Dixie City Jam

by James Lee Burke

  'Ain't you gonna he'p out?'

  'I'm afraid I don't have a lot to work with here.'

  'Mr. Robicheaux, my mama's gonna lose her job.'

  I sat back down. 'Where's your dad?'

  His eyes became unfocused, then he looked over at the jukebox as though he had just noticed it.

  'I ain't got one. Why you ax that?' he said.

  'No reason. Your mother's a tough lady. Stop worrying about her.'

  'Easy for you to say. You ain't there when she come home, always telling me-'

  'Telling you what?'

  'I ain't nothing but a big drink of water, I gotta be a man, I gotta stop slouching around like somebody pulled my backbone outta my skin.' He rolled up a paper napkin in his palm and dropped it in his plate. 'It ain't her fault. They get on her case where she works, then she just got to get on mine. But I'm tired of it.'

  For the first time I noticed how long and narrow his hands were. Even his nails were long, almost like a girl's.

  'You feel like putting your trunks back on?' I said.

  'What for?'

  'Take a walk with me to the drugstore, then we'll head back to the gym and talk about clocks and bombsights.'

  'What?'

  'Gome on, I'm over the hill. You-dump me on my butt, Zoot.'

  We went into the drugstore on the corner, and I bought a rubber ball, just a little smaller than the palm of my hand, and dropped it in the pocket of my slacks. Then we crossed the street to the gym, and Zoot put on his trunks again and met me in an alcove with padded mats on the floor and a huge ventilator fan bolted into the wire-mesh windows. I hung my shirt on a rack of dumbbells and slipped on a pair of sixteen-ounce gloves that were almost as big as couch pillows.

  Advice is always cheap, and the cheapest kind is the sort we offer people who have to enter dangerous situations for which they are seriously unprepared or ill-equipped. I probably knew a hundred one-liners that a cut-man or a trainer had told me in the corner of a Golden Gloves ring while he worked my mouthpiece from my teeth and squeezed a sponge into my eyes ('Swallow your blood, kid. Don't never let him see you're hurt… He butts you again in the clench, thumb him in the eye… He's telegraphing. When he drops his right shoulder, click off his light').

  But very few people appreciate the amount of courage that it takes to stand toe-to-toe with a superior opponent who systematically goes about breaking the cartilage in your nose, splitting your eyebrows against the bone, and turning your mouth into something that looks like a torn tomato, while the audience stands on chairs and roars its approval of your pain and humiliation.

  'Let's try to keep two simple concepts in mind,' I said. 'Move in a circle with the clock. You got that? Circle him till he thinks you're a shark. Always to the left, just like you're moving with the clock.'

  'All right…' He started circling with me, his gym shoes shuffling on the canvas pad, the skin around his temples taut with expectation, his eyes watching my fists.

  'Then you look him right in the eye. Except in your mind you're seeing his face in a bombsight… Don't look at my hands, look at my face. His face is right in the crosshairs, you understand me, because you know it's just a matter of time till you bust him open with your left, maybe make him duck and come up without his guard, and then pull the trigger and bust him with your right.'

  He circled and squinted at me above his gloves with his puffed left eye.

  'Hit me,' I said.

  His jabs were like spastic jerks, ill-timed, fearful, almost pathetic.

  'I said hit me, Zoot!'

  His left came out and socked into my gloves.

  'Hit me, not the glove,' I said. 'You're starting to piss me off.'

  'What?'

  'I said you're pissing me off. Do you have some problem with your hearing?' I could see the verbal injury in his eyes. I flipped a left jab at his head and drove my right straight into his guard. Then I did it again. His head snapped back with the weight of the blow, then he caught his balance and hunched his shoulders again. I saw him lower his right slightly and a glint form in one eye like a rifleman peering down iron sights.

  His left missed me and scraped past my ear, but he had forced me to duck sideways, and when he unloaded his right he snapped his shoulder into it, the sweat leaping off his face, and caught me squarely across the jaw.

  I lowered my gloves and grinned at him.

  'That one was a beaut,' I said, and started pulling off my gloves.

  'You quitting?'

