James Burke: Robicheaux

Since the death of my wife Molly, I wanted to see more and more of Clete, particularly in those moments when I felt as though the defining moments of my life had little application in the present, that somewhere down a deserted street a bus was throbbing at the curb, the passengers hollow-eyed and mute, unable to assimilate the journey that awaited them. Then the driver popped open the doors with a sucking sound, and I knew with a sinking of the heart that the bus was for me and I wouldn’t be returning to the city or the state I loved.

When I have those moments, I say the names of Clete and my daughter, Alafair, over and over. I have done it even in public, indifferent to the stares of others, a napkin held to my mouth or with my chin pointed down at my chest. And that’s why I resented Whitey Zeroski and his hired help or anyone else who tried to hurt the noblest man I ever knew.

“How’s tricks, Whitey?” I said.

He always looked surprised, as though someone had just stepped on his foot. He also had a habit of jerking his entire head when something caught his attention, like a meth addict or a chicken pecking in a barnyard or a man with a fused neck. He wore coveralls zipped up to his neck, the sleeves cut off at the armpits, his arms covered with hair.

“What it is, Robicheaux?” he said.

“Mind telling me what the hell you’re doing?”

“I work for the bank now. They gave me the key to Purcel’s building and the paperwork to move his belongings out on the sidewalk. He’s got another point of view on that.”

“This idiot creeped my house, Streak,” Clete said.

“What happened to your cab business?” I said to Whitey.

“Heard of Katrina?” he said.

“Don’t do this, Whitey,” I said.

“Off my back, Robicheaux. This is a legal action, here.”

“Whitey, I try to be kind to dumb Polacks, but I’m about to stuff you in the storm sewer,” Clete said.

“How about laying off the ethnic slurs?” Whitey said.

Clete looked at me and opened his hands. A pale red scar ran diagonally through his left eyebrow where he’d been hit with a pipe when he was a kid. “This is like beating up on somebody who was born brain-dead. Whitey, I apologize for calling you a dumb Polack. That’s an insult to dumb Polacks.”

Whitey’s face contorted as he tried to figure out what Clete had just said.

“Let me see the paperwork,” I said.

“It’s a reverse mortgage,” Clete said, his face coloring.

I looked at him blankly. “You didn’t?”

“I was jammed up,” he said. He had a little-boy haircut and a dimpled chin and green eyes that never faltered unless he was hiding something from me.

“We’ll get the furniture off the sidewalk,” I said. “We’ll work it out.”

“Oh, you will?” Whitey said. He had a New Orleans working-class accent, like someone whose voice box had been injected with Novocain. “What, I got nothing else to do but walk behind dick-brain here with a dustpan and a broom?”

“Shoot your mouth off one more time, Whitey, and see what happens,” Clete said.

I placed my arm across Whitey’s shoulders. “Take a walk with me.”

“What for?”

“Your helpers don’t seem to speak English. You don’t have an inspection sticker on your windshield. Your license plate isn’t current. You’re parked in a no-loading zone. You don’t have flashers. What should we do about that?”

“Give me a break here, Robicheaux.”

I took out my wallet, removed all the bills from it, and put them in his hand. “That’s about sixty dollars. Tell your boys to put everything back in the building, and buy them a round. I’ll call the bank and get this straightened out.”

“We’re supposed to live on a beer and a shot while you get me fired by the bank? I can’t wait to tell my boys this.”

“Clete never did anything to you, Whitey, but you’re making money off an unrighteous situation that’s not Clete’s fault.”

“I’ll make you a counteroffer. Wipe your ass with your sixty dollars. I’ll buy the round for the boys, and you and Purcel can haul everything back in the building. Then pour a shitload of Vaseline on it and cram it up your ass. I hope both of you get rich twice and go broke three times. I hope both of you inherit a house with fifty rooms in it and drop dead in every one of them.”

I had to hand it to him: Whitey was stand-up. I had tried to use my power wrongly to help a friend, and in so doing, I had probably put an unskilled and poor man at the mercy of an unscrupulous mortgage holder.

Clete and I spent the next two hours dragging furniture back into the building or wrestling it up the stairs into the apartment. It was four o’clock when I sat down heavily on the couch, my head swimming. Clete was in the kitchen, pouring four inches of Scotch into a glass packed with cracked ice. It was not a good moment. My defenses were down, the smoky smell of the Scotch like an irresistible thread from an erotic dream you can’t let go of at first light.

“You want a Dr Pepper?” he said, his back to me.

“No, thanks.”

“I got some cherries and limes.”

“I don’t want one.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I think I pulled something in my back.” I got up and went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I took out a Dr Pepper and opened it.

“I thought you didn’t want one.”

“I changed my mind. Why didn’t you tell me you needed money?”

“It was eighty grand.”

“How much?”

“What I said.”

“You got it from a shylock?”

“I started gambling. I did pretty good at first.”

“Here?”

“Everywhere. I had a credit line in Vegas. Google has ruined private investigation. Anyway, I started losing, and I didn’t stop until I was broke and borrowing on the property.”

He took a long drink from the glass, his eyes on mine, the ice and mint and Scotch sliding down his throat. I felt a twitch in my face. “So the bank owns your place now?”

“It’s not a bank, it’s a mortgage company. They screw old people. Maybe they’re mobbed up.”

“Great choice.”

He set down the glass. The Scotch was drained from the ice. He dumped the ice into the sink. I felt myself swallow.

“Let’s go eat,” he said.

“There’s something you’re not telling me. Tony Nine Ball said you had trouble with Bobby Earl. What’s that about?”

“The problem wasn’t exactly with Bobby Earl. I almost feel sorry for the bastard. I heard the blacks were loading up on condoms his first night in Lewisburg.”

“Tony says you pissed in Earl’s car.”

“Yeah, years ago. At the Yacht Club.”

“Just recently.”

“Okay, I’m shooting craps at Harrah’s, and in come Bobby Earl and Jimmy Nightingale with this stripper who used to work on Bourbon. Except it was obvious Earl is carrying the stripper for Nightingale, or at least obvious to me, because Nightingale is a bucket of warm vomit who manipulates the subculture like it’s his private worm farm. But right now that’s not my business, and I’m simpatico at the table as long as these two assholes leave me alone. I’ve got twenty-six hundred dollars in chips in front of me, and a magic arm, and I’m rolling nothing but elevens and sevens. The broad hanging all over Earl is staring at me with this curious look, then a lightbulb goes off in her head and she says, ‘Hey, you’re the fat guy who came to my house.’ ”

Listening to a story told by Clete Purcel was like building the pyramids with your bare hands. I twirled my finger, trying to make him finish.

“Seconds earlier I felt like I owned Fort Knox,” he said. “Then I see it all draining away, like dirty water going down the lavatory. I pick up the dice and rattle them once and fling them down the felt. Snake eyes. She goes, ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You’re the guy who came around about that legal problem?’ ”