Last Car to Elysian Fields dr-13 Page 12

  Theo removed the guitar from its case and sat down again on the steps. She made a chord on the neck and brushed her thumb across the strings, then began singing "Corina, Corina" in Cajun French. She had been much too humble about her ability. Her voice was lovely, her accompaniment with herself perfect as she ran each chord into the next. In fact, like all real artists, she seemed to disappear inside the thing she created, as though the identity by which others knew her had nothing to do with the inner realities of her life.

  She smiled at me when she finished, almost like a woman delivering a kiss after she has made love.

  "Gee, you're great, Theo," I heard myself saying.

  "My mother used to sing that. I don't remember her well, but I remember her singing that song to me before I went to sleep," she said. She began putting away her guitar.

  The cat she had named Snuggs nuzzled his head against her knee. The wind riffled through the oak and pecan trees overhead, and a group of children on their way to the library rode by on bicycles, laughing, the streetlights glowing in the dampness like the oil lamps in a Van Gogh painting. There was not a mechanized sound on the street, only the easy sweep of wind and the scratching of leaves on the sidewalk. I didn't want the moment to end.

  But like the canker in the rose or the serpent uncoiling itself out of an apple tree, there had been an element in Theo's song that disturbed me in a way I couldn't let go of.

  "The melody for "Corina, Corina' is the same as "The Midnight Special,"" I said.

  "Un-huh," she said vaguely.

  "That was Leadbelly's song. The Midnight Special was a train he rode into the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. According to the prison legend, the convict who saw the headlight on the locomotive shining at him in his sleep was going to be released in the coming year."

  But I saw she had still not made the connection.

  "Your father didn't want to answer questions about Junior Crudup, Theo," I said. "Crudup was Leadbelly's friend inside Angola. They probably composed songs together. I think Crudup was a convict laborer on your father's plantation."

  She continued snapping her guitar case shut and never looked at me while I spoke. But I could see what I thought was a great sadness in her eyes. She reached over and petted the cat good-bye, then turned toward me. "You have an enormous reservoir of anger inside you, Dave. I guess I feel sorry for you," she said.

  The next morning events kicked into overdrive, beginning with a phone call from Clotile Arceneaux, the black patrolwoman who Helen said was an undercover state trooper.

  "We've got Father Jimmie Dolan in custody," she said.

  "Are you serious?" I said.

  "As a material witness. He won't give up Max Coil's whereabouts."

  "Which administrative moron is behind this?" I said.

  She paused before she spoke again. "Coll tried to kill the priest but he won't press charges. So a couple of detectives figured Father Jimmie is not a friend of N.O.P.D. and decided to put the squeeze on him. Look, the word on the street is there's an open contract on Max Coll. We need this guy out of town or in lock-up. We also don't need trouble from Catholic priests."

  "Can't help you," I said, and hung up the phone.

  She called back three hours later. "Guess who?" she said.

  "Same answer as before," I said.

  "Try this. We just heard from Miami-Dade P.D. Max Coll flew into Ft. Lauderdale, whacked two grease balls who were getting laid on a yacht, then caught the last flight back to New Orleans. At least that's what they think. Get Dolan out of Central Lock-Up. Better yet, get him out of the state," she said.

  But I didn't have to spring Father Jimmie. The bishop and Father Jimmie's conservative colleagues at his church came through for him, evidently making trouble from the mayor's office on down through the chain of command at N.O.P.D.

  Father Jimmie called me at home that evening. "You know the story of Typhoid Mary?" he said.

  "A nineteenth-century cook or kitchen helper who caused problems everywhere she went?" I replied.

  "The bishop is recommending I travel somewhere that's quiet and rustic. Maybe do a little bass fishing. I think anywhere outside of New Orleans would be fine with him," he said.

  I shut my eyes and tried not to think about what he was obviously suggesting. "Straight up, Jimmie. Do you know where Max Coll is hiding?"

  "Absolutely not," he said.

  "Why didn't you file charges against him?"

  "The cops need a Catholic minister to tell them Coil's a killer?"

