The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  “Ma’am?” he said.

  “You’re not with the plumber?”

  “I was looking for an address. I ain’t sure I got the right one.”

  “What’s the address?”

  He couldn’t think. The sound of his own blood roared in his ears. “The address where Mr. Kovick is at,” he said.

  God, what had he just said?

  “He’s out front. I’ll tell him you’re here. What’s your name?”

  “You ain’t got to bother him. I’ll get my tools. They’re in the truck.”

  “Wait just a minute,” she said. Then she was gone into the front of the shop.

  He couldn’t decide whether to flee or to pull the.38 from his belt before Kovick came through the heavy felt curtain that separated the front of the shop from the back. A truck rattled past the back door onto the side street, and he almost jumped out of his skin. Then, like an apparition in a dream, Kovick pulled back the curtain and stared into his face. Kovick looked like the biggest man Bertrand had ever seen. “What’s the problem?” he said.

  Bertrand’s mouth was so dry he almost swallowed his tongue when he tried to speak. “Ain’t no problem, suh,” he said, frozen in place, the thumb of his right hand hitched in his trouser pocket.

  Kovick wore a beige suit with pale purple stripes in it and a lavender shirt and a tie that was the color of a pomegranate. His eyes contained a dark light, like obsidian, the focus in them unrelenting. “You here about the bathroom? Some of the pipes are right under the tiles, so you got to be careful how you pry them up. They’re old and it won’t take much to bust them.”

  “I ain’t here about no bat’room,” Bertrand said.

  “Then what do you want?” Sidney looked at him sideways as he lifted an empty vase out of a carton on the floor and partially filled it from a wall tap. He set the vase on the worktable and began sorting through an order book. “Did you hear me? What do you want, kid?”

  Nothing, except your life, motherfucker, Bertrand heard a voice inside him say.

  “What’d you just say?” Sidney asked.

  “Nothing. I ain’t said nothing.”

  “You called me a motherfucker?”

  “No, suh, I ain’t said that.”

  “I think you did.” Sidney ’s eyes dropped to Bertrand’s belt. “What have you got there?”

  “Nothing,” Bertrand said, backing away.

  “Yeah?” Sidney said. He slapped Bertrand across the face, hard, coming around with his shoulder when he did it. “I asked you a question. What’s down there?”

  “Suh, I ain’t did nothing. I’ll go away. You ain’t never gonna see me again. I promise.”

  Sidney reached down and jerked the.38 from Bertrand’s belt, the steel sight tearing Bertrand’s skin. “You little shit,” he said. “You came in here packing, with my wife in the store?”

  “No, suh. I was just lost.”

  “Don’t lie,” Sidney said. He slapped Bertrand full in the face again, knocking spittle from his mouth.

  “I thought it was an easy score, man,” Bertrand said, his nose full of needles, his eyes brimming with water.

  “I got the reputation as an easy score? I got the reputation as anybody’s punch? That’s what you’re telling me in my own shop?”

  Bertrand opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Sidney flipped open the cylinder of the.38 and dumped the shells in his palm. “Where you from?” he asked.

  “ Shreveport,” Bertrand said.

  Sidney dropped the.38 in his coat pocket and fitted his hand inside Bertrand’s shorts and pulled them and his trousers out from his stomach. He poured the six rounds down into Bertrand’s genitalia, then walked him to the door. “This is what it is, kid. You made a mistake. Come around again and I’ll tear up your whole ticket.”

  Sidney pushed him into the alley and kicked him so hard between his buttocks that Bertrand felt like glass had been shoved up his rectum. He limped to the end of the alley, convinced that blood was running down his thighs. When he got out to the street, when he did not think any more humiliation or misery could come into his life, he saw a wrecker hoisting the front end of his Toyota into the air.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, the phone rang on my kitchen counter. “Either you or Purcel are behind this, Dave,” a voice said.

  “ Sidney?” I said.

  “You surprised I’m alive?”

