A Stained White Radiance dr-5 Page 11

  "You ever see a bishop drive a Volkswagen?"

  "I'll get off right there at the corner. Thanks very much for the evening."

  I stepped out onto the gravel road, closed the car door, and walked toward a clapboard bar that vibrated with the noise from inside. Lyle's fire-engine-red convertible grew small in the distance, then disappeared in the purple shadows between the sugarcane fields.

  I had to wait to use the pay phone in the bar, and I drank a 7 Up at a table in the corner and watched a drunk blackhaired girl in blue jeans dance by herself in front of the bandstand. Her undulating, slim body was haloed in cigarette smoke.

  I hadn't meant to be self-righteous with Lyle. I truly felt for him and his family and what they had endured at the hands of the father and the prostitute named Mattie, but Lyle also made me angry in a way that I couldn't quite describe to myself. It wasn't simply that he pandered to an audience of ignorant and fearful people or that he misused the money they gave him; it went even deeper than that. Maybe it was the fact that Lyle had truly been inside the fire storm, had seen human behavior at its worst and best, had made a mistake down in a tunnel that perhaps beset his conscience with a level of pain that could only be compared to having one's skin ripped off in strips with a pair of pliers. And he sold it all as cheaply as you might market the plastic flowers that adorned the stage of his live TV show.

  Yes, that was it, I thought. He had made a meretricious enterprise out of an experience that you share with no one except those who've been there, too. I don't believe that's an elitist attitude, either. There are events you witness, or in which you participate, that forever remain sacrosanct and inviolate in memory, no matter how painful that memory is, because of the cost that you or others paid in order to be there in that moment when the camera lens clicked shut.

  How do you tell someone that a drunk blue-collar girl dancing in a low-rent Louisiana bar, her black hair curled around her neck like a rope, makes you remember a dead Vietnamese girl on a trail three klicks from her village? She wore sandals, floppy black shorts, a white blouse, and she lay on her back, with one leg folded under her, her eyes closed as though in sleep, the only disfiguration in her appearance a dried stream of blood that curled from the corner of her mouth like a red snake. Why was she there? I don't know. Was she killed by American or enemy fire? I don't know that either. I only remember that at the time I wanted to see a weapon near her person, to believe that she was one of them But there was no weapon, and in all probability she was simply a schoolgirl returning from visiting someone in another village when she was killed.

  That was my third day in-country. That was twenty-six years ago. I had news for Lyle. He might be honest about the spiders crawling around in his head, but he wouldn't get rid of them by trying to sell them through a television tube.

  You offer them the real thing, Brother Lyle, you tell them the real story about what happened over there, and they'll put you in a cage and take out your brains with an ice cream scoop.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next morning I telephoned Drew to ask her about the intruder in her kitchen, but there was no answer, and later when I went by her house she wasn't home. I stuck my business card in the corner of her screen door.

  As I drove back down East Main under the oaks that arched over the street, I saw her jogging along the sidewalk in a T-shirt and a pair of purple shorts, her tan skin glistening with sweat. She raised her arm and waved at me, her breasts big and round against her shirt, but I didn't stop. She could call me if she wanted to, I told myself.

  I drove home for lunch and stopped my pickup at the mailbox on the dirt road at the foot of my property. Among the letters and bills was a heavy brown envelope with no postage and my name written across it with no address. I cut the engine, sorted out the junk mail, then sliced open the brown envelope with my pocket knife. Inside were a typed letter and twenty one-hundred dollar bills. The letter read:

  We think this fell out of your pocket in Weldon Sonniers house. We think you should have it back. The cop in the basement was an accident. Nobody wanted it that way. He could have walked out of it but he wanted to be a hard guy. Sonnier is a welsher and a rick. If you want to be his knothole, that's your choice. But we think you should mark off all this bull shit and stay in New Iberia. What you've got here is two letrge with more down the road, maybe some business opportunities too, if we get the right signals. Let Sonnier drown in his own shit. If you don't want the money, blow your nose on it. It's all the same to us. We just wanted to offer you an intelligent alternative to being Sonnier main localfuck.

