in herpes for AIDS.”
Unfortunately, I'd just drained off the last of my beer and was trying to swallow it. I choked and coughed and wiped off my chin with the napkin from under my glass.
“Would that,” I started and had to cough again, “have anything to do with Bubba's threat to have your tongue cut out?”
“I'm afraid so.”
She wanted me to go talk to Brevna because he refused to talk to her, and there was no way she could come up with five thousand dollars by Friday, which was tomorrow.
“Look, Jackie, I don't want to get in the middle of some lovers’ quarrel.”
“Lovers’ quarrel! The man is threatening me!”
“Do you really think he's serious about this contract?”
She told me she thought Brevna was perfectly serious, and repeated what she'd said over the phone, that Brevna was essentially a stupid man, stupid about everything except how to hurt people, which he liked to do.
“I'm afraid of Bubba, Neal. I'm even more afraid of that goon of his. There are all kinds of rumors around about him—that he killed a young girl a long time ago and didn't even know it, or he left her for dead or something. I don't know—I want him out of here. Please go talk to Bubba, Neal. Please, for old time's sake.”
I wished she hadn't said that.
“You didn't have to say that, Jackie.”
But that's exactly why I was going to go talk to Brevna, for old time's sake, and sometime later I remembered that, and it made me wish that all those years ago, things had ended up a bit differently. If they had, I don't think Jackie would have had the nerve to keep in touch.
She gave me Brevna's address, a trailer park in Marrero.
“Brevna lives in a trailer park?” I was astounded. There is probably nothing more depressing than a trailer park on the West Bank unless it's a trailer park in New Orleans East. “I thought you said he had money.”
Jackie said, “The thing about Bubba is that he lives as well as he knows how to live. It's a very nice trailer, the best one in the lot. He likes living over there. He's king of the trailer park.”
5
King of the Trailer Park
Roughly speaking, I drove east on 4th Street after I left The Emerald Lizard. I say “roughly” because in New Orleans we don't give the standard north, south, east, west directions. We say lake, river, uptown, downtown. That's because New Orleans wasn't laid out on a grid; it was built into a crescent of the river, and most of the streets run northeast, or south-southwest and so on. But I was on the West Bank, and there was no Lake Pontchartrain to the north. To the north was the river, to the south Lafitte. According to the map, I was traveling roughly east. Like Jackie said—China.
I turned on Ames Boulevard away from the river to get to West Bank Expressway, a huge thoroughfare divided by a wide median. It slices across the West Bank on about the same curve as the river, and it's bordered by shopping centers, car dealerships, fast food places, ad infinitum. Jackie told me the trailer park was located off the Expressway, not too far past Barataria Boulevard. A couple of blocks after Barataria, I headed back toward the river.
Once you're off West Bank Expressway, there's a feeling of space, as long as you're not in a planned subdivision. There'll be a stand of tall lacy cypress trees or dense overgrown woods or several lots of tall grass waving gently in the wind. Here it was, November, and the foliage was still a dark, lush green fringed with the lighter green of new growth that seemed to take no heed of the approaching winter. The cypress trees hadn't even started turning the reddish-brown they become before they bare themselves.
The Marrero Trailer Court was like some blight in the woods, an enclave of irregular shapes that kill off anything too close to it. The field of tall grass on one side of the court was edged with bent brown stalks. On the other side were a few scraggly trees missing most of their leaves, though the leaves that remained were still green. The Marrero Trailer Court sign itself looked like the victim of some pestilence or pesticide, the white behind the letters now a dull dead gray with a pox of rust, its galvanized pole pitted by some powerful corrosive, maybe nothing more than the swollen swampy air of Louisiana marshland.
The car wheels left asphalt and crunched on a bed of oyster shells, ground cover for most of the front part of the trailer court. I pulled over into a space reserv
ed for cars. A little kid, couldn't have been more than two, stood beyond the parking space, his bare feet on the shells, wearing nothing but a dirty plastic diaper and a short-sleeved T-shirt. His nose was running. So were a couple of sores on his dirt-streaked legs. I got out of the car and smiled at him. I might as well have growled. He took off across the shells, the bottoms of his feet striking hard against their sharp jagged edges.