  I rubbed the back of my neck. "Want to entertain the bass?" I asked.

  Father Jimmie moved into a back room of my house and the weekend passed uneventfully. On Monday Clete called the department and asked me to meet him for lunch at Victor's Cafeteria.

  It was crowded with noontime customers, the wood-bladed fans turning high above us on the stamped-tin ceiling, the steam tables arrayed with Friday specials featuring shrimp or catfish or etoufee. Clete's plate was piled with dirty rice and brown gravy, kidney beans, and two deep-fried pork chops. He wore an electric blue shirt and white sports coat, his face red with sunburn from a tarpon-fishing trip out on the salt. "Dolan's at your place, huh?" he said.

  I nodded, waiting for him to begin one of his lectures. But he surprised me.

  "There's an N.O.P.D. snitch I pay a few bucks to. He called me this morning about a bail skip who's hid out in Morgan City. Then he mentions this guy Max Coll. He says Coll capped two high-level Miami grease balls and there's a fifty thou open whack on him. Which means every street rat in New Orleans is crawling out of the sewer grates."

  "Yeah, I heard about it."

  "Right," Clete said, feeding a half piece of bread into his mouth. "Well, tell me if you've heard this. At seven this morning either Frank Dellacroce or his clone was in the donut shop by the railway tracks."

  "Here, in New Iberia? The guy you saw shooting pool in Fat Sammy's house?"

  "He came out of the donut shop just when I was going in. At first he couldn't believe his bad luck. Then he puts on a wise-ass grin and says, "You fish for green trout over here, Purcel?" I go, "No, I'm looking for a needle dick who puts his own child in a refrigerator. Know anybody like that, Frank?"

  "He goes, "That story is a lie my wife's lawyer spread about me during our divorce. So why don't you either pull your head out of your ass or mind your own fucking business?""

  People around us were quietly picking up their plates and trays and moving to tables farther away from us.

  "Just then two more grease balls come out of the donut shop. One used to be a shooter for the Giacanos. The other one I don't know."

  "How do you read it?" I asked.

  "They think Dolan knows where Coll is hiding. Any way you cut it, big mon, you've let Dolan piss in your shoe." "Can we take our food to the park?" I said. "What's the problem?"

  "I think we're about to get thrown out of here." "What for?" he said, still chewing, his face filled with puzzlement.

  After I returned from lunch I went into Helen's office. She was talking on the phone, standing up, a pair of handcuffs pulled through the back of her belt. Before she hung up I heard her say, "You don't have to tell me." Then she looked at me blankly. "What is it?" she said.

  "Clete says three New Orleans wiseguys are in town. They're after a rogue button man by the name of Max Coll," I said.

  "They're staying at the Holiday," she said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "The manager called earlier. The grease balls have hookers in their rooms and are scaring the shit out of the staff. I was about to tell you about it but I got a call from a guy at the chamber of commerce. He says you and Clete Purcel had a conversation in Victor's Cafeteria that made a third of the room move their tables."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Dave, I've told you before, we have enough problems of our own. What does it take to make you understand that?"

  The room was silent. I heard a warning bell clanging at the railroad cross
ing and a freight train clattering down the tracks. "You want the wiseguys out of town?" I said.

  "I hate to tell you what I want," she said.

  "Just say it, Helen."

  She spit a hangnail off her tongue. "Meet you outside," she said.

  We arrived in four cruisers at the Holiday Inn out by the four-lane. My experience with the Mob or its members had never been one that possessed any degree of romance. In fact, my encounters with them always made me feel as though I had walked inside the drabness and urban desperation of an Edward Hopper painting. Although it was Monday and the motel was almost empty, Frank Dellacroce and his two friends had taken a row of rooms in back, facing the highway, where road noise echoed off the windows and doors of their building. Their cars were brand new, waxed and shining, but were parked by an overflowing Dumpster, out of which trash feathered in the wind and scudded across the asphalt. The sun was barely distinguishable in the sky, the air close with an odor like fish roe that has dried on a beach; the only sign of life in the scene was a palm tree whose yellowed fronds rattled dryly in the wind.

