The Neon Rain (15 page)

“Have you heard of a guy named Abshire?” I asked.

“What about him?” he replied.

“I think these guys work for somebody named Abshire.” His eyes looked into space, then back at me. But I had seen the recognition in them.

“Who is this guy?” I asked.

“How would I know?”

“You circling up the wagons?”

“We can’t afford to have you around,” he said.

“Too bad.”

“What does it take for you to get the message, Lieutenant?”

“I liked that kid, too.”

“Then make a tribute to his memory by staying out of federal business.”

He left without saying good-bye and I felt foolish and alone in the sunlit whiteness of my room. I was also starting to shake inside, like a tuning fork that starts to tremble at a discordant sound. There was a bottle of Listerine on my nightstand. I walked stiffly to the bath, rinsed my mouth, and spit into the sink. Then I sucked the juice out of my cheeks and tongue and swallowed it. Then I rinsed again, but this time I didn’t spit it out. I could feel the alcohol in my stomach like an old friend.

A half hour later, two detectives from Internal Affairs stood over my bed. It was the same two who had investigated the shooting at Julio Segura’s. They wore sports clothes and mustaches, and had their hair cut by a stylist.

“You guys are making me nervous. You look like vultures sitting on my bedposts. How about sitting down?” I said.

“You’re a fun guy, Robicheaux, a laugh a minute,” the first detective said. His name was Nate Baxter and he had worked for CID in the army before he joined the department. I had always believed that his apparent military attitudes were a disguise for a true fascist mentality. He was a bully, and one night a suspended patrolman punched him headlong into a urinal at Joe Burton’s old place on Canal.

“We don’t need too much from you, Dave,” his partner said. “We’re just vague on a couple of points.”

“Like what you were doing in that snatch-patch out by the airport,” Baxter said.

“I heard about a girl that wanted to turn a couple of Segura’s people.”

“You didn’t find her?”

“No.”

“Then why did you have to spend all that time out there watching the gash?” Baxter said.

“I waited to see if she’d come in.”

“What’d you have to drink?”

“7-Up.”

“I didn’t know 7-Up caused people to shit their pants,” Baxter said.

“You’ve read the report. If you don’t believe me, that’s your problem.”

“No, it’s your problem. So run through it again.”

“Stick it up your butt, Baxter.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. You get out of my face.”

“Slow down, Dave,” his partner said. “It’s a wild story. People are going to ask questions about it. You got to expect that.”

“It’s supposed to be a wild story. That’s why they did it,” I said.

“I don’t think there’s any mystery here. I think you fell off the wagon, got a snootful, and crashed right on your head,” Baxter said. “The paramedics say you smelled like an unflushed toilet with whiskey poured in it.”

“I keep defending you. No matter what everybody says, I tell them that under that Mortimer Snerd polyester there’s a real cop who can sharpen pencils with the best administrators in the department. But you make it hard for me to keep on being your apologist, Baxter.”

“I think your mother must have been knocked up by a crab,” he said.

His partner’s face went gray.

“I’m going to be out of here by tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe I ought to call you up off-duty, meet you someplace, talk over some things. What do you think?”

“You call me up off-duty, you better be asking for bus fare to an AA meeting.”

“I’ve got a feeling it won’t make much difference if I go out of control here today.”

“I wish you would, wise-ass. I’d love to stomp the shit out of you.”

“Get out of here, Baxter, before somebody pours you out with the rest of the bedpans.”

“Keep popping those Quaaludes, hotshot, because you’re going to need them. It’s not me that’s dropping the hammer on you, either. You blew out your own doors this time. I hope you enjoy the fall, too, because it’s a big one.” Then he turned to his partner. “Let’s get out in the fresh air. This guy’s more depressing every time I see him.”

They went out the door, brushing past a young Irish nun in a white habit who was bringing in my lunch on a tray.

“My, what an intense pair,” she said.

“That’s probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said about them, Sister.”

“Are they after the men who did this to you?”

“I’m afraid they get paid for catching other cops.”

