DR07 - Dixie City Jam (20 page)

But my conversation with Jimmie was not quite over. A half
hour later he called Clete Purcel's apartment, just before I was about
to head back to New Iberia.

'I'm glad I got you,' he said. 'Something's wrong here.'

'What's happened?'

'It's the Count. After we close the shop, he always goes
upstairs to his room and eats a can of potted meat and watches Pat
Robertson on TV. Except tonight he kept droning and humming and walking
in circles and cleaning the shelves till the place looked like a dust
storm, then for no reason he goes crashing up the stairs and throws
everything in a suitcase and flies out the back door with his cape
flapping in the breeze.'

'You're saying Buchalter
was
in your
store? Maybe when the Count was by himself?'

'You tell me. Hey, when a guy who talks to Olivia Newton-John
through the hole in the lavatory is scared out of town by sickos, I'm
wondering maybe I should move to Iraq or one of them places where all
you got to worry about is your nose falling off from the BO.'

In the morning I got the autopsy report on Charles Sitwell. He
didn't die of an air bubble being injected into his bloodstream. The
syringe had been loaded with a mixture of water and roach paste.

It was time to talk to Tommy Lonighan about his knowledge of
German U-boats and Silver Shirts, preferably in an official situation,
in custody, outside of his own environment. I called Ben Motley and
asked about the chances of rousting him from his house or gym and
bringing him down to an interrogation room.

'On what basis?' he said.

'He's lying about the reasons for his interest in this U-boat.'

'So he didn't want to tell you his mother was a Nazi. It's not
the kind of stuff anybody likes to hang on the family tree.'

'It's too much for coincidence, Motley. He's connected with
Buchalter. He's got to be.'

'You want me to get a warrant on a guy, in a homicide
investigation, because of something his mother did fifty years ago?'

'We just bring him in for questioning. Tommy likes to think of
himself as respectable these days. So we step on his cookie bag.'

'I wonder why the words
civil suit
keep
floating in front of my eyes. It probably has something to do with my
lens prescription.'

'Don't give this guy a free pass. He's dirty, Motley. You know
it.'

'Give me a call if you come up with something more. Until
then, I don't think it helps to be flogging our rods over the
wastebasket.'

'Listen to me, Ben—'

'Get real, Robicheaux. NOPD doesn't roust people, not even
Tommy Blue Eyes, when they live on lakefront property. Keep it in your
pants, my man.'

I worked late that evening on two
other cases, one involving a
stabbing in a black nightclub, the other, the possible suffocation of
an infant by his foster parents.

The sky was the color of scorched pewter when I drove along
the dirt road by the bayou toward my house. The wind was dry blowing
across the marsh, and the willows were coated with dust and filled with
the red tracings of fireflies. The deputy on guard at the house started
his car engine, waved at me as he passed, and disappeared down the long
corridor of oak trees.

Bootsie was washing dishes at the sink when I came in. She
wore a pair of grass-stained white dungarees and a rumpled yellow
blouse that was too small for her and exposed her midsection.

'Where's Alafair?' I said, and kissed her on the cheek. I
could smell cigarette smoke in her clothes and hair.

'In the living room. Doing her homework,' she said. She kept
her face turned toward the open window when she spoke.

'Where'd you go today?' I said.

'What does it matter?'

'Beg your pardon?'

'What does it matter where we go?'

'I don't understand, Boots.'

'It doesn't matter where we go. He's going to be there.'

'You mean Buchalter?'

'He called.'

'Here? When?'

'This afternoon.'

'Why didn't you call me at the office?'

'And tell you what?'

I put my hands lightly on her shoulders and turned her toward
me. She breathed through her nose and kept her face at an angle to me.

'What did he say, Boots?'

'Nothing. I could hear music, like the kind you hear in a
supermarket or an elevator. And then a man breathing. His breath going
in and out, like he was waiting for something.'

'Maybe it was somebody else, maybe just a crank.'

'He did something else. He scratched a fingernail back and
forth on the receiver. The way a cat paws at the door.'

Her mouth parted, and she looked up into my face. Her breath
smelled like bourbon-scented orange slices.

