DR07 - Dixie City Jam (15 page)

I could feel my heart thundering against my rib cage, hear the
blood roaring in my ears like wind in a seashell.

'I don't know where the sub is,' I said. 'I'd tell you if I
did. I don't even known why you guys want it. Why would I keep the
information from you?'

'Because you work for Jews, my friend,' he said. 'Because I
think you lie.'

'It's got air trapped in the hull. It floats right above the
gulf's floor. It probably drifts in a pattern with the Gulf Stream,' I
said. 'Hire some salvage people who understand those things. New
Orleans and Miami are full of them.'

'But evidently you've found it twice. That means you know
something other people don't.'

'There may be more than one sub down there,' I said. 'The Navy
nailed three or four of them during nineteen forty-two. Maybe I saw two
different subs.'

He took a nautical chart from his pocket, unfolded it, and
spread it flat on the table in front of me. It showed the Louisiana
coast, all its bays and soundings, and the northern gradations of the
gulf. He stood behind my chair and fitted his huge hands over my
shoulders, inserted his thumbs in the back of my neck.

'Our business can end here tonight in a couple of ways,' he
said. 'I believe you understand me.'

'After you know where the sub is, you'll just go away?'

'Why not?' he said. His fingers tightened on my shoulder
tendons.

'Because you're in over your head.'

He lowered his mouth to my ear. 'It isn't a time to be clever,
Dave,' he said. 'You want me to make you trace the drift pattern with
your nose?'

I tried to lean forward, away from the steady beat of his
breath on my skin. Then he cupped one hand under my chin, the other on
the back of my neck, like a man about to do a trick shot with a
basketball.

'Would you like me to snap it?' he said. 'I can turn your body
into a slug's from the neck down. I'm not exaggerating, Dave. I've done
it twice before. Ask Chuck there.'

Think, think, think.

I tried to avoid swallowing, tried to keep my voice empty of
fear. I closed and opened my eyes, and blinked the sweat out of them.
Bootsie's hair had fallen in her face; the black tape that cut across
her mouth was slick with saliva, and her eyes were red and liquid with
terror at what she was about to witness.

'There're two things that aren't going to happen here tonight,
Buchalter,' I said. 'I'm not going to give you information I don't
have, and nobody here is going to kiss your butt. You're a piece of
shit. Nothing you can do here will ever change that fact.'

He was quiet a moment. I felt his fingers move, but they were
uncertain now, the pressure against my chin and neck temporarily in
abeyance.

'You want to say that again?' he asked.

'Guys like you are cruel because you got fucked up in toilet
training. That's how it works. Go to a psychologist and check it out.
It's better than living with skid marks in your underwear.'

The man with crossed eyes started to laugh, then looked at
Buchalter's face.

Buchalter was breathing heavily now. His hands were moist with
perspiration, poised on my chin and neck. But the indecision, the
physical pause, was still there, the means of resolving the insult not
quite yet in place.

Then the man with crossed eyes turned in his chair and stared
at the side window, whose blinds were drawn. He raised one hand in the
air.

'Will, there's somebody outside,' he said.

Buchalter's hands slid away from me. He took the Beretta from
his pocket while the man called Chuck peeked out the side of the blinds.

'It's a delivery guy,' he said.

'What do you mean "a delivery guy"?' Buchalter said.

'A fucking delivery guy. With a clipboard and a flashlight.
He's coming to the back door.'

'Let him give you what he's got, then get rid of him.'

'Me?'

'Yes, you.'

The man called Chuck went out on the back porch, beyond my
angle of vision. Buchalter rested one hand on my shoulder and placed
the barrel of the Beretta behind my ear.

'UPS. I got a box for Dave Robicheaux. I guess your doorbell's
broke,' a voice said out in the darkness.

I saw Bootsie's eyes fasten on mine.

'Put it on the gallery,' Chuck said.

'It's COD.'

'How much?'

'Eight fifty.'

'Wait a minute.'

The man named Chuck came back into the kitchen, his face
filled with consternation.

'I ain't got any money, Will,' he said.

'Here,' Buchalter said, and handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

'What if I got to sign for it?'

'Just scribble on the board. Now, get out there and do it.'

Chuck went back out on the porch. I could see his shadow
moving about under the bug-crusted light.

