Dixie City Jam Page 4

  'I won't charge expenses,' I said.

  'I'm dying here. Hemorrhaging on the floor. I'm serious. Nobody believes me. Dave, you take food stamps?'

  Hippo, you're a jewel, I thought.

  Batist and I picked up my boat and left the dock at three the next morning. The breeze was up, peppered with light rain, and you could smell the salt spray breaking over the bow. The water was as dark as burgundy, the chop on the edge of the swells electric with moonlight, the wetlands to the north green and gray and metamorphic with mist. To the southeast I could see gas flares burning on some offshore rigs; then the wind dropped and the sky turned the color of bone and I could see a red glow spreading out of the water into the clouds.

  It was completely light when I cut the engine and drifted above the spot where I had dove down into darkness and the sounds of grinding metal three days earlier. Batist stood on the bow, feeding the anchor rope out through his palms, until it hit bottom and went slack; then he tied it off on a cleat.

  The water was smoky green, the swells full of skittering bait fish, the air hazy with humidity. I had fashioned a viewer box from reinforced window glass inset in a waterproofed wood crate, and I lowered it over the side by the handles and pressed it beneath the surface. Pockets of air swam across the glass, then flattened and disappeared, and suddenly in the yellow-green light I could see schools of small speckled trout, like darting silver ribbons, drumfish, as round and flat as skillets, a half dozen stingrays, their wings undulating as smoothly as if they were gliding on currents of warm air, and down below, where the light seemed to be gathered into a vortex of silt, the torpedo shapes of sand sharks, who bolted and twisted in erratic circles for no apparent reason.

  Batist peered downward through the viewer box over my shoulder. Then I felt his eyes studying me while I strapped on my tanks and weight belt.

  'This don't make me feel good, Dave,' he said.

  'Don't worry about it, partner.'

  'I don't want to see you lunch for them sharks, no.'

  'Those are sand sharks, Batist. They're harmless.'

  'Tell me that out yonder's harmless.' He pointed past the cabin to the southwest.

  It was a water spout that had dropped out of a thunderhead and was moving like an enormous spinning cone of light and water toward the coast. If it made landfall, which it probably would not, it would fill suddenly with mud, rotted vegetation, and uprooted trees, and become as black as a midwestern tornado coursing through a freshly plowed field.

  'Keep your eye on it and kick the engine over if it turns,' I said.

  'Just look up from down there, you see gasoline and life jackets and a bunch of bo'rds floatin' round, see me swimmin' toward Grand Isle, that means it ain't bothered to tell me it was fixin' to turn.'

  I went over the side, swam to the anchor rope, and began pulling myself downward hand over hand. I felt myself sliding through three different layers of temperature, each one cooler than the last; then just as a school of sea perch swept past me, almost clattering against my mask, I could feel a uniform level of coldness penetrate my body from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet. Clouds of gray silt seemed to be blowing along the gulf's floor as they would in a windstorm. The pressure against my eardrums began to grow in intensity; it made a faint tremolo sound, like wire stretching before it breaks. Then I heard iron ring against iron, and a groan like a great weight shifting against impacted sand.

  I held the anchor rope with one hand and floated motionlessly in the current. Then I saw it. For just a moment.

  It was pointed at an upward angle on a slope, buried in a sand-bar almost to its decks, molded softly with silt. But there was no mistaking the long, rounded, sharklike shape. It was a submarine, and I could make out the battered steel flanges that protruded above the captain's bridge on the conning tower, and I knew that if I scraped the moss and layers of mud and shellfish from the tower's plates I would see the vestiges of the swastika that I had seen on the same conning tower over three decades ago.

  Then I saw it tilt slightly to one side, saw dirty strings of oil or silt or engine fuel rise near the forward torpedo tubes, and I realized that years ago air must have been trapped somewhere in a compartment, perhaps where a group of terrified sailors spun a wheel on a hatch and pretended to themselves that their friends outside, whose skulls were being snapped like eggshell, would have chosen the same alternative.

