Heaven's Prisoners (10 page)

The wind was still blowing hard as I drove down the long concrete causeway over the Atchafalaya swamp. The sky was still a soft blue and filled with tumbling white clouds, but a good storm was building out on the Gulf and I knew that by evening the southern horizon would be black and streaked with rain and lightning. I watched the flooded willow trees bend in the wind, and the moss on the dead cypress in the bays straighten and fall, and the way the sunlight danced and shattered on the water when the surface suddenly wrinkled from one shore to the next. The Atchafalaya basin encompasses hundreds of square miles of bayous, willow islands, sand bogs, green leaves covered with buttercups, wide bays dotted with dead cypress and oil-well platforms, and flooded woods filled with cottonmouths, alligators, and black clouds of mosquitoes. My father and I had fished and hunted all over the Atchafalaya when I was a boy, and even on a breezy spring day like this we knew how to catch bull bream and goggle-eye perch when nobody else would catch them. In the late afternoon we’d anchor the pirogue on the lee side of a willow island, when the mosquitoes would start to swarm out of the trees, and cast our bobbers back into the quiet water, right against the line of lilly pads, and wait for the bream and goggle-eye to start feeding on the insects. In an hour we’d fill our ice chest with fish.

But my reverie about boyhood moments with my father could not get rid of the words Annie had said to me. She had wanted to raise a red welt across the heart, and she had done a good job of it. But maybe what bothered me worse was the fact that I knew she had hurt me only because she had an unrelieved hurt inside herself. Her reference to a statement made by my first wife was an admission that maybe there was a fundamental difference in me, a deeply ingrained character flaw, that neither Annie nor my ex-wife nor perhaps any sane woman would ever be able to accept. I was not simply a drunk; I was drawn to a violent and aberrant world the way a vampire bat seeks a black recess within the earth.

My first wife’s name was Niccole, and she was a dark-haired, beautiful girl from Martinique who loved horse racing almost as much as I. But unfortunately she loved money and clubhouse society even more. I could have almost forgiven her infidelities in our marriage, until we both discovered that her love affairs were not motivated by lust for other men but rather contempt for me and loathing for the dark, alcoholic energies that governed my life.

We had been at a lawn party out by Lake Pontchartrain, and I had been drinking all afternoon at Jefferson Downs and now I had reached the point where I didn’t even bother to leave the small bar under the mimosa trees at the lawn party and make a pretense of interest at the conversation around me. The wind was balmy and it rattled the dry palm fronds on the lakeshore, and I watched the red sun set on the horizon and reflect on the green, capping surface of the water. In the distance, white sailboats lurched in fountains of spray toward the Southern Yacht Club. I could feel the whiskey in my face, the omiscient sense of control that alcohol always brought me, the bright flame of metaphysical insight burning behind my eyes.

But my seersucker sleeve was damp from the bar, and my words were thick and apart from me when I asked for another Black Jack and water.

Then Niccole was standing next to me with her current lover, a geologist from Houston. He was a summer mountain climber, and he had a rugged, handsome profile like a Roman’s and a chest that looked as hard as a barrel. Like all the other men there, he wore the soft tropical colors of the season—a pastel shirt, a white linen suit, a purple knit tie casually loose at the throat, he ordered Manhattans for both of them, then while he waited for the Negro bartender to fix their drinks he stroked the down on top of Nicole’s arm as though I were not there.

Later, I would not be able to describe accurately any series of feelings or events after that moment. I felt something rip like wet newspaper in the back of my head; I saw his startled face look suddenly into mine; I saw it twist and convulse as my fist came across his mouth; I felt his hands try to grab my coat as he went down; I saw the genuine fear in his eyes as I rained my fists down on him and then caught his throat between my hands.

When they pulled me off him, his tongue was stuck in his throat, his skin was the color of ash, and his cheeks were covered with strings of pink spittle. My wife was sobbing uncontrollably on the host’s shoulder.

When I awoke on our houseboat the next morning, my eyes shuddering in the hard light refracting off the lake, I found the note she had left me:

Dear Dave,

I don’t know what it is you’re looking for, but three years of marriage to you have convinced me I don’t want to be there when you find it. Sorry about that. As your pitcher-bartender friend says, Keep it high and hard, podjo.

