Sunset Limited

by James Lee Burke

  Helen turned the jar upside down and pulled the envelope out of the opening. The glue on the flap was still sealed. I slipped my pocketknife in the corner of the flap and sliced a neat line across the top of the envelope and shook three black-and-white photos out on the hood.

  Jack Flynn was still alive in two of them. In one, he was on his hands and knees while men in black hoods with slits for eyes swung blurred chains on his back; in the other, a fist clutched his hair, pulling his head erect so the camera could photograph his destroyed face. But in the third photo his ordeal had come to an end. His head lay on his shoulder; his eyes were rolled into his head, his impaled arms stretched out on the wood of the barn wall. Three men in cloth hoods were looking back at the camera, one pointing at Flynn as though indicating a lesson to the viewer.

  "This doesn't give us squat," Helen said.

  "The man in the middle. Look at the ring finger on his left hand. It's gone, cut off at the palm," I said.

  "You know him?"

  "It's Archer Terrebonne. His family didn't just order the murder. He helped do it."

  "Dave, there's no face to go with the hand. It's not a felony to have a missing finger. Look at me. A step at a time and all that jazz, right? You listening, Streak?"

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS AN HOUR LATER. Terrebonne had not been at his home, but a maid had told us where to find him. I parked the cruiser under the oaks in front of the restaurant up the highway and cut the engine. The water dripping out of the trees steamed on the hood.

  "Dave, don't do this," Helen said.

  "He's in Iberia Parish now. I'm not going to have these pictures lost in a St. Mary Parish evidence locker."

  "We get them copied, then do it by the numbers."

  "He'll skate."

  "You know a lot of rich guys working soybeans in Angola? That's the way it is."

  "Not this time."

  I went inside the foyer, where people waited in leather chairs for an available table. I opened my badge on the maître d'.

  "Archer Terrebonne is here with a party," I said.

  The maître d's eyes locked on mine, then shifted to Helen, who stood behind me.

  "Is there a problem?" he asked.

  "Not yet," I said.

  "I see. Follow me, please."

  We walked through the main dining room to a long table at the rear, where Terrebonne was seated with a dozen other people. The waiters had just taken away their shrimp cocktails and were now serving the gumbo off of a linen-covered cart.

  Terrebonne wiped his mouth with a napkin, then waited for a woman in a robin's-egg-blue suit to stop talking before he shifted his eyes to me.

  "What burning issue do you bring us tonight, Mr. Robicheaux?" he asked.

  "Harpo Scruggs pissed in your shoe," I said.

  "Sir, would you not-" the maître d' began.

  "You did your job. Beat it," Helen said.

  I lay the three photographs down on the tablecloth.

  "That's you in the middle, Mr. Terrebonne. You chain-whipped Jack Flynn and hammered nails through his wrists and ankles, then let your daughter carry your guilt. You truly turn my stomach, sir," I said.

  "And you're way beyond anything I'll tolerate," he said.

  "Get up," I said.

  "What?"

  "Better do what he says," Helen said behind me.

  Terrebonne turned to a silver-haired man on his right. "John, would you call the mayor's home, please?" he said.

  "You're under arrest, Mr. Terrebonne. The mayor's not going to help you," I said.

  "I'm not going anywhere with you, sir. You put your hand on my person again and I'll sue you for battery," he said, then calmly began talking to the woman in a robin's-egg-blue suit on his left.

  Maybe it was the long day, or the fact the photos had allowed me to actually see the ordeal of Jack Flynn, one that time had made an abstraction, or maybe I simply possessed a long-buried animus toward Archer Terrebonne and the imperious and self-satisfied arrogance that he and his kind represented. But long ago I had learned that anger, my old enemy, had many catalysts and they all led ultimately to one consequence, an eruption of torn red-and-black color behind the eyes, an alcoholic blackout without booze, then an adrenaline surge that left me trembling, out of control, and possessed of a destructive capability that later filled me with shame.

