Dixie City Jam Page 5

  Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought.

  It was late evening after I picked up my truck down in Barataria and drove back into the city. I called Clete at his apartment in the Quarter.

  'Hey, noble mon,' he said. 'I called you at your house this afternoon.'

  'What's up?'

  'Oh, it probably doesn't amount to much. What are you doing back in the Big Sleazy, mon?'

  'I need some help on these vigilante killings. I'm not going to get it from NOPD.'

  'Lose this vigilante stuff, Dave. It's a shuck, believe me.'

  'Have you heard about some guys having their hearts cut out?'

  He laughed. 'That's a new one. Where'd you get that?' he said.

  'Lucinda Bergeron.'

  'You've been out of Homicide too long, Streak. When they cancel them out, it's for money, sex, or power. This vampire or ghoul bullshit is out of comic books. Hey, I got another revelation for you. I think that Bergeron broad has got a few frayed wires in her head. Did she tell you she went up to Angola to watch a guy fry?'

  'No.'

  'It probably just slipped her mind. Most of your normals like to watch a guy ride the bolt once in a while.'

  'Why'd you call the house?'

  'I'm hearing this weird story about you and a Nazi submarine.'

  'From where?'

  'Look, Martina's over here. I promised to take her to this blues joint up on Napoleon. Join us, then we'll get some étouffée at Monroe's. You've got to do it, mon, it's not up for discussion. Then I'll fill you in on how you've become a subject of conversation with Tommy Blue Eyes.'

  'Tommy Lonighan?'

  'You got it, Tommy Bobalouba himself, the only mick I ever met who says his own kind are niggers turned inside out.'

  'The Tommy Lonighan I remember drowned a guy with a fire hose, Clete.'

  'So who's perfect? Let me give you directions up on Napoleon. By the way, Bootsie seemed a little remote when I called. Did I spit in the soup or something?'

  The nightclub up on Napoleon was crowded, the noise deafening, and I couldn't see Clete at any of the tables. Then I realized that an exceptional event had just taken place up on the bandstand. The Fat Man, the most famous rhythm and blues musician ever produced by New Orleans, had pulled up in front in his pink Cadillac limo, and like a messiah returning to his followers, his sequined white coat and coal black skin almost glowing with an electric purple sheen, had walked straight through the parting crowd to the piano, grinning and nodding, his walrus face beaming with goodwill and an innocent self-satisfaction, and had started hammering out 'When the Saints Go Marching In.'

  The place went wild.

  Then I realized that another event was taking place simultaneously on the dance floor, one that probably not even New Orleans was prepared for-Clete Purcel and his girlfriend doing the dirty boogie.

  While the Fat Man's ringed, sausage fingers danced up and down on the piano keys and the saxophones and trumpets blared behind him, Clete was bopping in the middle of the hardwood floor, his porkpie hat slanted forward on his head, his face pointed between his girlfriend's breasts, his buttocks swinging like an elephant's; then a moment later his shoulders were erect while he bumped and ground his loins, his belly jiggling, his balled fists churning the air, his face turned sideways as though he were in the midst of orgasm.

  His girlfriend was over six feet tall and wore a flowered sundress that fit her tanned body like sealskin. She waved bandannas in each hand as though she were on a runway, kicking her waxed calves at an angle behind her, lifting her chin into the air while her eyelids drifted shut and she rotated her tongue slowly around her lips. Then she let her mouth hang open in a feigned pout, pushed her reddish brown hair over the top of her head with both hands, flipped it back into place with an erotic challenge in her eyes, and rubbed a stretched bandanna back and forth across her rump while she oscillated her hips.

  At first the other dancers pulled back in awe or shock or perhaps even in respect; then they began to leave the dance floor two at a time and finally in large numbers after Clete backed with his full weight into another dancer and sent him careening into a drink waiter.

  The Fat Man finished, wiped his sweating face at the microphone with an immaculate white handkerchief, and thanked the crowd for their ongoing roar of applause. I followed Clete and his girl to their table, which was covered with newspaper, beer bottles, and dirty paper plates that had contained potatoes French-fried in chicken fat. Clete's face was bright and happy with alcohol, and the seams of his Hawaiian shirt were split at both shoulders.