Niccole

I followed the highway through the eastern end of the Atchafalaya basin. White cranes rose above the dead cypress in the sunlight just as the first drops of rain began to dimple the water below the causeway. I could smell the wet sand, the moss, the four-o’clock flowers, the toadstools, the odor of dead fish and sour mud blowing on the wind out of the marsh. A big willow tree by the water’s edge looked like a woman’s hair in the wind.

4

THE RAIN WAS falling out of a blue-black sky when I parked the pickup truck in front of the travel agency in New Orleans. I knew the owner, and he let me use his WATS line to call a friend in Key West. Then I bought a one-way ticket there for seventy-nine dollars.

Robin lived in a decrepit Creole-style apartment building off South Rampart. The cracked brick and mortar had been painted purple; the red tiles in the roof were broken; the scrolled iron grillwork on the balconies had burst loose from its fastenings and was tilted at odd angles. The banana and palm trees in the courtyard looked as though they had never been pruned, and the dead leaves and fronds clicked loudly in the rain and wind. Dark-skinned children rode tricycles up and down the second-floor balcony, and all the apartment doors were open and even in the rain you could hear an incredible mixed din of daytime television, Latin music, and people shouting at each other.

I walked up to Robin’s apartment, but as I approached her door a middle-aged, overweight man in a rain spotted gray business suit with an American-flag pin in his lapel came toward me, squinting at a small piece of damp paper in his hand. I wanted to think he was a bill collector, a social worker, a process server, but his eyes were too furtive, his face too nervous, his need too obvious. He realised that the apartment number he was looking for was the one I was standing in front of. His face went blank, the way a man’s does when he suddenly knows that he’s made a commitment for which he has no preparation. I didn’t want to be unkind to him.

“She’s out of the business, partner,” I said.

“Sir?”

“Robin’s not available anymore.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His face had grown rounder and more frightened.

“That’s her apartment number on that piece of paper, isn’t it? You’re not a regular, so I suspect somebody sent you here. Who was it?”

He started to walk past me. I put my hand gently on his arm.

“I’m not a policeman. I’m not her husband. I’m just a friend. Who was it, partner?” I said.

“A bartender.”

“At Smiling Jack’s, on Bourbon?”

“Yes, I think that was it.”

“Did you give him money?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t go back there for it. He won’t give it back to you, anyway. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

I took my hand away from his arm, and he walked quickly down the stairs and out into the rain-swept courtyard.

I looked through the screen door into the gloom of Robin’s apartment. A toilet flushed in back, and she walked into the living room in a pair of white shorts and a green Tulane T-shirt and saw me framed against the wet light. The index finger of her left hand was wrapped in a splint. She smiled sleepily at me, and I stepped inside. The thick, drowsy odor of marijuana struck at my face. Smoke curled from a roach clip in an ashtray on the coffee table.

“What’s happening, Streak?” she said lazily.

“I just ran off a client, I’m afraid.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Jerry sent a John over. I told him you were out of the business. Permanently, Robin. We’re moving you to Key West, kiddo.”

“This is all too weird. Look, Dave, I’m down to seeds and stems, if you know what I mean. I’m going out to buy some beer. Mommy has to get a little mellow before she bounces her stuff for the cantaloupe lovers. You want to come along?”

“No beer, no more hooking, no Smiling Jack’s tonight. I’ve got you a ticket on a nine o’clock flight to Key West.”

“Stop talking crazy, will you? What am I going to do in Key West? It’s full of faggots.”

“You’re going to work in a restaurant owned by a friend of mine. It’s a nice place, out on the pier at the end of Duval Street. Famous people eat in there. Tennessee Williams used to come there.”

“You mean that country singer? Wow, what a gig.”

“I’m going to square what those guys did to you and me,” I said. “When I do, you won’t be able to stay in New Orleans.”

“That’s what’s wrong with your mouth?”