'All right, thanks a lot,' I heard him say. 'Just set it on
the gallery. I'll carry it in later.'

'I'll bring it around. It's no trouble.'

'No, man. You don't need to do that.'

'It's going to rain. We're responsible for water damage.'

Chuck came back into the kitchen, the skin around one eye
twitching with anxiety.

'Calm down,' Buchalter said. 'Go out front and help the man.
Just keep him away from the back.'

'I'm cool, I'm cool.'

'I can see that, all right.'

'I don't need you on my case, Will. This one gets fucked up,
I'm going down on a habitual.'

'It's better you not talk anymore, Chuck.'

'You don't get it. I been down four times. I don't need this
kind of shit in my life. Now there's this fucking weird guy for UPS.
I'm telling you, I don't need this kind of shit, man. I ain't up for
it.'

'You're under a strain, Chuck. Wait a minute, what do you mean
"weird guy"?'

'He looks like an ape with a UPS cap on its head. Wearing
fucking Budweiser shorts. You don't call that weird?'

Buchalter's hand pinched at his mouth. I could feel the heat
from his body, smell the mixture of sweat and deodorant secreting under
his arms.

'Go out the front door, Chuck,' he said. 'You talk to the man
out front. You keep him there. That's your assignment. You understand
me?'

'Why me? I don't like this, Will. You want to 'front the guy,
you 'front the fucking guy.' Then the skin of Chuck's face drew tight
against the bone, stretching his eyebrows like penciled grease marks.

'The sonofabitch is coming around the side again,' he said.

'I'll handle it. You keep these two quiet,' Buchalter said.

'You wouldn't listen to me, man. Now it's turning to shit. I
can feel it.'

'Shut up, Chuck. If it goes sour, you make sure Mr. and Mrs.
Robicheaux catch the bus,' Buchalter said. 'If he doesn't work for us,
he doesn't work for the Jews, either.'

'You want to clip a cop? With our prints all over the place?
Are you out of your goddamn mind?'

Buchalter raised his ringers for the cross-eyed man to be
silent, then dropped the Beretta into his pants pocket and walked out
onto the back porch, with a smile at the corner of his mouth that
looked like an elongated keyhole.

Chuck picked up his crossbow and leveled it at my throat. His
hands looked round and white and small against the bow's dark metal
surfaces. He breathed loudly through his nose and shook a fly out of
his face. Large, solitary drops of rain began hitting in the trees
outside.

I heard Buchalter open the screen door out on the porch.

'Okay? Is that everything now?' he said.

'I need you to sign.'

'All right.'

'You got a pen? Mine must have fallen off my clipboard.'

'No, I don't. And I'm rather busy right now.'

'Maybe it's in my pocket—'

'Now listen, my friend—'

'Hands on your head, down on your knees, motherfucker! Do it!
Now! Don't think about it!'

I heard the weight of two large bodies crash against the wood
slats and rake across the tangle of garden tools on the porch; then
Buchalter and Clete Purcel fell into the kitchen, and Clete's
blue-black .38 revolver skittered across the linoleum.

Buchalter got to his feet first, his flat buttocks pinched
together, the change jangling in his slacks, his triangular back rigid
with muscle, and drove his right fist into the center of Clete's face.
Clete's head snapped sideways with the force of the blow, blood
whipping from his nose across his cheek. But he grabbed Buchalter
around the legs, locked his wrists behind Buchalter's thighs, and
smashed him against the doorjamb.

'Chuck!' Buchalter yelled out, as he tried to get his hand
into his pants pocket.

But Chuck had taken his crossbow and gone through the hallway
and out the front door like a shot.

Buchalter began swinging both his fists into the top of
Clete's head. He wore a large Mexican ring on his right hand, one with
a raised, knurled design on it, and each time he swung his right fist
down, he twisted the ring with the blow, and I could see gashes
bursting like tiny purple flowers in Clete's scalp.

But Clete Purcel was not one who gave up or went down easily.
With rivulets of blood draining out of his hair into his eyes, he
reached behind him, grasped a three-pronged dirt tiller by the wood
handle, and jerked the sharpened tines upward into Buchalter's scrotum.

