James Burke - Burning Angel

I felt myself blink inside with the severity of my own words.

“Y’all always know, always got the smart word,” she said.

“You’re angry at the wrong person.”

“When y’all cain’t get at the people who really did something, y’all go down into the quarters, find the little people to get your hands on, put inside your reports and send up to Angola.”

I started my truck engine. Her hand didn’t move from the window jamb.

“I’m not telling the troot, no?” she said.

Her gold skin was smooth and damp in the blowing mist, her hair thick and jet black and full of little lights.

“Who supplies your girls?” I said.

Her eyes roved over my face. “You’re not very good at this, if you ax me,” she said, and limped back toward the front door of the juke.

That afternoon, just before five, I received a call from Clete Purcel. I could hear seagulls squeaking in the background.

“Where are you?” I said.

“By the shrimp docks in Morgan City. You know where a cop’s best information is, Streak? The lowly bail bondsman. In this case, with a fat little guy named Butterbean Reaux.”

“Yeah, I know him.”

“Good. Drive on down, noble mon. We’ll drink some mash and talk some trash. Or I’ll drink the mash while you talk to your buddy Sonny Boy Marsallus.”

“You know where he is?”

“Right now, handcuffed to a D-ring in the backseat of my automobile. So much for all that brother-in-arms bullshit.”

Clete gave me directions in Morgan City, and an hour later I saw his battered Cadillac convertible parked under a solitary palm tree by an outdoor beer and hot dog stand not far from the docks. The sky was sealed with gray clouds, and the wind was blowing hard off the Gulf, capping the water all the way across the bay. Sonny sat in the backseat of the Cadillac, shirtless, a pair of blue suspenders notched into his white shoulders. His right wrist was extended downward, where it was cuffed to a D-shaped steel ring inset in the floor.

Clete was drinking a beer on a wood bench under the palm tree, his porkpie hat slanted over his forehead.

“You ought to try the hot dogs here,” Clete said.

“You want to be up on a kidnapping charge?” I said.

“Hey, Sonny! You gonna dime me?” Clete yelled at the car. Then he looked back at me. “See, Sonny’s stand-up. He’s not complaining.”

He brushed at a fleck of dried blood in one nostril.

“What happened?” I said.

“He’d rat-holed himself in a room over a pool hall, actually more like a pool hall and hot pillow joint. He said he wasn’t coming with me. I started to hook him up and he unloaded on me. So I had to throw him down the stairs.”

He rubbed the knuckles of his right hand unconsciously.

“Why do you have it in for him, Clete?”

“Because he was down in Bongo-Bongo Land for the same reasons as the rest of us. Except he pretends he’s got some kind of blue fire radiating around his head or something.”

I walked over to the car. Sonny’s left eye was swollen almost shut. He grinned up at me. His sharkskin slacks were torn at the knee.

“How’s the man, Streak?” he said.

“I wish you had come in on your own.”

“Long story.”

“It always is.”

“You going to hold me?”

“Maybe.” I turned toward Clete. “Give me your key,” I called.

“Ask Sonny if I need rabies shots,” he said, and pitched it at me.

“You’re not going to get clever, are you?” I said to Sonny.

“With you guys? Are you kidding?”

“You’re the consummate grifter, Sonny,” I said, opened the door, and unlocked his wrist. Then I leveled my finger at his face. “Who were the guys who killed Delia Landry?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Sonny.”

“It could be any number of guys. It depends who they send in. You didn’t lift any prints?”

“Don’t worry about what we do or don’t do. You just answer my questions. Who’s they ?”

“Dave, you’re not going to understand this stuff.”

“You’re starting to piss me off, Sonny.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Get out of the car.” I patted him down against the fender, then slipped my hand under his arm and turned him toward my truck.

“Where we going?” he said.

“You’re a material witness. You’re also an uncooperative material witness. That means we’ll be keeping you for a while.”

“Mistake.”

“I’ll live with it.”

“Don’t count on it, Dave. I’m not being cute, either.”

“He’s a sweetheart,” Clete said from the bench. Then he rubbed the knuckles on his right hand and looked at them.

“Sorry I popped you, Cletus,” Sonny said.

“In your ear, Sonny,” Clete said.

We drove past boatyards then some shrimp boats that were knocking against the pilings in their berths. The air was warm and smelled like brass and dead fish.

“Can I stop by my room and pick up some things?” Sonny asked.

“No.”

“Just a shirt.”

“Nope.”

“You’re a hard man, Streak.”

“That girl took your fall, Sonny. You want to look at her morgue pictures?”

He was quiet a long time, his face looking straight ahead at the rain striking the windshield.

“Did she suffer?” he said.

“They tore her apart. What do you think?”

His mouth was red against his white skin.

“They were after me, or maybe the notebook I gave you,” he said.

“I’ve got it. You’ve written a potential best-seller and people are getting killed over it.”

“Dave, you lock me up, those guys are going to get to me.”

“That’s the breaks, partner.”

He was quiet again, his eyes focused inward.

“Are we talking about some kind of CIA involvement?” I said.

“Not directly. But you start sending the wrong stuff through the computer, through your fax machines, these guys will step right into the middle of your life. I guarantee it, Dave.”

“How’s the name Emile Pogue sit with you?” I said.

He let out his breath quietly. Under his suspenders his stomach was flat and corded with muscle.

“Another officer ran him all kinds of ways and came up empty,” I said.

He rubbed the ball of his thumb across his lips. Then he said, “I didn’t eat yet. What time they serve at the lockup?”

Try to read that.

Two hours later Clete called me at home. It was raining hard, the water sluicing off the gutters, and the back lawn was full of floating leaves.

“What’d you get out of him?” Clete said.

“Nothing.” I could hear country music and people’s voices in the background. “Where are you?”

“In a slop chute outside Morgan City. Dave, this guy bothers me. There’s something not natural about him.”

“He’s a hustler. He’s outrageous by nature.”

“He doesn’t get any older. He always looks the same.”

I tried to remember Sonny’s approximate age. I couldn’t. “There’s something else,” Clete said. “Where I hit him. There’s a strawberry mark across the backs of my fingers. It’s throbbing like I’ve got blood poisoning or something.”

“Get out of the bar, Clete.”

“You always know how to say it.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. The rain stopped and a heavy mist settled in the trees outside our bedroom window, and I could hear night-feeding bass flopping back in the swamp. I sat on the edge of the bed in my skivvies and looked at the curtains puffing in the breeze.

“What is it, Dave?” Bootsie said behind me in the dark.

“I had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“About what?” She put her hand on my spine.