Dixie City Jam Page 23

  'What is it, Dave? Say it,' Buchalter said.

  My lips felt like bruised rubber; the words were clotted with membrane in my throat.

  'It's all right, take your time,' Buchalter said. 'You've had a hard night… Get him a drink of water.'

  A moment later Buchalter held a tin cup gingerly to my lips. The water sluiced over my chin and down my throat; I gagged on my chest.

  'Dave, I understand your pain. It's the pain of a soldier and a brave man. Just whisper to me. That's all it takes,' Buchalter said.

  Hatch was bent down toward me, too, his hands on his knees, his face elfish and merry. Buchalter leaned his ear toward my mouth, waiting. I could see the oil and grain in his skin, the glistening convolutions inside his ear.

  I pushed the words out of my chest, felt my lips moving, my eyes blinking with each syllable.

  A paleness like the color of bone came into Buchalter's face. One hobnailed boot scratched against the cement as he rose to his feet.

  'What'd 'e say?' Freddy asked.

  'He said Will was a cunt,' Hatch answered, his grin scissoring through his beard. He and Freddy rocked on the balls of their feet, hardly able to keep their mirth down inside themselves.

  Then Hatch said, 'Sorry, Will. We're just laughing at the guy. He hasn't figured out yet who's on his side.'

  'That's right, Will,' Freddy said. ''E's a stupid fouk for sure. Go have breakfast. Me and Hatch'll finish it up here.'

  But the insult had passed out of Buchalter's face now. He began pulling on a pair of abbreviated gray leather gloves, the kind a race driver might wear, with holes that allowed the ends of the fingers to extend above the webbing. He dried each of his armpits with a towel, then positioned himself in front of me.

  'Stand him up,' he said.

  'Maybe that's not a good idea, Will,' Freddy said. 'Unless you've given up. Remember what happened out in Idaho. Like an egg breaking, it was.'

  'I say tear up his ticket, Will,' Hatch said. 'He's in with Hippo Bimstine. You're gonna trust what he tells you? Rip his ass.'

  Then, as though he had given permission for his own anger to feed and stoke and fan itself, Hatch's hands began to shake, his teeth glittered inside his beard, and he wrenched me under one arm and tried to tug me upward against the wood post, his breath whistling in his nostrils.

  'You know what's lower than a Jew?' he said. 'An Aryan who works for one. You think you're stand-up, motherfucker? A punk like you couldn't cut a week on Camp J. See how you like the way Will swings.'

  Freddy grabbed my other arm, and they raked me upward against the post like a sack of feed. I could feel splinters biting into my forearms, my ankles twisting sideways with my weight.

  'Get your fouking head up,' Freddy said.

  'Strap his belt around his neck,' Hatch said.

  'Step back, both of you,' Buchalter said.

  Strands of hair were glued in my eyes, and a foul odor rose from my lap. I heard Buchalter's boots scrape on the cement as he set himself.

  'I'm going to hit you only three times, Dave, then we'll talk again,' Buchalter said. 'If you want to stop before then, you just have to tell me.'

  'Your juices are about to fly, Mr. Robicheaux,' Freddy said.

  Then the three men froze. The Nazi flag rippled along the cinder blocks with pockets of air from the floor fan.

  'It's glass breaking,' Freddy said.

  'I thought you said the Negro was tucked away,' Buchalter said.

  'E was, Will. I locked 'im in the paint closet,' Freddy said.

  'The paint closet? It's made of plywood. You retard, there're upholstery knives in there,' Buchalter said.

  'Hatch didn't tell me that. Nobody told me that. You quit reaming me, Will,' Freddy said.

  But Buchalter wasn't listening now. He ripped Hatch's Luger from a holster that hung above the workbench and moved quickly toward the door behind the post where I was tied, the muscles in his upper torso knotting like rope. But even before he flung the metal door back against the cinder blocks, I heard more glass breaking, cascading in splintered panes to the cement, as though someone were raking it out of window frames with a crowbar; then an electric burglar alarm went off, one with a horn that built to a crescendo like an air-raid siren, followed by more glass breaking, this time a more congealed, grating sound, like automobile windows pocking and folding out of the molding, while automobile alarms bleated and pealed off the cement and corrugated tin roof.

