Heaven’s Prisoners Read online

  In the glow of the movie screen I looked at Alafair's upraised and innocent face and wondered about the victims of greed and violence and political insanity all over the world. I have never believed that their suffering is accidental or a necessary part of the human condition. I believe it is the direct consequence of corporate avarice, the self-serving manipulations of politicians who wage wars but never serve in them themselves, and, perhaps worse, the indifference of those of us who know better.

  I've seen many of those victims myself, seen them carried out of the village we mortared, washed down with canteens after they were burned with napalm, exhumed from graves on a riverbank where they were buried alive.

  But as bad as my Indochinese memories were, one image from a photograph I had seen as a child seemed to encapsulate the dark reverie I had fallen into. It had been taken by a Nazi photographer at Bergen-Belsen, and it showed a Jewish mother carrying her baby down a concrete ramp toward the gas chamber, while she led a little boy with her other hand and a girl of about nine walked behind her. The girl wore a short cloth coat like the ones children wore at my elementary school. The lighting in the picture was bad, the faces of the family shadowy and indistinct, but for some reason the little girl's white sock, which had worked down over her heel, stood out in the gloom as though it had been struck with a shaft of gray light. The image of her sock pushed down over her heel in that cold corridor had always stayed with me. I can't tell you why. But I feel the same way when I relive Annie's death, or remember Alafair's story about her Indian village, or review that tired old film strip from Vietnam. I commit myself once again to that black box that I cannot think myself out of.

  Instead, I sometimes recall a passage from the Book of Psalms. I have no theological insight, my religious ethos is a battered one; but those lines seem to suggest an answer that my reason cannot, namely, that the innocent who suffer for the rest of us become anointed and loved by God in a special way; the votive candle of their lives has made them heaven's prisoners.

  It rained during the night, and in the morning the sun came up soft and pink in the mist that rose from the trees across the bayou. I walked out to the road and got the newspaper from the mailbox and read it on the front porch with a cup of coffee.

  The phone rang. I went inside and answered it.

  "What are you doing driving around with the dyke?"

  "Dunkenstein?" I said.

  "That's right. What are you doing with the dyke?"

  "None of your business."

  "Everything she and Bubba do is our business."

  "How'd you know I was with Claudette Rocque?"

  "We have our ways."

  "There wasn't a tail."

  "Maybe you didn't see him."

  "There wasn't a tail."

  "So?"

  "Have you got their phone tapped?"

  He was silent.

  "What are you trying to tell me, Dunkenstein?" I asked.

  "That I think you're crazy."

  "She used the phone to tell somebody I gave her a ride into New Iberia?"

  "She told her husband. She called him from a bar. Some people might think you're a dumb shit, Robicheaux."

  I looked at the mist hanging in the pecan trees. The leaves were dark and wet with dew.

  "A few minutes ago I was enjoying a cup of coffee and the morning paper," I said. "I think I'm going to finish the paper now and forget this conversation."

  "I'm calling from the little grocery store by the drawbridge. I'll be down to your place in about ten minutes."

  "I think I'll make a point of being on my way to work by then."

  "No, you won't. I already called your office and told them you'd be late. Hang loose."

  A few minutes later I watched him drive his U.S. government motor pool car up my front lane. He closed his car door and stepped around the mud puddles in the yard. His loafers were shined, his seersucker slacks ironed with knife-edge creases, his handsome blond face gleaming with the closeness of his shave. He wore his polished brown belt high up on his waist, which made him look even taller than he was.

  "Have you got another cup of coffee?" he said.

  "What is it you want, Minos?" I held the screen open for him, but I imagine my face and tone were not hospitable.

  He stepped inside and looked at Alafair's coloring book on the floor.

  "Maybe I don't want anything. Maybe I want to help you," he said. "Why don't you try not to be so sensitive all the time? Every time I talk with you, you're bent out of joint about something."

  "You're in my house. You're running on my meter. You haven't given me any help, either. Cut the bullshit."

