The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

“Ten percent on the recovery.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Screw you,” Clete said.

  Sidney ’s gaze drifted out the front window, where his two men were playing cards in the shade. “What makes you think you can deliver?”

  “It’s like prayer, what do you got to lose?”

  One at a time, Sidney placed three more rose stems in the vase. “Don’t mess it up,” he said. He fixed his eyes on Clete’s, a blade of sunlight slicing like a knife across his face.

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?” I said to Clete after he telephoned and told me what he had done.

  “What was I supposed to do? Let an animal like Kovick threaten me and my employer?” he said.

  In the background I could hear a sound like a rack of bowling pins exploding. “Why don’t you just sprinkle broken glass in your breakfast food? Save yourself the time and effort of fooling with Kovick?” I said.

  “What’s that line in Machiavelli about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer?”

  “Yeah, it’s Machiavelli and it’s crap,” I replied.

  “Look, I need a place to stay. My power is still off and something with black tendrils on it is growing out my drains.”

  “What about your room at the motor court?”

  “It got rented to some evacuees.”

  “Stay with us,” I said, trying to keep my voice flat, imagining any number of nightmarish events associated with Clete as houseguest.

  “Molly won’t mind?”

  “No, she’ll be happy.”

  “I’m at the bowling alley on East Main. I’ll motor on over. Tell Molly not to fix anything. I’ve got it covered. Everything is copacetic, big mon.”

  And motor over he did, at 6:00 p.m. Sharp, with a bucket of Popeyes fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits and a big carton of fried oysters and dirty rice. He also brought a separate bag of paper plates, plastic forks and knives, paper napkins, and a six-pack of Dr Pepper. He went about setting the table while Molly and Alafair tried to hide their smiles.

  “Clete, we have plates and silverware,” I said.

  “No need to dirty things up,” he said.

  Molly shook her head behind his back to stop me from admonishing him. Alafair wasn’t as diplomatic. “You have any salad in there, Clete?” she said.

  “You bet,” he replied, and proudly lifted a quart of potato salad from the sack.

  But Clete’s gay mood was often an indicator of worries and memories that he shared with few people. To the world he was the trickster and irresponsible hedonist, sowing mayhem and destruction wherever he went. But in his sleep he still dreamed of two adults fighting in their bedroom late at night and of kneeling in short pants on grains of rice his father sprinkled on the floor, and of liquid flame arching into a village of straw hooches. If sometimes he looked disconcerted, he would never admit he had just glanced out a window into the darkness and had seen a dead mamasan staring back at him.

  After we ate, he took a long walk into City Park by himself, then returned to the house and went to bed early in our guest bedroom. Shortly after 4:00 a.m., I heard Tripod running up and down on the clothesline where we hooked his chain. I put on my khakis without waking Molly and opened the back door. Clete was sitting at our redwood table in his skivvies, his skin netted with moonlight. When he heard the screen open, he removed a pint bottle of bourbon from the tabletop and set it by his thigh.

  “You don’t have to hide that,” I said.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I heard thunder. But the sky is clear.”

  I sat down next to him. “What’s eating you, podna?”

  “I went back to my old neighborhood in the Irish Channel. I always hated the house where I grew up. I hated my old man. But I went back there and saw what the storm had done, and I had feelings I’ve never had before. I missed my old man and the rattling sounds his milk truck made when he drove off at four in the morning. I missed my mom cooking pancakes in the kitchen. It was like everything in my childhood was finally over, but I didn’t want it to be over. It was like I had died and nobody had told me about it.”

  He picked up the pint bottle from the bench and unscrewed the cap. The bottle was wrapped in a brown paper bag and the moonlight glinted on the neck. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and tilted it up to drink. I could smell the bourbon as it rolled back over his tongue. I envisioned its amber color inside the yellow staves of the curing barrel, the bead it made inside the bottle’s neck when it was air-locked under the cork, the splash it made when it was released again and poured over ice and mint leaves inside a glass. Unconsciously I swallowed and touched at my brow as though a vein were tightening in my head.