  'Martina, this is the guy I've been telling you about,' he said. 'My ole bust-'em or smoke-'em podjo.'

  'How about giving that stuff a break, Clete?' I said.

  'I'm very pleased to meet you,' she said.

  Her face was pretty in a rough way, her skin coarse and grained under the makeup as though she had worked outdoors in sun and wind rather than on a burlesque stage.

  'Clete's told me about how highly educated you are and so well read and all,' she said.

  'He exaggerates sometimes.'

  'No, he doesn't,' she said. 'He's very genuine and sincere and he feels very deeply for you.'

  'I see,' I said.

  'He has a gentle side to his nature that few people know about. The people in my herbalist and nude therapy group think he's wonderful.'

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Clete study the dancers out on the floor as though he had never seen them before.

  'He says you're trying to find the vigilante. I think it's disgusting that somebody's out there murdering colored people in the projects and nobody does anything about it.'

  'Clete doesn't seem to give it much credence.'

  'Look, mon, let me tell you where this vigilante stuff came from. There's a citizens committee here, a bunch of right-wing douche bags who haven't figured out what their genitalia is for, so they spend all their time jacking up local politicians and judges about crime in the streets, dope in the projects, on and on and on, except nobody wants to pay more taxes to hire more cops or build more jails. So what they're really saying is let's either give the blacks a lot more rubbers or do a little less to stop the spread of sickle-cell.'

  Martina had taken a pocket dictionary from her purse. She read aloud from it: '"Credence-belief, mental acceptance or credit." That's an interesting word. It's related to "credibility," isn't it?'

  Clete widened his eyes and looked at her as though he were awakening from sleep. Then somebody on the opposite side of the dance floor caught his attention.

  'Dave, a guy's coming over to our table,' he said. 'He just wants to talk a minute. Okay? I told him you wouldn't mind. He's not a bad guy. Maybe you might even be interested in what he's got to say. It doesn't hurt to listen to a guy, right?'

  Through the layers of drifting cigarette smoke my eyes focused on a man with two women at a table. His solid physique reminded me of an upended hogshead; even at a distance his other features-his florid, potato face, his eyes that were as blue as ice, his meringue hair-were unmistakable.

  'You shouldn't have done this, partner,' I said to Clete.

  'I provide security at two of his clubs. What am I supposed to say to him, "Drop dead, Tommy. My buddy Dave thinks you're spit on the sidewalk, get off the planet, sonofabitch"?'

  'He's not just an eccentric local character. He was up on a murder beef. What's the matter with you?'

  'The guy he did with the fire hose was beating up old people in the Irish Channel with an iron pipe. Yeah, big loss. Everybody was real upset when they heard he'd finally caught the bus.'

  'Fire hose?' Martina said, and made a puzzled face.

  There was nothing for it, though. The man with the red face and the eyes that were like flawless blue marbles was walking toward our table.

  Clete mashed out his cigarette in a paper plate.

  'Play it like you want, Dave,' he said. 'You think Tommy Bobalouba's any more a geek than Hippo Bimstine, tell him to ship out
.'

  'What about Hippo?' I said.

  'Nothing. What do I know? I thought I might bring you a little extra gelt. You're too much, Streak.'

  Tommy Lonighan hooked two fingers under an empty chair at an adjacent table without asking permission of the people sitting there, swung it in front of him, and sat down. He wore a long-sleeve pink shirt with French cuffs and red stone cuff links, but the lapels were ironed back to expose the mat of white hair on his chest, and the hair on his stubby, muscular forearms grew out on his wrists like wire. He had the small mouth of the Irish, with downturned corners, and a hard, round chin with a cleft in it.

  'What d'you say, Lieutenant?' he said, and extended his hand. When I took it, it was as square and rough-edged as a piece of lumber.

  'Not much, Mr. Lonighan. How are you this evening?' I said.

  '"Mr. Lonighan," he says. I look like a "mister" to you these days?' he said. The accent was Irish Channel blue-collar, which is often mistaken for a Brooklyn accent, primarily because large sections of New Orleans were settled by Irish and Italian immigrants in the 1890s. He smiled, but the clear light in his eyes never changed, never revealed what he might or might not be thinking.