  “You lost me.”

  “I’m holding a thirty-eight one-inch in my hand. Guess where it came from? It was stolen from my own house. I just took it off a black kid with breath like somebody broke wind. The black kid came in my shop with my own gun and was going to cap me with it. You think that’s just coincidence?”

  “Where’s the black kid now?”

  “I don’t know. I kicked his ass down the alley before I realized he was one of the guys who tore my house apart. But if I get my hands on him, I’m going to pull all his parts off and bring them to you.”

  “Bad statement to make to a cop, Sidney.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  He paused, evaluating my response. “You’re saying you didn’t sic that kid on me?”

  “No, and neither did Clete Purcel.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. Purcel has got a long-standing beef with me. There was a rumble at the bottom of Magazine when we were kids. He thinks I was behind the guy who bashed him across the eye with a pipe. He’s a dumb mick. You know how you can tell a dumb mick? They think and act and look like Purcel.”

  “Lay off Clete. He cut you slack when he could have destroyed you in front of your wife.”

  “I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I had waded out into deep water, but I figured Sidney had asked for it. “Clete knew you had gotten it on with Natalia Ramos. He could have shown you up for the sorry-ass sack of shit you are, but he’s too much of a gentleman to do something like that.”

  “I guess the lesson here is wet-brains hang together. Let me try to line it out for you. I met Natalia Ramos at the video store. She loves movies, like I do. I gave her a job cleaning my office. I also tried to help the junkie priest she was shacked up with. He was a good man, but his cancer kept him on the spike. Tell Purcel he’s even dumber than I thought he was.”

  “You knew Father Jude LeBlanc?”

  “You and Dumbo flap your ears down to the state mental hygiene clinic and see if they do brain transplants.”

  “Ronald Bledsoe broke into my house. That’s on you, Sidney.”

  But he hung up while the words were only half out of my mouth.

  The tops of the oak trees in the backyard were denting in the wind, and leaves were tumbling onto the surface of the bayou. I could see children playing with a Frisbee on the green slope of City Park and hear their voices carrying across the water. It was a fine evening, one that should not have been stained by thoughts about men like Ronald Bledsoe. But evil is evil, and it does not depart from our lives because we wish for it to leave. Otis Baylor’s advice about not empowering Bledsoe was right on target, but that did not mean I had to play Bledsoe’s game.

  I called Clete on his cell phone. “Bledsoe doesn’t sleep at night?” I said.

  “No.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Scares the hell out of hookers or plays card games.”

  “Cards?”

  “On his laptop. There’s a bumper sticker from the casino on his car. Maybe that’s his jones. All these guys got one. Why?”

  Chapter 22

  I DROVE TO CLETE’S motor court at two o’Clock Sunday morning. The sky was dark, the trees alive with wind, the lights burning inside Ronald Bledsoe’s cottage. When I knocked, he pulled aside the blinds and looked outside, then dropped the night chain and opened the door. He was dressed in a navy blue robe and fluffy white slippers. He was smiling, his missing tooth replaced by a bridge.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Bledsoe. But I saw your light and didn�
�t think you’d mind,” I said.

  “Not in the least. What a treat.” He looked at his watch. “You’re just like me. A night owl is what you are. Come in.”

  The interior of his cottage was immaculate, the bed still made, an open laptop on the breakfast table. “Bet I know what you’re gonna ask me,” he said.

  “Bet you don’t,” I said.

  “You want to know if I’m gonna file charges against your little girl.”

  “Are you?”

  “No, sir, that’s not my way.”

  “That’s good of you. Can I call you ronald?”

  “Everybody does, ’Cause that’s my name.” his elongated, waxed head gleamed under the electric light. He lifted a coffeepot off the stove and began filling two cups, glancing sideways at me. “You want sugar and cream?”

  “No, nothing,” I said, temporarily distracted by the images on his computer screen.