'We'll get an unlisted number in the morning,' I said.

'It
was
Buchalter, wasn't it?'

'Maybe. But what we have to remember, Boots, is that when
these guys try to scare people with telephone calls, they're running on
the rims. They don't have anything else going.'

Her eyes went back and forth, searching inside mine.

'We've got a computer sketch of the guy all over town,' I
said, 'I don't think he'll come back.'

'Then who killed the man in the hospital?'

'I don't know.'

'He's out there, Dave. I know he is.'

Her experience with Buchalter had been even worse than mine,
and I knew that my words could not take the unrelieved sense of
vulnerability out of her face. I held her against me, then walked her
into the bedroom, turned on the shower, waited while she got inside the
stall, locked the house, then said Alafair's prayers with her. The moon
was down, the pecan and oak trees were motionless and black outside the
screens, and the only sound I could hear besides the suck of the attic
fan was Tripod running up and down on his chain and wire clothesline.

I poured a glass of milk, fixed a ham and onion sandwich, and
ate it at the kitchen table. When the phone on the wall rang, I knew
who I would be talking to.

His voice sounded as though he were waking from sleep, or as,
though he had been disturbed during copulation. It was in slow motion,
with a
click
to it, deep in his throat, that was
both phlegmy and dry at the same time.

'It doesn't have to be bad between us.'

'What doesn't?'

'You, me, your wife. Y'all could be part of us.'

'Buchalter, you've got to understand this. I can't wave a wand
over the gulf and bring up a depth-charged sub. I think you're a sick
man. But if I get you in my sights, I'm going to take you off at the
neck.'

Again, I heard a wet, clicking sound, like his tongue sticking
to the insides of his cheeks.

'I like you,' he said.

'You
like
me?'

'Yes. A great deal.'

I waited before I spoke again.

'What do you think is going to happen the next time I see
you?' I said.

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'You'll come around to our way. It's a matter of time.'

My palm was squeezed damply on the receiver.

'Listen, every cop in Iberia Parish knows what you look like.
They know what you've done, they're not big on procedure. Don't make
the mistake of coming back here. I'm telling you this as a favor.'

'We can give you power.'

You're learning nothing. Change the subject.

'I know where you've been in New Orleans,' I said. 'You talked
too much about music. You left a trail, Buchalter.'

'I could have hurt you the other night, in ways you can't
dream about, but I didn't,' he said. 'Do you want to hear how they
reach a point where they beg, what they sound like when they beg?'

'Will you meet with me?'

I heard him drinking from a glass, deeply, swallowing like a
man who had walked out of a great, dry heat.

'Because I'm different, you shouldn't treat me as though I'm
psychotic. I'm not. Good night,' he said. 'Tell your wife I remember
our moment with fondness. She's a beautiful specimen of her gender.'

He hung up the receiver as gently as a man completing a yawn.

My heart was racing inside my chest. My pistol was still
clipped to my belt. I unsnapped the holster, slipped the .45 out of the
leather, which I had rubbed with saddle soap, and ran my fingers along
the coolness of the metal. The balls of my fingers left delicate prints
in the thin sheen of oil. I released the magazine from the butt, rubbed
my thumb over the brass casing of the top round, pulled the slide back
and forth, then shoved the magazine back into the butt. The grips felt
hard and stiff inside my hand.

I looked through the window into the dark. I wanted Buchalter
to be out there, perhaps parking his car behind a grove of trees,
working his way across the fields, confident that this time he could
pull it off, could invade my house and life with impunity. And this
time—

I put the .45 on the nightstand in our bedroom and undressed
in the dark. My own skin felt as dry and hot as a heated lamp shade.
Bootsie was still asleep when I moved on top of her, between her legs,
without invitation or consent, a rough beast who could have been hewn
out of desert stone.

I made love to her as a starving man might. I put my tongue
deep in her mouth and tasted the whiskey and candied cherries and
sliced oranges deep in her wet recesses. I plummeted into her fecund
warmth, I inhaled the alcohol out of her breath, I robbed her of the
golden and liquid heat that had been aged in oak and presented
mistakenly as a gift to her heart's blood rather than to mine.