The trailers, twenty-two of them, were set close to each other, drawn up around an elongated oval clearing. It reminded me of a wagon train, the wagons huddled together for protection. At their center was a rusting swing set atop a mound of dirt, a few benches and chairs around a slab of concrete, the courtyard. The courtyard foliage, a few withered bushes and some droopy flowers in pots, served to accentuate the fact that nothing seemed to be able to grow there. The kid disappeared into an old bullet-shaped aluminum trailer, its door banging shut behind him. He was the only sign of life around.
Toward the back was a new-looking trailer that was at least twice as wide as any of the others. It seemed to be set off to itself, but that was only because of its size. A shelled driveway skirted the right side of the circle of trailers. I walked over to it. It went from the parking area to a clearing large enough for a couple of cars at the rear end of the big trailer. Pulled up into the clearing was a long green aluminum flatboat with an outboard motor, and next to it a dirty white Lincoln Town Car with a trailer hitch.
My shoes scrunched on the shells as I made my way down the driveway. I'd gone this way to be less obtrusive in case there was anyone home besides a snot-nosed two year old. His mother was. She eyeballed me from a crack in the door of the silver bullet. I smiled at her and she closed the door.
It was silly to be so circumspect, but it's a habit I have whenever I'm on foreign turf, and I was certainly a stranger in a strange land. I was out of place, wearing a medium-gray flannel suit with a light-gray pinstripe. I was high profile dressed like that here, but low key, conservative, and credible in the courtroom. The lawyers I do work for like it. So do the judges. It was my power suit, and my going-to-court suit, though I'd gone to court that morning only to hear that the trial was continued until the next Monday. But no matter how I was dressed, I was, to say the least, on a dubious mission. If this Bubba Brevna really went around putting out contracts on people and committing arson, why wasn't I en route to the Jefferson Parish Organized Crime Unit instead of getting ready to knock on Brevna's trailer door? But there you have it: a man named Bubba who lived in a trailer. Imagine the field day the OCU would have with that.
I banged on the door, making quite a racket and getting no response. He must have been in there if the car and the boat were parked outside. I'd given up and was toying with the idea of breaking and entering, frankly afraid of what I might find, when he opened the door and stood looking down at me, his eyes a wet, watered-down blue in a broad, ill-tempered, blunt-featured face. His mouth curved down and was flanked by two folds of skin that ran from the sides of his nose to his jawline. He had on a pair of tan slacks, an undershirt, and a brown towel around his neck. There were leftover tufts of shaving foam on his chin and on the lobe of one ear.
I apologized for interrupting his toilette, introduced myself, and told him I was here to talk about Ms. Jackie Silva's debt.
He didn't quite know what to make of me, a guy with beefy shoulders, in a gray pin-striped suit, a cigarette butt sticking out of his mouth, and a ragged scar on his face, who used words like toilette. But he couldn't resist talking about Jackie Silva's debt. He invited me in by standing aside.
I could see why Bubba needed an extra-wide trailer; he was an extra-wide man, his frame square-looking because he wasn't very tall, maybe five eight. I bet he had a good thirty-five pounds on me, though, in spite of my being four inches taller. His gut hung a bit over his Sansabelt slacks, but, actually, he carried his weight fairly well. Once he had a jacket on, I imagined he would be quite presentable, a real presence with his bulk, his bald head, except for a graying fringe, and his pugnacious expression.
Bubba eyed me warily and didn't ask me to sit on the tweedy high-backed sofa with maple trim or matching recliner in the living area. The maple coffee table was stacked with power boating magazines. On the walls were plaques glorifying dirty old men. On top of a portable bar were Mardi Gras glasses and swizzle sticks shaped into naked ladies. Knickknacks promoting sex and partying gave evidence to Bubba's lifestyle. A counter with two rattan stools divided the living room from a kitchen that appeared to have every convenience.
“Nice trailer,” I said. I hate trailers. The worst thing I can think of is having shelter that could just roll away on you.
Bubba grunted and got a point for having no other reaction to hypocritical flattery. All he did was watch me. A quiet sort of guy, this Bubba, to be such a party animal. Maybe that explained his rather bizarre tongue removal contract.
I gestured toward the sofa. He repeated the gesture and I sat. Then Bubba left me. I heard water running and a toilet flush. That's another thing about trailers—the problem of waste removal.
He came back wearing a light blue shiny shirt, the same tan slacks.
“Mobile home,” he said.
“What's that?”