  I grabbed him by the back of his belt and hoisted him out of the chair, pushed him facedown on the table, into his food, and cuffed his wrists behind him, hard, ratcheting the curved steel tongues deep into the locks, crimping the veins like green string. Then I walked him ahead of me, out the foyer, into the parking area, pushing past a group of people who stared at us openmouthed. Terrebonne tried to speak, but I got the back door of the cruiser open and shoved him inside, cutting his scalp on the jamb.

  When I slammed the door I turned around and was looking into the face of the woman in the robin's-egg-blue suit.

  "You manhandle a sixty-three-year-old man like that? My, you must be proud. I'm so pleased we have policemen of your stature protecting us from ourselves," she said.

  THE SHERIFF CALLED ME into his office early the next morning. He rubbed the balls of his fingers back and forth on his forehead, as though the skin were burned, and looked at a spot six inches in front of his face.

  "I don't know where to begin," he said.

  "Terrebonne was kicked loose?"

  "Two hours after you put him in the cage. I've had calls from a judge, three state legislators, and a U.S. congressman. You locked him in the cage with a drag queen and a drunk with vomit all over his clothes?"

  "I didn't notice."

  "I bet. He says he's going to sue."

  "Let him. He's obstructed and lied in the course of a murder investigation. He's dirty from the jump, skipper. Put that photo and his daughter in front of a grand jury and see what happens."

  "You're really out to burn his grits, aren't you?"

  "You don't think he deserves it?" I said.

  "The homicide was in St. Mary Parish. Dave, this guy had to have stitches in his head. Do you know what his lawyers are going to do with that?"

  "We've been going after the wrong guys. Cut off the snake's head and the body dies," I said.

  "I called my insurance agent about an umbrella policy this morning, you know, the kind that protects you against losing your house and everything you own. I'll give you his number."

  "Terrebonne skates?"

  The sheriff picked up a pink memo slip in the fingers of each hand and let them flutter back to his ink blotter.

  "You've figured it out," he said.

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, JUST as the sun dipped over the trees, Cisco Flynn walked down the dock where I was cleaning the barbecue pit, and sat on the railing and watched me work.

  "Megan thinks she caused some trouble between you and your wife," he said.

  "She's right," I said.

  "She's sorry about it."

  "Look, Cisco, I'm kind of tired of y'all's explanations about various things. What's the expression, 'Get a life'?"

  "That guy who got thrown out the hotel window in San Antonio? Swede did it, but I helped set up the transportation and the alibi at the movie theater."

  "Why tell me?"

  "He's dead, but he was a good guy. I'm not laying off something I did on a friend."

  "You got problems with your conscience about the hotel flyer, go to San Antone and turn yourself in."

  "What's with you, man?"

  "Archer Terrebonne, the guy who has money in your picture, killed your father. Come down to the office and check out the photos. I made copies before I turned the originals over to St. Mary Parish. The downside of the story is I can't touch him."

  His face looked empty, insentient, as though he were winded, his lips moving without sound. He blinked and swallowed. "Archer Terrebonne? No, there's something wrong. He's been a guest in my home. What are you saying?" he said.

  I went inside the bait shop and
didn't come back out until he was gone.

  THAT NIGHT THE MOON was down and leaves were blowing in the darkness outside, rattling against the trunks of the oak and pecan trees. When I went into the bedroom the light was off and Bootsie was sitting in front of her dresser in her panties and a T-shirt, looking out the window into the darkness.

  "You eighty-sixed Cisco?" she said.

  "Not exactly. I just didn't feel like talking to him anymore."

  "Was this over Megan?"

  "When she comes out here, we have trouble," I said.

  The breeze ginned the blades in the window fan and I could hear leaves blowing against the screen.

  "It's not her fault, it's mine," Bootsie said.

  "Beg your pardon?"

  "You take on other people's burdens, Dave. It's just the way you are. That's why you're the man I married."

  I put my hand on her shoulder. She looked at our reflection in the dresser mirror and stood up, still facing the mirror. I slipped my arms around her waist, under her breasts, and put my face in her hair. Her body felt muscular and hard against mine. I moved my hand down her stomach, and she arched her head back against mine and clasped the back of my neck. Her stiffening breasts, the smoothness of her stomach and the taper of her hips, the hardness of her thighs, the tendons in her back, the power in her upper arms, when I embraced all these things with touch and mind and eye, it was like watching myself become one with an alabaster figure who had been infused with the veined warmth of a new rose.