  Helen got out of her cruiser, her arms pumped, her shield hanging from a black cord around her neck. A cleaning woman was passing on the walkway, a plastic bucket filled with detergent bottles on her arm. "You smell marijuana coming from that room?" Helen asked.

  "Ma'am?" the cleaning woman said.

  "That's what I thought," Helen said. She banged her left fist on the door of the room registered to Frank Dellacroce, her right hand resting on the butt of her holstered nine-millimeter. "Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department! Open the door!" she shouted.

  With few exceptions, television and motion pictures portray members of the Mafia or the Mob or the Outfit as dapperly dressed, Plo-tin ian emanations from an ancient ethnic mythos. They are not only charismatic they take on the proportions of protagonists in Elizabethan tragedy, with accents from Hell's Kitchen.

  The truth is most of them are stupid and at best capable of holding only menial jobs. They use dog-pack intimidation to get what they want, whether it involves preferential seating in a restaurant or taking over a labor union. On a personal level their sexual habits are adolescent or misogynistic, their social behavior inept and laughable.

  In terms of health, they're walking nightmares. Listen to any surveillance tape: After age fifty, they complain constantly about clap, AIDS, obesity, impotence, emphysema, clogged arteries, ulcers, psoriasis, swollen prostates, the big C, and incontinence.

  The room door opened and a man with black, freshly barbered hair and pale features and dark eyes stepped outside. He was barefoot and wore slacks without a shirt. His chest was triangular in shape and covered with a fine patina of hair, his upper arms well developed. He started to pull the door shut behind him.

  Helen pushed the door back on the hinges. "Your name Della-croce?" she said.

  "Frank Dellacroce, yeah. Why the roust?" he said.

  "We have a complaint you're soliciting prostitution and-using narcotics in the motel. Place both your hands against the building and spread your legs, please," she said. She crooked a finger at a figure inside the room. "You need to come out here, Miss. Bring your purse with you."

  The girl who emerged from the room was probably not over nineteen, dressed in sandals; skintight, cut-off jeans; and a Donald Duck T-shirt that hung on the points of her breasts. She wore no makeup and her hair was bunched on the back of her head with a rubber band. "I didn't do anything," she said.

  "Get out your ID," Helen said.

  The girl's hands were shaking as she removed her driver's license from her billfold and handed it to Helen.

  Helen looked at the photo and the birth date on the card, then gave it back to her. "Beat it."

  "Ma'am?"

  "Your trick is a guy who put his infant child inside a refrigerator. You want a fuckhead like that in your life?" Helen said.

  The girl walked hurriedly across the parking lot toward the street. The uniformed deputies had pulled Dellacroce's two friends out of the adjoining rooms and were shaking them down against a cruiser. But they found no weapons or dope on them and none in their rooms.

  Dellacroce was still leaning against the wall, his feet spread. "We done with this?" he said.

  Helen didn't answer. I could see the frustration building in her face.

  "Hey, we're here for the tarpon rodeo. We ain't broke any laws. You get off squeezing my sack, fine. But I want a lawyer," Dellacroce said.

  "Better shut up," I said.

  "I'd show you where to bite me, but I'm holding up the building here," he said.

  "Helen, could I have a word with Mr. Dellacroce?" I said.

  "Please do," she replied.

  Dellacroce took his hands off the wall and watched her and the deputies get back in their cruisers. I told Dellacroce's two friends to go inside their rooms and to keep their doors shut. Dellacroce stared at me, a cautious light in his eyes.

  "My house is off-limits to you, Frank. So is Father Jimmie Dolan," I said.

  His slacks hung just below his navel. He traced the tips of his fingers up and down the smooth taper of his stomach, almost as though he were caressing a woman's skin. "You were Purcel's partner in the First District?" he said.

  "At one time."

  "Mind if I get my shirt?" he said.

  "No, I don't mind," I said.