  "All right, you've got a legitimate beef. I told you we'd handle the action. We didn't. That's the way it goes sometimes. You know that. You want me to catch air?"

  "Come on in the kitchen. I'm going to fix some Grape-Nuts and strawberries. You want some?"

  "That sounds nice."

  I poured him a cup of coffee and hot milk at the kitchen table. The light was blue in the backyard.

  "I didn't talk to you at the funeral. I'm not good at condolences. But I wanted to tell you I was sorry," he said.

  "I didn't see you there."

  "I didn't go to the cemetery. I figure that's for family. I think you're a stand-up guy."

  I filled two bowls with Grape-Nuts, strawberries, and sliced bananas, and set them on the table. He put a big spoonful in his mouth, the milk dripping from his lips. The overhead light reflected off his crewcut scalp.

  "That's righteous, brother," he said.

  "Why am I late to work this morning?" I sat down at the table with him.

  "One of those shells you picked up had a beautiful thumbprint on it. Guess who New Orleans P.D. matched it with?"

  "You tell me, Minos."

  "Victor Romero is shooting at you, podna. I'm surprised he didn't get you, too. He was a sniper in Vietnam. I hear you shot the shit out of his car."

  "How do you know New Orleans matched his print? I haven't even heard that."

  "We had a claim on him a long time before you did. The city coordinates with us anytime his name pops up."

  "I want you to tell me something, with no bullshit. Do you think the government can be involved in this?"

  "Be serious."

  "You want me to say it again?"

  "You're a good cop. Don't fall for those conspiracy fantasies. They're out of style," he said.

  "I went down to Immigration in New Orleans. That fellow Monroe is having some problems with personal guilt."

  "What did he tell you?" His eyes were looking at me with new interest.

  "He's one of those guys who wants to feel better. I didn't let him."

  "You mean you actually think somebody in the government, the INS, wants you hit?"

  "I don't know. But no matter how you cut it, right now they've got shit on their noses."

  "Look, the government doesn't knock off its own citizens. You're sidetracking into a lot of claptrap that's not going to lead you anywhere."

  "Yeah? Try this. What kind of Americans do you think the government uses down in Central America? Boy Scouts? Guys like yourself?"

  "That's not here."

  "Victor Romero sure is."

  He let out his breath.

  "All right, maybe we can stick it to them," he said.

  "When's the last time you heard of the feds dropping the dime on each other? You're a laugh a minute, Minos. Finish your cereal."

  "Always the PR man," he said.

  That afternoon the street was filled with hot sunshine when Cecil Aguillard and I parked our car in front of the poolroom on Main in New Iberia. Some college boys from Lafayette had pried the rubber machine off the wall of the men's room and had taken it out the back door.

  "They ain't got rubbers in Lafayette? Why they got to steal mine?" said Tee Neg, the owner. He stood behind the bar, pointing his hand with the three missing fingers at me. The wood-bladed fans turned overhead, and I could smell bo
udin and gumbo in the kitchen. Several elderly men were drinking draft beer and playing bourée at the felt tables in back. "They teach them that in col'ech? What I'm gonna do a man come in here for his rubber?"

  "Tell them to take up celibacy," I said.

  Tee Neg's mouth was round with surprise and insult.

  "Mais I don't talk that, me. What's the matter you say something like that to Tee Neg? I think you gone crazy, Dave."

  I walked out of the coolness of the poolroom into the hot sunlight to find Cecil, who had gone next door to get a description of the college boys' car. Just then a cream-colored Oldsmobile with tinted windows pulled out of the traffic. The driver didn't try to park; he simply stopped the car at an angle to the curb, dropped the transmission into neutral, flung open the door, and stepped onto the street with the engine still running. His hair was brushed with butch wax, his skin tanned as dark as a quadroon's. He wore expensive gray slacks, loafers with tassels, a pink polo shirt; but his narrow hips, wide shoulders, and boilerplate stomach made his clothes look like an unnecessary accident on his body. The wide-set, gray-blue eyes were round and staring and showed no expression, but the skin of his face was stretched so tight there were nests of fine white lines below his temples.

