DR10 - Sunset Limited (9 page)

"Swede's trying to straighten out. I think he's going to make
it this time. But if he's ever a problem, give me a call," Cisco said.

"He's a mainline recidivist, Cisco. Why are you hooked up with
him?"

"When we were in the state home? I would have been anybody's
chops if it hadn't been for Swede."

"The Feds say he kills people."

"The Feds say my sister is a Communist."

The door to the trailer opened and a woman stepped out on the
small porch. But before she could close the door behind her, a voice
shouted out, "Goddamnit, I didn't say you could leave. Now, you
listen, hon. I don't know if the problem is because your brains are
between your legs or because you think you've got a cute twat, but the
next time I tell that pissant to rewrite a scene, you'd better not open
your mouth. Now you get the fuck back to work and don't you ever
contradict me in front of other people again."

Even in the sunlight her face looked refrigerated, bloodless,
the lines twisted out of shape with the humiliation that Billy Holtzner
bathed her with. He shot an ugly look at Cisco and me, then slammed the
door.

I turned to go.

"There's a lot of stress on a set, Dave. We're three million
over budget already. That's other people's money we're talking about.
They get mad about it," Cisco said.

"I remember that first film you made. The one about the
migrant farmworkers. It was sure a fine movie."

"Yeah, a lot of college professors and 1960s leftovers dug it
in a big way."

"The guy in that trailer is a shithead."

"Aren't we all?"

"Your old man wasn't."

I got into the cruiser and drove through the corridor of trees
to the bayou road. In the rearview mirror Cisco Flynn looked like a
miniature man trapped inside an elongated box.

THAT NIGHT, AS BOOTSIE and I prepared
to go to bed, dry
lightning flickered behind the clouds and the pecan tree outside the
window was stiffening in the wind.

"Why do you think Jack Flynn was killed?" Bootsie asked.

"Working people around here made thirty-five cents an hour
back then. He didn't have a hard time finding an audience."

"Who do you think did it?"

"Everyone said it came from the outside. Just like during the
Civil Rights era. We always blamed our problems on the outside."

She turned out the light and we lay down on top of the sheets.
Her skin felt cool and warm at the same time, the way sunlight does in
the fall.

"The Flynns are trouble, Dave."

"Maybe."

"No, no maybe about it. Jack Flynn might have been a good man.
But I always heard he didn't become a radical until his family got
wiped out in the Depression."

"He fought in the Lincoln Brigade. He was at the battle of
Madrid."

"Good night," she said.

She turned toward the far wall. When I spread my hand on her
back I could feel her breath rise and fall in her lungs. She looked at
me over her shoulder, then rolled over and fit herself inside my arms.

"Dave?" she said.

"Yes?"

"Trust me on this. Megan needs you for some reason she's not
telling you about. If she can't get to you directly, she'll go through
Clete."

"That's hard to believe."

"He called tonight and asked if I knew where she was. She'd
left a message on his answering machine."

"Megan Flynn and Clete Purcel?"

I WOKE AT SUNRISE the next morning and
drove through the leafy
shadows on East Main and then five miles up the old highway to Spanish
Lake. I was troubled not only by Bootsie's words but also by my own
misgivings about the Flynns. Why was Megan so interested in the plight
of Cool Breeze Broussard? There was enough injustice in the world
without coming back to New Iberia to find it. And why would her brother
Cisco front points for an obvious psychopath like Swede Boxleiter?

I parked my truck on a side road and poured a cup of coffee
from my thermos. Through the pines I could see the sun glimmering on
the water and the tips of the flooded grass waving in the shallows. The
area around the lake had been the site of a failed Spanish colony in
the 1790s. In 1836 two Irish immigrants who had survived the Goliad
Massacre during the Texas Revolution, Devon Flynn and William Burke,
cleared and drained the acreage along the lake and built farmhouses out
of cypress trees that were rooted in the water like boulders. Later the
train stop there became known as Burke's Station.