  He reached inside the door and picked up a long-sleeve pink shirt and began drawing a sleeve up his arm. His hair was tapered, lightly oiled, iridescent on the tips. "Purcel was on a pad for us," he said.

  "Yeah?" I said.

  "That's all. He made himself a little change."

  "What are you saying, Frank?"

  "Nothing. Just talking about the history of your friend."

  "Tell me, is that story about your infant child true?"

  "No," he said. His eyes held on mine, devoid of any sentiment or moral consideration I could see, indifferent to the lie they either contained or did not contain. His mouth was slightly parted and his teeth were wet with his saliva. I could feel his breath puff against my skin like a presence released from a poisonous flower. Involuntarily I stepped back from him.

  "Word of caution, Frank. Max Coll was a shooter for the IRA," I said.

  "The what?"

  "I hope you find Coll. I really do. Have a nice day," I said, and grinned at him.

  The sun came out late in the afternoon, the wind died, and the sky was marbled with crimson clouds. When I got home from work Father Jimmie was raking leaves in the backyard.

  "Clete and I are going to throw a line in. How about joining us?" I said.

  "Not today," he said. He picked up a huge sheaf of blackened pecan and oak leaves and dropped them on a fire burning inside a rusted oil barrel. The smoke rose in thick curds and twisted through the canopy like a yellow handkerchief.

  "Never knew you to pass up a fishing trip," I said.

  "I saw Max Coll," he said.

  "Don't say that."

  "I was coming out of Winn-Dixie. He was standing across the street."

  "Maybe you're imagining things."

  "No, I saw him, Dave."

  "Then he'd better not come around here."

  "He's a sick man. He needs help."

  "I'm not buying into this discussion," I said, and walked away.

  When I looked back out the kitchen window Father Jimmie was heaving more leaves onto the fire, his clothes and skin auraed with smoke and dust in the shafts of sunlight breaking through the trees.

  God protect me from martyrs and saints, I thought.

  Clete and I hitched up my boat trailer to the back of my pickup and a half hour later slid the boat into the water at Bayou Benoit in St. Martin Parish. The surrounding water shed looked both enormous and desolate in a strange, autumnal way. There wasn't a sound from the bays or the inlets, not even the flopping of a bass or a gator back in a cove. A painter would have called it a beautiful evening. The western sky was still pale blue, the clouds like strips of f
ire, the leaves of the cypress and willow trees golden and motionless in the dead air. But the closed shutters on the houseboats and the lines of ducks and geese transecting the sun made something sink in my heart, as though I were the last man standing on earth.

  As we headed across a long bay into a flooded woods, Clete sat in the bow, humped over, his back to me, the collar of his denim coat pulled up, his Marine Corps utility cap snugged down on his head. He ripped the tab off a can of beer and drank it, then began eating a Vienna sausage sandwich. I cut the engine and let the boat drift on its wake into the trees. Clete reached into the ice chest and tried to hand me a diet Dr. Pepper.

  "No, thanks," I said.

  He clipped a Mepps spinner on his monofilament and cast it deep into the cove. "Something happen today?" he asked.

  I told him about my encounter with Frank Dellacroce at the motel, about his attempt to put me on a pad, about his mention that Clete had once taken juice from the Mob. Clete retrieved his lure, his face never changing expression.

  "So what's the point?" he said.

  "I don't like a degenerate bad-mouthing my friends. I don't like being offered a bribe," I replied.

  He waited a long time before he spoke again. "I don't think that's the problem, noble mon," he said.

  "Oh?"

  "You think all this belongs in a time capsule," he said, making a circle in the air with his hand. "Outsiders aren't supposed to come here, particularly grease balls and Wal-Mart and these cocksuckers grinding up the trees with bulldozers. It's always supposed to be 1950."

  "I see."

  "The truth is you wish you had all these bastards locked in your sights inside a free-fire zone."

  "Glad you've figured it all out."

  "At least I don't sleep with a nine-millimeter anymore."

  "Don't be offended when I say this, but, Clete, you can really piss me off sometimes."

  "You worry me, mon. I think you're going into a place inside yourself that people don't come out of."