The Neon Rain (11 page)

“Then do the best thing you’ve done in years and keep on walking,” I said.

“I don’t know what to do, Julio,” she said to the backseat.

“Do what I tell you, hon. Your Latino gumball is going to take a big fall today,” I said.

Her eyes shifted nervously and she bit her lips, then she picked up her purse, eased past me, and clicked hurriedly down the sidewalk.

I leaned down in Segura’s window. He and the gatekeeper whom Clete had hit in the stomach the other day sat behind a fold-out bar with vodka drinks in their hands. Rubber bands held the napkins around the drink glasses. Segura wore yellow golf slacks, polished brown loafers, and a flowered white shirt unbuttoned to his stomach. His peculiar triangular face, with the tiny balls of purple skin in the furrows of his forehead, looked up at me in the slanting sunlight.

“What the fuck you think you’re doing now, Robicheaux?” he asked.

“Teaching you what a real bad day can be,” I said.

“What do you want? Some kind of action? A piece of something downtown?”

“You’re going to give me Philip Murphy, Bobby Joe Starkweather, and the little Israeli.”

“I don’t know none of these people. You keep coming around my house talking about things I don’t know nothing about.”

“Ole Streak’s in a bad mood today, Julio,” Clete said. “Your friends messed it up the other night and did some real bad things. They’re not around now, but you are. You and Paco the barfer here.” He blew his cigarette smoke into the gatekeeper’s face.

“You trying to squeeze me? Okay, I’m a realist. I got business arrangements with policemen,” Segura said.

“You don’t fly this time, Julio,” I said. “All the doors are closed. It’s just me and you.”

“Call Wineburger,” he said to the gatekeeper.

The other man reached for the telephone that was in a mahogany box inset in the back of the front seat.

“You touch that telephone and I’ll stuff it crossways down your throat,” Clete said.

The man sat back in the deep leather of the seat, his face tight, his hands flat on his knees.

“You don’t have anything, you don’t know anything, you’re just a noise like a fart in somebody’s pants,” Segura said.

“Try this, my friend,” I said. “Lovelace Deshotels was a little black girl from the country who had big aspirations for herself and her family. She thought she’d made the big score, but you don’t like broads that slop down your booze and throw up in your pool, so you eighty-sixed her back to the geek circuit. Except you had a badass black girl on your hands that wouldn’t eighty-six. On top of it, she developed this fixation about elephants.” I watched his face. It twitched like a rubber band. “So what does a macho guy like you do when one of his whores gets in his face? He has a couple of his lowlifes take her out on a boat and launch her into the next world with the same stuff she’d already sold her soul for.

“Right now you’re wondering how I know all this, aren’t you, Julio? It’s because the guys that work for you have diarrhea of the mouth. It’s information you can get across a lunch table. There are probably only several dozen people we can march by a grand jury right now.”

“Then do it, smart guy.”

“Let me give you the rest of it, just so you’ll be fully informed when Wineburger tries to bond you out this afternoon. I’m going to have your car towed in, vacuumed, and torn apart with crowbars. Possession in Louisiana is fifteen years, and all we need is the carbon ash, either off that cigarette lighter or the upholstery.

“Any way you cut it, your ass is busted.”

Then Cletus committed what was probably the stupidest and most senseless act of his career.

“And this little piggy is busted, too,” he said, and reached in the window and caught the gatekeeper’s nose between his fingers and twisted.

The gatekeeper’s eyes filled with tears; his hand slapped at Clete’s, then his hairy, tattooed arm dipped into the leather pouch on the side door.

”
No
lo hagas! No lo hagas
!” Segura screamed.

But it was forever too late for all of us. The gatekeeper’s hand came up with a nickel-plated automatic and let off one round that hit the window frame and blew glass all over Clete’s shirt. It was very fast after that. Just as I pulled the .45 from the back of my trousers, I saw Clete rip his nine-millimeter from his belt holster, crouch, and begin firing. I stepped back a foot, to clear the angle away from Segura, and fired simultaneously with my left hand locked on my wrist to hold the recoil down. I fired five times, as fast as I could pull the trigger, the explosions roaring in my ears, and saw no one thing distinctly inside the car. Instead, it was as though an earthquake had struck the inside of the Cadillac. The air was filled with divots of leather, stuffing from the seats, flying shards of glass and metal, splinters of mahogany, broken liquor bottles, cordite, smoke, and a film of blood and vodka that drained down the back window.

