A Stained White Radiance Read online

  “You always believed in prayer, Streak,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you AA guys call it ‘turning it over’? Maybe it’s time to do that. Worrying about Bootsie and what you can’t change is putting boards in your head.”

  “It sure is.”

  “So?”

  “What?”

  “Why set yourself up for a lot of grief?” He was looking straight ahead now, his porkpie hat resting on his brow. “I know you, noble mon. I know the thoughts you’re going to have before you have them. Turn the dials on yourself long enough, tamp them down till you got all the gears shearing off against each other, and pretty soon the old life looks pretty good again.”

  “That’s not the way it is this time.”

  “Yeah, probably not. I shouldn’t be handing out advice, anyway. When I started drinking my breakfast there for a while, I got sent by the captain to this shrink who was on lend-lease from the psychology department at Tulane. So I told him a few stories, stuff that I thought was pretty ordinary—race beefs when I was growing up in the Irish Channel, a hooker who dosed me while I was married, the time you and I smoked that greaseball dope dealer and his bodyguard in the back of their Cadillac—and I thought the guy was going to throw up in his wastebasket. I always heard these guys could take it. I felt like a freak. I ain’t kidding you, the guy was trembling. I offered to buy him a drink and he got mad.”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “That’s it, mon. Lighten up,” he said. “Nothing rattles the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide. And my, my, what do we have here?” He adjusted the outside mirror with his hand. “Yes indeedy, it’s the All-American peckerwood. You know this guy’s got broads all over New Orleans? That’s right, they really dig his rebop. I’ve got to learn his technique. Come on, fire it up, Streak.”

  I turned the ignition and followed the white, chauffeur-driven Chrysler toward the entrance.

  “I’m out of my jurisdiction, Clete,” I said. “No Wyatt Earp stuff. We don’t bruise the fruit. Right? Agreed?”

  “Sure. We’re just out here to visit. Talk some trash, maybe drink some mash. Get some political tips. Step on it, mon.” His arm was pressed flat against the side of the truck door, his face bright, like a man anticipating a carnival ride.

  The Chrysler drove through the gate and on up the drive toward the white stucco, blue-tiled home with the sweeping porch and an adjacent swimming pool that was bordered with banana and lime trees and flaring gas torches. A man in pressed black pants and shined shoes, white shirt and black tie, with oiled red hair combed straight back on his head, swung the gate closed and walked away as though we were not there.

  Clete got out of the truck and walked to the gate.

  “Hey, bubba, does it look like we’re from Fuller Brush?” he said.

  “What?” the man said.

  “We’re here to see Bobby Earl. Open up.”

  “He’s got dinner guests. Who are you?”

  “Who am I?” Clete said, smiling, pointing at his chest with his thumb. “Good question, good question. You see this badge? Dave, do you know who we’re talking to here?”

  He folded his private investigator’s badge and replaced it in his coat pocket when the man reached for it.

  “I bet you didn’t think I recognized you, did you?” Clete said. “Gomez, right? You were a middleweight. Lefty Felix Gomez. I saw you fight Irish Jerry Wallace over in Gretna. You knocked his mouthpiece into the third row.”

  The gateman nodded, his face unimpressed. “Mr. Earl don’t want to be bothered by anybody tonight,” he said. “That badge you got. Pawnshop windows are full of them.”

  “Sharp eye,” Clete said, his mouth still grinning. “I remember another story about you. You beat up a kid in a filling station. A high school kid. You fractured his skull.”

  “I told you what Mr. Earl said. You can come back tomorrow, or you can write him care of the state legislature. That’s where he works.”

  “Nice tie,” Clete said, reached through the gate, knotted the man’s necktie in his fist, and jerked his face tightly against the bars. “You’ve got a serious problem, Lefty. You’re hard of hearing. Now, you get on that box and tell Mr. Earl that Cletus Purcel and Detective Dave Robicheaux are here to see him. Is my signal getting through to you? Are we big-picture clear on this?”

  “Let him go, Clete,” I said.

  A tall, good-looking man with angular shoulders in a striped gray, double-breasted suit, his silk shirt unbuttoned on his chest, walked down the drive toward us.