  I felt a heavy surge in the current from out in the dark, beyond the continental shelf. The water clouded and the submarine disappeared. I thought I heard thunder booming, then the anchor rope vibrated in my palm, and when I looked up I could see the exhaust pipes on my boat boiling the waterline at the stern.

  When I came to the surface the chop smacked hard against my mask, and the swells were dented with rain circles. Batist came outside the cabin and pointed toward the southeast. I pushed my mask up on my head and looked behind me; three more water spouts had dropped out of the sky and were churning across the surface of the water, and farther to the south you could see thunderclouds as thick as oil smoke on the horizon.

  I climbed up the ladder, pulled off my gear, tied the end of a spool of clothesline through a chunk of pig iron that had once been a window sash, and fed the line over the gunwale until the weight bit into the bottom. Then I sawed off the line at the spool and strung it through the handles of three sealed Clorox bottles that I used as float markers. The rain was cold and dancing in a green haze on the swells now, the air heavy with the smell of ozone and nests of dead bait fish in the waves. Just as I started to fling the Clorox bottles overboard, I heard the blades of a helicopter thropping low over the water behind me.

  It passed us, flattening and wrinkling the water below the downdraft, and I saw the solitary passenger, a blond man in pilot's sunglasses, turn in his seat and stare back at me. Then the helicopter circled and hovered no more than forty yards to the south of us.

  'What they doin'?' Batist said.

  'I don't know.'

  'Let's get goin', Dave. We don't need to be stayin' out here no longer with them spouts.'

  'You got it, partner,' I said.

  Then the helicopter gained altitude, perhaps to five hundred feet directly above us, high enough for them to see the coastline and to take a good fix on our position.

  I left the Clorox marker bottles on the deck and pulled the sash weight back up from the bottom. We could return to this same area and probably find the sub again with my sonar, or 'fish finder,' which was an electronic marvel that could outline any protrusion on the gulfs floor. But the sky in the south was completely black now, with veins of lightning trembling on the horizon, and I had a feeling that the Nazi silent service down below was about to set sail again.

  chapter four

  We lived south of New Iberia, on an oak-lined dirt road next to the bayou, in a house that my father had built of notched and pegged cypress during the Depression. The side and front yards were matted with a thick layer of black leaves and stayed in deep shade from the pecan and oak trees that covered the eaves of the house. From the gallery, which had a rusted tin roof, you could look down the slope and across the dirt road to my boat-rental dock and bait shop. On the far side of the bayou was a heavy border of willow trees, and beyond the willows a marsh filled with moss-strung dead cypress, whose tops would become as pink as newly opened roses when the sun broke through the mist in the early morning.

  I slept late the morning after we brought the boat back from New Orleans. Then I fixed coffee and hot milk and a bowl of Grape-Nuts and blackberries, and took it all out on a tray to the redwood picnic table under the mimosa tree in the backyard. Later, Bootsie came outside through the screen door with a glass of iced tea, her face fresh and cool in the breeze across the lawn. She wore a sleeveless white blouse and pink shorts, and her thick, honey-colored hair, which she had brushed in swirls and pinned up on her head, was burned gold on the tips from the sun.

  'Did you see the phone messages from a police serg
eant on the blackboard?' she asked.

  'Yeah, thanks.'

  'What does she want?'

  'I don't know. I haven't called her back.'

  'She seemed pretty anxious to talk to you.'

  'Her name's Lucinda Bergeron. I think she probably has problems with her conscience.'

  'What?'

  'I tried to help her on an insubordination beef. When I asked her to do a favor for Batist, she more or less indicated I could drop dead.'

  'Maybe it's just a misunderstanding.'

  'I don't think so. Where's Alafair?'

  'She's down at the dock with Batist.' She drank from her iced tea and gazed at the duck pond at the foot of our property. She shook the ice in the bottom of the glass and looked at it. Then she said, 'Dave, are we going to pay for his lawyer?'

  'It's either that or let him take his chances with a court-appointed attorney. If he's lucky, he'll get a good one. If not, he can end up in Angola.'