Megan and Cisco's ancestor had been one of those Texas
soldiers who had surrendered to the Mexican army with the expectation
of boarding a prison ship bound for New Orleans, and instead had been
marched down a road on Palm Sunday and told by their Mexican captors to
kneel in front of the firing squads that were forming into position
from two directions. Over 350 men and boys were shot, bayoneted, and
clubbed to death. Many of the survivors owed their lives to a
prostitute who ran from one Mexican officer to the next, begging for
the lives of the Texans. Her name and fate were lost to history, but
those who escaped into the woods that day called her the Angel of
Goliad.

I wondered if Cisco ever thought about his ancestor's story as
material for a film.

The old Flynn house still stood by the lake, but it was
covered by a white-brick veneer now and the old gallery had been
replaced by a circular stone porch with white pillars. But probably
most important to Megan and Cisco was the simple fact that it and its
terraced gardens and gnarled live oaks and lakeside gazebo and
boathouse all belonged to someone else.

Their father was bombed by the Luftwaffe and shot at by the
Japanese on Guadalcanal and murdered in Louisiana. Were they bitter,
did they bear us a level of resentment we could only guess at? Did they
bring their success back here like a beast on a chain? I didn't want to
answer my own question.

The wind ruffled the lake and the longleaf pine boughs above
my truck. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the sheriffs cruiser
pull in behind me. He opened my passenger door and got inside.

"How'd you know I was out here?" I asked.

"A state trooper saw you and wondered what you were doing."

"I got up a little early today."

"That's the old Flynn place, isn't it?"

"We used to dig for Confederate artifacts here. Camp Pratt was
right back in those trees."

"The Flynns bother me, too, Dave. I don't like Cisco bringing
this Boxleiter character into our midst. Why don't both of them stay in
Colorado?"

"That's what we did to Megan and Cisco the first time. Let a
friend of their dad dump them in Colorado."

"You'd better define your feelings about that pair. I got
Boxleiter's sheet. What kind of person would bring a man like that into
his community?"

"We did some serious damage to those kids, Sheriff."

"
We
? You know what your problem is, Dave?
You're just like Jack Flynn."

"Excuse me?"

"You don't like rich people. You think we're in a class war.
Not everybody with money is a sonofabitch."

He blew out his breath, then the heat went out of his face. He
took his pipe from his shirt pocket and clicked it on the window jamb.

"Helen said you think Boxleiter might be a pedophile," he said.

"Yeah, if I had to bet, I'd say he's a real candidate."

"Pick him up."

"What for?"

"Think of something. Take Helen with you. She can be very
creative."

Idle words that I would try to erase from my memory later.

I DROVE BACK TOWARD THE office. As I
approached the old
Catholic cemetery, I saw a black man with sloping shoulders cross the
street in front of me and walk toward Main. I stared at him,
dumbfounded. One cheek was bandaged, and his right arm was stiff at his
side, as though it pained him.

I pulled abreast of him and said, "I can't believe it."

"Believe what?" Cool Breeze said. He walked bent forward, like
he was just about to arrive somewhere. The whitewashed crypts behind
him were beaded with moisture the size of quarters.

"You're supposed to be in federal custody."

"They cut me loose."

"Cut you loose? Just like that?"

"I'm going up to Victor's to eat breakfast."

"Get in."

"I don't mean you no disrespect, but I ain't gonna have no
more to do with po-licemens for a while."

"You staying with Mout'?"

But he crossed the street and didn't answer.

AT THE OFFICE I called Adrien Glazier
in New Orleans.

"What's your game with Cool Breeze Broussard?" I asked.

"Game?"

"He's back in New Iberia. I just saw him."

"We took his deposition. We don't see any point in keeping him
in custody," she replied.

I could feel my words binding in my throat.

"What's in y'all's minds? You've burned this guy."

"Burned him?"

"You made him rat out the Giacanos. Do you know what they do
to people who snitch them off?"

"Then why don't you put him in custody yourself, Mr.
Robicheaux?"

"Because the prosecutor's office dropped charges against him."

"Really? So the same people who complain when we investigate
their jail want us to clean up a local mess for them?"

"Don't do this."