  “It’s called a vision of mortality,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “The feelings you experienced when you went back to your old house.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to die?”

  “You saw the Big Sleazy die, Clete. It’s like having an affair with the Great Whore of Babylon. When you finally come to your senses and get her out of your life, you find out she was the only woman you ever loved.”

  Clete upended the bottle again, his throat working rhythmically, watching me with one eye, as though someone had spoken to him from one of his dreams.

  BUT CLETE WAS not the only friend or acquaintance from New Orleans seeking refuge in Iberia Parish. Two weeks after I had been sent to help investigate the shooting death of Kevin Rochon and the crippling of Eddy Melancon, Helen Soileau called me into her office. She spit a piece of her thumbnail off her tongue. “Otis Baylor just moved back to town with his family. Evidently they still own a home on Old Jeanerette Road,” she said.

  I waited for her to go on.

  “You think he dropped those two looters or not?” she said.

  “You mean is he that kind of guy? No, I don’t think he is. But-”

  “What?”

  “His daughter had a terrible experience at the hands of three street pukes. I don’t know what I would do if I were in his shoes.”

  “I didn’t hear that last sentence.”

  “Maybe Baylor thought they were going to break into his house. Maybe his nerves were fried.”

  “If this guy is dirty on a homicide, he’s not going to use our parish as a sanctuary. Talk to his wife and daughter.”

  “I’d rather drop this one.”

  “I’d rather not be present at my own death. Get out of here.”

  Baylor’s home was a dark green nineteenth-century one-story house with tall windows and high ceilings and a peaked tin roof streaked with rust that had a purple cast in the shadows, not unlike my own. It had a wide screened-in gallery and was set back from Bayou Teche under pecan and palm trees and a solitary live oak dripping with Spanish moss. A glider hung on chains from one of the oak limbs, and a tan Honda was parked in the shale driveway, its paint spotted with bird droppings. A girl of about nineteen answered the door.

  “I’m Dave Robicheaux, from the sheriff’s department,” I said, opening my badge. “Is Mr. Baylor here?”

  “He’s at work,” she said.

  She wore black sweatpants and a white T-shirt that was flecked with tiny pieces of leaves. “I was cleaning up the backyard when you rang the bell.”

  “Are you Otis Baylor’s daughter?”

  “I’m Thelma Baylor.”

  “Is your mother here?”

  “My stepmother is at the grocery store.”

  “Could I talk with you? I’m investigating the shooting of the looters in front of your home in New Orleans. We have a lead or two, but I still can’t quite picture where these guys were when they were shot.”

  “What does it matter? They were shot.”

  “That’s true, isn’t it? Could I come in?”

  “You can watch me rake leaves if you want.”

  I followed her through the kitchen into the backyard. On both sides of her simple house were antebellum plantation homes of the kind on
e normally sees only on postcards. One hundred yards farther down the bayou, across the drawbridge, was a trailer slum where every form of social decay imaginable was a way of life. “You like New Iberia?” I asked.

  “Are there always traffic jams at the Wal-Mart, or is that just because of the storm?” she said, drawing a bamboo rake through leaves that were black with mold.

  I figured this one was going to be a long haul. I sat down on the back steps. “Did you hear the shots?”

  Her eyes looked into neutral space, her rake missing a beat. “I heard a shot. It woke me up.”

  “Just one shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where were you sleeping?”

  Her face looked pale and round in the shade, devoid of expression, her lipstick glossy and unnatural, her bangs as precise as a nun’s wimple. “In my room.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Yes, my room is upstairs. Do you want to talk to my father? I don’t see how any of this is helpful.”

  “Do you think your next-door neighbor, Tom Claggart, is capable of popping a couple of looters?”

  “Mr. Claggart is an upended penis with arms and legs and a face drawn on it. I don’t know what he’s capable of.”

