The Neon Rain (3 page)

“What do you want, Purcel?” he said indifferently.

“Dave, meet Wesley Potts, our resident bucket of shit,” Cletus said.

“I don’t have time for your insults, Purcel. You got a warrant or something?”

“That’s what they say on television, Pottsie,” Cletus said. “You see any TV cameras, Dave?”

“I don’t see any TV cameras,” I said.

“On television some guy is always saying ‘You got a warrant?’ or ‘You got to read me my rights,’” Cletus said. “But in big-people land we don’t do it that way. You ought to know that, Pottsie.”

“I thought you didn’t work vice anymore,” Potts said.

“That’s right. I’m in homicide now. My partner here’s last name is Robicheaux. Does that make your swizzle stick start to tingle?”

The man behind the desk blew cigar smoke out in front of him and looked into it with his eyes flat, but I saw his fingers crimp together on the desk blotter.

“Your little brother up at Angola says you’re blabbing it around that Dave here is going to get snuffed,” Cletus said.

“If that’s what my brother says, you ought to be talking to him. I don’t know anything about it.”

“The people up at Angola don’t like cops hitting on their convicts. Bad for their image and all that,” Cletus said. “But you and us, well, that’s a whole different caper, Wes.”

Potts’s eyes were small and hot and staring straight ahead.

“Lighten up,” Cletus said. “You’re a businessman, you pay taxes, you’re reasonable. You just got diarrhea of the mouth and you been spreading rumors around, and we want to know why you been doing that. It’s no big deal. Just straighten us out about this strange stuff we heard, and you can get back to entertaining the perverts. Look at the material you got here. This is classy stuff.” Cletus began to bang through the film cans on the wooden rack. He picked up one in both hands and looked at the penciled title with a critical eye. “This one is state-of-the-art porn, Dave. In one scene a guy kills a naked broad with a nail gun. She screams and begs, but the guy chases her around the house and staples pieces of her all over the woodwork.” Cletus opened the can, held on to one end of the film, and dropped the reel bouncing on the floor. He held the film strip up to the light. “The funny thing, Wes, is sometimes a John goes apeshit and tears a hooker up, and I get the feeling that maybe the guy just finished eating popcorn out there in your theater. What do you think?”

“I never look at that stuff. I couldn’t tell you what’s in it. I just manage the place. It’s a movie house, with a license, with fire exits, with sanitary bathrooms just like any other movie house. You don’t like the place, go talk to the people that give out the permit.”

Cletus began opening the other film cans, dropping the reels to the floor, and walking on them as he worked his way down the rack. Thick tangles of film were looped around his ankles and shoes.

“You cut it out, you bastard,” Potts said.

“How’d you get into the IRS beef?” Cletus said.

“Fuck off.”

“You’re fronting points for the spicks, aren’t you?” Cletus said. “You probably don’t have fifteen people out there right now, but you show profits like you have the patent on the wheel. Why is that?”

“I sell lots of popcorn.”

“All that coke and brown scag money finds a ledger to get written down on,” Cletus said. “Except the Treasury boys are about to ream your butthole.”

“I don’t see any Treasury men. All I see is a plainclothes prick that never grew up from high school,” Potts said. “Where the fuck you get off with this stuff? You smash up my films, you come down on me because of something my little brother said which I don’t even know he said, and you give me some bullshit about Mexican scag, when if I remember right you never busted anybody more serious than a junkie with a couple of balloons in his crotch. Maybe you took a little juice while you were in vice, huh? You’re a fucking joke, Purcel.”

“Listen to this man carry on,” Cletus said. “We’re going to have to have privacy. Does this door go into the theater? Thanks, that’s what I thought.”

He opened a side door that gave onto a small theater that looked like a remodeled garage. In the flickering darkness a dozen or so men stared fixedly at the screen.

“What’s happening, geeks?” Cletus said loudly, and began flicking the light switch on and off. “I’m the New Orleans heat. I just wanted to make sure everything was working all right. Enjoy your show.”

They rose quickly from their seats and moved as a group up the aisles farthest from Cletus and went through the curtained exit.

“Big deal. The same guys’ll be sitting out there tonight,” Potts said.

“Could you leave me and Wesley alone a few minutes?” I said.

“I thought you might say that,” Cletus said, and crunched again through the tangle of ruined film on the floor and closed the door behind him.

