Heaven's Prisoners (11 page)

The weight of the .45 was heavy in my raincoat pocket. I had a permit to carry it, but I never had occasion to, and actually I had fired it only once since leaving the department, and that was at an alligator who attacked a child on the bayou. But I had used it as a police officer when the bodyguard of New Orleans’s number-one pimp and drug dealer threw down on my partner and me. It had kicked in my hand like a jackhammer, as though it had a life of its own; when I had stopped shooting into the back of the Cadillac, my ears were roaring with a sound like the sea, my face was stiff with the smell of the cordite, and later my dreams would be peopled by two men whose bodies danced disjointedly in a red haze.

This district had been my turf for fourteen years, first as a patrolman, then as a sergeant in robbery investigation, and finally as a lieutenant in homicide. In that time I got to see them all: male and female prostitutes, Murphy artists, psychotic snipers, check writers, pete men, car boosters, street dealers, and child molesters. I was punched out, shot at, cut with an ice pick, stuffed unconscious behind the wheel of a car and shoved off the third level of a parking garage. I witnessed an electrocution in Angola penitentiary, helped take the remains of a bookie out of a garbage compactor, drew chalk outlines on an alley floor where a woman had jumped with her child from the roof of a welfare hotel.

I turned the key on hundreds of people. A lot of them did hard time in Angola; four of them went to the electric chair. But I don’t think my participation in what politicians call “the war on crime” ever made much difference. New Orleans is no safer a town now than it was then. Why? Narcotics is one answer. Maybe another is the fact that in fourteen years I never turned the key on a slumlord or on a zoning board member who owned interests in pornographic theaters and massage parlors.

I saw Jerry take off his apron and walk toward the back of the bar. I crossed the street in the slanting rain and entered the bar just as Jerry disappeared through a curtained doorway in back. On the lighted stage in front of a full-wall mirror, two topless girls in sequined G-strings with gold chains around their ankles danced barefoot to a 1950s rock ‘n’ roll record. I had to wait for my eyes to adjust to the turning strobe light that danced across the walls and floor and the bodies of the men staring up at the girls from the bar, then I headed toward the curtained doorway in back.

“Can I help you, sir?” the other bartender said. He was blond and wore a black string tie on a white sports shirt.

“I have an appointment with Jerry.”

“Jerry Falgout?”

“The other bartender.”

“Yeah. Have a seat. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Hey, you can’t go back there.”

“It’s a private conversation, podna. Don’t mess in it.”

I went through the curtain into a storage area that was filled with cases of beer and liquor bottles. The room was lit by a solitary bulb in a tin shade, and a huge ventilator fan set in the far window sucked the air out into a brick alley. The door to a small office was partly ajar, and inside the office Jerry was bent on one knee in front of a desk, almost as if he were genuflecting, while he snorted a line of white powder off a mirror with a rolled five-dollar bill. Then he rose to his feet, closed each nostril with a finger, and sniffed, blinked, and widened his eyes, then licked his finger and wiped the residue off on a small square of white paper and rubbed it on his gums.

He didn’t see me until he was out the door. I caught both of his arms behind him, put one hand behind his head and ran him straight into the window fan. His fedora clattered in the tin blades, and then I heard them thunk and whang against his scalp and I pulled his head up the way you would a drowning man’s and shoved him back inside the small office and shut the door behind us. His face was white with shock, and blood ran out of his hairline like pieces of string. His eyes were wild with fright. I pushed him down in a chair.

“Goddamn, goddamn, man, you’re out of your fucking mind,” he said, his voice almost hiccupping.

“How much did you get for dropping the dime on Robin?”

“What? I didn’t get nothing. What are you talking about?”

“You listen to me, Jerry. It’s just you and me. No Miranda, no lawyer, no bondsman, no safe cell to be a tough guy in. It all gets taken care of right here. Do you understand that?”

He pressed his palm against the blood in his hair and then looked at his palm stupidly.

“Say you understand.”

“What?”

“Last chance, Jerry.”

“I don’t understand nothing. What the fuck’s with you? You come on like a crazy person.”