  Time to take a chance, I told myself. “I know about the attack on your person two years ago, Miss Thelma. I have a daughter a little older than you. If I thought she was in danger, particularly from the kind of men who hurt you, I’d take them off at the neck.”

  Her rake slowed in the leaves, her chest rising and falling.

  “I lost my mother and a wife to violent men,” I continued. “I think men who abuse women are invariably physical and moral cowards. I think a man who rapes a woman should be first in line at the injection table.”

  She became motionless. Grains of dirt were stuck to the side of her mouth.

  “I think you saw and know more than you’re telling me,” I said.

  “I saw a guy floating facedown in the water. Another guy was wounded. A third guy started running through the water. A fourth guy was trying to hold the wounded guy in the boat.”

  “That’s very detailed. I appreciate it.” I made a note on a pad and put away my pen, as though we were finished. “Where was your father?”

  “In his bedroom.”

  “Where was your mother?”

  “She’s my stepmother. My real mother is dead.”

  “Where was your stepmother?”

  “In the bedroom with my father.”

  “Did your old man shoot those guys?”

  “If you won’t believe him, you won’t believe me. Why bother asking?”

  “I think you carry a big burden, Miss Thelma. I’m not here to add to it.”

  “You need to shut up, Mr. Robicheaux.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Why do you assume you know what happened to me? Why do you assume my family wants revenge on people we have nothing against? I can’t stand people like you. You don’t have any idea of what it’s like to be a rape victim. If you did, you wouldn’t be patronizing and trying to manipulate me.”

  “I apologize if I gave that impression.”

  “It’s not an impression.”

  I stood up from the steps and brushed off the seat of my trousers. “I’m sorry just the same.”

  “Fuck you.”

  As I left the yard, I glanced back over my shoulder. Her body seemed to float inside a nimbus of light particles and dust and smoke and bits of desiccated leaves. For just a moment, as she resumed her work, stroking the rake hard across the ground, the bamboo tines splintering on the root system of a cypress tree, the intensity of her concentration and anger gave her a kind of integrity that I always associated with Alafair.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY I called the Baylor house and asked Mrs. Baylor to come into the department for an interview.

  “More about the looters who were shot?” she said.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Is this absolutely necessary?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is,” I said.

  “We’re out on Old Jeanerette Road, just past Alice Plantation. Why don’t you come here if you want to talk?”

  I realized Thelma had not told her stepmother of my visit. “I’d be happy to.”

  “Mr. Robicheaux, let’s do this on another basis. I seriously believe you’re wasting your time with us, but nonetheless we’d like to be your friend. Can we take you and your family to dinner? I think you’ll see we’re truthful people and want to assist you in any way we can. But the reality is we’re bystanders who have no idea who shot those men.”

  “That’s kind of you. But there’s a protocol I have to pursue. Will you be home in the next half hour?”

  “No, I have a doctor’s appointment.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure. May I call you?”

  “I need to make an appointment with you right now, Mrs. Baylor.”

  “Unfortunately that’s not possible. I’ve tried to be cooperative, Mr. Robicheaux. But this is starting to get a little tiresome. I’d better say good-bye now. I wish you success in your investigation.”

  The line went dead.

  Wrong move, Mrs. Baylor.

  I WENT INTO Helen’s office. “I interviewed Otis Baylor’s daughter yesterday and just got an Academy Award nose-in-the-air performance from his wife,” I said.

  “Slow it down, Pops,” she said, leaning back in her swivel chair.

  “They’re lying,” I said, spreading my notes on Helen’s desk. “Look, both Otis and his daughter say they heard a single shot. Both use the same language. They say ‘It woke me up.’ When I mentioned multiple shots to the daughter, she even corrected me. I was bothered from the get-go by Baylor’s statement that he heard a single shot. That’s not what people say when they’re awakened by gunfire. All they know is that a frightening sound shook them out of their sleep. They don’t count shots.”

  I saw Helen’s attention sharpen.