  “Sure,” Clete said, and released the gateman, whose face had gone livid with anger except for the two diagonal lines where the flesh had been pressed into the iron bars of the gate.

  “What’s the trouble, Felix?” the man in the suit said.

  “No trouble, Mr. Earl. We want a few minutes of your time. I don’t think your man here was passing on the information very well,” Clete said.

  “I’m Detective Dave Robicheaux of the Iberia Parish sheriff’s office,” I said, and opened my badge in my palm. “I’m sorry for the late hour, but I’m in town only for today. I’d like to talk with you about Mr. Raintree.”

  “Mr. Raintree? Yes. Well, I’m having someone for dinner, but—” His thick brown hair was styled and grew slightly over his collar, giving him a rugged and casual look. His skin was fine-grained, his jaws cleanly shaved, and his smile was easy and good-natured. The only strange characteristic about him was his right eye, whose pupil was larger than the one in his left eye, which gave it a monocular look. “Well, we can take a minute or two, can’t we? Would you like to sit down by the pool? I’m not sure that I can help you, but I’ll try.”

  “I appreciate your time, sir,” I said, and followed him up the drive.

  “Hey, Lefty, I forgot to tell you,” Clete said, winking at the gateman. “When you were in the ring, I always heard they tried to match you up with cerebral-palsy victims.”

  We sat on canvas deck chairs by a swimming pool that was shaped in the form of a cross. The underwater lights were on, and the turquoise surface glistened with a thin sheen of suntan oil. On the flagstone patio a linen-covered table was set with candelabra and service for two. Bobby Earl walked to the side door of his house and spoke to his chauffeur, who had changed into a white butler’s jacket. Then a young blonde woman in a pink bathing suit, terry-cloth robe, and high heels came out the door and began arguing with Bobby Earl. His back was to us, but I could see him raise his long, slender hands in a placating gesture. Then she slammed the screen and went back inside.

  “I told you he was a gash hound,” Clete said.

  “Clete, will you ease up? I mean it.”

  “I’m mellow, I’m extremely serene. Don’t sweat it. Hey, I didn’t mention something else about the gateman back there. He was a coke mule for Joey Gouza and the Giacano family. It’s funny he’s out here with the white man’s hope.”

  “We’ll run him later. Now stop shaking the screen on the zoo cage.”

  “You’ve got no sense of humor, Streak. The sonofabitch is scared. Watch the corner of his mouth. Now’s the time to squeeze his peaches.”

  Bobby Earl came back to the pool, with his butler behind him. The butler set a bowl of popcorn crawfish down on a folding table between me and Clete.

  “Would you gentlemen like something from the bar?” he said. His face was flat, with a small nose, close-set eyes, and a chin beard.

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” I said.

  “How about a double Black Jack, no ice, with a 7 on the side?” Clete said.

  “I’ll have a vodka collins, Ralph,” Bobby Earl said, sat down across from us, and folded one leg across his knee. I studied his handsome face and tried to relate it to the 1970s newspaper photograph I had seen of him in silken Klan robes when he had been imperial wizard of the Louisiana Grand Knights of the Invisible Empire.

  “Does Mr. Raintree work for you?” I asked. I opened a small notebook in my hand and cli
cked my ballpoint pen with my thumb.

  “No.”

  “He doesn’t work for you?” I said.

  “You mean Eddy?”

  “Yes, Eddy Raintree.”

  “He did at one time. Not now. I don’t know where he is now.”

  Then I saw what Clete had meant. The skin at the corner of his mouth wrinkled, like fingernail impressions in putty.

  “When’s the last time you saw him?” I asked.

  “It’s been a while. I tried to help him a couple of times when he was out of work. Has Eddy done something wrong? I don’t understand.”

  “I’m investigating the murder of a police officer. I thought Eddy might be able to help us. Do you know if Eddy has ever been up the road?”

  “What?”

  “Has he ever done time?”

  “I don’t know.” Then his peculiar, mismatched eyes focused on me thoughtfully. “Why do you ask me if he’s been in prison? As a police officer, wouldn’t you know that?”

  “I didn’t know his first name until you told me,” I said, and smiled at him.

