DR03 - Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

"The mob doesn't make money out of real estate speculation. You stop lying to me."

  "You hurt me, man. Maybe I'm a lush, but that don't mean I'm a liar."

  "Then tell me why they're buying up property."

  "Dave, if you go to prison, and, Lord, I hope you don't, you'll learn two things in there. You stay out of the boss man's eye, and you never try to find out the other side of a cat like Sal. You go along and you get along. When you were a cop, did you want to know everything that was going on in your department? How many guys were on a pad? How many of them copped some skag or flake at a bust and sold it off later? Look, in another three or four weeks I'm going to start playing a gig at one of Sal's places in Tahoe. It's not a big deal a piano bar, a stand-up bass, maybe a guitar. But it's Tahoe, man. It's rhythm and blues and back in the lights. I just got to ease up on the fluids, get it under control."

  "Why not get it the hell out of your Me?"

  "Everybody don't chop cotton the same way. I'm going inside for a brew. You want to come?"

  I watched him walk across a board ramp into the bar side of the restaurant. I had wasted most of the morning, part of the afternoon, had accomplished nothing, and I felt a great weariness both with Dixie Lee and my situation. I followed him inside. He sat at the far end of the bar, by the windows, silhouetted against the sunlight on the lake. The walls of the bar were decorated with life preservers and nautical ropes and fish nets Dixie was drinking from a bottle of Great Falls with a shot of whiskey on the side.

  The bartender walked toward me, but I motioned him away.

  "You don't want anything?" Dixie said.

  "Who would Mapes and Vidrine have reason to kill?" I said.

  "Not Vidrine. Mapes."

  "All right."

  He looked out the window.

  "I don't know," he said.

  "It was somebody who was in his way, somebody who would cost him money."

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  "So who would cause Mapes trouble?"

  "Maybe the crazoids. The tree spikers. Star Drilling wants to get into a wilderness area on the eastern slope. The tree spikers want everybody out."

  "But they don't represent anybody. You said they were cultists or something."

  "I don't know what they are. They're fucking wild men."

  "What could they do to keep Star out of a wilderness area?"

  "Nothing, really. People up here don't like them. Them gyppo loggers will rip their ass if they get the chance."

  "Who's that leave?"

  He sipped off his whiskey, chased it with beer, and looked out at the lake. His face was composed and his green eyes were distant with either thought or perhaps no thought at all.

  "Come on, partner, who could really mess up Mapes's plans?"

  "The Indians," he said finally.

  "Star wants to drill on the Black-feet Reservation. It shouldn't be a problem, because in 1896 the Indians sold all their mineral rights to the government. But there're some young guys, AIM guys, that are smart, that are talking about a suit."

  "The American Indian Movement?"

  "Yeah, that's them. They can tie everything up in court, say the treaty was a rip-off or the reservation is a religious area or some other bullshit. It can cost everybody a lot of money."

  "You know some of these guys?"

  "No, I always stayed away from them. Some of them been in federal pens. You ever know a con with a political message up his butt? I celled with a black guy like that. Sonofabitch couldn't read and was always talking about Karl Marx."

  "Give me one name, Dixie."

  "I don't know any. I'm telling you the truth. They don't like white people, at least white oil people. Who needs the grief?"

  I left him at the bar and drove back toward Missoula. In the Jocko Valley I watched a rain shower move out from between two tall white peaks in the Mission Mountains, then spread across the sky, darken the sun, and march across the meadows, the clumped herds of Angus, the red barns and log ranch houses and clapboard cottages, the poplar windbreaks, the willow-lined river itself, and finally the smooth green hills that rose into another mountain range on the opposite side of the valley. Splinters of lightning danced on the ridges, and the sky above the timberline roiled with torn black clouds. Then I drove over the tip of the valley and out of the rain and into the sunshine on the Clark Fork as though I had slipped from one piece of geographical climate into another.

  I picked up Alafair at the baby-sitter's, next door to the rectory, then took her to an ice cream parlor by the river for a cone. There was a big white M on the mountain behind the university, and we could see figures climbing up to it on a zigzag trail. The side of the mountain was green with new grass, and above the M ponderosa pine grew through the saddle on the mountain and over the crest into the next valley. Alafair looked small at the marble-topped table, licking her cone, her feet not touching the floor. Her red tennis shoes and the knees of her jeans were spotted with grass stains.

  "Were they nice to you at school?" I said.

  "Sure." Then she thought for a moment.

  "Dave?"

  "Yes."

  "The teacher says I talk like a Cajun. How come she say that?"

  "I can't imagine," I said.

  We drove back to the house, and I used my new phone to call Dan Nygurski at the DEA in Great Falls. At first he didn't know where I was calling from, then I heard his interest sharpen when I told him I was in Montana.

  "What do you think you're doing here?" he said.

  "I'm in some trouble."

  "I know about your trouble. I don't think you're going to make it any better by messing around up here in Montana."