I sat on the corner of Potts’s desk and folded my hands on my thigh.

“How do you think this is going to end?” I said.

“What d’ you mean?”

“Just what I said. Do you think you can tell people somebody is going to blow me away and I’m just going to walk out of here?”

His sucked in his lips and looked at the wall.

“Tell me what you think is going to happen,” I said.

“I don’t know. I never saw you before. Why would I go around talking about you?”

“Who wants to drop the hammer on me, Wes?”

“I don’t know any such thing.”

“Do you think I’m a dumb guy?”

“I don’t know what you are.”

“Oh, yes you do. I’m the guy you never thought you’d see, just a vague figure in your mind you could laugh about getting snuffed. I’ve sort of showed up like a bad dream, haven’t I?”

“I got nothing against you,” he said. “I run a legal business. I don’t cause you guys trouble.”

“But I’m sitting here on your desk now. It’s like waking up with a vulture on your bedpost, isn’t it?”

“What are you going to do? Trash the place, knock me around? Big fucking deal.”

I took out my five-inch, single-blade Puma pocket knife and opened it. The blade could fillet bass like a barber’s razor. It trembled with light.

“Jesus Christ, man, what are you doing?” he said.

I picked up his cigar from the ashtray, sliced off the burning end on the desktop, and put the still-warm stub in Potts’ shirt pocket.

“You can smoke the rest of that later,” I said.

“What the fuck! Are you crazy, man?” he said. His face had gone white. He swallowed and stared at me, his eyes full of fear and confusion.

“You know who Didi Gee is, don’t you?”

“Sure, everybody does. Why you ask about—”

“What’s he do?”

“What d’you mean?”

“What’s he do? Tell me now.”

“Everything. Whores, numbers, unions, y’all know that.”

“We’re going to have lunch with him and I’m going to tell him what you told me.”

“What?”

“He has lunch in Jimmie the Gent’s restaurant every Tuesday at two o’clock. You and I are going to sit at the next table and have a chat with the fat boy himself. Believe me, he’ll find you an entertaining guy.”

“I ain’t going.”

“Yes you are. You’re under arrest.”

“What for? I didn’t do anything,” he said desperately.

“You said something about cash. That sounded like an attempted bribe to me.”

His eyes flicked back and forth frantically. Pinpoints of sweat broke out on his forehead.

“I said ‘trash.’ I said ‘trash the place.’”

“I’m hard of hearing. Anyway, I’ll think about it on the way over to the restaurant. Do you believe that story about Didi Gee’s aquarium, the one full of piranha? I heard he held a Teamster’s hand in it for a full minute. Maybe that’s just another one of those bullshit Mafia stories, though. Put your hands out in front of you, I’m going to cuff you. You can carry your coat across your wrists if it embarrasses you.”

“I don’t rattle. You’re running a game on me.”

“You dealt the hand, Wes. Play it out. But right now you put your wrists in front of you or I’m going to break open your fucking worthless face.”

He was breathing loudly now, his hands clenched in fists on the desk blotter.

“Listen, Lieutenant, I heard the other guys say something. Lot of times they’re just blowing gas. It don’t necessarily mean anything. I didn’t hear it from Mr. Segura. You understand that? It didn’t come from Mr. Segura. It’s just street talk, a bunch of guys’ bullshit.”

“You’re talking about the Colombian?”

“He’s from Nicaragua.”

“Goon.”

He wiped his lips with his fingers, then pulled at the flap of skin under his chin.

“It’s got something to do with a nigger girl. I think she used to be a street whore. Didn’t you pull a nigger out of the bayou in Cataouatche Parish?”

“You just keep telling me what you know, Wes.”

“Jesus Christ, Lieutenant, what d’you think I am? I’m just a theater manager. Maybe once a month Mr. Segura has a bunch of guys out to his place on the lake. A buffet, a lot of booze, some broads in the pool. He shakes everybody’s hand, maybe has a collins with us or plays cards a few minutes under the beach umbrella, then disappears inside.”

“What’s the girl have to do with Julio Segura?”

“You’re not understanding me, Lieutenant. He don’t tell me things like that. He don’t talk to me about anything, in fact. Look, this is a heavy-metal cat. I think he’s wired into big people. Why mess with him? The feds deal with guys like this.”

I continued to stare silently at him. His hands flicked on the desk blotter as though wires were attached to them.