I took the .45 out of my coat pocket, pulled back the receiver so he could see the loaded magazine, and slid a round into the chamber. I sighted between his eyes.

His face twitched with fear, his mouth trembled, his hair glistened with sweat. His hands were gripped on both his thighs as though there were a terrible pain in his bowels.

“Come on, man, put it away,” he said. “I told you I ain’t no swinging dick. I’m just a guy getting by. I tend bar, I live off tips, I mop up bathrooms. I’m no heavy dude you got to come down on like King Kong. No shit, man. Put away the piece.”

“What did they pay you?”

“A hunnerd bucks. I didn’t know they were going to hurt her. That’s the truth. I thought they’d just tell her not to be talking to no ex-cops. They don’t beat up whores. It costs them money. I don’t know why they broke her finger. They didn’t have to do it. She don’t know anything anyway. Come on, man, put it away.”

“Did you call Eddie Keats?”

“Are you kidding? He’s a fucking hit man. Is that who they sent?”

“Who did you call?”

His eyes went away from the gun and looked down in his lap. He held his hands between his legs.

“Does my voice sound funny to you?” I said.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“It’s because I have stitches in my mouth. I also have some in my head. A black guy named Toot put them there. Do you know who he is?”

“No.”

“He broke Robin’s finger, then he came to New Iberia.”

“I didn’t know that, man. Honest to God.”

“You’re starting to genuinely piss me off, Jerry. Who did you call?”

“Look, everybody does. it. You hear something about Bubba Rocque or somebody talking about him or maybe his people getting out of line, you call up his club about it and you get a hunnerd bucks. It don’t even have to be important. They say he just likes to know everything that’s going on.”

“Hey, you all right in there, Jerry?” the voice of the other bartender said outside the door.

“He’s fine,” I said.

The doorknob started to turn.

“Don’t open that door, podna,” I said. “If you want to call the Man, do it, but don’t come in here. While you’re at it, tell the heat Jerry’s been poking things up his nose again.”

I looked steadily into Jerry’s eyes. His eyelashes were beaded with sweat. He swallowed and wiped the dryness of his lips with his fingers.

“It’s all right, Morris,” he said. “I’m coming out in a minute.”

I heard the bartender’s feet walk away from the door. Jerry took a deep breath and looked at the gun again.

“I told you what you want. So cut me some slack, okay?” he said.

“Where’s Victor Romero?”

“What the fuck I know about him?”

“You knew Johnny Dartez, didn’t you?”

“Sure. He was in all these skin joints. He’s dead now, right?”

“So you must have known Victor Romero, too.”

“You don’t get it. I’m a bartender. I don’t know anything that anybody on the street don’t know. The guy’s a fucking geek. He was peddling some bad Mexican brown around town, it had insecticide in it or something. So he had to get out of town. Then I heard him and Johnny Dartez got busted by Immigration for trying to bring in a couple of big-time greasers from Colombia. But that must be bullshit because Johnny was still flying around when he went down in the drink, right?”

“They were busted by Immigration?”

“I don’t know that, man. You stand behind that bar and you’ll hear a hunnerd fucking stories a night. It’s a soap opera. How about it, man? Do I get some slack?”

I eased the hammer down carefully and let the .45 hang from my arm. He expelled a long breath from his chest, his shoulders sagged, and he wiped his damp palms on his pants.

“There’s one other thing,” I said. “You’re out of Robin’s life. You don’t even have thoughts about her.”

“What am I supposed to do? Pretend I don’t see her? She works here, man.”

“Not anymore. In fact, if I were you, I’d think about finding a job. outside the country.”

His face looked confused, then I could see a fearful comprehension start to work in his eyes.

“You got it, Jerry. I’m going to have a talk with Bubba Rocque. When I do, I’ll tell him who sent me. You might think about Iran.”

I dropped the .45 in the pocket of my raincoat and walked back out of the bar into the rain that had now thinned and was blowing in rivulets off the iron-scrolled balconies along the street. The air was clean and cool and sweet-smelling with the rain, and I walked in the lee of the buildings toward Jackson Square and Decatur, where my truck was parked, and I could see the lighted peaks of St. Louis Cathedral against the black sky. The river was covered with mist as thick as clouds. The waiters had stacked the chairs in the Café du Monde, and the wind blew the mist over the tabletops in a wet sheen. In the distance I could hear a ship’s horn blowing across the water.