  I replaced the hundred-dollar bills and the letter in the envelope, put the envelope in my back pocket, and walked down to the dock. Batist was squatted down on the boards in the sunlight, scaling a stringer of bluegill with a spoon.

  The sun was hot off the water, and sweat coursed down between the shoulder blades of his bare back.

  "Did you see someone besides the postman up by the mailbox?" I asked.

  He squinted his eyes in the glare and thought for a moment. The backs of his hands were shiny with fish mucus.

  "A man pass on a mortorsickle," he said.

  "Did he stop?"

  "Yeah, I t'ink he stopped. Yeah, he sho' did."

  "What did he look like?"

  "I ain't real sure. I ain't paid him much mind, Dave. Somet'ing wrong?"

  "It's nothing to worry about."

  Batist tapped his spoon on the dock.

  "I 'member he was dressed funny," he said. "He didn't have no shirt but he wore them Vings on his pants, what you call them t'ings, you see them in the movies."

  I tried to visualize what he meant, but I was at a loss, as I often was when I tried to talk with Batist in either English or French.

  "What movies?" I said.

  "The cowboy movies."

  "Chaps? Big leather floppy things that fit over the legs?"

  "Yeah, that's it. They was black, and he had tattoos on his back. And he had long hair, too."

  "What kind of tattoos?"

  "I don't 'member that."

  "Okay, partner. That's not bad."

  "What ain't bad?"

  "Nothing. Don't worry about it."

  "Worry about what?"

  "Nothing. I'm going up to the house for lunch now. If you see this guy again, call me. But don't mess with him. Okay?"

  "This is a bad guy?"

  "Maybe."

  "This is a bad guy, but Batist ain't suppose to worry, no. You somet'ing else, Dave. Lord, if you ain't."

  He went back to scraping the fish with his spoon. I started to speak again, but I had learned long ago to leave Batist alone when I had offended him by underestimating his perception of a situation.

  I walked up to the house, and Bootsie and I ate lunch on the redwood table under the mimosa tree in the backyard.

  She wore a flowered sundress, and had put on lipstick and earrings, which she seldom did in the middle of the day.

  "How do you like the sandwich?" she said.

  "It's really good." It was, too. Ham and onion and horseradish, one of my favorites.

  "Did something happen today?"

  "No, not really."

  "Nothing happened?"

  "Somebody put some money in our mailbox. It's a bribery attempt. Batist thinks it was a guy on a motorcycle.

  Somebody with riding chaps and tattoos on his back. So kind of look out for him, although I doubt he'll be back."

  "Is this about Weldon Sonnier?"

  "Yeah, I think Clete and I shook up somebody's cookie bag when we went to Bobby Earl's house."

  "You think Bobby Earl's trying to bribe you?"

  "No, he's slicker than that. It's probably coming from somewhere else, maybe somebody who's connected with him. I'm not sure."

  "You got a call from Drew Sonnier."

  "Oh?"

  "Why did she call here, Dave?"

  "I left my card at her house this morning."

  "At her house. I see."


  "Lyle said somebody broke into her house."

  "Doesn't that involve the city police, not the sheriff's department?"

  "She didn't report it to them."

  "I see. So you're investigating?"

  I looked at the mallards splashing on the pond at the back of our property.

  "I promised Lyle I'd talk to her."

  "Lyle made you promise? Is that right? I had the impression that you had a low opinion of Lyle."

  "Ease up, Boots. This case is a pain in the butt as it is."

  "I'm sure that it is. Why don't we ask Drew over sometime? I haven't seen her in a long time."

  "Because I'm not interested in seeing Drew."

  "I think she's very nice. I've always been fond of her."

  "What should I do, Boots? Pretend she's not part of this case?"

  "Why should you do that? I don't think you should do that at all."

  I could see the peculiar cast coming into her eyes, as though inside her head she had seen a thought or a conclusion that should have been as obvious to the rest of the world as it was to her.