  'What's up?' I said.

  'Boy, you fucking cut straight to it, don't you?'

  'How about it on the language, Tommy?' Clete said.

  'Sorry, I spend all day with prizefighters down at my gym,' he said, glancing sideways at Martina. 'So how much is Blimp-stine offering you to find this sub?'

  'Who?' I said.

  'Hippo Bimstine, the beached whale of south Louisiana. Who you think I'm talking about?'

  'How do you know Hippo's offering me anything?'

  'It's a small town. Times are hard. Somebody's always willing to pass on a little information,' he said, and put a long French fry between his lips, sucking it deep into his mouth with a smile in his eyes.

  'You're right, there's a Nazi sub out there someplace. But I don't know where. Not now, anyway. For all I know, it's drifted all the way to the Yucatan. The alluvial fan of the Mississippi probably works it in a wide circle.'

  He set his palm on my forearm and looked me steadily in the eyes. There were thin gray scars in his eyebrows, a nest of pulsating veins in one temple that had not been there a moment ago.

  'Why is it I don't believe you?' he said.

  'What's your implication, Tommy?' I said.

  'It's "Tommy" now. I like it, Dave. I don't "imply" anything. That's not my way.' But his hand did not leave my forearm.

  Martina read from her pocket dictionary: '"Alluvial fan-the deposit of a stream where it issues from a gorge upon an open plain." The Mississippi isn't a stream, is it?'

  Lonighan stared at her.

  'I'm not sure why either you or Hippo are interested in some World War II junk, but my interest is fading fast, Tommy,' I said.

  'That's too bad. Because both Hippo and me are going into the casino business. I'm talking about riverboats here, legalized gambling that can make this city rich, and I'm not about to let that glutinous sheeny set up a tourist exhibit on the river that takes maybe half my business.'

  'Then tell it to Hippo,' I said, and pulled my arm out from under his hand.

  'What?' he said. 'You got your nose up in the air about something? I come to your table, you act like somebody's flushing a crapper in your face? You don't like me touching your skin?'

  'Take it easy, Tommy. Dave didn't mean anything,' Clete said.

  'The fuck he didn't.' Then he said it again: 'The fuck he didn't.'

  'I'd appreciate your leaving our table,' I said.

  He started to speak, but Martina beat him to it.

  'I happen to be part Jewish, Mr. Lonighan,' she said, her face serene and cool, her gaze focused benignly on him as though she were addressing an abstraction rather than an enraged man at her elbow. 'You're a dumb mick who's embarrassing everybody at the table. It's not your fault, though. You probably come from a dysfunctional home full of ignorant people like yourself. But you should join a therapy group so you can understand the origin of your rude manners.'

  The crow's-feet around Lonighan's eyes were white with anger and disbelief. I looked at Martina in amazement and admiration.

  chapter five

  I slept on Clete's couch that night, and in the morning I called Nate Baxter at his office and asked about the other homicides that involved mutilation.

  Nate had never been a good liar.

  'Mutilation? How do you think most homicides are committed? By beating the person to death with dandelions?'

  'You know what I'm talking about.'

  'Yeah, I do. You got to somebody under my supervision.'

  'Your office is a sieve, Nate.'

  'No, there's only one broad I smell in this. Nothing racial meant. Stay out of the investigation, Robicheaux. You blew your career in New Orleans because you were a lush. You won't change that by sticking your nose up that broad's cheeks.'

  He hung up.

  I got back home just before lunch. The air was already hot and breathless and dense with humidity, and I put on my tennis shoes and running shorts, jogged three miles along the dirt road by the bayou, then did three sets of arm curls, dead lifts, and military presses with my barbells in the backyard. My chest was singing with blood when I turned on the cold water in the shower.

  I didn't hear Bootsie open the bathroom door.

  'Do you have a second?'

  'Sure,' I said, and twisted the shower handle off.

  'I acted badly. I'm sorry,' she said.

  'About what?'

  'About Batist. About the money. I worry about it sometimes. Too much, I guess.'

  'What if I had a wife who didn't?'

