Dixie City Jam Page 27

  He ran his hand through his hair, wiped the perspiration on his shirt, blew out his breath, and ordered a double Scotch straight up. The corners of his mouth looked as gray as fish scale.

  By five that afternoon I still had not heard back from the monsignor in Lafayette. Before signing out of the office, I called again.

  'His mother's been quite ill. Can he call you at home, Detective Robicheaux? I know he'll want to,' the secretary said.

  'Yes, I'd appreciate it if he would,' I said, and gave her our number.

  Bootsie and I had planned to go to a seven o'clock AA step meeting in town, and I had told her not to prepare supper. On the way home I picked up some po'-boy sandwiches and dirty rice at a take-out place by City Park. As I drove down the dirt road along the bayou, smoke was drifting across the sun from a scorched sugarcane field, and the air smelled like burning leaves and late-blooming flowers. It was raining in the south, and you could see a gray squall line, splintered with lightning, moving inland from the gulf. The wind was already up, straightening the moss in the cypress trees out in the marsh, and most of the fishermen who had been out for saca-lait had turned their boats toward the dock.

  The deputy who still guarded the house during the day waved at me and headed for town. I parked in the drive and went inside with the paper sack of po'-boys and dirty rice. The windows were all open, and the curtains were billowing with wind.

  'Who's home?' I said.

  But the house was quiet. I walked into the kitchen and set the sack of sandwiches on the table. Then I saw the empty sherry bottle and three beer cans half buried in a tangle of wet newspapers and coffee grounds in the plastic trash container. I rubbed my hand in my face, then opened the icebox to get a Dr Pepper, changed my mind for no reason, and slammed the door, rattling everything inside.

  The phone rang on the counter.

  'Detective Robicheaux?'

  'Yes.'

  'This is Monsignor DeBlanc. I'm sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. You called about Sister Marie?'

  'Yes, Marie Guilbeaux.'

  'Right. Is something wrong?'

  'I'm not sure, really. I'm working a strange case now… Sister Guilbeaux keeps showing up around here at odd times.'

  'I'm sorry, I'm confused. What do you mean "showing up"?'

  'Just that. She seems to take an inordinate interest in things that aren't her affair.'

  'You mean she's been in New Iberia recently?'

  'Yes.'

  'I don't understand. Marie went back home to Napoleonville three months ago. She's had some severe problems with her health.'

  I paused a moment. 'What does this lady look like, Monsignor?'

  'Good for her age, I guess, but, well, time has its way with all of us.'

  'Her age?'

  'She's almost seventy years old. How old do you think she is?'

  After I hung up I sat at the kitchen table and stared out the back screen at the orange wafer of sun descending into the smoke from the smoldering cane stubble. Why hadn't I seen it? She had been outside the intensive care unit when Clete and I had interviewed Charles Arthur Sitwell, who later was launched into the next world with an injection of water and roach paste. Even Alafair had felt there was something wrong about her, that she was a harbinger of trouble and discord.

  I looked again at the empty sherry bottle and cans in the trash. When the bedroom door opened in the hallway I didn't even bother to turn around. There was no point in trying to go to a step meeting tonight. Bootsie's fears and anxieties had obviously sent her into a relapse; maybe tomorrow we'd give it another try. Or maybe I simply had to let go of her for a while, turn her over to my Higher Power, and let her bottom out. How could I demand more of her than had ever been demanded of me? But regardless of what I chose to do, anger would serve no purpose, and would only reinforce her determination to stay drunk.

  I smelled the alcohol and the odor of cigarettes even before I felt the warm breath against my cheek, the touch of fingernails in my hair and on my scalp, the soft caress of a woman's breasts against the back of my neck. Then I felt the mouth and tongue in my ear, the tapered hand that slid down my chest toward my loins, and I turned and looked up into the face of the woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux.

  chapter twenty-three

  'Tough day when they take the scales from your eyes?' she said. Her hand reached out to touch my hair. I pushed it away.

  'Where are Bootsie and Alafair?' I said.

