DR03 - Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

  "Why you stay with him?"

  She pressed my face against her breasts. I could feel the hard shape of her stomach and her thighs.

  "He shot somebody. In a card game," I said.

  "He ain't bad. He's good to me. We brung you a present. You gonna see."

  She picked me up and carried me to the road. I could see my father watching from the side yard, the hammer in his hand. She set me down by the open door of the coupe. The air was humid and hot in the sun, and the cattails in the ditch were coated with dust.

  "Come see," she said.

  "Show it him, Mack. Behind the seat."

  His face had no expression. He reached behind the seat, his eyes looking out at the yellow road, and pulled out a paper bag. It was folded across the top and tied with string.

  "Here," she said, and unwrapped it for me. Her dress was tight across her thighs and there were dimples in her knees. The man got out of the car and walked out on the road and lit a cigarette. He didn't look in my father's direction, but they could see each other well.

  "You like a top, huh?" my mother said.

  "See, it got a crank. You push it up and down and it spin around and whistle."

  There was perspiration in her black hair. She put the top in my hands. The metal felt hot against my palms.

  "Is he coming out?" the man said.

  "No. He promised."

  "The last time was for free. You told him that?"

  "He don't want no more trouble, Mack. He ain't gonna bother us."

  "I give a damn, me."

  "Don't be talking that way. We gotta go. Don't be looking over there. You hear me, Mack?"

  "They gonna keep him in jail next time."

  "We going right now. Get in the car. I gotta be at work. Dave don't need be standing out in the hot road. Ain't that right, Davy? Mack, you promised."

  He flipped his cigarette away in the ditch and got behind the steering wheel. He wore two-tone brown and white shoes, and he wiped the dust off the shine with a rag from under the seat. I saw my father toss his hammer up on the workbench, then pick up the chicken coop and look at the angles of its side.

  My mother leaned over me and pressed me against her body. Her voice was low, as though the two of us were under a glass bell.

  "I ain't bad, Davy," she said.

  "If somebody tell you that, it ain't true. I'll come see you again. We'll go somewheres together, just us two. Eat fried chicken, maybe. You gonna see, you."

  But a long time would pass before I would see her again. The Victory gardens, the picket-fenced donation centers of worn tires and bundled coat hangers, the small tasseled silk flags with blue and gold service stars that hung in house windows to signify the number of family members who were in uniform or killed in action, would all disappear within the year, an era would end, and the oil companies would arrive from Texas. I would hear that my mother worked in the back of a laundry with colored women in Baton Rouge, that Mack died of tuberculosis, that she married a man who operated carnival rides. Then when I was sixteen years old and I went for the first time to the Boundary Club on the Breaux Bridge highway, a rough, ramshackle roadhouse where they fought with knives and bottles in the shale parking lot, I saw her drawing draft beer behind the bar. Her body was thicker now, her hair blacker than it should have been, and she wore a black skirt that showed a thick scar above one knee. She brought a beer tray to a table full of oil-field workers, then sat down with them. They all knew her and lit her cigarettes, and when she danced with one of them she pressed her stomach against his loins. I stood by the jukebox and waved at her, and she smiled back at me over the man's shoulder, but there was no recognition in her face..

  I waited out in the car for my friends to come out of the club. I saw a drunk man pushed out the side door onto the shale. I saw some teenagers throw a Coke bottle at a car full of Negroes. I saw a man in a yellow cowboy shirt and tight blue jeans without a belt slap a woman against the side of a car. He hit her hard and made her cry and shoved her in the backseat and made her stay there by herself while he went back inside. It was hot and still in the parking lot, except for the sounds of the woman. The willow trees were motionless on the banks of the Vermilion River, and the moonlight looked like oil on the water's surface. Dust drifted through the car window, and I could smell the stench of dead garfish out on the mud bank and hear the woman weeping quietly in the dark.

  The opinion of certain people has always been important to me. Most of those people have been nuns, priests, Catholic brothers, and teachers. When I was a child the good ones among them told me I was all right. Some in that group were inept and unhappy with themselves and were cruel and enjoyed inculcating guilt in children. But the good ones told me that I was all right. As an adult, I still believe that we become the reflection we see in the eyes of others, so it's important that someone tell us we're all right. That may seem childish, but only to those who have paid no dues and hence have no. question mark about who they are, because their own experience or lack of it has never required them to define themselves. You can meet some of these at university cocktail par ties; or sometimes they are journalists who fear and envy power and celebrity but who love to live in its ambience. There is always a sneer buried inside their laughter. They have never heard a shot fired in anger, done time, walked through a mortared ville, seen a nineteen-year-old door gunner go ape shit in a free-fire zone. They sleep without dreaming. They yawn at the disquietude of those whom they can't understand. No one will ever need to tell them that they are all right.

  I think for some the soul has the same protean shape as fire, or a collection of burning sticks that melts and hisses through the snow until only an ill-defined and soot-streaked hollow remains to indicate the nature of flame and its passage through ice.