  'I told you, I'm over the hill for it. Besides, I have to get back to New Iberia.'

  'Go three with me.'

  I reached in my slacks, took out the rubber ball I had bought at the drugstore, and tossed it to him.

  'Squeeze that in each hand five hundred times a day. Do that, and keep working on that right cross, and you'll be able to tear off your opponent's head and spit in it, Zoot.'

  When I walked toward the exit, I looked back and saw him shadowboxing in front of the ventilator fan, his right hand working the rubber ball, his head ducking and weaving in front of the spinning fan blades. Advice might be cheap, but there is nothing facile about the faith of those to whom we give it. I wished Zoot lots of luck. He was probably going to need a pile of it.

  chapter nine

  I was almost out the front door of the gym when Tommy Lonighan came out of his office and shook my hand like a greeter at a casino. His muscular thighs bulged out of a pair of cut-off gray sweat trunks. His light blue eyes and pink face were radiant with goodwill.

  'I saw you working out with Zoot,' he said.

  'He's a good kid. I hope he does all right here, Tommy.'

  'I'm a bad influence?'

  'He shouldn't be going up against pros.'

  'He got in the ring with that white kid, the one with the dragon tattooed on his belly?'

  'Yes.'

  'No kidding? That's not bad for a kid whose mother was probably knocked up by a marshmallow.'

  'You know how to say it, Tommy.'

  'Step into my office,' he answered, smiling. 'I want to talk.'

  'I'm on my way out of town.'

  'I'll buy you a beer. You want a pastrami sandwich? I got your pastrami sandwich. Forget about the other night. I had too much to drink. Come on, don't be a hard-ass.'

  'What's on your mind?'

  'On my mind? Somebody hurts your wife, and the next thing I know you're beating up people in my fucking driveway. Hey, it's all right. The Caluccis are scum. I just want to talk.'

  I went inside his glassed-in office and sat down in front of his desk. The walls were covered with old prizefight posters and newspaper clippings about fighters that Lonighan had owned or managed. Above a shelf filled with boxing trophies was an autographed photograph of President Reagan, with two crossed American flags tucked behind the frame.

  'How did you know about my wife, Tommy?' I said.

  'Because Clete Purcel's been all over town, threatening to jam a chain saw up the butt of anybody with information who doesn't pass it on.' He took a long-necked bottle of beer out of a cooler by his feet, wiped off the ice, set the cap on the edge of his desk, and popped it off with the heel of his hand. He offered it to me.

  'No, thanks.'

  He poured it into a schooner, took a deep drink, and wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his wrist.

  'Let me cut to it, Tommy,' I said. 'You're right, a man came to our house and harmed my wife. It was right after you tried to discourage me from working for Hippo Bimstine.'

  'I got a hard time believing this, Dave. You think that's how I operate, I got to send degenerates around to hurt the wives of people I respect?'

  'You tell me.' I looked directly into his eyes. The cast in them reminded me of light trapped inside blue water. They remained locked on mine, as though wheels were turning over in his brain. Then he looked out the window with a self-amused expression on his face and picked up a sandwich from a paper plate in front of him.

  'Is there a priv
ate joke you want to share with me, Tommy?'

  'Dave, you insulted me at your table, in front of people, then you beat the shit out of a guy with a shovel in my driveway. Then you come to my place of business and tell me I'm sending perverts over to New Iberia to bother your family. What did I do to deserve this? I offered you a fucking business situation. You don't see the humor in that?'

  'I remember a line a journalist for The Picayune used about you once, Tommy. I never forgot it.'

  'Yeah?'

  'You're a mean man in a knife fight.'

  'Oh yeah, I always liked that one.' He leaned forward on his elbows. His curly white hair hung across his forehead. 'I want that fucking sub. Anything the mockie's paying you, I'll double.'

  'See you around, Tommy.'

  'I don't get you. You act like I got jock odor or something. But it doesn't bother you to do business with a fanatic who gets people fired from their jobs.'

  'I don't follow you.'

  'Your buddy, bubble butt… Bimstine, Dave. He belongs to the Jewish Defense Organization. They don't like somebody, they rat-fuck him where he works.'

