Dixie City Jam Page 17

  chapter sixteen

  The next morning I tried to concentrate on the daily routine at the office. But it was no use. I stared out the window at the rain.

  What drove the engines of a man like Will Buchalter?

  The conclusion I came to wasn't a pleasant one. He was a sadist, pure and simple, and, like all sadists, he developed erotic fixations about the people and animals he planned to hurt in a methodical way. The pain he imposed upon his victim was intended to humiliate and degrade and was always administered personally, by his hand, only a breath away from the victim's face. As with all of his kind he had found an ideological purpose that justified his perversity, but in reality the cries with which he could fill a room made his back teeth grind softly together while his loins tingled like a swarm of bees.

  The phone on my desk rang. It was Lucinda Bergeron.

  'Your friend over here is becoming a pain in the ass to a lot of people,' she said.

  'Who?'

  'Cletus Purcel.'

  'What's wrong with Clete?'

  'What's right with him?'

  'Give it a break, Lucinda.'

  'He tried to turn somebody into a human bell clapper. Do you know a character by the name of Dogshit Dolowitz?'

  'No Duh Dolowitz, the merry prankster?'

  'Yeah, I guess he's called that, too. Your friend crammed a garbage can over his head, then pounded the can all over an alley with a baseball bat.'

  'What for?'

  'Ask him… Wait a minute.' She set the phone down and closed a door. 'Listen, Detective, Nate Baxter would like to put your buddy's ham hocks in a skillet. I'd have a serious talk with him.'

  'Is Zoot back home yet?'

  'I don't believe you. I think you must come from outer space.'

  'You're telling me he should be living over at Tommy Lonighan's?'

  'I thought I was doing a favor for your friend.'

  'I appreciate it.'

  I heard her make a sound like she was digesting a thumbtack.

  'Take it easy,' I said.

  'God, I hate talking to you!' Then she caught her breath and started again. 'Listen, your buddy hasn't been arraigned yet, but my guess is his bond will be around two thousand dollars. You want me to give him a message?'

  'No Duh pressed charges?'

  'No, Nate Baxter did. Disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. Good-bye, Detective Robicheaux. In all honesty I don't think I'm up to many more conversations with you.'

  She hung up the phone.

  I called her back.

  'Look, I can't take off work just to bail a friend out of the slam. Why'd Clete knock Dolowitz around?'

  'It has something to do with the Calucci brothers.'

  'What about them?'

  'I don't know,' she said, the exasperation rising in her voice. 'Nate Baxter's handling it. What's that tell you, Robicheaux, besides the fact he's got a major hard-on for Purcel?'

  'I'm not sure.'

  'He's on a pad.'

  'For the Calucci brothers?'

  'Who else?'

  'You can prove that?'

  'Who to? Who cares? The city's broke. That's what's on people's minds.'

  'I'll try to get over there. It's a bad day, though.'

  'What's wrong?'

  I told her about Buchalter's visit of the night before.

  'Why didn't you tell me that?' she said.

  'You've got your own problems.'

  She paused a moment. 'You saw Zoot over at Tommy Lonighan's?' she said.

  'Yeah, for just a few minutes.'

  'Did he say-' She let out her breath in the receiver and didn't finish.

  'I think you mean a lot to him, Lucinda. I'd bring him back home. I'm sorry if I sound intrusive sometimes.'

  I called Bootsie at the house, then signed out of the office. It was still raining when I got to NOPD headquarters in the Garden District. Lucinda Bergeron was out of the office, but Benjamin Motley told me that the Reverend Oswald Flat had gotten Clete released in his custody without having to post bail and they were waiting for me at a café up on St. Charles by the Pontchartrain Hotel.

  It was a working man's place that served rib-eye steaks, deep-fried catfish, and biscuits with sausage gravy that you could stoke boilers with. It was also the café where the Calucci brothers ate lunch every day.

  I parked my truck around the corner, then ran back in the rain under the dripping overhang of the oak trees on St. Charles. The inside of the restaurant was warm and crowded and loud. Clete and the preacher were at a checker-cloth-covered table in front. In the center of the table was a solitary, green-stemmed purple rose set in a dime-store glass vase. Between the preacher's feet I could see a worn-edged, black guitar case with the words The Great Speckled Bird hand-lettered on the side.

