Dixie City Jam Read online

  I looked into his eyes.

  'I don't want to offend you, Hippo, but I don't think you've squared with me. Is there something about this submarine you haven't told me?'

  'Hey, time for a flash, Dave. You told me about the sub, remember? You bargained with me about the finder's fee. You think I got secrets, I live in a private world? You bet your oysters I do. The bars on my house windows, the electronic security system, the rent-a-cops I pay to watch my kids, you think I got all that because I'm worried a bunch of coloreds from Magazine are gonna walk off with my lawn furniture? You're living in the New Jerusalem, Dave. It's the year zero; it's us against them. We either make it or we don't.'

  'I'm not sure I get what you're saying, Hippo. I'm not sure I want to, either. It sounds a little messianic'

  His face was flushed, his collar wilted like damp tissue paper around his thick neck.

  'Go on back to the worm business, Dave,' he said. 'That guy comes around your house again, do the earth a favor, screw a gun barrel in his mouth and blow his fucking head off. Leave me alone now, will you? I don't feel too good. I got blood pressure could blow gaskets out of a truck engine.'

  He wiped at his mouth with his hand. His lips were purple in the refrigerated gloom of his office. He stared at a collection of thumbtacked news articles and photographs on his corkboard as though his eyes could penetrate the black-and-white grain of the paper, as though perhaps he himself had been pulled inside a photograph, into a world of freight cars grinding slowly to a stop by a barbed-wire gate that yawned open like a hungry mouth, while dogs barked in the eye-watering glare of searchlights and files of the newly arrived moved in silhouette toward buildings with conical chimneys that disappeared into their own smoke.

  Or was I making a complexity out of a histrionic and disingenuous fat man whose self-manufactured drama had accidentally brought a stray misanthrope out of the woodwork?

  It was hard to buy into the notion that somehow World War II was still playing at the Bijou in New Orleans, Louisiana.

  I left him in his office and walked outside into the light. The heat was like a match flame against my skin.

  'It sounds deeply weird,' Clete said, biting into his po'-boy sandwich at a small grocery store up by Audubon Park, where the owner kept tables for working people to eat their lunch. 'But maybe we're just living in weird times. It's not like the old days.'

  'You believe this American Bund stuff?'

  'No, it's the way people think nowadays that bothers me. Like this vigilante gig and this Citizens Committee for a Better New Orleans. You knew Bimstine and Tommy Lonighan are both on it?'

  'No. When did Lonighan become a Rotarian?'

  'Law-and-order and well-run vice can get along real good together. Conventioneers looking for a blow job don't like getting rolled or ripped off by Murphy artists. Did you know that Lucinda Bergeron is NOPD's liaison person with the Committee?'

  He chewed his food slowly, watching my face. Outside, the wind was blowing and denting the canopy of spreading oaks along St. Charles.

  'Then this preacher whose head glows in the dark shows up at your dock and tells you he's part of the same bunch. You starting to see some patterns here, noble mon?' he said.

  'I don't know what any of that has to do with the guy who hurt Bootsie.'

  'Maybe it doesn't.' He watched the streetcar roll down the track on the neutral ground and stop on the corner. It was loaded with Japanese businessmen. In spite of the temperature they all wore dark blue suits, ties, and long-sleeve shirts. 'If I were a worrying man, you know what would worry me most? It's not the crack and the black punks in the projects. It's a feeling I've got about the normals, it's like they wouldn't mind trying it a different way for a while.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Maybe I'm wrong, but if tomorrow morning I woke up and read in The Times-Picayune that an election had just been held and it was now legal to run the lowlifes through tree shredders, you know, the kind the park guys use to grind oak limbs into wood chips, it wouldn't be a big surprise.'

  'Did you ever hear of anybody in the city who fits the description of this guy Buchalter?'

  'Nope. I've got a theory, though; at least it's something we can check out. He's an out-of-towner. He went to your house to shake up your cookie bag. Right? There doesn't seem to be any obvious connection between our man and any particular local bucket of shit we might have had trouble with. Right? What does all that suggest to you, Streak?'