  'The wifey's passed out. Doesn't she send your daughter off with the black man when she decides to go on the grog?'

  I walked into the hall and opened the bedroom door. Bootsie was asleep, half undressed, on top of the sheets, her face twisted into the pillow. The curtains popped in the silence.

  The woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux stood in the center of the kitchen, putting lipstick on in front of her compact mirror. She wore sun-faded jeans, sandals, a beige terry-cloth pullover with a dipping neckline, and a gold chain with a pearl around her throat.

  'Did you know the little wife has something of a pill problem?' she said, her eyes still fastened on the mirror.

  'Who are you?'

  She crimped her lips together in the mirror and clicked the compact closed.

  'Want to find out?' she said. She smiled. Her eyes seemed to darken, like charcoal-colored smoke gathering inside green glass. She unsnapped the top of her jeans, exposing the pink edge of her panties, then reached behind her back and unhooked her bra. 'Sit down in the chair, Dave. It's time someone does something nice for you.'

  I dumped her purse on the breakfast table. In it were car keys, an empty aspirin tin, a roll of breath mints, a perfume spray bottle, and a doeskin wallet. In the wallet was over six hundred dollars, and a Social Security card and driver's license with the name Marie Guilbeaux on them. The address on the license was in uptown New Orleans, back toward the levee. There were no credit cards.

  'Do you like everything to be so hard?' she said, and moved her tongue in a circle inside her lips.

  She worked her bra out from under her pullover and laid it over the chair top, then clasped her hands around the back of my neck and pressed her stomach against me. 'I have a feeling the wifey hasn't been treating you right,' she said.

  'Where's your automobile?'

  'Down by the dock.'

  'Is anyone with you?'

  'No.' She flexed her loins against me.

  'I'll tell the wrecker service not to scratch it up,' I said, turning her in a half circle.

  'What?'

  'The guy we contract to haul cars into the pound is careless sometimes.' I pulled her forearms behind her. Her wrists were narrow and pale, and the undersides were lined with thin green veins. I snipped the handcuffs on each wrist, then stuffed her bra in the back pocket of her jeans.

  'The offer's still open. With handcuffs. Think about it, Dave. Ouu,' she said, and made a pout with her mouth. 'You might even like it better than climbing on top of a drunk sow.'

  'Try it on our jailer, Marie,' I said. 'He's a three-hundred-pound black homosexual. Maybe you can turn him around.'

  The next morning at the department I picked up a cup of coffee and a doughnut by the dispatcher's cage and called Clete at his office in the Quarter. The sun was shining, and there was dew on the grass and trees outside my window. I had called him twice the day before and hadn't gotten an answer.

  'The tape on my machine's screwed up. What's happening?' he said.

  I told him about my conversation in the restaurant with Tommy Lonighan.

  'You sound mad,' he said.

  'I am.'

  'What's the big deal?'

  'I warned you about provoking these guys.'

  'Look, Dave, what's "open hit" actually mean? Nothing. It's something these greasebags like to mouth off about while they're stuffing linguine in their faces. A real whack is when they bring in a mechanic, a mainline button man, a full-time sociopath, from Miami or Houston, and this guy knows he either leaves
meat on the sidewalk or he's the next guy for the cooling board.'

  'Clete-'

  'Drop it, mon. Max and Bobo are always blowing gas. It's time they both get their snouts stuck in the commode.'

  'I just don't believe you. Why don't you go stand in the middle of the streetcar tracks?'

  'Okay, big mon, you've warned me. Listen, has Motley called you yet?'

  'No.'

  'Dig this. Ole Mots stopped thinking about food and cooze and being black long enough to do some real detective work.'

  'I think Motley's turned out to be a good guy.'

  'That's what I was saying. Is there static on the line or something? Yesterday afternoon he got some chest waders from the fire department, and he and I splashed out into that swamp in Lafourche Parish. It took a while, but we found it.'

  'Found what?'