  Then I was between her thighs on top of the sheet and I could hear a sound in my head like wind in a conch shell and feel her press me deeper inside, as though both of us were drawing deeper into a cave beneath the sea, and I knew that concerns over winged chariots and mutability and death should have no place among the quick, even when autumn thudded softly against the window screen.

  IN VIETNAM I HAD anxieties about toe-poppers and booby-trapped 105 duds that made the skin tighten around my temples and the blood veins dilate in my brain, so that during my waking hours I constantly experienced an unrelieved pressure band along one side of my head, just as though I were wearing a hat. But the visitor who stayed on in my nightmares, long after the war, was a pajama-clad sapper by the name of Bedcheck Charlie.

  Bedcheck Charlie could cross rice paddies without denting the water, cut crawl paths through concertina wire, or tunnel under claymores if he had to. He had beaten the French with resolve and a shovel rather than a gun. But there was no question about what he could do with a bolt-action rifle stripped off a dead German or Sudanese Legionnaire. He waited for the flare of a Zippo held to a cigarette or the tiny blue flame from a heat tab flattening on the bottom of a C-rat can, then he squeezed off from three hundred yards out and left a wound shaped like a keyhole in a man's face.

  But I doubt if Ricky Scarlotti ever gave much thought to Vietnamese sappers. Certainly his mind was focused on other concerns Saturday morning when he sat outside the riding club where he played polo sometimes, sipping from a glass of burgundy, dipping bread in olive oil and eating it, punching his new girlfriend, Angela, in the ribs whenever he made a point. Things were going to work out. He'd gotten that hillbilly, Harpo Scruggs, back on the job. Scruggs would clip that snitch in New Iberia, the boon, what was his name, the one ripping off the Mob's own VCRs and selling them back to them, Broussard was his name, clip him once and for all and take the weight off Ricky so he could tell that female FBI agent to shove her Triad bullshit up her nose with chopsticks.

  In fact, he and Angela and the two bodyguards had tickets for the early flight to Miami Sunday morning. Tomorrow he'd be sitting on the beach behind the Doral Hotel, with a tropical drink in his hand, maybe go out to the trotters or the dog track later, hey, take a deep-sea charter and catch a marlin and get it mounted. Then call up some guys in Hallandale who he'd pay for each minute they had that fat shit Purcel begging on videotape. Ricky licked his lips when he thought about it.

  A sno'ball truck drove down the winding two-lane road through the park that bordered the riding club. Ricky took off his pilot's glasses and wiped them with a Kleenex, then put them back on again. What's a sno'ball truck doing in the park when no kids are around? he thought. The sno'ball truck pulled into the oak trees and the driver got out and watched the ducks on the pond, then disappeared around the far side of the truck.

  "Go see what that guy's doing," Ricky said to one of his bodyguards.

  "He's lying in the shade, taking a nap," the bodyguard replied.

  "Tell him this ain't Wino Row, go take his naps somewhere else," Ricky said.

  The bodyguard walked across the road, into the trees, and spoke to the man on the ground. The man sat up and yawned, looked in Ricky's direction while the bodyguard talked, then started his truck and drove away.

  "Who was he?" Ricky asked the bodyguard.

  "A guy sells sno'balls."

  "Who was he?"

  "He didn't give me his fucking name, Ricky. You want I should go after him?"

  "Forget it. We're out of drinks here. Get the waiter back."

  An hour later Ricky's eyes were red with alcohol, his skin glazed with sweat from riding his horse hard in the sun. An ancient green milk truck, with magnetized letters on the side, drove down the two-lane road through the park, exited on the boulevard, then made a second pass through the park and stopped in the trees by the duck pond.

  Benny Grogan, the other bodyguard, got up from Ricky's table. He wore a straw hat with a multicolored band on his platinum hair.

  "Where you going?" Ricky said.

  "To check the guy out."