  'One of the resident wise guys using out-of-town talent to send a message.'

  'And whose Johnson did we just jerk on? It can't hurt to have a talk with Tommy Bobalouba again, can it?'

  'I thought he was part of your meal ticket.'

  'Not anymore. I don't like the way he acted in front of Martina. You take an Irish street prick out of the Channel, put him in an eight-hundred-thou house by Lake Pontchartrain, and you've got an Irish street prick in an eight-hundred-thou house by Lake Pontchartrain. How about we have a little party?'

  'I'm on leave, and I'm out of my jurisdiction.'

  'Who cares? If the guy's clean, it's no big deal. If he's not, fuck that procedural stuff. We scramble his eggs.'

  The cashier cut his eyes toward us, then turned the floor fan so that our conversation was blown out the open door, away from the other customers.

  'Let me call home first,' I said.

  'No argument?'

  I shrugged my shoulders. He watched my face.

  'How much sleep did you get last night?' he asked.

  'Enough.'

  'You could fool me.'

  'You want to go out to Lonighan's or not?'

  There was a pause in his eyes, a fine bead of light. He made a round button with his lips and scratched at his cheek with one fingernail.

  Lonighan lived a short distance from the yacht club in an imitation Tudor mansion that had been built by a New Orleans beer baron during the 1920s. The grounds were surrounded by a high brick wall, at the front of which was a piked security gate, with heavy clumps of banana trees on each side of it, and a winding driveway that led past a screened-in pool and clay tennis courts that were scattered with leaves. We parked my truck, and Clete pushed the button on the speaker box by the gate.

  'Who is it?' a voice said through the box.

  'Clete Purcel. Is Tommy home?'

  'He's over at his gym. You want to come back later or leave a message?'

  'Who are all those people in the pool?'

  'Some guests. Just leave a message, Clete. I'll give it to him.'

  'When'll he be home?'

  'He comes, he goes, what do I know? Just leave a fucking message, will you?'

  'Here's the message, Art. I don't like talking to a box.'

  'I'm sorry, I'll be down. Hey, Clete, I'm just the hired help, all right?'

  A moment later the man named Art walked down the drive with a pair of hedge clippers in his hand. He was bare-chested and sweaty and wore grass-stained white shorts and sandals that flopped on his feet.

  'Open up,' Clete said.

  'You're putting me in a bad place, man. Why'd you have to get Tommy upset?'

  'I didn't do anything to Tommy.'

  'Tell that to him. Christ, Clete, you know what kind of guy he is. How you think he feels when a broad tells him off in public?'

  'You gonna open up?'

  'No.'

  'You're starting to piss me off, Art.'

  'What can I say? Wait in your truck, I'll send you guys out some drinks and sandwiches. Give me a break, all right?'

  He walked back toward the house. The swimmers were leaving the screened-in pool for a shady area in the trees, set with lawn chairs, a drinks table, and a smoking barbecue pit. The skin flexed around the corners of Clete's eyes.

  'You still got your binoculars?' he asked.

  'In the glove compartment.'

  He went to the truck and returned to the gate. He focused my pair of World War II Japanese field glasses through the steel bars and st
udied the people in the shade.

  'Check it out, mon,' he said, handing me the glasses.

  One woman lay on a reclining chair with a newspaper over her face. A second, older, heavyset and big-breasted, her skin tanned almost the color of mahogany, stood on the lawn with her feet spread wide, touching each toe with a cross-handed motion, her ash blond hair cascading back and forth across her shoulders. A third woman, with dyed red hair, who could not have been over twenty or twenty-one, was bent forward over a pocket mirror, a short soda straw held to one nostril, the other nostril pinched shut with a forefinger. Seated on each side of her was a thick-bodied, sun-browned, middle-aged man with a neon bikini wrapped wetly around the genitals, the back and chest streaked with wisps of black and gray hair. The face of one man was flecked with fine patterns of scab tissue, as though he had walked through a reddish brown skein of cobweb.

  'When did Tommy Blue Eyes hook up with the Caluccis?' Clete said. 'They always hated each other.'