  I let my eyes rove over the people at the tables; then I saw Max and Bobo Calucci and a half dozen of their entourage eating at a long table against the back wall, three feet from an old jukebox, whose maroon and orange plastic casing rippled with light.

  I sat down with Clete and the preacher.

  'You ought to get you an umbrella, son. You look like a hedgehog somebody drowned in a rain barrel,' Oswald Flat said.

  'Thank you, Reverend,' I said.

  'Sorry to get you down here for no reason, Streak,' Clete said. 'I tried to catch you after Brother Oswald here got me out of the bag, but you were already down the road.' He grinned while he chewed on a bread stick.

  'What are you doing beating up on a guy like No Duh Dolowitz?' I said.

  'Yeah, I always dug ole No Duh myself,' Clete said, then turned to the preacher. 'You see, this guy No Duh-sometimes they call him Dogshit because that's what he put in some sandwiches once at a Teamsters convention in Miami-he used to be a second-story creep till a night watchman bonged a big dent in his forehead with a ball peen hammer. But instead of turning into a mush brain, he developed a genius for playing pranks. The mob knows talent when it sees it.

  'If they want to take over an apartment building or a bunch of duplexes at fire-sale prices, they send in Dolowitz. He pours cement mix down all the drains, puts Limburger cheese in the air vents, tapes bait fish under the furniture, maybe has a landscape service pour a dump truck load of cow manure in the swimming pool. This contractor built some real class condos in Jefferson Parish, then he finds out too late that he doesn't have clear title to the land and that part of it is owned by the Giacano family. So while he's trying to hold off the Giacanos in court, they send in No Duh, who makes keys to all the doors, stops up the toilets, stocks the cabinets with Thunderbird and Boone's Farm, then buses in about twenty winos from skid row and tells them to have a good time. I heard the cleaning crews had to scrape the carpets up with shovels.'

  He laughed, pushed his porkpie hat up on his head, and put a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His hand looked huge on his Zippo lighter. I noticed that his eyes never looked in the Caluccis' direction.

  'Why the beef with a guy like that, Clete?' I said.

  The humor drained out of his face, and his eyes drifted toward the rear of the restaurant.

  'I gave Martina the two grand to pay off the Caluccis. Guess what? They told her that's just the back payment on the vig. She still owes another two large. Last night we came back from the show and there's Dolowitz hiding in the shrubs by the side of Martina's garage. So I ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing there.

  'He tells me he lives two blocks away, up by Audubon Park, and he's been walking his dog. I say, "That's funny, I don't see any dog." He says, "No duh, Purcel. Because my dog run away." "Oh, I see. That's why you're in the shrubs," I say. "No duh, my fast-thinking man," he says.

  'I say, "I got another problem here, No Duh. People like you don't live by Audubon Park. Not unless the neighborhood has recently been rezoned for meltdowns and toxic waste. If I remember right, you live in a shithole by the Industrial Canal. So why are you hiding here by Martina's garage, and if you give me one more wiseass answer, I'm going to st
uff your dented head up the tailpipe of my car."

  'So he puts his fingers in the corners of his mouth and stretches out his lips like a jack-o'-lantern. Can you believe this guy? I say, "No Duh, your mother must have defecated you into the world," and I shake him down against the wall, and what do we find, our man's got a bottle of muriatic acid in his pants pocket.'

  'I don't get it. Dolowitz isn't an enforcer,' I said.

  'I didn't get it, either. Also, dispensation time for dimwits was starting to run out. I go, "What do you think you're doing with this, fuckhead?" Suddenly he's like a guy who just sobered up. He goes, "It's just a prank, Purcel. I don't hurt people." That's when I screwed the trash can down on his head and got a ball bat out of my car and bounced him around the alley. Finally he's yelling inside the can, "I was going to put it in her gas tank! I wasn't going to have nothing to do with the rest of it!"