  "Let's go to the track tonight," I said.

  "Let's do. Will you call her this afternoon? I think you should."

  I tried to read what was in her eyes. The mood swings, the distorted and fearful perception, took place sometimes as quickly as a bird flying in and out of a cage.

  "I might talk to her," I said, and put my hand on top of hers, "but I don't think she'll be much help in the case. The Sonniers don't trust other people. But I have to try to do what I can."

  "Of course you do, Dave. Nobody said otherwise." And she looked off at the periwinkles blowing in the shade next to the coulee. The light in her eyes was as private as a solcandle burning in a church.

  "We'll take Alafair to Possum's for gtoufge before we go to the track," I said. "Or maybe we can just come home and rent a movie."

  "That would be wonderful."

  "The sandwiches were really good. It's sure nice to come home and have lunch with you, Boots. Maybe after I close the drawer on this case, I might take leave of the department. We're doing pretty well at the dock."

  "Don't fool yourself. You'll never stop being a cop, Dave."

  I looked into her eyes again, and they were suddenly clear, as though the breeze had blown a dark object away from her line of vision.

  I squeezed her hand, rose from the wood bench, and went around behind her and kissed her hair and hugged her against me. I could feel her heart beating under my arms.

  At the office I gave the sheriff the envelope containing the two thousand dollars and the unsigned letter.

  "It must be a cheap outfit," he said. "You'd think they'd pay a little more to get a cop on the pad."

  He had run a dry-cleaning business before he became sheriff. He was also a Boy Scout master and belonged to the Lions Club, not for political reasons but because he thoroughly enjoyed being a Scoutmaster and belonging to the Lions Club. He was a thoughtful and considerate man, and I always hated to correct him or to suggest that his career as an elected police officer would probably always consist of on-the-job training.

  "Seduction usually comes a teaspoon at a time," I said. "Sometimes a cop who won't take fifty grand will take two. Then one day you find yourself way down the road and you don't remember where you made a hard left turn."

  He wore large rimless glasses, and his stomach swelled over his gunbelt. Through the window behind his desk I could see two black trusties from the parish jail washing patrol cars in the parking lot. He scratched the blue and red veins in his soft cheek with his fingernail.

  "Who do you think it came from?" he asked.

  "Somebody with long-range plans, somebody who's always looking around to buy a cop. Probably the mob or somebody in it."

  "Not from Bobby Earl?"

  "His kind only pay out money when you catch them sodomizing sheep. I'm pretty sure we're dealing with the wiseguys now."

  "What do you think they'll do next?"

  "If I stay out of New Orleans, there will probably be another envelope. Then they'll offer me a job providing security in one of their nightclubs or in a counting room at the track."

  He put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and rotated it with his fingers.

  "I've got a bad feeling about all this," he said. "I surely do."

  "Why?"

  "Don't underestimate Bobby Earl's potential. I met him a couple of times ten or twelve years ago, when he was still appearing in Klan robes. This guy could make the ovens sing and grin while he was doing it."

  "Maybe. But I never met one of those guys who wasn't a physical and moral coward."

  "I saw Garrett's body before the autopsy. It was hard to look at, and I was in Korea. Watch your butt, Dave."

  His eyes were unblinking over his rimless glasses.

  By two Pm. it was ninety-five degrees outside; the sunlight off the cement was as bright as a white flame; the palm trees looked dry and desiccated in the hot wind; and my own day was just warming up.

  I called Drew again and this time she answered. I was ready to argue with her, to lecture her about her and Weldon's lack of cooperation in the case, even blame her for my difficulties with Bootsie at lunch. In fact, my opening statement was "Who was this guy in your kitchen, Drew, and why didn't you report it?"

  I could hear her breathing in the receiver.

  "Lyle told you?" she said.

  "As well as Lyle can tell me anything, without trying to sell glow-in-the-dark Bibles at the same time. I'll tell you I've pretty well had it with your family's attitude. I don't want to be unkind, but the three of you behave like y'all have been shooting up with liquid Drano."