  'Business is business.'

  'Yeah, but the micks always looked down on the greaseballs. They didn't socialize with them.' He took the glasses out of my hand and looked again through the bars. 'If you think Bobo and Max are geeks, check out the cat flopping steaks on the grill.'

  A man who must have been six and one half feet tall had come out of the side entrance to the house with a tray of meat. He had a flat Indian face, a cheerless mouth, and wide-set, muddy eyes that didn't squint or blink in the smoke rising from the pit. His hair was jet black and freshly barbered and looked like a close-cropped wig glued on brownish red stone.

  'All the guy needs are electrodes inset in his temples,' Clete said.

  'I don't think this is going anywhere,' I said. 'I probably should head back to New Iberia.'

  His green eyes roamed over my face. 'You don't think Bootsie can handle it?' he asked.

  'How do I know, Clete? He humiliated her, he put his tongue in her mouth, he left bruises on her kidney like he'd taken a pair of pliers to her.'

  He nodded and didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, 'That blonde doing the aerobics is Tommy's regular punch when his old lady's out of town. No, she's more than that, he got a real Jones for her. Believe me, Tommy and that clunk of radiator hose he's got for a schlong aren't far away. Dave, look at me. You got my word, I'm going to dig this guy Buchalter out of the woodwork. If you're not around, I'll give you a Polaroid, then you can burn it.'

  He continued to stare into my face, then he said, 'You're troubling me, noble mon.'

  'What's the problem?'

  'You look wired to the eyes, that's the problem.'

  'So what?'

  'You have a way of throwing major monkey shit through the window fan, that's what.'

  'I do?'

  'Go down to the corner and call Bootsie. Then we'll give it another hour. If Tommy's not back by then, we'll hang it up.'

  We waited in the truck for another hour, but Tommy Lonighan didn't return. The metal of my dashboard burned my hands when I touched it, and the air smelled of salt and dead water beetles in the rain gutters. I started the engine.

  'Wait a minute. They're coming out. Let's not waste an opportunity, mon,' Clete said.

  The electronic piked gate opened automatically, and the Calucci brothers, in a light blue Cadillac convertible, with the two younger women in the backseat, drove out of the shade into the sunlight. I started-to block their exit with the truck, but it was unnecessary. Max Calucci, the driver, and one of the women in back were arguing furiously. Max stepped hard on the brakes, jolting everyone in the car forward, turned in his leather seat, and began jabbing his finger at the woman. The woman, the one who had been doing lines through a soda straw earlier, climbed out of the backseat in her shorts and spiked heels, raking a long, paint-curling scratch down the side of the Cadillac.

  Max got out of the car and struck the woman full across the mouth with the flat of his hand. He hit her so hard that a barrette flew from her lacquered red hair. Then he slapped her across the ear. She pressed her palms into her face and began to weep.

  None of them saw us until we had walked to within five feet of their car.

  'Better ease up, Max. People might start to think you abuse women,' Clete said.

  'What are you doing here?' Max said. He was bald down through the center of his head, and drops of sweat the size of BB's glistened in his thick, dark eyebrows. Up close, the scabs on his face and neck looked like curlicues of reddish brown, fine-linked chain.

  'Art didn't let you know we were out here?' Clete said. 'That's why you didn't invite us in?'

  'You blindsided me the other night, Purcel. It's not over between us. You better haul your fat ass out of here,' Max said.

  'Y'all know a dude by the name of Will Buchalter? Streak here'd really like to talk to him,' Clete said.

  'No, I don't know him. Now get out of here-' He stopped and raised his finger in the face of the woman with the dyed red hair. 'And you, get back in the car. You're gonna polish that scratch out if you have to do it with your twat. Did you hear me, move! You don't open that mouth again, either, unless I want to put something in it.'

  He clamped his hand on the back of her neck, squeezed, and twisted her toward the car while tears ran from her eyes.