"Should we tell Mr. Broussard his friend Mr. Robicheaux would
like to see him locked up again? Or will you do that for us?" she said,
and hung up.

Helen opened my door and came inside. She studied my face
curiously.

"You ready to boogie?" she asked.

SWEDE BOXLEITER HAD TOLD me he had a
job in the movies, and
that's where we started. Over in St. Mary Parish, on the front lawn of
Lila Terrebonne. But we didn't get far. After we had parked the
cruiser, we were stopped halfway to the set by a couple of off-duty St.
Mary Parish sheriffs deputies with American flags sewn to their sleeves.

"Y'all putting us in an embarrassing situation," the older man
said.

"You see that dude there, the one with the tool belt on? His
name's Boxleiter. He just finished a five bit in Colorado," I said.

"You got a warrant?"

"Nope."

"Mr. Holtzner don't want nobody on the set ain't got bidness
here. That's the way it is."

"Oh yeah? Try this. Either you take the marshmallows out of
your mouth or I'll go down to your boss's office and have your ass
stuffed in a tree shredder," Helen said.

"Say what you want. You ain't getting on this set," he said.

Just then, Cisco Flynn opened the door of a trailer and
stepped out on the short wood porch.

"What's the problem, Dave?" he asked.

"Boxleiter."

"Come in," he said, making cupping motions with his upturned
hands, as though he were directing an aircraft on a landing strip.

Helen and I walked toward the open door. Behind him I could
see Billy Holtzner combing his hair. His eyes were pale and watery, his
lips thick, his face hard-planed like gray rubber molded against bone.

"Dave, we want a good relationship with everybody in the area.
If Swede's done something wrong, I want to know about it. Come inside,
meet Billy. Let's talk a minute," Cisco said.

But Billy Holtzner's attention had shifted to a woman who was
brushing her teeth in a lavatory with the door open.

"Margot, you look just like you do when I come in your mouth,"
he said.

"Adios," I said, walking away from the trailer with Helen.

Cisco caught up with us and waved away the two security guards.

"What'd Swede do?" he asked.

"Better question: What's he got on you?" I said.

"What have I done that you insult me like this?"

"Mr. Flynn, Boxleiter was hanging around small children at the
city pool. Save the bullshit for your local groupies," Helen said.

"All right, I'll talk to him. Let's don't have a scene," Cisco
said.

"Just stay out of the way," she said.

Boxleiter was on one knee, stripped to the waist, tightening a
socket wrench on a power terminal. His Levi's were powdered with dust,
and black power lines spidered out from him in all directions. His
torso glistened whitely with sweat, his skin rippling with sinew each
time he pumped the wrench. He used his hand to mop the sweat out of one
shaved armpit, then wiped his hand on his jeans.

"I want you to put your shirt on and take a ride with us," I
said.

He looked up at us, smiling, squinting into the sun. "You
don't have a warrant. If you did, you'd have already told me," he said.

"It's a social invitation. One you really don't want to turn
down," Helen said.

He studied her, amused. Dust swirled out of the dirt street
that had been spread on the set. The sky was cloudless, the air moist
and as tangible as flame against the skin. Boxleiter rose to his feet.
People on the set had stopped work and were watching now.

"I got a union book. I'm like anybody else here. I don't have
to go anywhere," he said.

"Suit yourself. We'll catch you later," I said.

"I get it. You'll roust me when I get home tonight. It don't
bother me. Long as it's legal," he said.

Helen's cheeks were flushed, the back of her neck damp in the
heat. I touched her wrist and nodded toward the cruiser. Just as she
turned to go with me, I saw Boxleiter draw one stiff finger up his rib
cage, collecting a thick dollop of sweat. He flicked it at her back.

Her hand went to her cheek, her face darkening with surprise
and insult, like a person in a crowd who cannot believe the nature of
an injury she has just received.

"You're under arrest for assaulting a police officer. Put your
hands behind you," she said.

He grinned and scratched at an insect bite high up on his
shoulder.

"Is there something wrong with the words I use? Turn around,"
she said.