  "What do you mean, you know about it?" , "I got feedback from our office in Lafayette. Vidrine and Mapes worked with Dixie Pugh, and Pugh lives with Sally Dio. It's like keeping track of a daisy chain of moral imbeciles. You shouldn't have gotten involved, Robicheaux."

  I couldn't resist it.

  "I was at Sally Dio's today," I said.

  "I think that's dumb, if you're asking my opinion."

  "You know who Cletus Purcel is?"

  "Yeah, he was your old homicide partner. I heard he blew away a witness. It looks like he found his own level."

  "He told me Dio is called the Duck because he wears duck tails but I think he left something out of the story."

  "I bet he did. Dio was playing poker with one of the Mexico City crowd on a yacht out in the Gulf. They were playing deuces wild, and the grease ball had taken six or seven grand off our friend. Except Dio caught him with a deuce hidden under his thigh. Sal's old man used to be known as Frankie "Pliers." I won't tell you why. But I guess Sal wanted to keep up the tradition. He had another guy hold the grease ball down on the deck and he cut off most of his ear with a pair of tin snips. Then he told him, Tell everybody a duck ate your ear." That's the guy you were visiting today. That's the guy who takes care of your buddy Dixie Lee."

  "Why does he care about Dixie Lee?"

  "He gets something out of it. Sal doesn't do anything unless there's a blow job in it for him somewhere."

  "Leasing or buying land for him?"

  "Maybe. But don't concern yourself. Go back to Louisiana."

  "You know anything about some AIM members who might have disappeared from the Blackfeet Reservation?"

  "I'm really wondering about the soundness of your mind at this point."

  "It's a simple question."

  "If you really want to step into a pile of shit, you've found a good way to do it."

  "Look, Mr. Nygurski, I'm all on my own. Maybe I'm going to Angola pen. That's not hyperbole, I'm just about wiped out financially, my own testimony is my only defense, and my personal history is one that'll probably make a jury shudder. Tell me what you'd do in my circumstances. I'd really appreciate that."

  He paused, and I heard him take a breath.

  "I never heard anything about any AIM guys disappearing," he said.

  "You'll have to talk with the trib
al council or the sheriff's department. Maybe the FBI, although they don't have any love lost for those guys. Look, the reservation is a world unto itself. It's like a big rural slum. Kids cook their heads huffing glue, women cut each other up in bars. The Browning jail is a horror show on Saturday night. They're a deeply fucked-up people."

  "I may be over to see you in Great Falls."

  "Why?"

  "Because I think Dio is mixed up in this. Harry Mapes has been around his place, and I don't think it's simply because he knows Dixie Lee."

  "Dio is mixed up with narcotics, whores, and gambling. Let me set you straight about this guy. He's not Bugsy Siegel. Comparatively speaking, he's a small-time player in Vegas and Tahoe. Anything he owns, he's allowed to own. But he's an ambitious guy who wants to be a swinging dick. So he's come up here to Lum 'n' Abner land to make the big score. Now, that's all you get, Robicheaux. Stay away from him. You won't help your case, and in the meantime you might get hurt. If I hear anything about missing Indians, I'll let you know."

  "Is it possible you feel you have the franchise on Sally Dio?"

  "That could be, my friend. I grew up in West Virginia. I don't like what shitheads can do to good country. But I'm also a federal agent. I get paid for doing certain things, which doesn't include acting as an information center. I think I'm already overextended in this conversation. So long, Mr. Robicheaux."

  That evening I walked Alafair downtown in the twilight, and we ate fried chicken in a restaurant by the river. Then we walked over the Higgins Street Bridge, where old men fished off the railing in the dark swirls of current far below. The mountains in the west were purple and softly outlined against the red sun, and the wind was cold blowing across the bridge. I could smell chimney smoke and wood pulp in the air, diesel and oil from a passing Burlington Northern. We walked all the way to the park, where a group of boys was trying to hurry summer with a night baseball game. But in the hard glare of the lights the wind grew colder and the dust swirled in the air and finally drops of rain clicked across the tin roof of the dugout. The sky over the valley was absolutely black when we made it home.

  Firewood was stacked on the back porch of our house, and I broke up kindling from an orange crate in the fireplace, placed it and balls of newspaper under three pine logs on the andirons, and watched the bright red cone of flame rise up into the brick chimney. It was raining hard outside now, clattering against the roof and windows, and I could see a sawmill lighted across the river in the rain.

  During the night lightning flickered whitely on the far wall of my bedroom. It created a window in the soft green plaster, and through it I saw Annie sitting on a rock by a stream's edge. Cylindrical stone formations rose against the cobalt sky behind her. Her hair and denim shirt were wet, and I could see her breasts through the cloth.

  I'm worried, Dave, she said.

  Why's that?

  You haven't been going to AA meetings. You think maybe you're setting yourself up for a slip?

  I haven't had time.

  She pulled her wet shirtfront loose from her skin with her fingers.