  She touched at her hairline with her fingers and tried to keep her face empty of expression.

  'How much is it going to cost?' she said.

  'Ten to twenty grand. Maybe a lot more.'

  She widened her eyes and took a breath, and I could see a small white discoloration, the size of a dime, in each of her cheeks.

  'Dave, we'll go into debt for years,' she said.

  'I don't know what to do about it. Nate Baxter targeted Batist because he couldn't get at me or Clete. It's not Batist's fault.'

  The breeze blew through the mimosa, and the shade looked like lace rippling across her face. I saw her try to hide the anger that was gathering in her eyes.

  'There's nothing for it, Boots. The man didn't do anything to deserve this. We have to help him.'

  'All this started with Clete Purcel. He enjoys it. It's a way of life with him. When are you going to learn that, Dave?'

  Then she walked into the house and let the screen slam behind her.

  I hosed down some boats at the dock, cleaned off the telephone-spool tables after the lunch crowd had left, then finally gave in and used the phone in the bait shop to return Lucinda Bergeron's call. I was told she had gone home sick for the day, and I didn't bother to leave my name. Then I called three criminal attorneys in Lafayette and two in New Orleans. Their fees ran from eighty to one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, with no guarantees of anything.

  'You all right, Dave?' Alafair said. She sat on a tall stool behind the cash register, her Houston Astros cap on sideways, her red tennis shoes swinging above the floor. Her skin was dark brown, her Indian black hair filled with lights like a raven's wing.

  'Everything's copacetic, little guy,' I said. Through the screened windows the sun looked like a wobbling yellow flame on the bayou. I wiped the perspiration off my face with a damp counter towel and threw the towel in a corner.

  'You worried about money or something?'

  'It's just a temporary thing. Let's have a fried pie, Alf.'

  'Batist is in some kind of trouble, Dave?'

  'A little bit. But we'll get him out of it.' I winked at her, but the cloud didn't go out of her face. It had been seven years since I had pulled her from the submerged wreck of an airplane carrying illegal refugees from El Salvador. She had forgotten her own language (although she could understand most words in Cajun French without having been taught them), and she no longer had nightmares about the day the soldiers came to her village and created an object lesson with machetes and a pregnant woman in front of the medical clinic; but when she sensed difficulty or discord of any kind in our home, her brown eyes would immediately become troubled and focus on some dark concern inside herself, as though she were about to witness the re-creation of a terrible image that had been waiting patiently to come aborning again.

  'You have to trust me when I tell you not to worry about things, Squanto,' I said.

  Then she surprised me.

  'Dave, do you think you should be calling me all those baby names? I'm twelve years old.'

  'I'm sorry, Alf.'

  'It's all right. Some people just might not understand. They might think it's dumb or that you're treating me like a little kid or something.'

  'Well, I won't do it anymore. How's that?'

  'Don't worry about it. I just thought I ought to tell you.'

  'Okay, Alf. Thanks for letting me know.'

  She punched around on the keys of the cash register while blowing her breath up into her bangs. Then I saw her eyes go past me and focus somewhere out on the dock.

  'Dave, there's a black woman out there with a gas can. Dave, she's got a pistol in her back pocket.'

  I turned and looked out into the shade of the canvas awning that covered the dock. It was Lucinda Bergeron, in a pair of faded Levi's that barely clung to her thin hips, Adidas tennis shoes, and a white, sweat-streaked T-shirt with the purple-and-gold head of Mike the Tiger on it. She wore her badge clipped on her beltless waistband; a chrome snub-nosed revolver in an abbreviated leather holster protruded from her back pocket.

  Her face was filmed and gray, and she wiped at her eyes with one sleeve before she came through the screen door.

  'Are you okay?' I said.

  'May I use your rest room?' she said.

  'Sure, it's right behind the coolers,' I said, and pointed toward the rear of the shop.

  A moment later I heard the toilet flush and water running, then she came back out, breathing through her mouth, a crumpled wet paper towel in one hand.

  'Do you sell mouthwash or mints?' she said.