  She was quiet again, then I heard her begin to weep.

  "Drew?"

  But she continued to cry without answering, the kind of unrelieved and subdued sobbing that comes from deep down in the breast.

  "Drew, I apologize. I've had some bad concerns on my mind and I was taking them out on you. I'm truly sorry for what I said. It was thoughtless and stupid."

  I squeezed my temples with my thumb and forefinger.

  "Drew?"

  I heard her swallow and take a deep breath.

  "Sometimes I'm not very smart," I said. "You know I've always admired you. You have more political courage than anybody I've ever known."

  "I don't know what to do. I've always had choices before. Now I don't. I can't deal with that."

  "I don't understand."

  "Sometimes you get caught. Sometimes there's no way out. I've never let that happen to me."

  "Do you want to come into the office? Do you want me to come out there? Tell me what you want to do."

  "I don't know what I want to do."

  "I'm going to come over there now. Is that all right?"

  "I have to take the maid home, and I promised to stop by the market with her. Can you come out about four?"

  "Sure."

  "You don't mind?"

  "No, of course not."

  "It doesn't make you uncomfortable?"

  "No, not at all. That's silly. Don't think that way."

  After I had hung up the phone, I looked wanly at the damp imprint of my hand on the receiver. Were her tears for her brother or herself, I wondered. But then what right had I to be judgmental?

  Oh Lord, I thought.

  I was almost out the door when the dispatcher caught me in the hallway.

  "Pick up your line," he said. "A sergeant in the First District in New Orleans has been holding for you."

  "Take a message. I'll call him back."

  "You'd better get it, Dave. He says somebody stomped the shit out of Cletus Purcel."

  After I had finished talking with the sergeant in New Orleans, who had not been the investigative officer and who couldn't tell me much other than Clete's room number in the hospital off St. Charles and the fact that Clete wanted to see me, that somebody had worked him over bad with a piece of pipe, I told the dispatcher to send a uniformed de
puty out to Drew's house and to call Bootsie and tell her that I would be home late and would call her from New Orleans. The wind was hot through my truck windows as I drove across the causeway over the Atchafalaya marsh. The air tasted like brass, like it was full of ozone, and I could smell dead fish on the banks of the willow islands and the odor of brine off the Gulf. The willows looked wilted in the heat, and the few fishermen who were out had pulled their boats into the warm shade of the oil platforms that dotted the bays.

  I thought of an event, a low moment in my life, that had occurred almost fifteen years ago. I had been sent to Las Vegas to pick up a prisoner at the county jail and escort him back to New Orleans. But the paperwork and the court clearance had taken almost two days, and I walked in disgust from the courthouse down a palm-lined boulevard in 115-degree heat to a casino and cool bar, where I began drinking a series of vodka collinses as though they were soda pop. Then I had a blackout and seven hours disappeared from my day. I woke up in a rented car out on the desert about 10 PM., my head and body as numb and devoid of feeling and connection with the day as if stunned from crown to sole with novocaine, the distant neon city blazing in the purple cup of mountains.

  There was blood on my shirt and my knuckles, and a woman's compact was on the floor. My wallet was gone, along with my money, traveler's checks, credit cards, identification, and finally my shield and my.38 special. I remembered nothing except walking from the bar to a twenty-one table with my drink in my hand and sitting among a polite group of players from Ocala, Florida.

  I drove trembling back to the hotel and tried to drink myself sober with room-service Jim Beam. By midnight I went into the DTs and believed that the red message light on my phone meant that once again I had received a long-distance call from the dead members of my platoon. When I finally became rational enough to pick up the receiver and talk to the desk clerk, I was told that I had a message from Cletus Purcel.

  I had to use both hands to dial his number, while the sweat slid out of my hair and down the sides of my face.

  Six hours later he was standing in my hotel room in his Budweiser shorts, sandals, porkpie hat, and cutoff LSU T-shirt that looked like a tank top on a hippo.