  'He's out the door!' Buchalter said.

  'The guy who owns this place uses a security service. They're probably already rolling on that alarm,' Hatch said.

  'Y'all had a fucking security service into a place where you meet?' Buchalter said.

  'How'd anybody know you'd want to use it for an interrogation? I told you to pop the burrhead last night, anyway.'

  'Get out there and stop that noise,' Buchalter said.

  'The shit's frying in the fire, it is. Time to say cheery-bye and haul it down the road, Will,' Freddy said…

  'Can't you rip a wire out of a mechanism? Do I have to do everything myself?' Buchalter said.

  'No, I can drive very nicely by meself, thank you. Since that's me van out there, I'll be toggling to me mum's now. I think you've made a bloody fouking mess of it, Will. I think you'd better get your fouking act together,' Freddy said.

  The Luger dripped like a toy from Buchalter's huge hand. The smooth, taut skin of his chest was beaded with pinpoints of sweat; his eyes raced with thought.

  Freddy unbolted a door at the far end of the room and stepped out into the gray dawn.

  'Fuck it, I'm gone, too, Will,' Hatch said. 'Snap one into this guy's brainpan and clean him out of your head… All right, I'm not gonna say anything else. Don't point my own piece at me, man. It ain't my place to tell you what to do.'

  Hatch backed away from Buchalter, then paused, chewing on his beard, his eyes trying to measure the psychodrama in Buchalter's face. He unhooked the Nazi flag from the wall and draped it over his arm.

  'I'm taking the colors with me,' he said. 'Will, all this stuff tonight don't mean anything. It goes on, man. We're eternal. You know where you can find me and Freddy later. Hey, if you decide to smoke him, lose my piece, okay?'

  Then he, too, was gone into the brief slice of gray light between the door and jamb.

  Buchalter's thumb moved back and forth along the tip of the Luger's knurled grip. His tongue licked against the back of his teeth; then it made a circle inside his lips. As though he had stepped across a line in his own mind, he slipped the Luger into the top of his trousers and bent his face three inches from mine. He twisted his fingers into my hair and pulled my head back against the post.

  'I'm stronger inside than you are, Dave. You can never get away from me, never undo me,' he' said. 'I gave Bootsie a gift to remember me by. Now one for you.'

  He tilted his head sideways, his eyes closing like a lover's, his mouth approaching mine. The Luger was hard and stiff against his corded stomach. In the next room the burglar and car alarms screamed against the walls and tin roof.

  I sucked all the spittle and blood out of my cheeks and spat it full into his face.

  His face went white, then snapped and twitched as though he had been slapped. His skin stretched against his skull and made his brow suddenly simian, his eye sockets like buckshot. He wiped a strand of pink spittle on his hand and stared at his palm stupidly.

  But he didn't touch me again. He straightened to his full height with a level of hate and cruelty and portent in his eyes that I had never seen in a human being before, then, working his tropical shirt over one arm, snugging the Luger down tight in his belt, one eye fixed on me like a fist, he went out the door into the gray mist. But I believed I had now seen the face that inmates at Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka and Dachau had looked into.

  Five minutes later Zoot Bergeron, his face swollen like a bruised plum, sawed loose the rope and leather straps that bound my wrists, and in the wail of the approaching St. Mary Pari
sh sheriffs cars, we slammed the door back on its hinges and stumbled out into the wet light, into the glistening kiss of a new dawn, into an industrial-rural landscape of fish-packing houses, junkyards, shrimp boats rocking in their berths, S.P. railway tracks, stacks of crisscrossed ties, a red-painted Salvation Army transient shelter among a clump of blue-green pine trees, oil-blackened sandspits, gulls gliding over the copper-colored roll of the bay, two hoboes running breathlessly over the gravel to catch a passing boxcar, the smells of diesel and salt-water, creosote, fish blood dried on a dock, nets stiff with kelp and dead Portuguese men-of-war, flares burning on offshore rigs, freshly poured tar on natural gas pipe, the hot, clean stench of electrical sparks fountaining from an arc welder's torch.