  “I run different kinds of games on my laptop,” he said. “You like to play cards, Mr. Robicheaux?”

  “Call me Dave. I used to go to the track a bit. In fact, it became a problem for me, along with a bigger one I already had.”

  “That so?”

  He handed me a demitasse and a saucer with a tiny spoon on it. But I set it on the table without drinking from it. Electronic playing cards were flipping out of a dealer’s shoe and floating across the screen of his laptop. “I thought I could beat the odds, but eventually I got shellacked,” I said.

  “That so?” he repeated.

  “It’s every gambler’s weakness, kind of like a drunk’s. He thinks he can intuit and control the future, but his real mission is to lose.”

  “Why would a man want to lose?”

  “So he can blame the universe for all his problems.”

  “I never thought of it that way. You a smart man, Mr. Robicheaux. This is an impressive town. Southern people are the smartest there is. Your daughter is highly educated and cultured. A man knows that as a natural fact soon as he lays eyes on her.”

  “Thanks, Ronald. Look, I wonder if you can help me with a problem. Somebody broke into our home and vandalized her bedroom. You hear about that?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t.”

  “So my boss would like to exclude you as a suspect. Could we get a swab from you?”

  “Isn’t that a form of search, Mr. Robicheaux? requiring what they call ‘probable cause’?” his smile never left his face.

  “You’re dead-on right about that.”

  “Well, you got a warrant?” he asked playfully.

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Then you just hold on a minute,” he said. He went into the bath and returned with a Q-tip. He stuck one end deep into his jaw and wet it down, then dropped it into a Ziploc bag and handed it to me. “I don’t want you having trouble with your boss lady on my account. No, sir, that won’t slide down the pipe.”

  “You had a partner when you broke into my house?”

  He clasped the back of his neck and shook his head. “That offends me. Wish you wouldn’t say that.” His eyes went up and down my person. “You carrying a firearm, Mr. Robicheaux?”

  All the while we had spoken, he had allowed me to call him by his first name but had continued to address me formally, in his way both patronizing and outwitting me.

  I pulled back the right side of my sports coat. “Actually I’m supposed to, but this is just a friendly visit. Tell me, do you really believe you can come into a small southern town and wipe your feet on people and go back home without incurring some serious attrition? Do you really believe the South has changed that much?”

  He stepped close to me, still smiling, his teeth shiny with his saliva. “I’ve done every kind of work there is, in every kind of place there is. Love of money is the root of all evil. The Bible says it. People were for sale back then, people are for sale today. This whole town would be a Wal-Mart parking lot if the money was right.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Like hell I am,” he replied.

  “You know what blood stones are, don’t you, Bledsoe?”

  “In the civilized world, gentlemen don’t address one another by their last names, Mr. Robicheaux. But in answer to your question, no, I don’t know much about blood stones.”

  “Children’s arms were lopped off because of those stones. I think they’ll bring you to grief.”

  “I was brought to grief the day I was born. What do you think about that?”

  He was so close to me now I could smell the dried soap on his skin. My gaze broke and I stepped away from him. Then I opened the door to let myself out, my breath short, the Ziploc bag in my hand.

  “You not gonna drink your coffee, Mr. Robicheaux?”

  Outside, his odor seemed to cling to my face. When I started my truck, he was standing in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his robe, electronic cards flipping into a black satin hat on the screen of his laptop. He was backlit by the interior of the cottage, casting his face in shadow, but there was enough light from a streetlamp to show his teeth shining behind his smile. I backed down the driveway between the two rows of cottages, straight onto Main, the gearshift knob shaking inside my palm.

  BACK HOME, I undressed and got in bed beside Molly. When she felt my weight on the mattress, she woke and rolled against me, her body hot to my touch. Before leaving for the motor court, I had told her I had to go to the office to take care of a situation for the dispatcher. Now I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at me.

  “Everything is okay. Go back to sleep,” I said.

  She brought her knee sharply into my thigh. “Don’t try to put the slide on me, troop,” she said.