“I don’t understand.” Her face was round and pretty inside her nun’s wimple.

“It’s nothing. Sister, I don’t think I can eat lunch. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Your stomach will be better by tonight.”

“You know what I’d really like, that I’d give anything to have?”

“What?”

The words wouldn’t come. My eyes swept around the brightly lit room and went outside the window to the green tops of the oak trees moving in the breeze.

“Could you get me a big glass of Coca-Cola? With a lot of ice in it, maybe with cherry juice and slices of lime in it?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks very much, Sister.”

“Do you want anything else?”

“No. Just the Coca-Cola. I’m sure that’s all I need.”

That afternoon Captain Guidry sat on the foot of my bed, snuffed down in his nose, and wiped his glasses on my bedsheet.

“One time after every newspaper in the country condemned George Wallace as a racist, he told a reporter, ‘Well, that’s one man’s opinion,’” Captain Guidry said. “I was never his admirer, but I always liked that statement.”

“How bad is it going to be?”

“They stiffed you. Indefinite suspension without pay.”

“That’s what they give cops who get caught dealing dope.”

“For what it’s worth, I argued against it. They dumped on you, Dave, but you’ve got to see their side of it, too. In a week’s time your name has gotten into a lot of paperwork. We’re also talking about two people shot to death in one of the richest neighborhoods in New Orleans, and a Treasury agent killed in your automobile that falls three stories into the middle of a city street. That’s a tough act to follow.” ,

“Do you believe my report?”

“You’ve always been a good cop. There’s none better.”

“Do you believe me?”

“How the hell do I know what happened out there? To tell you the truth, I’m not sure you do, either, Dave. The paramedics said you were half crazy when they brought you in here. I saw what was left of your car. I don’t know how you survived it. The doctor said you had enough dope and booze in your blood to embalm the Russian army.”

“You want me to resign?”

“Don’t let them call the plays for you. You let parasites like Baxter see that you’re wounded and they’ll try to file a manslaughter charge against you.”

“That special agent, Fitzpatrick’s supervisor, knows who this guy Abshire is. I saw it in his eyes.”

“You shake a federal tree, and all you get in your face is birdshit. Secondly, you’re suspended. You’re out of it. That’s absolute.”

“What am I supposed to do, Captain?”

“It’s your turn in the barrel. I just hope it passes quick. Tell them all to go fuck themselves and take up needlepoint if you have to.”

I watched the sunset through the window that evening. The sky was crimson above the trees and the rooftops, then it turned lavender and finally a deep purple as the sun burned itself out in a crack of brilliant fire on the horizon. I sat alone in the dark awhile, then used the remote television control to switch on the twenty-four-hour cable news. I watched pictures of Salvadoran guerrillas threading their way through a jungle trail at the base of a dead volcano. Their faces were very young, with wispy beards like Orientals, and their bodies were hung with bandoliers and cloth belts of shotgun shells. Each of them had laced his straw hat with long blades of pampas grass.

A moment later the screen showed an unrelated scene of government troops in GI issue moving through a forest of banana trees and enormous clumps of green elephant ears. A Cobra gunship streaked across the glassy sky, hovered at an angle over a deep, rocky ravine, then unloaded a succession of rockets that blew water, powdered coral, and bits of trees and scrub brush out of the bottom of the ravine. The footage closed with a shot of the government troops retreating out of the banana trees with their wounded on stretchers. The heat in those trees must have been terrible, because the wounded were covered with sweat and the medics were washing their faces with water from canteens. It all looked very familiar.

Having been raised in Louisiana, I had always thought that politics was the province of moral invalids. But as a gambler I had certain instincts about which side I would wager my money on in certain military situations. On one side of the equation were people who had been conscripted into the army and were either forced or paid to fight, and who sometimes sold their weapons to the enemy if given the chance. On the other side was a group that lived off the jungle, scavenged guns and ammunition wherever they could buy or steal them, had absolutely nothing of economic value to lose, and who, because they had no illusions about their fate if they were captured, would go down to the last man in a firefight. I doubted there was a bookie in New Orleans who would take a bet on that one.