  The shovel lay propped among some rosebushes against the brick wall. It had a long, work-worn wood handle with a wide, round-backed blade. Max Calucci did not see me pick it up. Nor did he see me swing it with both hands, from deep behind me, as I would a baseball bat, until he heard the blade ripping through the air. By then it was too late. The metal whanged off his elbow and thudded into his rib cage, bending him double, and I saw his mouth drop open and a level of pain leap into his eyes that he could not quite find words to express.

  Then I reversed the shovel in my hands and swung the blade up into his face, as you would butt-stroke an adversary with a pugil stick. I saw him tumble backwards on the grass, his knees drawn up in front of him, his face bloodless with shock, his mouth a scarlet circle of disbelief. I heard feet running down the drive, Bobo Calucci blowing the car horn with both hands in desperation, then Clete was standing in front of me, pressing me back with his palms, his armpits drenched with perspiration, the strap of his nylon shoulder holster biting into one nipple.

  'For Christ's sakes, back off, Dave, you're gonna kill the guy,' he was saying. 'You hear me? Let it slide, Streak. He's not the guy we care about.'

  Then his big hands dropped to the handle of the shovel and twisted it from my grasp, his Irish pie-plate face two inches from mine, his eyes filled with pity and an undisguised and fearful love.

  chapter eight

  That night, as I lay next to Bootsie in our bed, I did not tell her about the incident with the Calucci brothers. Even though I had been in Alcoholics Anonymous a number of years, and to one degree or another had been through the twelve steps of recovery and had tried to incorporate them into my life, I had never achieved a great degree of self-knowledge, other than the fact that I was a drunk; nor had I ever been able to explain my behavior and the way I thought, or didn't think, to normal people.

  I always wanted to believe that those moments of rage, which affected me almost like an alcoholic blackout, were due to a legitimate cause, that I or someone close to me had been seriously wronged, that the object of my anger and adrenaline had not swum coincidentally into my ken.

  But I had known too many cops who thought the same way. Somehow there was always an available justification for the Taser dart, the jet of Mace straight into the eyes, the steel baton whipped across the shinbones or the backs of the thighs.

  The temptation is to blame the job, the stressed-out adversarial daily routine that can begin like a rupturing peptic ulcer, the judges and parole boards who recycle psychopaths back on the street faster than you can shut their files. But sometimes in an honest moment an unpleasant conclusion works its way through all the rhetoric of the self-apologist, namely, that you are drawn to this world in the same way that
some people are fascinated by the protean shape and texture of fire, to the extent that they need to slide their hands through its caress.

  I remember an old-time gunbull at Angola who had spent forty-seven years of his life shepherding convicts under a double-barreled twelve-gauge out on the Mississippi levee. During that time he had killed four men and wounded a half dozen others. His liver had been eaten away with cirrhosis; the right side of his chest was caved in from the surgical removal of a cancerous lung. To my knowledge, he had no relatives with whom he kept contact, no women in his life except a prostitute in Opelousas. I asked him how he had come to be a career gunbull.

  He thought about it a moment, then dipped the end of his cigar in his whiskey glass and put it in his mouth.

  'It was me or them, I reckon,' he said.

  'Beg your pardon?'

  'I figured the kind of man I was, one way or another I was gonna be jailing. Better to do it up there on the horse than down there with a bunch of niggers chopping in the cane.'

  I didn't tell Bootsie about the Caluccis, nor did I say anything to her about the smell of bourbon that she brought to bed with her that night. I fell asleep with my hand on her back. At about one in the morning I felt her weight leave the mattress. I heard her walk barefooted into the kitchen, open a cabinet without turning on the light, then clink a bottle against a glass. A moment later she was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth.

  She seldom drank and had little physical tolerance for alcohol. The following morning she stayed in the shower for almost fifteen minutes, then ate an aspirin with her coffee and talked brightly at the breakfast table for a long time, until finally her face became wan and she put her forehead down on her palm.

  I walked around behind her chair and rubbed her neck and shoulders.

  'Sometimes it's hard to accept this, Boots, but there's no reason to feel shame when we're overcome by superior physical force,' I said. 'No more than a person should be ashamed of contracting the flu or being undone by the attack of a wild animal.'