  Will you promise me to look in the yellow pages today and find a meeting? she said.

  I promise.

  Because I think you're flying on the outer edges now. Maybe looking at something worse than a slip.

  I wouldn't do that.

  What?

  I'm Catholic.

  I'm talking about something else, baby love. You blow out your doors and they put you in a place like Mandeville.

  I've still got it between the ditches. I'm sober.

  But you keep calling on me. I'm tired, sweetheart. I have to come a long way so we can talk.

  I'm sorry.

  She put a finger to her lips.

  I'll come again. For a while. But you have to keep your promise.

  Annie.

  When I woke I was sleepwalking, and my palms were pressed against the cold green plaster of the bedroom wall.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was still raining and cold in the morning. The logs in the fireplace had crumbled into dead ash, and the sky outside was gray. The trees in the yard looked wet and black in the weak light. I turned on the furnace, put fresh logs in the fireplace, lit the kindling and balls of wadded newspaper, and tried to fix French toast for me and Alafair while she dressed for school. I thought I could hear the drone of mosquitoes in my brain. I had on a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and I kept wiping the perspiration out of my eyes on my forearm.

  "Why you shaking, Dave?" Alafair said.

  "I have malaria. It comes back sometimes. It's not bad, though."

  "What?"

  "I got it in the army. In the Philippines. It comes from mosquito bites. It goes away soon."

  "You ain't suppose to be up when you sick. I can fix my own breakfast. I can cook yours, too."

  "Don't say 'ain't."

  " She took the spatula and the handle of the frying pan out of my hands and began turning the toast. She wore fresh denims with an elastic waistband, and a purple sweater over her white shirt. Her black hair was shiny under the kitchen light.

  I felt weak all over. I sat down at the kitchen table and wiped my face with a dry dish towel. I had to swallow before I could speak.

  "Can you put on your raincoat and walk yourself to school this morning?" I said.

  "Sure."

  "Then if I don't pick you up this afternoon, you go to the babysitter's. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  I watched her pack her lunch box and put on her yellow raincoat and hood.

  "Wait a minute. I'll drive you," I said.

  "I can take myself. You sick, you."

  "Alafair, try not to talk like Batist. He's a good man, but he never went to school."

  "You still sick, Dave."

  I rubbed the top of her head and hugged her briefly around the shoulders, then put on my raincoat and hat. The wind outside was cold and smelled of the pulp mill down the river. In the wet air the smell was almost like sewage. I drove Alafair to the school and let her off by the entrance to the playground. When I got back home I was trembling all over, and the heat from the fireplace and the furnace vents wouldn't penetrate my skin. Instead, the house seemed filled with a dry cold that made static electricity jump off my hand when I touched a metal doorknob. I boiled a big pot of water on the kitchen stove to humidify the air, then sat in front of the fireplace with a blanket around my shoulders, my teeth clicking, and watched the resin boil and snap in the pine logs and the flames twist up the chimney.

  As the logs softened and sank on the andirons, I felt as though I had been sent to a dark and airless space on the earth where memory became selective and flayed the skin an inch at a time. I can't tell you why. I could never explain these moments, and neither could a psychologist. It happened first when I was ten years old, after my father had been locked up a second time in the parish jail for fighting in Provost's Pool Room. I was at home by myself, looking at a religious book that contained a plate depicting the souls in hell. Suddenly I felt myself drawn into the illustration, caught forever in their lake of remorse and despair. I was filled with terror and guilt, and no amount of assurance from the parish priest would relieve me of it.

  When these moments occurred in my adult life, I drank. I did it full tilt, too, the way you stand back from a smoldering fire of wet leaves and fling a glass full of gasoline onto the flames. I did it with Beam and Jack Daniel's straight up, with a frosted Jax on the side; vodka in the morning to sweep the spiders into their nest; four inches of Wild Turkey at noon to lock Frankenstein in his closet until the afternoon world of sunlight on oak and palm trees and the salt wind blowing across Lake Pontchartrain reestablished itself in a predictable fashion.

  But this morning was worse than any of those other moments that I could remember. Maybe it was malaria, or maybe my childlike psychological metabolism still screamed for a drink and was writing a script that would make the old alternatives viable once again. But in truth I think it was somet
hing else. Perhaps, as Annie had said, I had found the edge.

  The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are and what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon become eclipsed and the world below is as dead and remote and without interest as if it were glazed with ice.

  Is this the way it comes? I thought. With nothing dramatic, no three-day bender, no delirium tremens in a drunk tank, no cloth straps and Thorazine or a concerned psychiatrist to look anxiously into your face. You simply stare at the yellow handkerchief of flame in a fireplace and fear your own thoughts, as a disturbed child would. I shut my eyes and folded the blanket across my face. I could feel my whiskers against the wool, the sweat running down inside my shirt; could smell my own odor. The wind blew against the house, and a wet maple branch raked against the window.