“They say you’re making noise about a nigger girl you found in another parish,” he said. “That ain’t your territory, so they wonder why the interest. For some reason they think you’re after them. Don’t ask me why. I don’t even like to be around that kind of talk. I walk away from it. That’s the God’s truth.”

“You really bother me, Wes. I have great concern about your sincerity. I also have the feeling you think you’re omniscient.”

“Wha—”

“Tell me if I’m wrong. You think you can intuit exactly what I’ll accept. You’re going to jerk me around and tell me bedtime stories, then snort a line or two after I’m gone to calm your nerves, and your day will be back intact again. That indicates a serious problem with vanity and pride. What do you think?”

“Look—” he began, his mouth smiling, his eyes cast down self-deprecatingly.

“No, no, it’s time for Wes to listen and me to talk. You see, when you shoot off your mouth about the murder of a police officer, you invite some dangerous complications into your life. Number one, foreknowledge can make an accomplice out of you, Wes. Then, on a more basic level, there are several men I work with who would simply cool you out. Are we communicating here?”

“Yes,” he said weakly.

“There’s no confusion?”

“No.”

“All right, Wes. We’ll talk again later. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

I stood up from his desk and walked toward the door. I could hear him expel his breath.

Then: “Lieutenant?”

I turned and looked at him. His face was small and pale.

“Will this get back to Mr. Segura?” he said. “A couple of the Latin guys that work for him… cruel guys… they were cops or national guardsmen or something in Nicaragua… I don’t like to think about the stuff they do.”

“No guarantees. You sniff something bad in the wind, come to us and we’ll get you out of town.”

The sun was blazing outside. Across the street, three black kids were tap dancing for the tourists in the shade of the scrolled iron colonnade. The huge taps they wore sounded like drumsticks clicking on metal. Cletus stood out of the sunlight’s glare, watching, with his seersucker coat over one arm. “What’d you get from old Pottsie?”

“It was the black girl I found in Bayou Lafourche. It’s got the smell of dope and the Barataria pirates. Did you ever run up against Julio Segura when you were on vice?”

“You better believe it. He’s your genuine, certified greaseball. The guy’s got Vitalis oozing out of every pore.”

“I thought he was a Colombian.”

“He’s hooked in with them, but he’s from Managua. I heard he owned a hundred whorehouses down there. They say the Sandinistas shot holes all over his plane just as it cleared the field. The guy’s a survivor. We tried to get him two or three times. I think he’s got a lot of high-up juice going for him.”

We walked in the warm shade back toward Royal Street, where we had left the car parked in front of the oyster bar. I went into a small, dark grocery store cooled by a wooden-bladed overhead fan, and bought a
Times-Picayune
. The interior of the store smelled of bananas, coffee, blocks of cheese, and big wooden bins filled with grapes and plums. I opened the
Picayune
to the sports page as we walked along.

“Y’all want to go to the races tonight?” I said.

“Forget the races. Let’s front the spick. We tell the captain about it first, then we go out to his house and flip his necktie in his face.”

“Nope. Too soon.”

“Bullshit. The only way to handle these guys is jump up and down on their nuts. In this case we want the guy to know it’s personal. We deliver the Candygram right in his living room.”

“I appreciate it, Clete, but I’ll let you know when it’s time to toggle out there. Don’t worry. You won’t miss out on the party.”

“You’re too laid back. I’m telling you, this guy is subhuman. He makes an animal like Didi Gee look like the archbishop by comparison.”

“Damn,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Next time, we take your car to lunch.”

“What for?”

“That’s my car on the back of that tow truck.”

The light was soft on the lake as I dressed on the houseboat that evening. Up the shore I could see the palm and cypress trees blowing in the wind off the Gulf. The air smelled like rain again. I felt very alone and quiet inside, and I wondered if my feeling of confident solitude, my peculiar moment of serenity inside, was not a deceptive prelude to another turbulent time in my life. Maybe it was just a brief courtship with narcissism. My body was still hard and lean, my skin brown, the old scar from the dung-tipped
pungi
stick like a broken gray snake embossed on my stomach. My hair and brush mustache were still as black as ink, except for the white patch above one ear, and I convinced myself every morning that living alone was no more a mark of age and failure than it was of youth and success. The dark purple clouds piled on the Gulf’s southern horizon trembled with heat lightning.