  'You want to know what "the rest of it" was?' Clete mashed out his cigarette in the ashtray. His eyes cut sideways toward the rear of the café, 'Martina goes, on shift cocktail-waitressing at a club in Gretna at ten P.M. Dolowitz was going to mess up her car so it'd kill somewhere between her house and work. A guy was going to be following her. You want to hear how No Duh put it? "Max and Bobo Calucci got some kind of geek working for them, not no ordinary button guy, either, Purcel, a guy who can fuck up people real bad, in ways nobody ever thought about."'

  Clete propped his elbow on the table and inserted a thumbnail in his teeth.

  'You think I was too hard on ole Dogshit?' he said.

  'Sir, could you watch your language?' the manager, who had come out from behind the cash register, said quietly.

  'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Clete said, flipping his hand at the air.

  'You think it could be Buchalter?' I said.

  'Maybe. But I don't know how he'd tie in with the greaseballs back there in the booth.'

  'Maybe he's connected with Tommy Lonighan's interest in the Nazi sub, and now Lonighan's mixed up with the Caluccis. Anyway, he was in my house last night,' I said.

  'He was what?'

  'Standing in our closet, watching us while we slept.'

  'Jesus Christ, Dave.'

  'He cut the back screen, prized out the deadbolt, walked around in the house, and I never heard him.'

  Clete sat back in his chair.

  'This guy's a new combo, mon,' he said. 'I thought if he ever came back, it'd be to cool you out.'

  'You think the real problem is y'all don't have no idea of what you're dealing with?' Oswald Flat said.

  We both looked at him. His clip-on bow tie was askew on his denim shirt. His pale eyes looked as big as an owl's behind his glasses.

  'You cain't find that fellow 'cause maybe he ain't human,' he said. 'Maybe y'all been dealing with a demon. You ever consider that?'

  'I can't say that I have,' I said.

  'It's the end of the millennium,' he said.

  'Yes?' I said.

  'Son, I don't want to be unkind to you. But when the brains was passed out, did you grab a handful of pig flop by mistake?'

  He paused to let his statement sink in.

  'The prophesy is in Nostradamus. The Beast and his followers are going to be loosed on the earth,' he said. 'Call me a fool. But you're a policeman, and the best you got ain't worth horse pucky on a rock, is hit?'

  I looked back at him silently. His short, dun-colored hair was combed neatly and parted almost in the center of his scalp. His washed-out eyes never blinked and seemed wide with a knowledge that was lost on others.

  The waiter set plates of deep-fried pork chops, greens, and dirty rice in front of him and Clete.

  'You're not going to eat?' Oswald Flat said.

  'No, thanks.'

  'I offended you?'

  'Not at all,' I said.

  Clete lowered his fork onto his plate and looked toward the rear of the restaurant again.

  'It looks like the Vitalis twins are about to finish their lunch. I don't know if they should slide out of here that easily,' he said.

  'Let it go,' I said.

  'Trust me.'

  'I mean it, Clete. Baxter's got you in his bombsights. Don't play his game.'

  'You worry too much, big mon. It's time to check out the jukebox and the ole hippy-dippy from Mississippi, yes indeed, Mr. Jimmy Reed. I'll be right back.'

  Clete strolled to the rear of the restaurant, past the Caluccis' table, his eyes never registering their presence. He dropped a quarter into the jukebox and punched off 'Big Boss Man,' then began snapping his fingers and slapping his right palm on top of his left fist while he scanned the other titles. The back of his neck looked as thick as a fire hydrant.

  The preacher's gaze moved back and forth from Clete to the Caluccis. His false teeth were stiff and white in his mouth.

  'He'll be all right, Reverend. Clete just likes to let people know he's in the neighborhood,' I said.

  But Oswald Flat didn't answer. There were pools of color in his cheeks, nests of wrinkles at the edges of his eyes.

  'You play guitar?' I said.

  'I played with Reno and Smiley, I played with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys. Hit don't get no better than that,' he said. But his eyes were riveted on the Caluccis when he spoke.

  Clete sat back down, his green eyes dancing with light, while Jimmy Reed sang in the background.

  The Caluccis were watching him now. Clete made a frame of his hands, with his thumbs joined together, tilting the frame back and forth, sighting through it at Max and Bobo, the way a movie director might if he were envisioning a dramatic scene. Then he began pointing his finger at them, grinning, tapping it in time to 'Big Boss Man's' driving rhythm.

  'Knock it off, Clete,' I said.