“It's a mobile home, not a trailer. My flatboat's on a trailer. I hook the trailer to the back of my mobile home and truck the whole rig down to Lafitte, you know, if I want to do some extended fishing. ‘Course there's no reason to go to the trouble. I can drive down to Lafitte in no time.”
Boy, put a shirt on this Bubba and he talks up a storm. I bet he was one of those people who is practically defenseless naked. I made a mental note that if I ever had any trouble with Bubba to just strip him down.
“You got money for me?” he asked.
“I said I was here to talk about Ms. Silva's debt. No, I don't have any money.”
“What's this Ms. Silva shit? You her lawyer? Her banker, maybe?” He laughed with his mouth closed, the sound of a bass string twanging. “I don't like the way you talk.” Not being very humorous now. “Who the hell are you?”
A moody guy, mean looking with his mouth clamped into an upside down smile and his jowls hanging low like a bulldog's.
“Ms. Silva said you refused to talk to her.”
“You can't talk to that woman! She won't shut up long enough for you to talk to her. I want her to pay up and shut up. You tell her that. While you're at it, tell her not to send any more of her fancy trained dicks around.”
This was not, you understand, a reference to my profession since he didn't know it, though it may have been to my suit. I stood up and locked into Brevna with an impersonal, hard-ass cop's stare.
“You threatened Ms. Silva,” I said in a menacing monotone.
I could almost see him think: If he was a cop he would have identified himself; he's got ten or twelve years on me, longer reach and agility. I saw him decide to lighten up.
His upside down smile righted itself. He walked over to the counter, the floor of his house on wheels shaking under his weight, and sat heavily on a rattan stool. The rattan creaked. He sat with his side to me, his arm stretched over the counter. I moved so his body wouldn't block my view of his hands.
“Hey,” he said, “I'm a business man. I kept my part of the deal. I'm asking her to keep hers.” Like it was all on the up-and-up.
“Legitimate businessmen don't threaten to have people's tongues cut out.”
The expression on his face changed suddenly, as if I'd snapped on the light; as if all of a sudden he understood the purpose of my visit and he found it funny. With his mouth open his laugh had a raspy scraping sound.
“She believed that?” he shrieked in wonderment. “She took that seriously?” He was getting pretty raucous now. Too much more hilarity and he might raise his rolling rooftop.
“Not only that,” I said over his laughter, and he quieted down enough to hear me, “she doesn't owe you five thousand dollars. Not quite. Not according to the s
chedule you worked out.”
Bubba shrugged. “I was talking in round figures. Look, all I was asking for was a show of faith. A little something to let me know her intentions, you know?”
He got up and went to the refrigerator.
“That's not the way she understood it.”
He was peering into the refrigerator, speaking deep into its interior. “I don't believe she took that seriously.” Laughing still. The door was blocking my view of everything except Bubba's rump. I hoped he didn't keep a piece on ice.
He straightened up, something long and brown in his hand. He farted and threw a rasher of bacon on the counter next to the stove.
“You know why I told her all that shit? ‘Cause I got tired of listening to her. Look.” He leaned against the refrigerator, a finger casually hooked into the side of his waistband. “I can't help it if she don't understand what I told her. She don't listen long enough to understand much. Her and me, we had a relationship for a while. It's all over now. It's been over, but she seems to think this debt has something to do with all that, like maybe she don't owe me nothin’ because we had a thing once. She talks about what she owes me and she starts talking about sex. I don't see what the one has to do with the other.”
“Neither do I, but it seems to me you're the one brought it up this time.”
“What the fuck do you want?” he demanded. Apparently I wasn't being sociable enough for him.
“I want to leave here assured that you won't threaten Jackie anymore. There's no way she can come up with anywhere near five thousand dollars by tomorrow, but since you say all you're looking for is a show of faith, I'll tell her you're willing to take five hundred next Friday. She plans to pay off the debt, the whole thing, as soon as her husband goes to court and settles his diving accident.”
“Yeah? Lemme tell you who's gonna get most of Larry Silva's money—his lawyer, his bookie, and that bogus church he belongs to. He isn't even going to get much out of workman's comp. He's over the hill, working on borrowed time. Divers don't age well, and Larry Silva is forty-five going on sixty. He's dead broke, in debt to his ears and you think he's going to pay off his wife's debt when she won't even fuck him?”