  “Both Otis and Thelma described what they saw in the same sequence. Each of them began by mentioning a man floating in the water. There were four guys in or around the boat. But Otis and Thelma mention the kid who was floating in the water first. Why not the guy hemorrhaging blood out of his mouth? I think they had their story prepackaged.”

  Helen rubbed at the back of her neck. Whenever she was pensive, her face always went through an androgynous transformation that was both lovely and mysterious to watch. I believed that several different people lived inside her, but I never told her that. Her lovers had included many men and women over the years, including Clete Purcel. Sometimes she looked at me in a way that made me feel sexually uncomfortable, as though one of the women who lived inside her had decided to stray.

  “Have you heard any more from the Feds or NOPD?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Write up what you just told me and fax it to Baton Rouge. Tell them to clean up their own shit while you’re at it. I want this stuff out of our hair.”

  “Why the change in attitude?”

  “Have you looked at The Weather Channel?”

  “No,” I said.

  “That new hurricane, what’s-its-name, the one that was supposed to smack Texas?”

  “Rita?”

  “It’s not.”

  IS THERE A DESIGN in the events of our lives? Or do things just happen, much like a junkyard falling down a staircase? If it’s the latter, how do you deal with it?

  If you have ever invested with regularity in the pari-mutuel arts, or shot craps in a game that made your hand sweat on the dice, or allowed yourself to believe you had the psychic power to intuit the next card out of the shoe at a blackjack table, you have probably crossed the wrong Rubicon on many occasions and are familiar with the following experience:

  There is magic in your hands and your walk. The magenta sky above the track and the flamingos lifting out of a grassy pond in the center ground are indicators that your perfecta wheel cannot lose. Inside t
he casino, the dice are as hard-edged and solid as rubies in your palm, and you double your bets on the pass line each time you bounce the dice down the felt into the backboard. The plunging neckline of the young woman dealing out of the shoe at the blackjack table cannot compare in its allure to the thrill of receiving a low number on the fifth card of a five-card Johnny.

  You know that you cannot lose, that it is God’s will that you not lose. Others draw close to you in the same way that candle moths surround an incandescent light burning inside a crystal container. They gasp in awe at both your recklessness and the vindication of your faith in yourself. They want to brush against you and absorb your power into their bodies.

  Then things start to go south. Your horse is disqualified because the jockey has bumped another rider’s horse on the far turn. The dice turn to lumps of lead in your hand and come up treys, boxcars, and snake eyes. The young female dealer blackjacks on you and deals you every high card in the deck, busting you again and again, stifling a yawn, her cleavage hovering like a withdrawn invitation only inches from your face.

  Welcome to “the dead zone.” It’s a special place that, unbeknown to himself, every degenerate gambler seeks. Check out the bar at the track after the seventh race. The people there are as happy as satiated hogs. They have lost the grocery money, the rent, the mortgage and car payment, even the vig they owe a Shylock. But they’re safe now because they have nothing else to lose. They also have the empirical evidence to prove once and for all time that the universe has conspired to cheat and injure them. Their personal failure is God’s, not theirs. The soul is packed in dry ice now, the battle over.

  When I went into the coffee room at the department, several uniformed deputies were watching CNN. Their collective expression and posture reminded me of helicopter pilots I had seen many years ago in a predawn briefing room backdropped by the China Sea. Most of these pilots were warrant officers not over twenty years in age. But I could never forget the suppressed tension in their faces, the deliberate restraint in their voices, the self-imposed solipsism in their eyes that told you the dawn was indeed about to come up like thunder from China across the bay.

  Hurricane Rita contained winds of 185 miles an hour and originally had been projected to make landfall somewhere around Matagorda Bay, northeast of Corpus Christi. Then its direction shifted farther to the east. Officials in Houston, fearing a repeat of Katrina in their own city, effected a massive evacuation, choking highways all the way to San Antonio and Dallas. Then the hurricane shifted direction again, this time almost certainly zeroing in on Beaumont and Port Arthur.