It was eleven o’clock when I got back home, and the storm had stopped and the house was dark. The pecan trees were wet and black in the yard, and the slight breeze off the bayou rustled their leaves and shook water onto the tin roof of the gallery. I checked on Alafair, then went into our bedroom, where Annie was sleeping on her stomach in her panties and a pajama top. The attic fan was on, and it drew the cool air from outside and moved the curly hair on the back of her neck. I put the .45 back in the drawer, undressed, and lay down beside her. I could feel the fatigue of the day rush through me like a drug. She stirred slightly, then turned her head away from me on the pillow. I placed my hand on her back. She rolled over with her face pointing at the ceiling and her arm over her eyes.

“You got back all right?” she said.

“Sure.”

She was quiet a moment, and I could hear the dryness of her mouth when she spoke again: “Who was she, Dave?”

“A dancer in a joint on Bourbon.”

“Did you take care of everything?”

“Yes.”

“You owed her, I guess.”

“Not really. I just had to get her off the hook.”

“I don’t understand why she’s your obligation.”

“Because she’s a drunk and an addict and she can’t do anything for herself. They broke her finger, Annie. If they catch her again, it’ll be much worse.”

I heard her take a breath, then she put her hands on her stomach and looked up into the dark.

“It’s not over, though, is it?” she said.

“It is for her. And the guy who was partly responsible for me getting my face kicked in is going to be blowing New Orleans in a hurry. I admit that makes me feel good.”

“I wish I could share your feeling.”

It was quiet in the room, and the moon came out and made shadows in the trees. I felt I was about to lose something, maybe forever. I put my foot over hers and took one of her hands in mine. Her hand was pliant and dry.

“I didn’t seek it out,” I said. “The trouble came to us. You have to confront problems, Annie. When you don’t, they follow you around like pariah dogs.”

“You always tell me that one of the main axioms in AA is ‘Easy does it.’”

“It doesn’t mean you should avoid your responsibilities. It doesn’t mean you should accept the role of victim.”

“Maybe we should talk about the price we should all be willing to pay for your pride.”

“I don’t know what to say anymore. You don’t understand, and I don’t think you’re going to.”

“What should I feel, Dave? You lie down next to me and tell me you’ve been with a stripper, that you’ve run somebody out of New Orleans, that it makes you feel good. I don’t know anything about a world like that. I don’t think anybody should have to.”

“It exists because people pretend it’s not there.”

“Let other people live in it, then.”

She sat up on the side of the bed with her back to me.

“Don’t go away from me,” I said.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Lie down and talk.”

“It’s no good to talk about it anymore.”

“We can talk about other things. This is just a temporary thing. I’ve had a lot worse trouble in my life than this,” I said.

She remained seated on the side of the bed, her panties low on her bottom. I put my hand on her shoulder and eased her back down on the pillow.

“Come on, kiddo. Don’t lock your old man out,” I said.

I kissed her cheeks and her eyes and stroked her hair. I could feel myself grow against her side. But her eyes looked straight ahead, and her hands rested loosely on my shoulders, as though that were the place that obligation required them to be.

I could see the water dripping out of the pecan trees in the moonlight. I didn’t care about pride or the feelings that I would have later. I needed her, and I slipped off her panties and pulled off my underwear and held her against me. Her arms rested on my back and she kissed me once lightly on the jaw, but she was dry went I entered her, and her eyes stayed open and unseeing as though she were focused on a thought inside herself.

Out on the bayou I heard the peculiar cry of a bull ‘gator calling to its mate. I was sweating now, even in the cool wind drawn by the attic fan through the window, and in the mire of thoughts that can occur in such a heart-rushing and self-defeating moment, I tried to justify both my lustful dependency and my willingness to force her to be my accomplice.

I stopped and raised myself off her, my body trembling with its own denial, and worked my underwear back over my thighs. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at me as a patient might from a hospital bed.

“It’s been a long day,” she said quietly.