James Burke - Last Car to Elysian Fields

Other people were beginning to look at us. “You’re disturbing the Mass, Mr. Robicheaux. Now show some respect and shut your ‘ole,” he replied.

Parishioners who had come in late, one of them weighing at least three hundred pounds, began bottling up the open end of the pew. I was trapped with Max Coll. I thought I might have a chance at him during communion, but as soon as the communicants began filing toward the front of the church, Max helped an elderly woman into a wheelchair and pushed her to the altar.

I stayed right behind them, received the Host myself, which he did not, and followed them back into the pew. Through the concluding prayers he kept his eyes straight ahead, one thumb hooked inside his half-zipped jacket. Just as the priest gave the final blessing to the congregation, Max turned to me and calmly whispered, “Got a Beretta nine-millimeter, fourteen rounds in the mag, all tucked nicely under my armpit. Try to take me and, House of the Lord or not, I’ll leave hair on the walls.”

With that, he wheeled the elderly woman down the center of the aisle and through a crowd in the vestibule, like a mummy wrapped in black cloth being trundled along a cobbled street. He and two other men lifted her down the steps and fitted her chair into a waiting van, then suddenly Max Coll leaped into the traffic.

I went after him, my shield held up above my head, a wall of water from a passing truck striking me full in the face, horns blowing, a taxi missing me by inches. Somewhere on the edge of my vision two vehicles crashed into each other. Max was now somewhere on the opposite side of the traffic, hidden behind a city bus or a Mayflower van or a refrigerator truck, all of which were moving through the intersection.

I reached the opposite sidewalk and looked in both directions.

No Max Coll.

I saw the bus stop briefly on the next block, then it turned a corner and headed in the direction of Lee Circle. I started running, threading my way through pedestrians, truck drivers off-loading food for restaurants, winos sitting in doorways with their legs outstretched on the sidewalk. I turned the corner and saw the bus at the curb in the middle of the block, the door opened to allow a passenger to exit.

I ran toward it, breathless, waving my arms at the driver. As the bus pulled away from the curb I struck the side with my fists. Behind the elongated glass windows in the back door I saw Max Coll standing in the aisle, holding a support strap with one hand. He grinned, unzipped his jacket, and pulled out the sides to show me he had no weapon on his person.

The bus sped through the next intersection and disappeared down the street. I reached for my cell phone to punch in a 911 call, then remembered hearing it clatter across the sidewalk two blocks behind me.

I stopped in the men’s room at the casino and tried to dry off with paper towels before I went in search of Janet Gish and Clete Purcel. A few minutes later, my clothes glued to my skin, I found the two of them eating breakfast in the restaurant, Janet looking half revived by food and coffee. Clete chewed his food thoughtfully, his eyes traveling up and down my person. “I’m not even going to ask,” he said.

“He was at Mass. He got away,” I said.

“At Mass? A stone killer?”

“I just told you.”

“So instead of calling the locals, you decided to talk him in?” he said.

“Something like that,” I replied.

“Couldn’t have used any backup from me, of course?”

“Lay off it, Clete,” I said.

He took a coffee cup and saucer that was set up on an empty table, poured the cup full, and pushed it toward me. “Sit down, big mon, and let Janet tell you how Fat Sammy was shipping porn out and crystal in,” he said.

“It all had to do with those Mideastern degenerates,” she said.

“Those what?” I said.

“Those Muslim lamebrains or whatever who crashed the planes into the towers. Sammy Fig said he was going to round them up for the FBI,” Janet said.

I gave Clete a look.

“You’re going to love this, Streak. Sammy straightening out Fart, Barf, and Itch,” he said.

It seemed a grandiose and bizarre tale, but in truth no more peculiar than many in New Orleans’ long history of political intrigue, from William Walker’s military adventurism into Nicaragua during the 1850s to Lee Harvey Oswald’s involvement in the city with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

According to Janet Gish, Fat Sammy felt tainted by a past association with a mobster who had been an enforcer in Brooklyn and later one of the Watergate Plumbers. The mobster was part of a blackmail sting involving Cuban prostitutes in Miami, and just before Kennedy’s visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963, the mobster showed up in New Orleans with a hooker and stayed at a motel owned by Sammy’s uncle. As soon as Sammy heard John Kennedy had been shot, he was convinced New Orleans had been the staging area for the assassination.

From that time on, Fat Sammy did everything in his power to demonstrate his patriotism and disassociate himself from the people who he believed had murdered the president.

“The night before the planes crashed into the towers, these Mideastern guys were in Sammy’s club by the airport. They told one of the girls they were pilots,” Janet said.

“Maybe they were,” I said.

“Except they were sweating so bad the janitor had to scrape the B.O. off the furniture. They had another problem, too. Like keeping napkins over their boners.”

“Sorry, I’m just not following all this,” I said.

“Sammy calls the FBI. They send some guys out and Sammy looks at all these photos and says that’s not the guys who were in the club. One of the FBI guys says, “Well, these are the hijackers who died in the planes.”

“Sammy says, “Yeah, but there must have been other hijackers whose planes got grounded. The guys in my club are the ones who probably never got off the tarmac Even while he’s talking you can already hear the toilet flushing.

“Two weeks go by and Sammy calls the FBI in Washington. He tells some agent there they’re looking in the wrong place for terrorists. He says these guys are not Muslim revolutionaries, they’re degenerates and losers, just like the other jack-offs who come into the club. Sammy says to the FBI agent, “Use your fucking head. These guys weren’t hanging in mosques or living in Nebraska. They were holed-up in Miami and Vegas and hanging in dumps like mine ‘cause they want to get laid.

You want to nail ‘em, float some cooze out on the breeze and see what happens.””

People at other tables were turning to stare.

“Maybe we should move to a quieter spot,” I said.

“Well, excuse me. Here’s the briefer version so I don’t offend anybody,” she said, her eyelids fluttering. “The FBI agent blew Sammy off, so he set up an Internet site out in Arizona to sell his movies.

He was using a PI. to run the credit card numbers of anybody with a Mideastern name who bought from the site.”

“Who were his partners?” I said.

“You met a couple of them,” she replied.

“The Dellacroces?” I said.

She raised her eyebrows innocuously.

“Tell him the rest of it, Janet,” Clete said.

“Sammy got paid in crystal. It’s cooked across the border and comes through Tucson,” she said. Then she looked at nothing, the whites of her eyes veined, her facial skin like flesh-colored clay that had been molded on bone. “Sammy wasn’t a bad guy. He took us all to Disney World once. He wore a Mouseketeer hat on the plane all the way back home.”

“Who popped him, Janet?” I said.

“I don’t know. Sammy always said it was the normals you got to watch out for, ‘cause they never learn who they really are.”