There was no place for Julio Segura to hide. He tried to shrink into an embryonic ball away from Clete’s line of fire, but his position was hopeless. Then he suddenly leaped up into the window with his hands pressed out toward me like claws. His eyes were pleading, his mouth open with a silent scream. My finger had already squeezed tight in the trigger guard, and the round caught him in the top of the mouth and blew the back of his head all over the jerking body of the gatekeeper.

I was trembling and breathless when I fell back from the Cadillac and leaned on top of Clete’s car, the .45 hanging from my hand. Clete’s scarred, poached face was so bloodless and tight you could have struck a kitchen match to it. His clothes were covered with flecks of glass.

“The sonofabitch missed me from two feet,” he said. “Did you see that? That fucking window glass saved my life. Go back and look inside. We blew them apart.”

Then the dwarf chauffeur climbed down from the driver’s seat and ran down the middle of the esplanade on his stubby legs amid a wail of sirens. Clete began to giggle uncontrollably.

FIVE

The next morning Cletus and I sat across from each other at our desks in our small, glass-enclosed office with its smudged yellow walls that made you think of a dressing cubicle at the YMCA. Cletus pretended to read a long memo from the superintendent’s office, but his eyes were either empty or glazed with the pain of his hangover. He was chain-smoking and eating breath mints, but last night’s Scotch was down deep in his lungs. Both of us had already made written reports to Captain Guidry.

“I’m not going to bail you out again, Clete,” I said.

“What do you mean, bail out? I put one through his brisket before you popped your first cap.”

“I’m not talking about that. You provoked it. It didn’t have to happen.” ,

“You’re sure about that, huh? What if Paco had come up with the automatic while you were cuffing Segura? There was a nine-round clip in there. He could have cut both of us in half.”

“You provoked it.”

“So what if I did? Scratch two lowlifes that should have been fertilizer a long time ago. Save the hearts and flowers, Dave. Nobody’s going to be interested in how Julio Segura bought it. I don’t think you could find three people to attend the guy’s funeral.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

Sergeant Motley came down the corridor and stopped in our doorway. He had just come in from outside, and his round, black head glistened with perspiration. He was eating an ice cream cone, and there were flecks of ice cream in his thick mustache.

“Somebody in the lab said they had to wash Segura’s brains off the seat with a hose,” he said.

“Oh yeah? That sounds like it might make a clever Excedrin ad,” Clete said.

“Guess what else I heard?” Motley said.

“Who cares?” Clete said.

“You’ll care, Purcel. The lab says the Cadillac was dirty. Reefer on the cigarette lighter, coke in the rug. Who would have thought Segura would let his broads be so careless?” He smiled. “You guys didn’t salt the mine shaft, did you?”

“Why are you so obnoxious, Motley?” Clete said. “Is it because you’re fat and ugly, or is it because you’re fat and dumb? It’s a mystery to all of us.”

“Except I hear the broad says you told Segura he was going to take a big fall. Not smart of the Bobbsey Twins in homicide,” Motley said.

“Here’s to the rapid spread of sickle cell,” Clete said, and toasted Sergeant Motley with his coffee cup.

“My dick in your ear,” Motley said.

“Lay off it,” I said.

“With this guy you’ve either got to use some humor or a can of insecticide,” Clete said.

A few minutes later Captain Guidry told me to come into his office. I wasn’t looking forward to talking with the captain, but I was relieved to get away from Clete.

Captain Guidry scratched the hair implants in his head and looked up at me from behind his horn-rimmed glasses. My report and Clete’s were side by side on his desk.

“The lab found some marijuana ash and grains of cocaine in the car,” he said. His voice was flat and reserved.

“Motley just told us.”

He picked up a pencil and began drumming it on his palm.

“They also said a round fired from inside the car bounced off the window frame and blew glass out into the street,” he said. “A second round went up through the roof, which would indicate the shooter was hit by that time. A yardman across the street says he heard a sound like a firecracker inside the Cadillac, then he saw you two start shooting. It’s all working for you, Dave.”