The early sun looked like a sliver of
pink ice, just above the
horizon's misty rim, when I stopped my truck at the locked entrance to
Tommy Lonighan's driveway. I got out of the truck and pushed the button
on the speaker box.

'Who is it?' the voice of the man named Art said.

'Detective Dave Robicheaux. I'm here to see Tommy.'

'He's busy.'

'No, he's not.'

'The last time you were here you were busting up people with a
shovel.'

'Yesterday's box score, Art.'

'It's seven o'clock in the fucking morning. How about some
slack?'

'Are you going to open up or not? If not, I can come back with
a warrant that has your name on it.'

'Is Purcel with you?'

'No.'

'You sure?'

'Last chance, Art.'

'Okay, take it easy, I'm buzzing you in. Tommy's out back.
I'll tell him you're here. Hey, can you do me a favor?'

'What?'

'It's a nice day. The Indian and me are serving breakfast for
Tommy and his guests out on the terrace. Let's keep it a nice day.
Okay, man? Shit don't go good with
grits and eggs.'

A minute later I parked my truck at the end of Lonighan's
drive. The interior of the compound was the architectural and
landscaped antithesis of everything in the Irish Channel neighborhood
where Tommy had grown up. His imitation Tudor house was surrounded by
citrus and pine and oak trees; steam rose from the turquoise surface of
his screened-in pool and his coral goldfish ponds; the Saint Augustine
grass was thick and wet from soak hoses, shining with dew in the hazy
light. Beyond his protective brick walls, I could hear canvas sails
flapping and swelling with wind on the lake.

He was behind the house, in an orange bikini swimsuit and a
pair of black high-top ring shoes, thudding his taped fists into what
looked like a six-foot stack of sandbags. His pale body, which rippled
with sweat, Was the color and texture of gristle. A tubular, red scar,
with tiny pink stitch holes on each side, wound in a serpentine line
from his right kidney up to his shoulder blade.

He stopped hitting the bags when he saw me, and wiped his
meringue hair and armpits with a towel. His flushed face smiled broadly.

'You're just in time to eat,' he said, pulling the adhesive
tape off his hands. 'How about this weather? I think we got ourselves
an early fall.' He flipped his towel on top of an azalea bush. His
knuckles were round and hard and protruded from his skin as though he
were holding a roll of quarters in each hand.

'You work out on sandbags, Tommy?'

'Cement. If you don't bust your hand or jam your wrist on a
cement bag, you sure ain't gonna do it on a guy's face. What's up,
Dave?'

'I've got a big problem with this guy Buchalter. He can't seem
to stay out of my life.'

'If I can help, let me know.' He worked a blue jumper over his
head as we walked down a gravel path toward a glass-topped table on his
patio, where an ash blond woman in a terry-cloth robe was drinking
coffee and reading the paper. 'I don't want a guy like this around,
either. He gives the city a bad reputation.'

'I didn't say he was from New Orleans, Tommy.'

'You wouldn't be here unless you thought he was. Sit down and
eat. You're too serious. Charlotte, this is Dave Robicheaux.'

She lowered her paper and looked at me with eyes that had the
bright, blue tint of colored contact lenses, that were neither rude nor
friendly, curious or wary. I suspected that she read news accounts of
airline disasters with the same level of interest as the weather
report. Her freckled, sun-browned skin had the smooth folds in it of
soft tallow.

Her mouth was red and wet when she took it away from the
coffee cup and acknowledged me.

'The gentleman who performs so well with a shovel,' she said.

'Sometimes it's better to use visual aids when you're talking
to the Calucci brothers,' I said.

'Fucking A,' Tommy said. 'Neither one of those dagos could
give himself a hand job without a diagram. But when you got to do
business with the oilcans, you got to do business with the oilcans,
right?'

'What kind of deals do you have with the Caluccis, Tommy?' I
said.

'Are you kidding? Restaurant linen, valet parking, food
delivery, carpenters and electricians working on my casino, you deal
with the greaseballs or you get a picket line in front of everything
you own.'