  'I wouldn't know. I don't like the way you talk about him, though.'

  'Excuse me?'

  'You take cheap shots, Tommy.'

  'Like maybe I'm un-American, an anti-Semite or something?'

  'Read it like you want.'

  'I was sixteen years old at Heartbreak Ridge. I love this country. You saying I don't-' He stopped and smiled. 'You and me might have to forget we're mature people.'

  'You don't know anybody named Will Buchalter?'

  'This the guy hurt your wife?'

  I didn't answer and stared straight into his face. He set his sandwich on his plate, removed a wisp of lettuce from his lip, then took a sip of beer from his schooner and brought his eyes back to mine.

  'What can I say? I'm fighting with cancer of the prostate,' he said. 'You want to know what's on my mind? Dying. You know what else is on my mind? Dying broke. I don't know any guy named Buchalter.'

  'I'm sorry to hear about your health problem, Tommy.'

  'Save it. That sweaty pile of gorilla shit you call a friend is trying to break me. We get casino gambling in New Orleans, he's gonna own it all. I got to take a piss. Which I do with my eyes closed because half the time there's blood in the bowl. You want a beer, they're in the cooler.'

  He opened a small closet that had a toilet inside and, without closing the door, began urinating loudly into the water while he flexed his knees and passed gas like it was a visceral art form.

  How do you read a man like Tommy Lonighan?

  Heartbreak Ridge, Irish bigotry, right-wing patriotism, morbidity that he used like a weapon, speech and mood patterns that had the volatility of tinfoil baking in a microwave.

  The day a person like Lonighan makes sense to you is probably the day you should seriously reexamine your relationship to the rest of the human gene pool.

  And on that note I waved good-bye and left before he had finished shaking himself and thumbing his gray sweat trunks back over his genitalia.

  I stopped by Clete's office on St. Ann to see if he had found out anything about the man who called himself Will Buchalter.

  'If the guy's local, he's low-profile,' Clete said. 'Like below street level. I think I talked to every dirtbag and right-wing crazoid in town. Have you ever been to any of these survivalist shops? I think we ought to round up some of their clientele while there's still time.'

  He started to take a cigarette out of a pack on his desk; instead, he put a mint on his tongue and smiled at me with his eyes.

  'How about hookers?' I said.,

  'The ones I know say he doesn't sound like any of their Johns. I don't think he's from around here, Streak. A guy like this earns people's attention.'

  'Thanks for trying, Clete.'

  'Hang on. You've got two messages,' he said, taking his feet off his desk and looking at two memo slips by his telephone. 'That black sergeant, Ben Motley, you remember him, he always had his fly unzipped when he was in Vice, he wants you to call him about some dude who electrocuted himself in custody last night-'

  'What?'

  'Hang on, mon. I got a similar message from this character Reverend Oswald Flat. Isn't that the guy who was out at your bait shop? He's got a voice like somebody twanging on a bobby pin.'

  'That's the guy.'

  'Well, he called Bootsie and she told him to call here. NOPD picked up some wild man in the Garden District, can you dig this, a forty-year-old guy with tattoos on his head, wearing black leather in August. The autopsy showed he'd been shooting up with speed and paint thinner. How about that for a new combo?'

  'What's the connection?'

  'He had a silenced.22 Ruger automatic on him and Hippo Bimstine's address in his pocket. We'd better go talk to Motley and this guy with a mouthful of collard greens.'

  'We?'

  'Let's be serious a minute, Dave. I think you're fucking with some very bad guys. I don't know who they are, why they're interested in this submarine, or what the connections are between this citizens committee and dope dealers in the projects having their hearts cut out. But I'll bet my ass politics doesn't have diddle-shit to do with it.'

  'I think this time it might.'

  'Anyway, I'm backing your action, Jackson, whether you like it or not.' He leaned back in his swivel chair, grinned, and drummed on his stomach with his knuckles like a zoo creature at play.

  I called Motley and told him that Clete and I would meet him at his office.

  'You don't need to bring Purcel,' he said.

  'Yeah, I do.'

  'Suit yourself. I remember now, you always did drink down.'