  "What's happening, Bubba?" I said.

  His fist shot out from his side, caught me squarely on the chin, and knocked me back through the open door of the poolroom. My clipboard clattered to the floor, I tried to catch myself against the wall, and then I saw him come flailing toward me out of the bright square of sunlight. I took two off the side of the head, ducked into a crouch, and smelled his cologne and sweat and heard his breath go out between his teeth as he missed with a roundhouse. I had forgotten how hard Bubba could hit. He rose on the balls of his feet with each punch, his muscular thighs and buttocks flexing like iron against his slacks. He never defended; he always attacked, swinging at the eyes and nose with such a vicious energy that you knew that once you were hurt he wouldn't stop until he had chopped your face into raw pork.

  But I still had the reach on him, and I jabbed him in the eye with my left, saw his head come erect with the shock of the blow, and then I caught him flat on the jaw with a right cross. He reeled backwards and knocked over a brass cuspidor that rolled wetly across the floor. There was a red circle around his right eye, and I could see my knuckle marks on his cheek. He spit on the floor and hitched his slacks up on his navel with his thumb.

  "If that's your best shot, your ass is glue," he said.

  Suddenly Cecil burst through the doorway, his jaw filled with Red Man, his baton and handcuffs clattering on his pistol belt, and picked up Bubba from behind, pinning his arms to his sides, and threw him headlong onto a bourée table and circle of chairs.

  Bubba got to his feet, his slacks stained with tobacco juice, and I saw Cecil slip his baton out of its plastic ring and grip it tightly around the handle.

  "You turning candy-ass on me, Dave?" Bubba said.

  "How you like I break your face?" Cecil said.

  "You were messing with Claudette. Don't lie about it, either, you sonofabitch. Keep Bruno on his chain, and I'll put out your lamp."

  "You're a dumb guy, Bubba."

  "So I didn't get to go to college like you. You want to finish it or not?"

  "You're busted. Turn around and put your hands on the table."

  "Fuck you. I'll put that deputy's badge up your butt."

  Cecil started toward him, but I motioned him back. I grabbed Bubba's arm, which was as hard as a cedar post in my hand, and spun him toward the table.

  Vanity, vanity.

  His torso turned back toward me as though it were powered by an overstressed spring, his fist lifting into my face like a balloon. His eyes were almost crossed with the force he put into his blow. But he was off balance, and I bobbed sideways, felt his knuckles rake across the top of my ear, then drove my right fist as hard as I could into his mouth. Spittle flew from his lips, his eyes snapped open wide, his nostrils flared white with pain and shock. I caught him again with my left, above the eye, then swung under his guard into his ribcage, right below the heart. He doubled over and fell back against the bar and had to hold on to the mahogany trim to keep from going down.

  I was breathless, and my face felt numb and thick where he had hit me. I pulled my handcuffs loose from the back of my belt. I snapped one cuff over Bubba's wrist, then pulled his other arm behind him and locked on the second cuff. I sat him down in a chair while he hung his head forward and spit a string of bloody saliva between his knees.

  "You want to go to the hospital?" I asked.

  He was grinning, with a crazy light in his eyes. There was a red smear, like lipstick, on his teeth.

  "Brasse ma chu, Dave," he said.

  "You going to cuss me because you lost a fight?" I said. "You've got more class than that, Bubba. Do you want to go to the hospital or not?"

  "Hey, Tee Neg," he said to the owner. "Give everybody a round. Put it on my tab."

  "You ain't got a tab," Tee Neg said. "You ain't getting one, either."

  Cecil walked Bubba out to the car and locked him in behind the wire screen. Green flecks of sawdust from the poolroom floor were stuck to the butch wax in his hair. Through the car window he looked like a caged animal. Cecil started the engine.

  "Drive over into the park for a minute," I said.

  "What for?" Cecil asked.

  "We're in no hurry. It's a nice day. Let's have a spearmint snowcone."