  The butler brought the drinks from the poolside bar and served them to Clete and Bobby Earl. Earl took a deep drink from his without his eyes ever leaving my face. When he lowered his glass his mouth looked cold and red, like a girl’s.

  “When was the last time you talked to him?” I asked.

  “It was awhile back. I don’t remember.”

  I nodded and smiled again while I wrote in my notebook. Clete put a handful of popcorn crawfish in his mouth, drank out of his glass of 7-Up and cracked the ice between his molars.

  “This is a great place,” he said. “You own it?”

  “I lease it.”

  “I hear you’re going to run for the U.S. Senate,” Clete said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Say, you ever see Jewel Fluck around?” Clete said.

  “Who?”

  “He’s a little sawed-off guy. Hangs around with Eddy. He’s in the AB.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

  “The Aryan Brotherhood,” Clete said. “They’re jailhouse Nazis.”

  “Well . . .” Bobby Earl began.

  “You really don’t know Fluck, huh?” Clete said.

  “No.”

  “Streak would really like to talk with him and Eddy. They almost blew out his light. You get Streak mad and he’ll throw elephant shit through your window fan.”

  Clete held up his glass for the butler to fill it again.

  “I think we don’t need to talk anymore,” Bobby Earl said. “I’m not sure why you’re here anyway. I have the feeling you’d like to provoke something.”

  “Here’s my business card, Mr. Earl,” I said. “But I’ll be back in touch one way or another. How’s Eddy’s face?”

  “What?”

  “He had a lot of splinters in it the last time I saw him. Do you know why he’d want to tear up your brother-in-law’s house?”

  “Now, you listen—”

  “He and two others executed a policeman. They blew his brains all over a basement floor at pointblank range,” I said. “You’d better think up some better bullshit the next time cops come out to your house.”

  The blood had drained out of his cheeks. Then a strange transformation took place in his face. The skin grew taut against the bone, and there was a flat, green-yellow venomous glaze in his eyes, the kind you see only in people who have successfully worked for years to hide the propensity for cruelty that lives inside them.

  “You got in here when you shouldn’t have. Now you’re on your way out,” he said.

  “That sounds serious. No J.D. refills?” Clete said.

  The butler rested his hand on the back of Clete’s chair. Through the banana trees I saw the gateman walking across the lawn toward us. I stood up to go. Clete lit a cigarette and flipped the match into the swimming pool. It was deep dusk now, and the trees were swimming with fireflies.

  “Don’t crowd the plate,” he said, his eyes looking straight ahead.

  The butler looked at Bobby Earl, who nodded his head negatively and rose from his chair.

  “I get it,” Clete said, rising also, his grin back in place. “You’re cutting us some slack. Otherwise the hired help might just stomp the shit out of us. But this ain’t nigger-town. And it’s no time for bad press, right? I’ve changed my mind about you, Mr. Earl. You’ve got real Kool-Aid. I dig it.” He blew cigarette smoke at an upward angle into the violet air and gazed approvingly about the grounds. “What a place. I’ve been in the wrong line of work.”

  Then the butler fitted his hand around Clete’s biceps to point him toward the driveway.

  Clete pivoted and lifted his huge fist into the butler’s stomach. It was a deep, unexpected blow, in the soft place right under the sternum, and the butler’s face went white with shock. His mouth gasped, and his eyes locked open as big as half dollars.

  Then Clete grabbed him by the back of his jacket and threw him spread-eagled across the table that had been set for two.

  “Back off, Clete!” I said.

  “Yeah? Take a look at the lollipop our man’s got in his pocket?” He held up a leather-hided slapjack in one hand, and tossed it over his shoulder into the pool. “Let’s see what other items Bonzo’s holding. How about this? A .25-caliber Beretta. What were you going to do with this, fuckhead?”

  The side of the butler’s face was pressed flat against the table; spittle dripped into his chin beard.

  “Answer me. You think this is Beirut?” Clete said, his hand tight on the back of the butler’s neck.

  Then he straightened his back, released the clip from the pistol’s magazine, ejected the round in the chamber, and sailed the pistol over a hedge. He threw the clip and the ejected round into the pool.

  The gateman’s eyes flicked back and forth between us and Bobby Earl; then he stepped hesitantly out on the flagstones, the skin around his mouth tight with expectation.