  'Thanks, Motley.'

  Then I called the Reverend Oswald Flat and asked what I could do for him.

  'Hit's about this man killed hisself in custody,' he said.

  'Why would you call me?'

  'Because you cain't seem to keep your tallywhacker out of the hay baler.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'You disturb me. I think there's people fixing to do you some harm, but you have a way of not hearing me. Is there a cinder block up there between your ears?'

  'Reverend, I'd appreciate it if you'd-'

  'All right, son, I'll try not to offend you anymore. Now, get your nose out of the air and listen to me a minute. I do counseling with prisoners. I bring ' em my Faith Made Easy tapes. I tried to counsel this crazy man they brought in there with tattoos on his head and a stink you'd have to carry on the end of a dung fork-' He stopped, as though his words had outpaced his thoughts.

  'What is it?' I said.

  'Hit wasn't a good moment. No, sir, hit surely wasn't. I looked into his eyes, and if that man had a soul, I believe demons had already claimed hit.'

  'He was shooting up with speed and paint thinner, Reverend.'

  'That may be. Your kind always got a scientific explanation. Anyway, I taped what he said. I want you to hear hit.'

  I asked him to meet Clete and me down at Motley's office. He said he'd be there, but he didn't reply when I said good-bye and started to hang up.

  'Is there something else?' I said.

  'No, not really. Maybe like you say, he was just a man who filled his veins with chemicals. I just never had a fellow, not even the worst of them, claw at my eyes and spit in my face before.'

  Oswald Flat was wearing a rain-spotted seersucker suit, a clip-on bow tie, white athletic socks with black shoes, and his cork sun helmet when he came through the squad room at district headquarters and sat on a wood bench next to me and Clete. He carried a small black plastic tape recorder in his hand. He blew out his breath and wiped his rimless glasses on his coat sleeve.

  At the other end of the room we could see Motley through the glass of Nate Baxter's office. Motley was standing; he and Baxter were arguing.

  'You want to hear hit?' Oswald Flat said, resting the recorder on his thigh. The side of his face wrinkled, as though he were reluctant to go
ahead with his own purpose.

  'That'd be fine, Reverend,' I said.

  When he pushed the Play button I could hear all the noises that are endemic to jailhouses everywhere: steel doors clanging, radios blaring, a water bucket being scraped along a concrete floor, cacophonous and sometimes deranged voices echoing through long corridors. Then I heard the man's voice-like words being released from an emotional knot, the syntax incoherent, the rage and hateful obsession like a quivering, heated wire.

  'You got mud people coming out of your sewer grates, you got-' he was saying when Motley came out of Baxter's office and Oswald Flat clicked off the recorder.

  'Movie time,' Motley said, scratching at the side of his mustache.

  'What's Nate Baxter on the rag about?' Clete said.

  'What do you think, Purcel? He's just real glad to see you guys down here again,' Motley said.

  'Get him transferred back to Vice. At least he could get laid once in a while,' Clete said. He looked at the expression on my face. 'You think I'm kidding? The transvestites in the Quarter really dug the guy.'

  The four of us went inside Motley's office. He closed the door behind us and inserted a videocassette into a VCR unit.

  'The guy's name was Jack Pelley,' Motley said. 'He had a dishonorable discharge from the Crotch for rolling queers in San Diego, priors in New Orleans for statutory rape and possession of child pornography. One federal beef for possession of stolen explosives. From what we can tell, he became an addict in the joint, muled tar for both the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia while he was inside, then jumped his parole about three years ago.'

  'How'd he get picked up?' I said.

  'He locked himself in a filling station rest room on Carrollton and wouldn't let anybody else in. When the owner opened the door, Pelley had his leathers down over his knees and was shooting into his thigh with a spike made out of an eyedropper. The Ruger was sitting on top of the toilet tank.'

  'How far away was he from Hippo Bimstine's house?' I said.

  'About two blocks,' Motley said. 'His pockets were full of rainbows, blues, purple hearts, leapers, you name it. I think somebody gave him the whole candy store to fuck up Bimstine's day.' He glanced at Oswald Flat. 'Sorry, Reverend.'