  Then somebody tells you that you are all right.

  I had to go back on the other side of the Divide. It was a good time to take Alafair out of Missoula, too. I walked down to the school and found Tess Regan in her office. A vase of mock orange sat on her desk, and her cork board was a litter of thumbtacked crayon drawings. Through a sunny window I could see the children on the playground, a solitary basketball hoop, and the brick wall of the church next door. She wore a cotton knit yellow dress, a gold neck chain, and gold earrings that were almost hidden by her auburn hair. Her nails were cut short and painted with clear polish, and her fingers were spread on her desk blotter while she listened to me talk. I liked her and respected her feelings, and I didn't want her to be angry with me any longer or to be uncomfortable because of our conversation yesterday.

  "People hang up on me all the time. I expect it," I said.

  "A Treasury agent once told me I had the telephone charm of Quasimodo."

  "That purple lump on your head, that happened at your house yesterday?"

  "I was careless. It'll be gone soon."

  "You want to take Alafair out of school today and tomorrow?"

  "That's right. She'll be back Thursday."

  "Where are you going, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "I have to take care of some business across the mountains."

  "I'm very concerned about all this. You give me bad feelings. These men you talk about are evil, aren't they? But you seem almost cavalier."

  "You're wrong about that, kiddo."

  "I wish you wouldn't call me that."

  "All right."

  "Alafair is a wonderful little girl. I worry about her. I worry about your attitudes."

  "She thinks the world of you, too. I don't want to be unpleasant or to upset you in any way, but I want you to understand something. Somebody sent me a used hypodermic needle and a letter and a photograph. I won't tell you what was in the photograph, but the person who wrote the letter said the needle had been used in a snuff film. His threat was not aimed at me. It was directed at Alafair. I believe he was serious, too.

  "Now, in the movies potential murder or assault victims are given twenty-four-hour protection by the cops. But it do
esn't happen that way. You're on your own. If you don't believe me, ask anybody who has been hunted down by a guy who they had locked up and who made bail by the next morning. They tell a great story. A lot of them tend to become NRA members."

  Her green eyes were steady and intelligent. She was a good soldier and obviously was trying to look beyond the abrasive quality of my words; but I had gone over a line, almost like an emotional bully, and she wasn't up to handling it.

  "I'll get Alafair for you," she said.

  "Miss Regan .. . Tess, I'm at a real bad place in my life. I apologize for the way that I talk, but I'm really up against it. Don't make me walk out of here feeling like a shit."

  But it was no use. She brushed past me, her hips creasing inside her knit dress, her eyes welling with tears.

  Later that day Alafair and I drove into the clouds on the Divide. It rained hard and the trees looked thick and black in the wet light, and water sluiced off the road into the canyons far below. It was too late to get anything done at the Teton County courthouse, so we stayed the night at a motel in Choteau, the county seat.

  The next day I found the connection between Sally Dee and the oil business. I found it all over the East Front, in Teton, Pondera, and Glacier counties. And I found out the service that Dixie Lee had been performing for him.

  CHAPTER 10

  That evening I called Dan Nygurski at his house in Great Falls.

  "Where've you been? I called you three times today," he said.

  "Over here, east of the Divide."

  "Now? Where?"

  "Right outside of Great Falls."

  "What are you doing right now?"

  "Nothing. Going to a motel. I don't feel like driving back tonight."

  "We're fixing to cook out in the backyard in a few minutes. You want to come over?"

  "My little girl's with me."

  "Bring her. We've got three kids she can play with. I've got some heavy stuff on Mapes that you ought to know about."

  "The DEA had a file on him?"

  "FBI. He was part of a kidnap investigation. You better come over."

  He gave me his address and directions, and Alafair and I drove in the twilight to a 1950s suburb of split-level ranch homes, maple-lined streets, sprinklers twirling on the lawns, flower beds full of blue clematis, yellow and red roses, with tree bark packed on the dirt to prevent the growth of weeds. We sat on the redwood deck built out back, behind sliding glass doors, while Alafair played on a small seesaw with two of his little girls. The coals in his hibachi had already turned gray and hot before we arrived, and his wife brought out a tossed salad and a pitcher of iced tea on a tray, then laid a row of venison and elk steaks on the grill. The grease hissed and steamed off the coals and the smell was wonderful.

  His wife was attractive and polite and had the same accent as he.

  She wore makeup and a dress, and her eyes were shy when you looked too closely at them. She went back into the kitchen and began slicing a loaf of French bread on a cutting board.

  "You're wondering why a woman who looks like that married a guy who looks like me," he said.

  "Not at all."

  "Come on, Robicheaux."

  "Women have kind hearts."

  "Yeah, they do," he said, and got up from his chair and closed the sliding glass door.

  "So let's walk around the side of the house so nobody else has to hear what I have to tell you. In fact, maybe we ought to wait until after you've eaten."

  "Let's do it."