  And in the distance, glowing like a chemical flame in the fog, was Morgan City, filled with palm-dotted skid-row streets, sawdust bars, hot pillow joints, roustabouts, hookers, rounders, bouree gamblers, and midnight ramblers. Zoot helped me stand erect, and I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and looked again at the two hoboes who had belly flopped onto the floor of the boxcar and were now rolling smokes as the freight creaked and wobbled down the old Southern Pacific railroad bed. Their toothless, seamed faces were lifted into the salt breeze with an expression of optimism and promise that made me think that perhaps the spirits of Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, and Jack Kerouac were still riding those pinging rails. But the scene needed no songwriter or poet to make it real. It was a poem by itself, a softly muted, jaded, heartbreakingly beautiful piece of the country that was forever America and that you knew you could never be without.

  chapter twenty

  At home the next day, I sat in the cool shade of the gallery and listened to Clete Purcel talk about his latest encounter with the Calucci brothers. The cane along the bayou's banks looked dry and yellow in the wind, and hawks were gliding high above the marsh against a ceramic blue sky. I had the same peculiar sense of removal that I had experienced after I was wounded seriously in Vietnam. I felt that the world was moving past me at its own pace, with its own design, one that had little to do with me, and that now I was a spectator who listened to interesting stories told by other people.

  'You remember how we used to do it when the greaseballs thought they could take us over the hurdles, I mean when they got the mistaken idea they were equal members of the human race and not something that should have run down their mother's leg?' he said. 'We'd show up in the middle of their lawn parties, have their limos towed in, roust them on nickel-and-dime beefs in public, flush their broads out of town, use a snitch to rat-fuck 'em with the Chicago Outfit, hey, you remember the time we blew up Julio Segura's shit in the backseat of his car? They had to wash him out with a hose, what a day that was.'

  Clete ripped the tab on a can of beer, drank the foam, and smiled at me. His face was pink with a fresh sunburn, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with white lines.

  'So that's what I did, big mon,' he said. 'I started following Max and Bobo all over town. Bars, restaurants, a couple of massage parlors they own, three fuck pads, black slum property, dig this, they've actually got a guy fronting a bail bonds office for them in Metairie, an escort service, a PCB incinerator out on the river. Dave, these two guys get up in the morning and go across Jefferson and Orleans parishes like a disease, it's impressive.

  'The problem is, I've got a convertible now, and it's a little hard to be inconspicuous. After a while Max and Bobo are doing big yawns when they see me and I'm starting to feel like part of the scenery while the neighbourhood dogs hose down my tires. So yesterday, when the Caluccis and all their gumballs go to lunch at Mama Lido's, I decide it's time to shift it on up into overdrive and I get a table out on the terrace, three feet behind one of Max's broads.

  'It was perfect timing, the ultimate New Orleans lowlife geek-out. Guess who shows up first? Tommy Blue Eyes and his main punch, what's her name, Charlotte, with her ta-tas sticking out of her sundress like a couple of muskmelons, and of course the Caluccis' hired help are winking at each other and squeezing their floppers under the table while Tommy's trying to act big-shit and order Italian dishes like he knows what he's doing, except he sounds like he's got Q-tips shoved up his nose.

  'Then Tommy's Indian zombie pulls up in front of the restaurant with Mrs. Lonighan in the passenger's seat. Have you ever seen her? Think of a fire hydrant with bow legs. She charges out onto the terrace, her glasses on crooked, spittle flying from her mouth, shouting about Tommy and the punch leaving a used rubber under her bed, and when the maître d' tries to calm her down, she squirts a bottle of seltzer water in his face.

  'Naturally, the Caluccis and the other greaseballs and their broads are loving all this. Tommy's face is getting redder and redder, his punch is using a little brush to powder her ta-tas, and the Indian is standing there like a lobotomy case who needs a spear in his hand and a bone in his nose. Then Mrs. Lonighan storms out of the place, gets in her car without the Indian, and drives across the curb into a bunch of garbage cans down the street.

  'So Tommy tries to blow it all off by talking about how the Jews are taking over legalized gambling in Louisiana. Then he starts telling these anti-Semitic jokes that have got people at the other tables staring with their mouths open, you know, stuff like "This Nazi officer told these Jewish concentration camps inmates, 'I got good news and bad news for you guys. The good news is you're going to Paris. The bad news is you're going as soap."'