“They told me what they did to your finger. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

“Forget it. It comes with my stage career.” She sat down on the stuffed couch and picked up the roach clip, which now held only smoldering ash. She toyed with it, studied it, then dropped it on top of the glass ashtray. “Don’t make them come back. The white guy, the one with the cowboy boots, he had some Polaroid pictures. God, I don’t want to remember them.”

“Do you know who these guys are?”

“No.”

“Did you ever see them before?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She squeezed one hand around the fingers of the other. “In the pictures, some colored people were tied up in a basement or something. They had blood all over them. Dave, some of them were still alive. I can’t forget what their faces looked like.”

I sat down beside her and picked up her hands. Her eyes were wet, and I could smell the marijuana on her breath.

“If you catch that plane tonight, you can start a new life. I’ll check on you and my friend will help you, and you’ll put all this stuff behind you. How much money do you have?”

“A couple of hundred dollars maybe.”

“I’ll give you two hundred more. That’ll get you to your first paycheck. But no snorting, no dropping, no shooting. You understand that?”

“Hey, is this guy out there one of your AA pals? Because I told you I don’t dig that scene.”

“Who’s asking you to?”

“I got enough troubles without getting my head shrunk by a bunch of ex-drunks.”

“Make your own choice. It’s your life, kiddo.”

“Yeah, but you’re always up to something on the side. You should have been a priest. You still go to Mass?”

“Sure.”

“You remember the time you took me to midnight Mass at St. Louis Cathedral? Then we walked across the square and had beignets at the Café du Monde. You know, I thought maybe you were serious about me that night.”

“I have to ask you a couple of questions before I go.”

“Sure, why not? Most men are interested in my jugs. You come around like a census taker.”

“I’m serious, Robin. Do you remember a guy named Victor Romero?”

“Yeah, I guess so. He used to hang around with Johnny Dartez.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Here.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He’s a little dark-skinned guy with black curls hanging off his head, and he wears a French beret like he’s an artist or something. Except he’s bad news. He sold some tainted skag down on Magazine, and I heard a couple of kids were dead before they got the spike out of their arms.”

“Was he muling for Bubba Rocque, too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. I haven’t seen the guy in months. Why do you care about those dipshits? I thought you were the family man now. Maybe things aren’t too good at home.”

“Maybe.”

“And you’re the guy that’s going to clean up mommy’s act so she can wipe off tables for the tourists. Wow.”

“Here’s the airline ticket and the two hundred dollars. My friend’s name is written on the envelope. Do whatever you want.”

I started to get up, but she pressed her hands down on my arms. Her breasts were large and heavy against her T-shirt, and I knew secretly that I had the same weakness as the men who watched her every night at Smiling Jack’s.

“Dave?”

“What?”

“Do you think about me a little bit sometimes?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like me?”

“You know I do.”

“I mean the way you’d like an ordinary woman, somebody who didn’t have a pharmacy floating around in her bloodstream.”

“I like you a lot, Robin.”

“Stay just a minute, then. I’ll take the plane tonight. I promise.”

Then she put her arm across my chest, tucked her head under my chin like a small girl, and pressed herself against me. Her short-cropped, dark hair was soft and smelled of shampoo, and I could feel her breasts swell against me as she breathed. Outside it was raining hard on the courtyard. I brushed her cheek with my fingers and held her hand, then a moment later I felt her shudder as though some terrible tension and fear had left her body with sleep. In the silence I looked out at the rain dancing on the iron grillwork.

The neon lights on Bourbon looked like green and purple smoke in the rain. The Negro street dancers, with their heavy metal clip-on taps that clattered like horseshoes on the sidewalk, were not out tonight, and the few tourists were mostly family people who walked close against the buildings, from one souvenir shop to the next, and did not stop at the open doors of the strip joints where spielers in straw boaters and candy-striped vests were having a hard time bringing in the trade.

I stood against a building on the opposite corner from Smiling Jack’s and watched Jerry through the door for a half hour. He wore his fedora and an apron over an open-necked sports shirt that was covered with small whiskey bottles. Against the glow of stage lights on the burlesque stage behind him, the angular profile of his face looked as though it were snipped out of tin.