  'The armored vest. The guy who cut open the two lowlifes with the chain saw, we found where he got out of the water on a levee not far from Larose. There were depressions in the mud that Sasquatch could have left. Anyway, about two hundred yards back into the swamp he'd dumped the vest by a sandbar. There were a half-dozen pieces of buckshot in the plates.'

  'Why would he be wearing a vest?'

  He laughed, then took the receiver away from his mouth and laughed again.

  'You want to let me in on it?' I asked.

  'You're beautiful, Streak. There's a secret that everybody seems to know except my old podjo from the First. You're one of the most violent people I've ever known. Why do you think Buchalter would wear a vest? You've probably got him spotting his Jockeys.'

  'Thanks for going out there, Clete.'

  'Hold on a minute. There's something else. Maybe it's important, maybe not. There was some stenciling on the cloth. The vest was Toronto PD issue.'

  'It's Canadian?'

  'Maybe he got it at a surplus store. But it's a thread, right? Anyway, talk with Motley.'

  'You remember the nun we saw at the hospital?'

  'Yes, she need somebody to pound erasers for her?'

  'Not unless you want to visit her in the parish jail.'

  Then I told him about all the events involving the woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux.

  'Definitely a weird scam, mon,' he said.

  'I'll bet she and Buchalter have their umbilical cords tied together.'

  'What are you holding her on?'

  'Not much.'

  'Don't let them kick her. Give me the address that's on her driver's license.'

  I read it to him off the arrest report.

  'Salt the shaft if you have to. You know why everybody loves straight shooters? Because they usually lose,' he said.

  'See you later, Cletus,' I said, and hung up the phone just as the sheriff tapped on my glass and motioned me toward his office at the other end of the hallway.

  He drank from his bottle of ulcer medicine, then leaned back in his swivel chair, bouncing the heels of his hands on the padded arms, and gazed at the potted plants and hand-painted flowered tea-pot on his windowsill. His stomach wedged over his hand-tooled gunbelt like a partly deflated football. He poked at it with his stiffened fingers.

  'You never had ulcers, did you?' he said.

  'No.'

  'I think I'm getting another one. I eat grits and baby food and get up in the morning with barbed wire in my stomach. Why's that?'

  'You got me.'

  'What are we supposed to do with that gal you locked up last night?'

  'We try to keep her there till we find out who she is.'

  'She's got no arrest record. Also the charge you've got against her is a joke.'

  'Not to me it isn't.'

  'At arraignment, what do we tell the judge?'

  'The truth.'

  'How's this sound? "Your Honor, this lady represented herself as a Catholic nun in order to get the wife of Detective Robicheaux drunk. Because everybody knows that's what nuns do in their spare time."'

  I opened and closed my right hand on my thigh. I fixed my gaze on a place about three inches to the side of his face.

  'I apologize, I shouldn't have said that,' he said. 'But at best all we've got is a misdemeanor.'

  'I think she murdered Charles Sitwell in the hospital.'

  'Put her there, in the hospital, in the room, in her nun's veil, around the time of death and we have something. Look, the driver's license and Social Security card are real. She says she never told you or your wife or anybody else she was a nun.'

  'You talked to her?'

  'I went to the jail early this morning. The jailer's got her in isolation. A couple of the dykes were getting stoked up.'

  'They like her?'

  'Are you kidding? They were scared shitless. One of them claims your gal threatened to put out a cigarette in her eye.'

  'Look, Sheriff, there's no easier ID to get than a driver's license and Social Security. But she had no credit cards. That's because credit bureaus run a check on the applicants. She's dirty, I think she's mixed up with Buchalter, and if we let her walk, we lose the only thread we have.'

  'I admit, she puts on quite a performance. If I didn't know better, I'd probably let her baby-sit my grandchildren.'

  'What explanation did she give you for being in my house?'

  'She says she used to be a part-time librarian and now she's trying to become a freelance magazine writer. According to her, she met Bootsie in a lounge and befriended her because she thought she was a sad lady. She's pretty eloquent, Dave.'

  He looked at my face and glanced away.

  'Librarian where?' I said.

  'She got a little vague.'

  'I bet.'