Buchalter's face went white, his mouth opening wide with a
roar that seemed to rise like a rupturing bubble from the bottom of his
viscera, as though bone and linkage were being sawed apart inside him.
He stumbled sideways, lifting his knees into Clete's face, and crashed
through the screen door into the backyard. Then I heard his feet
running into the darkness.

Clete pulled himself up by the doorknob and walked like a
drunk man into the kitchen, soaked a dish towel under the faucet, and
pressed it to the top of his head. He kept widening his eyes and
breathing hard through his mouth. His knees were barked, and one sock
was pulled down over his ankle.

'Pick up your piece,' I said.

He wiped at his nose and eyes with the towel, then leaned over
heavily, holding the towel to his scalp, and closed his hand around his
.38.

'The handcuff key is on the dresser in the bedroom,' I said.

He went into the bedroom, came back with the key, and began
unlocking the handcuffs. I could feel water dripping out of his hair
onto my neck. The handcuffs clattered to the floor. My hands were
purple, bloated with lack of circulation, the skin dead to the touch. I
opened my pocketknife, cut through the electrician's tape at the back
of Bootsie's head, eased it out of her mouth, then began sawing loose
the tape on her arms.

'Oh God, Dave,' she said. Her breath came in gasps, as though
she had been held underwater for a long time and her lungs were aching
for air. 'Oh Lord, God. Oh God, he was going—'

'It's over,' I said.

'He was going to cripple you. He was going to deliberately
cripple you,' she said, then squeezed her eyes shut against the tears
that coursed down her cheeks. I held her face against my chest and
kissed the top of her head. I could smell the heat in her hair.

'Your phone's dead. They must have cut it outside,' Clete said.

'Give me your piece,' I said.

'Where's yours?'

'In the glove compartment of the truck.'

'Man, I can't see straight. That guy's got fists like chunks
of concrete.'

'Take Boots down to the bait shop and call the sheriff's
office from there,' I said.

'Where are you going, Dave?' Bootsie said, her eyes clearing
with a new sense of alarm.

'They probably parked their car farther up the road,' I said.

'No,' she said. 'Let somebody else handle it this time.'

'He's a fanatic and a psychopath, Boots. If we don't nail him
now, he'll be back.'

I looked away from the expression on her face. I started out
the door with the revolver in my hand.

'Hey, Dave—' Clete said.

He followed me onto the back porch.

'Forget the rules on this one,' he said. 'You get the chance,
close this cocksucker's file.'

'Tell the sheriff to call the bridge tender and have him raise
the drawbridge,' I said.

'Listen to me—' he began, his face stretching with
impatience. Then he stopped and lowered his voice. 'This kind of guy
sits in a jail cell and thinks for a long time about things to do to
people. Don't live with regret later, Streak. Buchalter is as bad as
they get.' He pointed a finger at my face, then wiped a smear of blood
off his nose on his wrist.

The moon had risen in the east from behind a bank of black
clouds, and a steady, warm rain was dancing on the duck pond at the
foot of my property and clicking on the tall stalks of sugarcane in my
neighbor's field. When I had returned from New Orleans I hadn't seen
any vehicles parked on the dirt road by the bayou, and I guessed that
Buchalter and the man with crossed eyes had driven past my house,
parked on the far side of it, and cut back through a pecan orchard by
the four corners, over a wooded knoll, and through my neighbor's cane
field.

Beyond the duck pond, right by the remnant of my collapsed
barn, I saw two fresh sets of footprints glistening in the mud, leading
through the barbed-wire fence into the field. I lifted up the top
strand of barbed wire and stepped into the cane. It grew so thick that
the earth was still dry inside the rows. The sound of the rain on the
leaves was like marbles striking dry sheets of newspaper. I saw a bolt
of lightning splinter the sky and pop in the woods, and when the
thunder echoed off the trees, my neighbor's cattle began lowing in
terror at the bottom of the coulee.

There was no wind inside the cane, and the air was heated and
alive with insects. Ahead, I could see a winding pattern, like a faint
serpentine tunnel, through the rows where somebody had either wedged
the stalks sideways or cracked them at the base with his shoe. I knelt
in the row and listened. At first I heard only the sound of the rain
clicking on the leaves overhead, then there was a voice, one man
calling out to another, just as lightning burst in a white tree all
over the southern horizon and thunder rumbled across the fields.