  "He's a knife grinder. I seen that truck all over the neighborhood," Ricky said.

  "I thought you didn't want nobody hanging around, Ricky," Benny said.

  "He's a midget. How's he reach the pedals? Bring the car around. Angela, you up for a shower?" Ricky said.

  The milk truck was parked deep in the shade of the live oaks. The rear doors opened, flapping back on their hinges, and revealed a prone man in a yellow T-shirt and dark blue jeans. His long body was stretched out behind a sandbag, the sling of the scoped rifle twisted around his left forearm, the right side of his face notched into the rifle's stock.

  When he squeezed off, the rifle recoiled hard against his shoulder and a flash leaped off the muzzle, like an electrical short, but there was no report.

  The bullet tore through the center of Ricky's throat. A purple stream of burgundy flowed from both corners of his mouth, then he began to make coughing sounds, like a man who can neither swallow nor expel a chicken bone, while blood spigoted from his wound and spiderwebbed his chest and white polo pants. His eyes stared impotently into his new girlfriend's face. She pushed herself away from the table, her hands held out in front of her, her knees close together, like someone who did not want to be splashed by a passing car.

  The shooter slammed the back doors of the milk truck and the driver drove the truck through the trees and over the curb onto the boulevard. Benny Grogan ran down the street after it, his.38 held in the air, automobiles veering to each side of him, their horns blaring.

  IT WAS MONDAY WHEN Adrien Glazier gave me all the details of Scarlotti's death over the phone.

  "NOPD found the truck out by Lake Pontchartrain. It was clean," she said.

  "You got anything on the shooter?"

  "Nothing. It looks like we've lost our biggest potential witness against the boys from Hong Kong," she said.

  "I'm afraid people in New Orleans won't mourn that fact," I said.

  "You can't tell. Greaseball wakes are quite an event. Anyway, we'll be there."

  "Tell the band to play 'My Funny Valentine,'" I said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  THAT EVENING I DROVE DOWN to Clete's cottage outside Jeanerette. He was washing his car in the side yard, rubbing a soapy sponge over the hood.

  "I think I'm going to get it restored, drive it around like a classic instead of a junk heap," he said. He wore a pair of rubber boots and
oversized swimming trunks, and the hair on his stomach was wet and plastered to his skin.

  "Megan thinks the guys who did Ricky Scar might try to hurt Holtzner by going through his daughter. She thinks you shouldn't let her drive your car around," I said.

  "When those guys want to pop somebody, they don't do it with car bombs. It's one on one, like Ricky Scar got it."

  "Have you ever listened to me once in your life about anything?"

  "On the perfecta that time at Hialeah. I lost three hundred bucks."

  "Archer Terrebonne killed Cisco Flynn's father. I told Cisco that."

  "Yeah, I know. He says he doesn't believe you." Clete moved the sponge slowly back and forth on the car hood, his thoughts sealed behind his face, the water from the garden hose sluicing down on his legs.

  "What's bothering you?" I asked.

  "Terrebonne's a major investor in Cisco's film. If Cisco walks out, his career's a skid mark on the bowl. I just thought he might have more guts. I bet a lot of wrong horses."

  He threw the bucket of soapy water into a drainage ditch. The sun looked like a smoldering fire through the pine trees.

  "You want to tell me what's really bothering you?" I said.

  "I thought Megan and me might put it back together. That's why I scrambled Ricky Scar's eggs, to look like big shit, that simple, mon. Megan's life is international, I mean, all this local stuff is an asterisk in her career." He blew his breath out. "I got to stop drinking. I've got a buzz like a bad neon sign in my head."

  "Let's put a line in the water," I said.

  "Dave, those pictures Harpo Scruggs buried in the ground? That dude's got backup material somewhere. Something that can put a thumb in Terrebonne's eye."

  "Yeah, but I can't find Scruggs. The guy's a master at going in and out of the woodwork," I said.

  "Remember what that retired Texas Ranger in El Paso told you? About looking for him in cathouses and at pigeon shoots and dogfights?"

  His skin was pink in the fading light, the hair on his shoulders ruffling in the breeze.