“What’s the dwarf say?” I asked.

“Nothing. All he wants is an airplane ticket to Managua.”

“Something’s not getting said here, Captain.”

“I’ve been over your reports. Very neat stuff. I think they’ll get you by Internal Affairs.”

“That’s good.”

“My own opinion is they stink. Tell me why a guy with no arrests, who Whiplash Wineburger would have had back on the street in thirty minutes, would throw down on two armed cops.”

I didn’t answer.

“Do you think he had a suicidal personality?” the captain asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Did Segura tell him to do it?”

“No.”

“Then why did this guy pull his own plug?” His hand closed on the pencil.

“Internal Affairs gets paid to sort that stuff out.”

“To hell with Internal Affairs. I don’t like reading a report on two deaths that says ‘fill in the blanks.’”

“I can’t tell you anything else, Captain.”

“I can. I think something else happened out there. I think also you’re covering Purcel’s butt. That’s not loyalty. It’s stupidity.”

“The essential fact of my report is that somebody pulled a pistol on a police officer and fired it at him.”

“You keep telling yourself that. In the meantime, let me tell you a couple of my observations. The guys in Internal Affairs will mutter around over this stuff, ask you a few hard questions, make you feel uncomfortable a little while, maybe even really try to stick a finger in your eye. But eventually they’ll cut you loose and everybody around here will ask you guys out for a beer. But you’re going to take the suspicion of a wrongful death with you. It’s like a cloud you drag along everywhere you go. Sometimes it even grows into a legend. How about Motley and those guys on the wrist-chain that suffocated to death in the elevator?”

I had to look away from his face.

“It’s between Purcel and other people, Captain. I didn’t deal the play out there,” I said.

“I’m sorry to see you take that position, Dave.” He opened his palm and dropped his pencil on the top of his desk blotter. “I’ll make one other suggestion before you go. Take Purcel with you to some meetings. Also, if you’re going to cover for a partner who’s going out of control, you’d damn well better be able to take the consequences.”

It wasn’t the best of all possible mornings.

A half hour later the phone in our office rang.

“Guess who,” the voice said.

“The Howdy Doody Show.”

“Guess what I’m doing.”

“I’m not interested.”

“I’m looking at the photographic art on the front page of the
Picayune
,” Fitzpatrick said. “I underestimated your flair for the dramatic. These are the kinds of pictures we used to see in
The Police Gazette
—grainy black and white stuff, car doors thrown open, bodies hanging out on the street, pools of black blood on the seats. Congratulations, you greased the one solid connection we had.”

“If you want to get on my case this morning, you’ll have to stand in line. As far as I’m concerned, your meter is already on overtime. In fact—”

“Shut up, Lieutenant.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. I’m mad as hell right now. You’ve done a lot of damage.”

“You weren’t out there, bud.”

“I didn’t have to be. I had a real strong tingle down in the genitals that it might go like this, and you didn’t disappoint me.”

“You want to explain that?”

“I’m not sure you can handle it. I thought you were a bright guy. Instead, it doesn’t look like you can put one foot after another without somebody painting Arthur Murray dance steps on the floor for you.”

I didn’t answer. My hand was clenched on the telephone receiver and starting to perspire. Clete was looking curiously at my face.

“Are you where you can talk?” Fitzpatrick said.

“I’m in my office.”

“Who’s there with you?”

“My partner, Purcel.” ;

“Yeah, sure you can talk,” he said irritably. “I’ll pick you up in front of the Acme Oyster Bar on Iberville in ten minutes. I’ll be driving a blue Plymouth rental.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You either be there or I’ll come up to your houseboat tonight and knock out your goddamn teeth. That’s a personal promise.”

I waited ten minutes for him in front of the Acme, then went inside and bought a Dr Pepper in a cup of crushed ice with a sliced lime and drank it outside in the sunlight. I could see the spires of St. Louis Cathedral, where I sometimes went to Mass, shining in the clear morning air. By the time Fitzpatrick drew up to the curb, my anger had subsided to the point that I was no longer going to pull him out of his automobile by his necktie. But when I sat down in the passenger’s seat I did reach across and turn off his ignition.