  He propped his elbow on the desk blotter and scratched at the hollow of his cheek with a pink fingernail.

  'She's got a lawyer from Lafayette. He's already raising hell down at the prosecutor's office,' he said.

  'You want to talk to Clete Purcel? He saw her outside Sitwell's hospital room.'

  'Great witness, Dave. Purcel's got a rap sheet that few mainline cons have. It looks like something a computer virus printed by mistake.'

  'I think he was right.'

  'About what?'

  'He told me to salt the shaft. He knew how it was going to go down.'

  The sheriff stuck his pipe in his leather tobacco pouch and began filling the bowl. He didn't look up.

  'I didn't hear you say that,' he said.

  'It's one man's point of view.'

  He didn't answer. I got up to leave the room.

  'The Americans won the Revolution because they learned to fight from the Indians,' he said. 'They shot from behind the trees. I guess it sure beat marching across a field in white bandoliers and silver breastplates.'

  'I was never fond of allegory.'

  'All I said was I didn't hear Purcel's remark. The woman's purse is in Possessions. Who knows what the lab might find?' He raised his eyebrows.

  'We've got to hold her as a murder suspect, Sheriff.'

  'It's not going to happen, Dave. You going to the arraignment?'

  'You'd better believe it.'

  He nodded silently, lit his pipe, and looked out the window.

  Back inside my office, I looked again at all the paperwork concerning Will Buchalter. What were the common denominators? What had I missed?

  Buchalter was perverse and sadistic and possibly an addict.

  He was obviously a psychopath.

  His followers were recidivists.

  He appeared to be con-wise, talked about 'riding the beef,' but had no criminal record that we could find.

  Was he a sodomist, was he depraved, were his followers all addicts? Were they men whom he had turned out (raped) and reduced to a form of psychological slavery? Why not? It went on in every prison in the country.

  Except Buchalter had never been up the road.

  Maybe Clete had come up with the answer. Maybe we had been looking for Buchalter on the wrong side of the equation. Maybe he was a fireman who set fires. Maybe he
was one of us.

  I talked with Ben Motley at NOPD. The prints lifted from the armored vest that he and Clete had found in the marsh matched those that Buchalter had left all over my house. But there was no serial number on the fabric.

  'I wouldn't spend too much time on it,' he said. 'These paramilitary groups come up with shitloads of this stuff. You know what's still the best way to nail this guy? Find one of his lowlifes, then plug his pud into a light socket.'

  Thanks, Mots, I thought.

  Then I put in a call to the robbery division of the Toronto Police Department and talked with a lieutenant named Rankin. No, he knew nothing about a stolen armored vest. No, he had no knowledge whether or not the department might have sold off some of its vests; no, he had never heard of a Will Buchalter and, after leaving me on hold for five minutes, he said their computer had no record of a Will Buchalter.

  'This man's a Nazi?' he said.

  'Among other things.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'He likes to torture people.'

  He cleared his throat.

  'About eight or nine years ago I remember a case… no, it wasn't a case, really, it was a bad series of events that happened with a detective named Mervain. We had a recruit who bothered Mervain for some reason. He couldn't get this fellow out of his mind. It seems like the fellow was suspected of stealing some guns from us, who knows, maybe it was some vests, too.'

  'What was the recruit's name?'

  'I'm sorry, I don't remember everything that happened and I don't want to say the wrong thing and mislead you. Let me check with a couple of other people here and call you back.'

  'I'd appreciate it very much, sir.'

  Arraignment for the nun impersonator was at 11:00 A.M., and my best throw of the dice kept coming back boxcars, deuces, and treys. Clete called collect from a pay phone in Metairie.

  'Dead end,' he said. 'Her address is in an apartment building that a wrecking ball went through six months ago.'

  'Did you ask around the neighborhood about her?'

  'I'm in a phone booth in front of a liquor store that has bullet holes in the windows. There's garbage all over the sidewalk. As I speak I'm looking at a collection of pukes who are looking back at me like I'm an albino ape. Guess what color these pukes are? Guess what color the whole neighborhood is.'