  We walked into his side yard, which was planted with apple trees and climbing red roses on trellises set in small circular beds. There were small, hard green apples in the leaves of the trees. A picket fence separated his yard from his neighbor's swimming pool. It was dusk now, and the reflection of the neighbor's porch light looked like a yellow balloon under the pool's surface. He picked up two metal chairs that were leaned against the side of his house and shook them open. His mouth twitched when he started to speak, and I saw the web of vein and sinew flex and pulse in his throat.

  "Where'd your lawyer get his information on Mapes?"

  "He hired a PI."

  "Tell him to get your money back. The PI blew it. I suspect he checked the sheriff's and city police's office in Mapes's hometown, came up with the assault arrest, the golf club deal, when Mapes was seventeen, then sent your lawyer a bill for two days' services, which is usually about six hundred dollars. In the meantime he didn't check anything else."

  "What's the story?"

  "Look, you were a cop a long time. You know that once in a while you run across a guy, a guy who everybody thinks is normal, maybe a guy with an education, a good job, service record, a guy who doesn't focus much attention on himself. At least he doesn't give cops reason to think about him. But there's something wrong with him. The conscience isn't there, or maybe the feelings aren't.

  But he's out there, in suburbs just like this, and he's the one who commits the murders that we never solve. I think that's your man Harry Mapes.

  "In 1965 an eighteen-year-old soldier on leave from Fort Polk picked up his girlfriend in Tyler, Texas, and took her to a drive-in movie. Then it looks like they went out on a back road and parked behind an old greenhouse where somebody used to grow roses. At least that's where the sheriff's department found the girl's dress and underwear. They found the car five miles away in a creek bed. Somebody had torn the gas line loose and set it on fire. Both those kids were in the trunk. The pathologist said they were alive when it burned."

  I leaned forward on the folding metal chair and picked a leaf from a rosebush. My throat felt tight. I could hear the children playing on the seesaw in the backyard.

  "Mapes was involved?" I said.

  "That's the big question. The fingerprints of another kid from Marshall were on the victims' car, but not Mapes's. But that would figure, if Mapes drove one car and the other kid drove the victims' car to the place where they burned it. Both of them were seen together earlier that night, and it took two people to pull it off, unless the kid they had dead-bang was on foot, which is improbable, since he owned a car and was driving around in it with Mapes earlier."

  "The other kid didn't implicate Mapes?"

  "He denied everything. Evidently he had a reputation around Marshall as a lunatic. Acid, speed, all that bullshit. In his cell he wrapped himself in toilet paper, soaked it in lighter fluid, and set himself on fire. It looked like good theater. But later on he showed everybody he was sincere. He unwrapped some wire from a broom and hanged himself.

  "In the meantime, Mapes's old man, who owned a sawmill there, hired a law firm, and they got a Mexican prostitute to swear Mapes and another friend of his were trying out their magic twangers that night. The other kid backed her up. But later on it looks like he might have had problems with his conscience."

  "And he was the one Mapes worked over with the golf club."

  "You got it, brother. Case closed. On top of it, that other kid got zapped in Vietnam two years later."

  I rubbed my hands up and down on my trousers.

  "I've got to nail him, Dan. I'm all out of leads, and I keep coming up with a handful of air."

  "Let's eat some dinner."

  "I don't think I'm up to it. I'm sorry. I've got less than one and a half weeks to trial. I'm being straight with you. I'm just not going to do time."

  "You're a good man, and you're going to be all right," he said, and put his big hand on the corner of my shoulder. It felt hard and cupped, like a starfish that had dried on hot sand.

  It was time to turn things around on Sally Dee, to plant some dark thoughts in his head about his own vulnerability, so I could concentrate on Harry Mapes. I knew that Charlie Dodds had probably become bear food at the bottom of a canyon, but Sally Dee didn't. However, he was well aware of Charlie Dodds's potential, and I doubted if he would enjoy being in an adversarial relationship with him. Snapping dogs don't like having their collars chained together. After Alafair and I got back to Missoula, I rente
d an hour's typewriter time at the University of Montana library and composed the following letter. I worked hard on it. Chaucer and Dickens created wonderful rogues. I wondered what they would have thought of my attempt. But the more I read over my final draft, the more I was certain that they just might have winked at me with approval.

  Dear Sal, The flowers that go with this you can stick up your butt. When you called Vegas, you said it was a simple yard job. You didn't say anything about pictures and this before and after bullshit. That little stunt almost got me killed. In fact, maybe I think you set me up. You go around telling everybody you're a made guy but made guys don't get their nose bent out of joint by some ex-cop that nobody cares about. I think you're not only a dago shit bag and a welsher but a yellow cunt, too. I heard about you from some guys that were in Huntsville. They say your punk had the whole joint laughing at you behind your back. The only reason you got straight is because you were more afraid of your old man than you were of your punk. But you're not getting out of this one. You owe me the rest of the money, and you know where to deliver it. I don't get it, and I mean right away, I'm coming after you. Nobody back in Vegas is going to make a beef about it, either. They all think you're a prick that should have been clipped a long time ago. CD.