  'Anyway, the greaseballs are roaring at Tommy's jokes, and I'm wondering why I'm letting these guys act like I've used up my potential and I'm not a factor in their day anymore. So I lean over and tap Tommy on the shoulder with a celery stick and say, "Hey, Tommy, too bad you left your peter cheater lying around for Miz Bobalouba to step on. You ought to get you a fuck pad in the Pontalba like Max and Bobo here."

  'The whole place goes quiet except for the sound of the Indian slurping up his squids. I'm thinking, Ah, show time. Wrong. Bobo calls the maître d' and has me thrown out. Can you dig it? Here's a collection of people that would turn the stomach of a proctologist, but I get eighty-sixed out on the street, right in front of a busload of Japanese tourists who are on their way back from the battleground at Chalmette.

  'I'm thinking. What's wrong with this picture? I was humping it outside Chu Lai while Max and Bobo were boosting cars and doing hundred-buck hits for the Giacano family. Plus I look back at the terrace and the maître d' is picking up my silverware and changing the tablecloth like some guy with herpes on his hands had been eating there.

  'I look down the street and some guys are taking a break from pouring a concrete foundation for a house. You remember that story you told me about how this mob guy in Panama City got even with his wife for giving a blow job to a judge behind a nightclub?

  'The guy in charge of the cement truck is a union deadbeat and a part-time bouncer in the Quarter I went bail for about two years ago. I say, "Mitch, you mind if I drive your truck around the block, play a joke on a friend?" He says, "Yeah, we were just going to have a beer and a shot across the street if somebody'd stand the first round." I say, "Why don't you let me do that, Mitch? I think I have a tab there." He goes, "I was just telling my friends here you're that kind of guy, Purcel."

  'I pull the truck right up to Max's Caddy convertible. It's gleaming with a new wax job, the top's down, the dashboard's made of mahogany, the seats are purple leather and soft as warm butter. I get out of the truck, clank that feeder chute over the driver's door, and let 'er rip. Streak, it was beautiful. The cement splatters all over the dashboard and the windows, covers the floors, oozes up over the seats, and hangs in big gray curtains over the doors. Even with the mixer roaring I could hear people yelling and going crazy out on the terrace. In the meantime, the Japanese have piled back off the bus in these navy blue business suits that look like umpire uniforms, laughing and applauding and snapping their Nikons because they think a movie is being made and this is all part of the tour, and while Max and Bobo are trying to fight their way through the cr
owd, the springs on the Caddy collapse, the tires pop off the rims, the cement breaks out the front windows and crushes the hood down on the engine. You remember that character called "The Heap" in the comic books? That's what the Caddy looked like, two headlights staring out of this big, gray pile of wet cement-.'

  'Have you lost your mind?' I said.

  'What's wrong?'

  'You're going to end up in the bag or get your P.I. license pulled. Why do you keep clowning around with these guys? It doesn't get the score changed.'

  'They loan-sharked the Caddy out of a builder in Baton Rouge. The last thing Max wants is a police report filed on it. Lighten up, noble mon. You've been around the local Rotary too much.'

  Then I saw his eyes look into mine and his expression change. I looked away.

  'You really spit in Buchalter's face?' he said.

  'It wasn't a verbal moment.'

  'I'm proud of you, mon.'

  His eyes kept wandering over my face.

  'Will you cut it out, Clete?'

  'What?'

  'Staring at me. I'm all right. Both the guys with Buchalter are fuckups and aren't going to be hard to find. Particularly the cockney. We've got the feds in on it now, too.'

  He made tiny prints with the ball of his index finger in the moisture and salt on top of his beer can.

  'You think Buchalter's some kind of Nazi superman?' I said. 'He's not. He's a psychotic freak, just like dozens of others we sent up the road.'

  'NOPD and the sheriff's office in Lafourche Parish probably haven't gotten hold of your boss yet. But they will.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'You're right. Those two were fuckups. That's why they're off the board now.'

  The sunlight seemed to harden and grow cold on the garden.

  As best as I could reconstruct it, this is how Clete (and later a Lafourche sheriff's deputy) told me the story:

  The previous night, out in a wetlands area southwest of New Orleans, a man who had been gigging frogs emerged terrified from the woods, his face whipped by branches and undergrowth, and waved down a parish sheriffs car with his shirt. It had started to rain, and ground fog was blowing out of the trees.