  'They need to know they've been ratted out, mon. You never let a shit bag forget he's a shit bag. You got to keep them buttoned down under the sewer grates, big mon.'

  'You're both good fellows, but one is as wrongheaded as the other,' Oswald Flat said.

  'Excuse me?' Clete said.

  'You don't outwit evil. You don't outthink hit, you don't joke with hit, no more than you tease or control fire by sticking your hand in hit.'

  'You all right, Reverend?' I said.

  'No, I ain't.'

  His sun-browned, liver-spotted hands were flat on the table-cloth. His nails looked like hooked tortoiseshell.

  'What's the trouble, partner?' I said.

  'They took my boy.'

  'Who?' Clete said.

  'He come back from Vietnam with needle scars on his arm. Wasn't no he'p for hit, either. Federal hospitals, jails, drug programs, he could always get all the dope he needed from them kind yonder. Till he killed hisself with hit.'

  The music on the jukebox ended. Clete looked at me and raised his eyebrows. Oswald Flat slipped the purple rose out of the dimestore vase in the center of the table and sliced off the green stem with his thumbnail.

  'Hey, hold on, Brother. Where you going?' Clete said.

  Oswald Flat walked toward the rear of the restaurant. He moved like a crab, his shoulders slanted to one side, the rose hanging from his right hand. The Caluccis were finishing their coffee and dessert and at first did not pay attention to the man with the clip-on bow tie standing above them.

  Then Max stopped talking to a woman with lacquered blond hair next to him and flicked his eyes up at Oswald Flat.

  'What?' he said. When Flat made no reply, Max said it again. 'What?'

  Then Bobo was looking at the preacher, too.

  'Hey, he's talking to you. You got a problem?' he said.

  The people at nearby tables had stopped talking now.

  'Hey, what's with you? You can't find the men's room or something?' Max said.

  The blond woman next to him started to laugh, then looked at Oswald Flat's face and dropped her eyes.

  'Y'all think you're different from them colored dope dealers? Y'all think hit cain't happen to you?' the preacher said.

  'What? What can happen?'
Max said.

  'Your skin's white but your heart's black, just like them that's had hit cut out of their chests.'

  The restaurant was almost completely silent now. In the kitchen someone stopped scraping a dish into a garbage can.

  'Listen, you four-eyed fuck, if Purcel and that cop sent you over here-' Max began.

  Oswald flipped the purple rose into Max Calucci's face.

  'You're a lost, stupid man,' he said. 'If I was you, I'd drink all the ice water I could while I had opportunity. Hell's hot and it's got damn little shade.'

  The Reverend Oswald Flat picked up his guitar case, fitted his cork sun helmet on his head, and walked out the front door into a vortex of rain.

  As I crossed the wide, brown sweep of the Mississippi at Baton Rouge and headed across the Atchafalaya Basin toward home, I thought about Oswald Flat's speculation on the elusiveness of Will Buchalter.

  It seemed the stuff of an Appalachian tent revival where the reborn dipped their arms into boxes filled with poisonous snakes.

  But the preacher's conclusion that we were dealing with a demonic incarnation was neither eccentric nor very original and, as with some other cases I've worked, was as good an explanation about aberrant human behavior as any.

  Ten years ago, when Clete and I worked Homicide at NOPD, we investigated a case that even today no one can satisfactorily explain.

  A thirty-five-year-old small contractor was hired to build a sun-porch on a home in an old residential neighborhood off Canal. He was well thought of, nice-looking, married only once, attended church weekly with his wife and son, and had never been in trouble of any kind. At least that we knew of.

  The family who had contracted him to build the addition on their house were Rumanian gypsies who had grown wealthy as slum-lords in the black districts off Magazine. Their late-Victorian home had polished oak floors, ceiling-high windows, small balconies dripping with orange passion vine, a pool, and a game room with a sunken hot tub.

  They thought well enough of the contractor to leave him alone with their fifteen- and twelve-year-old daughters.

  The father should have been gone for the day, checking out his rental property miles away. Instead, he came home unexpectedly for lunch. Someone waited for him behind the living room door, then fired a.22 Magnum round into his ear. The bullet exited his opposite cheek and embedded in the far wall.