James Burke - Robicheaux

“It’s clean,” she said.

I swallowed.

“You could have deleted the call,” she said.

“I didn’t.”

“How can you say what you did? Did you call the Dartez house on your landline?”

“I don’t remember doing that. I remember I was going to St. Martinville to sit on the bench under the Evangeline Oak.”

“Do you know how silly that sounds?”

“It’s the way I felt at the time.”

She picked up my right hand and looked at my knuckles. I pulled my hand away.

“I’m on your side,” she said. “Even if you killed that man, I’m on your side. But don’t lie to me.”

“I don’t know what I did, Helen. That’s the truth. Does Ms. Dartez have a cell phone or a landline?”

“A cell.”

“Did Labiche check it?”

She looked away from me. “Not yet.”

“Don’t leave him on the case.”

“Maybe he’s a little hinky, but he came to us with a clean jacket.”

“Two black women filed complaints against him.”

“The same women have filed complaints against bill collectors and their estranged husbands.”

“They’re probably telling the truth.”

“Get used to seeing him around.”

“Thanks for the hand up,” I said.

“Piss off, Dave.”

She closed the door quietly behind her, sealing me in an airless vacuum, my sweat cold inside my shirt.

Cormac watts called three hours later. “Hi, Dave. I wanted to update you on the Dartez homicide.”

“Spade Labiche is handling that.”

“Oh.”

“What have you got?”

“Cause of death, blunt force trauma. Maybe he was stomped and kicked by someone wearing steel-toes. There was a filter-tip cigar stub lodged in his throat, plus a couple of teeth.”

“That’s it?”

“He went out hard. What else is there to say?”

In A.A., we respectfully refer to normal human beings as flatlanders or earth people. Drunks are space aliens and glow in the dark with phobias and hallucinations and paranoia, at least while they’re on the grog. We also believe that blackouts are a violent neurological reaction to a chemical that an alcoholic’s constitution cannot process, a bit like a firecracker exploding in the brain. As a rule, a person in a blackout has no more governance over himself than a car crashing through the rail on top of a ten-story parking garage.

After work, I went to Clete’s cottage at the Teche Motel and told him everything. He listened quietly, his big hands cupped on his knees. Through the window, I could see chickens pecking in the yard, a family cooking a pork roast on a spit among the oaks on the bayou, ducks wimpling the water. I felt as though I’d been trapped behind a wall of Plexiglas while the rest of the world went about its business.

“You think you did it?” he said.

“Maybe.”

“Did you fantasize about doing it when you weren’t drinking?”

“No.”

“When’s the last time you ripped up somebody while you were drunk?”

“Never.”

“That’s my point. I don’t buy this. Who’s the last person you talked to before you blacked out?”

“A barmaid.”

“At the joint on the bayou?”

“Her name was Babette.”

“You walked home? You didn’t drive?”

“Right.”

“Then you decided to go to St. Martinville?”

“I was thinking about the way things used to be. I was thinking about my mother and father and fishing in a pirogue. It’s just the foolish way I get sometimes.”

“Listen, big mon. I know your thoughts before you have them. Look at what you just told me. You were thinking about the best times in your life. You weren’t thinking about killing a guy. You’re not a killer, Dave. Neither of us is. We never dusted anybody who didn’t deal the hand. You got that? I don’t want to hear any Dr. Freud dog shit.”

“Freud was a genius,” I said.

“That’s why he stuck all that coke up his nose.”

“I applied for a loan on the house.”

“You did what ?”

“The banker said it wouldn’t be a problem. If any collectors try to lean on you, let me know. I don’t have a lot to lose right now.”

“I think Jimmy Nightingale is part of this,” he said.

“Why Nightingale?”

“Maybe he thinks you’re on to him.”

“About what?”

“About everything. He’s dirty. Maybe you know something about him he doesn’t want other people to hear.”

“I told him what you said about Kevin Penny. About Penny bringing dope and girls to Nightingale’s home.”

“That would do it,” Clete said.

“Killing someone? I don’t believe that.”

“When are you going to wake up about that guy?” Clete said. He went to the icebox and took out a quart bottle of beer and began chugging it, then paused. “Excuse me for doing this in front of you, but it’s my feeding time. Plus, I can’t stand listening to you protect a silver spoon con man like Nightingale.”

“I’d like to talk with Kevin Penny,” I said. “Where’s he in custody?”

“He isn’t. The guy he cut across the face decided he doesn’t remember who mutilated him. Penny lives in a shithole south of Jennings.”

I took a Dr Pepper out of the icebox and sipped it while Clete finished his beer. Outside, I heard raindrops as fat as nickels clicking on the canvas top of Clete’s Caddy.

It was still raining when Clete and I got off I-10 at Jennings and drove south to an Airstream trailer perched on blocks by a pond dark with sediment and coated with floating milk cartons and raw garbage. A dirt bike was parked in an open-sided shed. Clete cut the lights and took his .38 white-handled snub-nose from his shoulder holster and put it under the seat, then removed a sap and a pair of brass knuckles from the glove box and slipped them into his slacks.

“Leave your piece,” he said.

“Why?”

“If it goes down and Penny gets his hand on a gun, he’ll kill everybody in the room. When we have time, I’ll show you a video of what he did to three black guys on the yard at Quentin.”

“He’s not your ordinary pimp?”

“Penny is not your ordinary anything.”

Clete knocked on the door. I was wearing a raincoat and a rain hat pulled down on my eyes. A man with a complexion like mold on a lamp shade opened it. His expression seemed to shape and reshape itself as though he couldn’t make up his mind about what he was seeing. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, his cargo pants buttoned under the navel. The inside of the trailer was a wreck.

“What do you want?”

“A few minutes, Kev,” Clete said. “This is my friend Dave Robicheaux.”

His eyes seemed to burn into my face. Then his expression lightened. “You a cop?”

“Why do you think that?” I said.

“They walk like their underwear is too tight or they got a suppository up their ass.”

“I treated you righteous, Kev,” Clete said. “Lose the hostility.”

“So what do you want?”

“Jimmy Nightingale’s cousin says she fired you. I didn’t think that was right. She also said you were a yardman. That didn’t ring right, either. Help me out here.”

His eyes went from Clete to me and then to Clete again. “That bitch said that?”

“You got it.”

“Come in.”

He closed the door behind us. “Sit down.”

A half-eaten pizza lay in a delivery box on a breakfast table. A television set rested in the sink. A bed against the wall was layered with skin magazines. I tried to keep my expression neutral.

“Why you looking at me?” he said.

“Clete showed me your sheet,” I said. “You were in three mainline joints. But you don’t have any tats.”

“Pencil dicks need tats. Want to find the biggest sissy on the yard? Check the guy with sleeves. What’d that bitch say?”