  “I confronted Bledsoe.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Clete was close by. I was okay.”

  She placed her hand on my chest. “Your heart is pounding.”

  “I couldn’t be in the same room with him. It’s hard to explain. I had to get away from him.”

  “He admitted he broke into our house? He threatened you?”

  “That’s not the way he operates. The Prince of Darkness is always a gentleman. So are his acolytes.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Dave.”

  “I’m going to nail him. One way or another, I’m going to tack him to the side of the barn.”

  She lay back down, the back of her head cupped by the pillow, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then she said something I never believed I would hear her say. “I want to buy a pistol.”

  IN THE MORNING, while I was still off the clock, I drove down to the south end of Lafourche Parish and parked in front of the crossroads bar where Bo Diddley Wiggins and I had gone to pick up Clete after Clete had shot at a man fleeing down a canal in an outboard boat. The bartender was alone in the bar, in a strap undershirt, sitting in front of a fan, trying to read a newspaper in the half-light. I opened my badge holder on the bar and asked him about the two men who had been there when I had come to collect Clete. There was a pad of body hair on the bartender’s shoulders and his eyebrows were laced with scar tissue, pinching his eyes at the corners so that they looked Asian rather than occidental.

  “You know the guys who brought my friend in here?”

  “They work for Mr. Wiggins. They drink beer here sometimes,” he said.

  “I knew that when I came in. I need to know where they are now.”

  “On Sunday, it’s hard to say.”

  “I’m investigating a double torture-homicide. Would you like to answer my questions at the parish jail?”

  He folded his newspaper over on itself and pushed it away. “There’s a fuel dock four miles down the road. You might find one of them there.”

  “Thank you,” I said, scooping my badge holder off the bar.

  “Hey!” he said when I was almost out the door.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “I drive thirty-four miles on bad roads to get to this job. I make six bucks an hour
and tips. FEMA says in another mont ’ I may get a trailer. How far you drive to work? Your house got a roof on it?”

  I drove south to a fuel dock that was located at the junction of a brackish bay and a freshwater canal an oil company had cut into living marsh. Disintegrating pools of diesel oil floated on the water. A rusted barge lay half submerged in the sawgrass. I could see a man in khaki clothes moving about in a small office that had been built on the end of the dock. He was watching an airboat roaring across the bay and he did not hear me walk up behind him.

  “Whoa, you scared me!” he said when he turned around. Then he recognized me and reintroduced himself. He said his name was tolliver and that he was originally from Arkansas and had worked for Bo Wiggins for thirteen years.

  “Your friend had a snootful, didn’t he?” he said. “Did he get home okay?”

  “Did you see him shoot at somebody, Mr. Tolliver?”

  “No, I heard a couple of distant pops, the way a shotgun sounds in the wind. A guy was taking off in an outboard and I thought this guy Purcel maybe was a robbery victim. That’s the only reason I got involved.”

  He was a pleasant-looking man, his stomach and love handles protruding over his belt. His forearms were big and brown and on the tops they were covered with reddish hair. He smiled a lot. In fact, he was too pleasant and smiled much more than he should have.

  “You don’t know who the man in the boat was?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How long have you been working on this dock?”

  “A couple of years, maybe.”

  “A lot of strangers come through here?”

  “I just fuel up Mr. Wiggins’s boats. I don’t pay much mind to what-all goes on around here, I mean, folks fishing and that sort of thing.”

  “You ever hear of a guy named Ronald Bledsoe?”

  “I can’t say that I have.”

  “He’s a strange-looking guy. His head and face look like the end of a dildo.”

  He coughed out a laugh and looked sideways onto the bay. He removed a pair of yellow-tinted aviator glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on, even though the sun had gone behind clouds and the marshland surrounding us had dropped into shadow. He spread his arms on the dock railing behind him and kept shaking his head, as though mulling over a question, although I had not asked one.