  I put a roll of Life Savers on top of the counter. Then I opened up a can of Coca-Cola and set it in front of her.

  'It settles the stomach,' I said.

  'I've got to get something straight with you.'

  'How's that?'

  She drank out of the Coke can. Her face looked dusty and wan, her eyes barely able to concentrate.

  'You think I'm chickenshit,' she said.

  'You were in a tough spot.'

  'But you still think I'm chickenshit, don't you?'

  'I know you're not feeling well, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't use profanity in front of my daughter.'

  'Excuse me. Did you have a reason for not returning my phone calls?'

  'When I called back, you were already gone. Look, Sergeant, I appreciate your coming down here, particularly when you're sick. But you don't owe me anything.'

  'You've decided that?'

  I let out my breath. 'What can I say? It's not my intention to have an argument with you.'

  'You sell gas? I ran out down the road. My gauge is broken.' She clanked the gasoline can on the counter.

  'Yeah, I've got a pump for the boats at the end of the dock.'

  'Your friend, the black man, Batist Perry, they're sticking it to him. Nate Baxter held some information back from you.'

  'Alafair, how about telling Bootsie we'll go to Mulate's for supper tonight?'

  She made an exasperated face, climbed down from the stool, unhitched Tripod, her three-legged pet raccoon, from his chain by the door, and went up the dock toward the house with Tripod looking back at me over her shoulder.

  'The murdered man had his heart cut out,' Lucinda Bergeron said. 'But so did three other homicide victims in the last four months. Even one who was pitched off a roof. He didn't tell you that, did he?'

  'No, he didn't.'

  'The press doesn't know about it, either. The city's trying to sit on it so they don't scare all the tourists out of town. Baxter thinks it's Satanists. Your friend just happened to stumble into the middle of the investigation.'

  'Satanists?'

  'You don't buy it?'

  'It seems they always turn out to be meltdowns who end up on right-wing religious shows. Maybe it's just coincidence.'

  'If I were you, I'd start proving my friend was nowhere near New Orleans when those other homicides were committed. I've got to sit down. I think I'm going to be sick again.'

  I came around from behind the counter and walke
d her to a chair and table. Her back felt like iron under my hands. She took her revolver out of her back pocket, clunked it on the table, and leaned forward with her forearms propped on her thighs. Her hair was thick and white on the ends, her neck oily with sweat. Two white fishermen whom I didn't know started through the door, then turned and went back outside.

  'I'll be right with y'all,' I called through the screen.

  'Like hell you will,' I heard one of them say as they walked back toward their cars.

  'I'll drive you back to New Orleans. I think maybe you've got a bad case of stomach flu,' I said to Lucinda.

  'Just fill my gas can for me. I'll be all right in a little bit.' She took a crumpled five-dollar bill from her Levi's and put it on the tabletop.

  'I have to go back for my truck, anyway. It's at a dock down by Barataria Bay. Let's don't argue about it.'

  But she wasn't capable of arguing about anything. Her breath was rife with bile, her elongated turquoise eyes rheumy and listless, the back of her white T-shirt glued against her black skin. When I patted her on the shoulder, I could feel the bone like coat hanger wire against the cloth. I could only guess at what it had been like for her at the NOPD training academy when a peckerwood drill instructor decided to turn up the butane.

  I carried the gas can down to her Toyota, got it started, filled the tank up at the dock, and drove her to New Orleans. She lived right off Magazine in a one-story white frame house with a green roof, a small yard, and a gallery that was hung with potted plants and overgrown with purple trumpet vine. Around the corner, on Magazine, was a two-story bar with a colonnade and neon Dixie beer signs in the windows; you could hear the jukebox roaring through the open front door.

  'I should drive you out to the boatyard,' she said.

  'I can take a cab.'

  She saw my eyes look up and down her street and linger on the intersection.

  'You know this neighborhood?'

  'Sure. I worked it when I was a patrolman. Years ago that bar on the corner was a hot-pillow joint.'

  'I know. My auntie used to hook there. It's a shooting gallery now,' she said, and walked inside to call me a cab.