  “You don’t get paid enough money for it, partner,” I said.

  “You want me to call the cops, Mr. Earl?” he said.

  Bobby Earl didn’t answer him. Instead he looked at me.

  “You’ve made a grave mistake,” he said. The pupil in his right eye was round and black, like a large, broken drop of India ink.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think you’re dirty. I think you’re involved with the death of a police officer. In Louisiana you don’t skate when you kill a cop. Do some research on the Red Hat and find out who they’ve processed through there.”

  “The what?” The rim below his right eye was red and trembling with anger.

  “The Red Hat House. You’re in the legislature. Call up at Angola and check it out. They used to have a sign on one wall that said, This is where they knock the fire out of your ass. I think they meant it.”

  Clete and I walked across the lawn toward my truck. I looked back over my shoulder before I opened the door. Bobby Earl was staring after us, his face bathed in the yellow-red light of a flaming gas torch by the pool. The blonde girl in the pink swimsuit and terry-cloth robe clung to his arm like a frightened acolyte, her mouth a silent O. The 1970s photograph of Bobby Earl in silken robes, a cross crawling with fire in the background, no longer seemed out of place and time.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE HOUSE WAS DARK when I got back home. I looked in on Alafair, who was sleeping with her thumb in her mouth and her stuffed frog on the pillow next to her. Her room was filled with souvenirs from our vacation trips to Houston, Key West, Biloxi, and Disney World: an Astros space helmet, a Donald Duck cap with a quacking bill, conch shells, dried starfish, a huge inflated Goofy figure, rows of sand dollars, a coral-encrusted cannon ball that I had chopped out of Seven-Mile Reef. I took her thumb out of her mouth and stroked her hair when her eyes fluttered temporarily awake. Then I latched her screen window, which had become part of a silent conspiracy three or four nights a week when she forgot to hook it after letting Tripod in her room
against house rules.

  Then I undressed in the main bedroom and sat on the side of the bed in my skivvies next to Bootsie’s sleeping form. The sky had cleared, and the pecan trees clicked with moonlight in the breeze off the bayou; I could smell the fecund odor of bream spawning in the marsh. In the distance I heard a freight train blowing down the line.

  I tried to let go of the day’s concerns, let all the heat and fatigue and anger drain out of my hands and feet; but I was genuinely wired, wrapped so tight that my skin felt like a prison. I could hear the tiger pacing in his cage, his paws softly scudding on the wire mesh. His eyes were yellow in the darkness, his breath as fetid as meat that had rotted in the sun.

  Sometimes I imagined him prowling through trees in William Blake’s dark moral forest, his striped body electrified with a hungry light. But I knew that he was not the poet’s creation; he was conceived and fed by my own self-destructive alcoholic energies and fears, chiefly my fear of mortality and my inability to affect the destiny of those whom I could not afford to lose.

  Then Bootsie rolled against me, and I felt her hand brush my thigh and touch my sex. I took off my shorts and undershirt and lay down next to her, slipped my arms around her back, and put my face in her hair. Her body was warm from sleep, and she spread one leg around my calf, placed me inside her, and pressed her palm in the small of my back. When we made love I always had several images in my mind of Bootsie and I never saw her as one person, maybe because we had both known each other since we were nineteen. I remembered her in an organdy evening dress and the bright redness of her sunburned shoulders under the Japanese lanterns when we first met at a college dance out on Spanish Lake; I saw the fearful innocence in her face when we lost our virginity together in my father’s boathouse, the rain dripping out of the cypress trees into the dead water as loudly as the beating of our hearts; and I still saw the pain in her eyes when I rejected her, hurt her deeply, and caused her to marry another man, all because of my own self-loathing and inability to explain to anyone else the dark psychological landscape I had wandered in and out of since I was a child.

  But just as Alafair had been given to me in a wobbling bubble of air below the Gulf’s surface, I believed my Higher Power had given me back Bootsie when I had lost all claim to her, had undone my youthful mistakes for me, and had made that wonderful summer of 1957 as immediate and tangible and ongoing as the four o’clocks that bloomed nightly under the moon on Bayou Teche.