James Burke: Last Car to Elysian Fields

“Shooting at the Taliban?”

He smiled with his eyes but didn’t reply.

“The woman in St. James Parish? Her grandfather was Junior Crudup,” I said.

“An R&B guy?”

“Yeah, one of the early ones. He did time with Leadbelly. He played with Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner,” I said. But I could see him losing interest in the subject. “I’d better go. Your place looks nice. Give me some feedback later on the Crudup situation, will you?” I said.

“My favorite police officer,” I heard a woman say.

The voice of Theodosha Flannigan was like a melancholy recording out of the past, the kind that carries fond memories but also some that are better forgotten. She was a member of the LeJeune family in Franklin, down the Teche, people whose wealth and lawn parties were legendary in southwest Louisiana, and she still used their name rather than Merchie’s. She was tall, darkly beautiful, with hollow cheeks and long legs like a model’s, her southern accent exaggerated, her jeans and tied-up black hair and convertible automobiles an affectation that belied the conservative and oligarchical roots she came from.

But in spite of her corn bread accent and the pleasure she seemed to take in portraying herself as an irreverent and neurotic southern woman, she had another side, one she never engaged in conversation about. She had written two successful screenplays and a trilogy of crime novels containing elements that were undeniably lyrical. Although her novels had never won an Edgar award, her talent was arguably enormous.

“How you doin’, Theo?” I said.

“Stay for coffee or a cold drink?” she said.

“You know me, always on the run,” I said.

She curled her fingers around the limb of a mimosa tree and propped one moccasin-clad foot against the trunk. Her breasts rose and fell against her blouse.

“How about diet Dr. Pepper on the rocks, with cherries in it?” she said.

Don’t hang around. Get away now, I heard a voice inside me say.

“I’m just about to fix some sherbet with strawberries. We’d love to have you join us, Dave,” Merchie said.

“Sounds swell,” I said, and dropped my eyes, wondering at the price I was willing to pay in order not to be alone.

On the way into the backyard Theodosha touched my arm. “I’m sorry about your loss. I hope you’re doing all right these days,” she said.

But I had no memory of her sending a sympathy card when Bootsie died.

Iwent to an early Mass the next morning, then bought a copy of the Times-Picayune and drank coffee at the picnic table in the backyard and read the newspaper. I read three paragraphs into an article about an errant bomb falling into a community of mud brick huts in Afghanistan, then closed the paper and watched a group of children throwing a red Frisbee back and forth under the oak trees in the park. A speedboat full of teenagers roared down the bayou, swirling a trough back and forth between both banks, splintering the air with a deafening sound. I heard my portable phone tinkle softly by my thigh.

The operator asked if I would accept a collect call from Clete Purcel.

“Yes,” I said.

“Streak, I’m in the zoo,” Clete shouted.

In the background I could hear voices echoing down stone corridors or inside cavernous rooms.

“What did you say?”

“I’m in Central Lock-Up. They busted me for assaulting Gunner Ardoin. I feel like I’ve been arrested for spraying Lysol on a toilet bowl.”

“Why haven’t you bonded out?” I asked.

“Nig and Willie aren’t answering my calls.”

I tried to make sense out of what he was saying. For years Clete had chased down bail skips for Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine. He should have been out of jail with a signature.

I started to speak, but he cut me off. “Gunner is a grunt for Fat Sammy Fig, and Fat Sammy is connected up with every major league piece of shit in Louisiana. I think Nig and Willie don’t want trouble with the wrong people. Arraignment isn’t until Tuesday morning. Been down to Central Lock-Up lately?”

I took the four-lane through Morgan City into New Orleans. But I didn’t go directly to the jail. Instead, I drove up St. Charles Avenue, then over toward Tchoupitoulas and parked in front of Gunner Ardoin’s cottage. His Honda was in the driveway. I walked down to a corner store and bought a quart of chocolate milk and a prepackaged ham sandwich and sat down on Gunner’s front steps and began eating the sandwich while children roller-skated past me under the trees.

I heard someone open the door behind me.

“What the fuck you think you’re doin’?” Gunner’s voice said.

“Oh, hi. I was about to ask you the same thing,” I said.

“What?” he said. He was bare chested and barefoot, and wore only a pair of pajama bottoms string-tied under his navel. The breeze blew from the back of the cottage through the open door. “What?” he repeated.

“Toking up kind of early today?”

“So call the DEA.”

“Father Jimmie Dolan was your basketball coach. Why did you say you didn’t know him?”

’”Cause I can’t remember every guy I knew in high school with a whistle hanging out of his mouth.”

“Father Jimmie says it wasn’t you who attacked him, Gunner. But I think somebody told you to bust him up, and you pieced off the job to somebody else. Probably because you still have qualms.”

“Is this because I filed on your friend?”

“No, it’s because you’re a shit bag and you’re going to drop those charges or I’ll be back here tonight and jam a chainsaw up your ass.”

“Look, man —” he began.

“No, you look,” I said, rising to my feet, shoving him backward through the door into the living room. “Fat Sammy is behind the job on Father Jimmie?”

“No,” he said.

I shoved him again. He tripped over a footstool and fell backward on the floor. I pulled back my sports coat and removed my .45 from its clip-on holster and squatted next to him. I pulled back the slide and chambered a round, then pointed the muzzle at his face.

“Look at my eyes and tell me I won’t do it,” I said.

I saw the breath seize in his throat and the blood go out of his cheeks. He stretched his head back, turning his face sideways, away from the .45.

“Don’t do this,” he said. “Please.”

I waited a long time, then touched his forehead with the gun’s muzzle and winked at him.

“I won’t. I’d think about my request on those charges, though,” I said.

Just as I eased the hammer back down, his bladder gave way and he shut his eyes in shame and embarrassment. When I looked up I saw a little girl, no older than six or seven, staring at us, horrified, from the kitchen doorway.

“That’s my daughter. I get her one day a week. I’ve known some cruel guys with a badge, but you take the cake,” Gunner said.

The charges against Clete were dropped by three that afternoon. I drove him from Central Lock-Up to his apartment on St. Ann, where he fell asleep on the couch in front of a televised football game. Fat Sammy Figorelli’s home was only three blocks away, over on Ursulines. The temptation was too much.

Fat Sammy had grown up in the French Quarter, and although he owned homes in Florida and on Lake Pontchartrain, he spent most of his time inside the half city block where the Figorelli family had lived since the 1890s. It seemed Sammy had been elephantine all his life. As a child the balloon tires of his bicycle burst under his weight. His rump wouldn’t fit in the desk at the school run by the Ursuline nuns.

In high school he got stuck inside his tuba while performing with the marching band at an LSU football game. The paramedics had to scissor off his jacket, smear him with Vaseline, and pry him loose in front of ninety thousand people. In his senior year he mustered up the courage to invite a girl to the Prytania Theater. A gang of Irish kids in the balcony rained down a barrage of water-filled condoms on their heads.