But my war was over, and maybe my career as well. I turned off the set and looked out the window at the reflection of the lights against the sky. The room was quiet, the sheets were cool and clean, and my stomach didn’t feel sick anymore; but the tuning fork was still vibrating inside me. I brushed my teeth, I showered, I rinsed my mouth with Listerine again; then I got back in bed and pulled my knees up in front of me and started to shake all over.

Fifteen minutes later I checked myself out of the hospital and took a cab to my houseboat. It was a dark, hot night and the heat had built up all day in the cabin. My collection of historical jazz records—irreplaceable seventy-eights of Blind Lemon, Bunk Johnson, Kid Ory, Bix Beiderbecke—lay scattered and broken and tattooed with footprints on the floor. I opened the windows wide, turned on my floor fan, picked up the few records that were still hard and stiff in their jackets, cleaned them with a soft cloth, and set them in the wail rack. Then I swept the rest into a paper bag and lay down to sleep on the couch with my clothes on.

Small waves chucked against the hull, and the boat rocked rhythmically under me. But it was no good; I couldn’t sleep. I was sweating and trembling and when I took my shirt off I shivered as though I’d been struck with a blast of arctic air. Each time I closed my eyes I felt the earth’s surface drop away under me, felt myself spinning end over end inside my automobile toward the distant bottom of a rock-strewn canyon, saw words form like a bubble on the dead lips of Sam Fitzpatrick sitting next to me.

Later, Annie Ballard tapped softly on the cabin door. I unlocked it and went back to the couch in the dark. A sailing yacht out on the lake had a floodlamp lighted on its deck, and it made gold lights in Annie’s hair. I saw her feel for the switch on the wall.

“Don’t turn it on,” I said.

“Why not?”

“People just out of the hospital don’t look good.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.”

“You knew I was coming up there. Didn’t you want to leave me a message?”

“I thought I did. Maybe I didn’t. There were cops in there all day.”

She walked closer to the couch. She wore a pair of white jeans with a blue denim shirt tucked inside.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“I guess it’s malaria. I picked it up in the Philippines.”

“I’m going to turn on the light.”

“No.”

“You don’t have to hide anything, Dave.”

“I’m suspended without pay. I don’t feel well right now. To tell you the truth, I feel like killing somebody.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When they suspend you indefinitely without pay, it means you’re probably not coming back. It’s the kind of stuff they drop on cops that are about to be indicted.”

She sat down on the edge of the couch and put her hand on my bare shoulder. Her face was a dark silhouette against the glass behind her. She touched my forehead with her fingers.

“I can’t believe they would do that to you.”

“It’s my past history. You don’t know about it. I was a full-blown drunk for years. They figure I’m back into it.”

“They can’t hold the past against you.”

“Why the hell not? It makes it easier. Most cops couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag. They think categorically about virtually every situation. That’s why we don’t put a lot of people away. Look, four pieces of human slime that wouldn’t even make good bars of soap are out there right now drinking a beer, celebrating burning a kid into charcoal, while some of our own people are wondering if they should hang a DUI on me, or a DUI and a manslaughter charge.”

“You’re not talking like yourself.”

“Annie, in the real world we fry paupers in the electric chair and send priests to prison for splashing chicken blood on draft files. It’s the nature of ritual. We deal with the problem symbolically, but somebody has to take the fall. In this case, a guy that looked like he escaped from a Popsicle wrapper launched a one-man crusade against an entire government policy in Central America. If you were an administrative pencil-pusher, don’t you think it would be easier to deal with a drunk-driving fatality than a story about a lot of right-wing crazies who are killing peasant villagers in Nicaragua?”

“Why do you think you’re the only person who sees the truth?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it’s the way you feel, Dave. That’s too big a burden for a person.” Her face was soft and composed and she looked out the window across the water for a moment, then stood up and began undressing in the dark.

“Annie, I’m not a charity case. I’m just not doing too good today.”

“If you want me to go away, tell me. But look me directly in the face and tell me honestly, with no weirdness or bullshit this time.”