James Burke: Burning Angel

“Give me your phone number.”

“You got to call up at the sto’. You know why Moleen Bertrand want that land, don’t you?”

“No.”

“They’s a bunch of gold buried on it.”

“That’s nonsense, Bertie.”

“Then why he want to bulldoze out our li’l houses?”

“I’ll ask him that.”

“When?”

“Today. Is that soon enough?”

“We’ll see what we gonna see.”

My phone rang and I used the call, which I put on hold, as an excuse to walk her to the door and say good-bye. But as I watched her walk with labored dignity toward her car in the parking lot, I wondered if I, too, had yielded to that old white pretense of impatient charity with people of color, as though somehow they were incapable of understanding our efforts on their behalf.

It was two days later, at five in the morning, when a cruiser pulled a man over for speeding on the St. Martinville highway.

On the backseat and floor were a television set, a portable stereo, a box of women’s shoes, bottles of liquor, canned goods, a suitcase full of women’s clothes and purses.

“There’s a drag ball I haven’t been invited to?” the deputy said.

“I’m helping my girlfriend move,” the driver said.

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“No, sir.”

“You seem a little nervous.”

“You’ve got a gun in your hand.”

“I don’t think that’s the problem. What’s that fragrance in the air? Is it dark roast coffee? Would you step out of the car, please?”

The deputy had already run the plates. The car belonged to a woman named Delia Landry, whose address was on the St. Martin-Iberia Parish line. The driver’s name was Roland Broussard. At noon the same day he was brought into our interrogation room by Detective Helen Soileau, a dressing taped high up on his forehead.

He wore dark jeans, running shoes, a green pullover smock from the hospital. His black hair was thick and curly, his jaws unshaved, his nails bitten to the quick; a sour smell rose from his armpits. We stared at him without speaking.

The room was windowless and bare except for a wood table and three chairs. He opened and closed his hands on top of the table and kept scuffing his shoes under the chair. I took his left wrist and turned up his forearm.

“How often do you fix, Roland?” I asked.

“I’ve been selling at the blood bank.”

“I see.”

“You got an aspirin?” He glanced at Helen Soileau. She had a broad face whose expression you never wanted to misread. Her blonde hair looked like a lacquered wig, her figure a sack of potatoes. She wore a pair of blue slacks and a starched short-sleeve white shirt, her badge above her left breast; her handcuffs were stuck through the back of her gunbelt.

“Where’s your shirt?” I said.

“It had blood all over it. Mine.”

“The report says you tried to run,” Helen said.

“Look, I asked for a lawyer. I don’t have to say anything else, right?”

“That’s right,” I said. “But you already told us you boosted the car. So we can ask you about that, can’t we?”

“Yeah, I boosted it. So what else you want? Big fucking deal.”

“Would you watch your language, please?” I said.

“What is this, a crazy house? You got a clown making fun of me out on the road, then beating the shit out of me, and I’m supposed to worry about my fucking language.”

“Did the owner of the car load all her possessions in it and give you the keys so you wouldn’t have to wire it? That’s a strange story, Roland,” I said.

“It was parked like that in the driveway. I know what you’re trying to do... Why’s she keep staring at me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I took the car. I was smoking dope in it, too. I ain’t saying anything else... Hey, look, she’s got some kind of problem?” He held his finger close to his chest when he pointed at Helen, as though she couldn’t see it.

“You want some slack, Roland? Now’s the time,” I said.

Before he could answer, Helen Soileau picked up the wastebasket by the rim and swung it with both hands across the side of his face. He crashed sideways to the floor, his mouth open, his eyes out of focus. Then she hit him again, hard, across the back of the head, before I could grab her arms. Her muscles were like rocks.

She shook my hands off and hurled the can and its contents of cigarette butts, ashes, and candy wrappers caroming off his shoulders.

“You little pissant,” she said. “You think two homicide detectives are wasting their time with a fart like you over a car theft. Look at me when I talk to you!”

“Helen—” I said softly.

“Go outside and leave us alone,” she said.

“Nope,” I said, and helped Roland Broussard back into his chair. “Tell Detective Soileau you’re sorry, Roland.”

“For what?”

“For being a wiseass. For treating us like we’re stupid.”

“I apologize.”

“Helen—” I looked at her.

“I’m going to the John. I’ll be back in five minutes,” she said.

“You’re the good guy now?” he said, after she closed the door behind her.

“It’s no act, podna. I don’t get along with Helen. Few people do. She smoked two perps in three years.” His eyes looked up into mine.

“Here’s the lay of the land,” I said. “I believe you creeped that woman’s duplex and stole her car, but you didn’t have anything to do with the rest of it. That’s what I believe. That doesn’t mean you won’t take the fall for what happened in there. You get my drift?”

He pinched his temples with his fingers, as though a piece of rusty wire were twisting inside his head.

“So?” I opened my palms inquisitively.

“Nobody was home when I went through the window. I cleaned out the place and had it all loaded in her car. That’s when some other broad dropped her off in front, so I hid in the hedge. I’m thinking, What am I gonna do? I start the car, she’ll know I’m stealing it. I wait around, she turns on the light, she knows the place’s been ripped off. Then two guys roar up out of nowhere, come up the sidewalk real fast, and push her inside.

“What they done, I don’t like remembering it, I closed my eyes, that’s the truth, she was whimpering, I’m not kidding you, man, I wanted to stop it. What was I gonna do?”

“Call for help.”

“I was strung out, I got a serious meth problem, it’s easy to say what you ought to do when you’re not there. Look, what’s-your-name, I’ve been down twice but I never hurt anybody. Those guys, they were tearing her apart, I was scared, I never saw anything like that before.”

“What did they look like, Roland?”

“Gimmie a cigarette.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“I didn’t see their faces. I didn’t want to. Why didn’t her neighbors help?”

“They weren’t home.”

“I felt sorry for her. I wish I’d done something.”

“Detective Soileau is going to take your statement, Roland. I’ll probably be talking to you again.”

“How’d you know I didn’t do it?”

“The ME says her neck was broken in the bathroom. That’s the only room you didn’t track mud all over.”

I passed Helen Soileau on my way out. Her eyes were hot and focused like BB’s on the apprehensive face of Roland Broussard.

“He’s been cooperative,” I said.

The door clicked shut behind me. I might as well have addressed myself to the drain in the water fountain.

Moleen Bertrand lived in an enormous white-columned home on Bayou Teche, just east of City Park, and from his glassed-in back porch you could look down the slope of his lawn, through the widely spaced live oak trees, and see the brown current of the bayou drifting by, the flooded cane brakes on the far side, the gazebos of his neighbors clustered with trumpet and passion vine, and finally the stiff, block like outline of the old drawbridge and tender house off Burke Street.