  I eased the water back on, then through the frosted glass I saw her undressing in muted silhouette. She opened the door, stepped inside with me, and slipped her arms around my neck, her face uplifted, her eyes closed against the spray of the shower over my shoulders.

  I held her against me and kissed her hair. Her body was covered with tan, the tops of her breasts powdered with freckles. Her skin was smooth and warm and seemed to radiate health and well-being through my palms, the way a rose petal does to the tips of your fingers, but the reality was otherwise. Lupus, the red wolf, lived in her blood and waited only for a slip in her medication to resume feeding on her organs and connective tissue. And if the wolf was not loosed by an imbalance in the combinations of medicine that she took, another even more insidious enemy was-temporary psychosis that was like an excursion onto an airless piece of moonscape where only she lived.

  She was supposed to avoid the sun, too. But I had long since given up trying to take her out of the garden or force her back into the shade of the cabin when we were out on the salt. I had come to feel, as many people do when they live with a stricken wife or husband, that the tyranny of love can be as destructive as that of disease.

  We made love in the bedroom, our bodies still damp and cool from the shower, while the window fan drew the breeze across the sheets. She moved her stomach in a circular motion on top of me, her arms propped against the mattress; then I saw her eyes close and her face become soft and remote. Her thighs tensed, and she bent forward suddenly, her mouth opening, and I felt her heat spread across my loins just as something crested and burst inside me like water edging over a dam and cascading in a white arc through a dark streambed.

  She was one of those rare people for whom making love did not end with a particular act. She lay beside me and touched the white patch in my hair, my mustache, the rubbery scar high up on my chest from a.38 round, the spray of lead gray welts along my right thigh where a bouncing Betty had painted me with light on a night trail outside a pitiful Third World village stinking of duck shit and unburied water buffalo.

  Then I felt her hand rest in the center of my chest.

  'Dave, there was a man outside this morning,' she said.

  'Which man?'

  'He was out by the road, looking through the t
rees at the gallery. When I opened the screen, he walked back down the road.'

  'What did he look like?'

  'I couldn't see his face. He had on a blue shirt and a hat.'

  'Maybe he was just lost.'

  'Our number and name are on the mailbox by the road. Why would he be looking up at the gallery?'

  'I'll ask Batist if he saw anyone unusual hanging around the front.'

  She got up from the bed and began dressing by the back window. The curtains, which had the texture of gauze and were printed with tiny pink flowers, ruffled across the arch of her back as she stepped into her panties.

  'Why are you looking at me like that?' she said.

  'Because without exaggeration I can say that you're one of the most beautiful women on earth.'

  When she smiled her eyes closed and opened in a way that made my heart drop.

  Later, I went down to the dock to help Batist clean up the tables after the lunch crowd had left. Parked by the boat ramp, pinging with heat, was a flatbed truck with huge cone-shaped loudspeakers welded all over the cab's roof. On the doors, hand-painted in a flowing calligraphy, were the words Rev. Oswald Flat Ministries.

  I remembered the name from years ago when he had broadcast his faith-healing show from Station XERF, one of the most powerful radio transmitters in the Western Hemisphere, located across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, in old Mexico so that the renters of its airtime were not governed by FCC restrictions. Sandwiched between ads for tulip bulbs, bat guano, baby chicks, aphrodisiacs, and memberships in every society from the Invisible Empire to the Black Muslims, were sermons by Brother Oswald, as he was called, that were ranting, breathless pieces of Appalachian eloquence. Sometimes he would become virtually hysterical, gasping as though he had emphysema, then he would snort air through his nostrils and begin another fifteen-minute roller-coaster monologue that would build with such roaring, unstoppable intensity that the technicians would end his sermon for him by superimposing a prerecorded ad.

  He and his wife, a woman in a print cotton dress with rings of fat under her chin, were eating barbecue at the only table in the bait shop when I opened the screen door. It must have been ninety degrees in the shop, even with the window fans on, but Oswald Flat wore a long-sleeve denim work shirt buttoned at the wrists and a cork sun helmet that leaked sweat out of the band down the sides of his head. His eyes were pale behind his rimless glasses, the color of water flowing over gravel, liquid-looking in the heat, the back of his neck and hands burned the deep hue of chewing tobacco.