  We crossed the drawbridge over Bayou Teche. The water was brown and high, and dragonflies flicked over the lily pads in the sunlight. Close along the banks I could see the armored backs of cars turning in the shade of the cypress trees. We drove through the oak-lined streets into the park, passed the swimming pool, and stopped behind the baseball bleachers. I gave Cecil two one-dollar bills.

  "How about getting us three cones?" I said.

  "Dave, that man belong in jail, not eating snowcones in the park, no," he said.

  "It's something personal between me and Bubba, Cecil. I'm going to ask you to respect that."

  "He's a pimp. He don't deserve no slack."

  "Maybe not, partner. But it's my collar." I winked at him and grinned.

  He didn't like it, but he walked away through the trees toward the concession stand by the swimming pool. I could see kids springing off the diving board into the sunlit blue water.

  "Do you really think I was messing around with your wife?" I asked Bubba through the wire-mesh screen.

  "What the fuck do you call it?"

  "Clean the shit out of your mouth and answer me straight."

  "She knows how to get a guy on the bone."

  "You're talking about your wife."

  "So? She's human."

  "Don't you know when you're being jerked around? You're supposed to be a smart man."

  "You thought about it when she was in your truck, though, didn't you?" he said, and smiled. His teeth were still pink with his blood. His arms were pulled behind him by the handcuffs, and his chest looked as round and hard as a small barrel. "She just likes to flash her bread around sometimes. They all do. That doesn't mean you get to unzip your pants.

  "Hey, tell me the truth, I really shook your peaches with that first shot, didn't I?"

  "I'm going to tell you something, Bubba. I don't want you to take it the wrong way, either. Go to a psychiatrist. You're a rich man, you can afford it. You'll understand people better, you'll learn about yourself."

  "I bet I pay my gardener more than you make. Does that say something?"

  "You're not a good listener. You never were. That's why one day you're going to take a big fall."

  I got out of the car and opened his door.

  "What are you doing?" he said.

  "Step out."

  I put one hand under his arm and helped him off the seat.

  "Turn around," I said.

  "What's the game?"

  "No game. I'm cutting you loose."

&n
bsp; I unlocked the cuffs. He rubbed his wrists with his hands. In the shade, the pupils of his gray-blue eyes stared at me like burnt cinders.

  "I figure what happened at Tee Neg's was personal. So this time you walk. If you come at me again, you're going up the road."

  "Sounds like a Dick Tracy routine to me."

  "I don't know why, but I have a strong feeling you're a man without a future."

  "Yeah?"

  "They're going to eat your lunch."

  "Who's this 'they' you're talking about?"

  "The feds, us, your own kind. It'll happen one day when you never expect it. Just like when Eddie Keats set one of your hookers on fire. She was probably thinking about a vacation in the Islands when he knocked on her door with a smile on his face."

  "I've had cops give me that shuck before. It always comes from the same kind of guys. They got no case, no evidence, no witness, so they make a lot of noise that's supposed to scare everybody. But you know what their real problem is? They wear J. C. Higgins suits, they drive shit machines, they live in little boxes out by an airport. Then they see a guy that's got all the things they want and can't have because most of them are so dumb they'd fuck up a wet dream, so they get a big hard-on for this guy and talk a lot of trash about somebody cooling out his action. So I'll tell you what I tell these other guys. I'll be around to drink a beer and piss it on your grave."

  He took a stick of gum out of his pocket, peeled off the foil, dropped it on the ground, and fed the gum into his mouth while he looked me in the eyes.

  "You through with me?" he asked.

  "Yep."

  "By the way, I got drunk last night, so don't buy yourself any boxing trophies yet."

  "I gave up keeping score a long time ago. It comes with maturity."

  "Yeah? Tell yourself that the next time you look at your bank account. I owe you one for cutting me loose. Buy yourself something nice and send me the bill. I'll see you around."

  "Don't misunderstand the gesture. If I find out you're connected to my wife's death, God help you, Bubba."