James Burke - Last Car to Elysian Fields

I didn’t take his hand. “I think you’re here covering your wife’s ass.

Will Guillot got popped and the cops are going to be taking a hard look at his enterprises. I believe Theo is part of a porn operation in New Orleans,” I said.

The smile died on his face. “You’re actually serious? You believe Theo is involved with pornography?” he said.

“The word is she wrote scripts for Fat Sammy Figorelli. Where was she the night the daiquiri store operator got shot?”

He slipped his hands into his pockets and looked at the rain falling through the live oaks onto the street, as though any conversation with me was useless and the problem was mine, not his. “Theo and I are taking a cruise to the Islands. I came by here to do the right thing. But I can see it was a mistake.”

“Where’d it go wrong for you, partner?”

“Wrong about what?” he said.

“You were Jumpin’ Merchie Flannigan, a stand-up kid from the Iberville who did the crime and stacked the time. Why’d you become a hump for a bum like Castille LeJeune?”

The skin of his face seemed to crinkle, like a sheet of yellow paper held against a hot light bulb. He raked his hair back over his head again and started to speak, his eyes tangled with thoughts I could only guess at, then stepped off the gallery and walked through a water puddle to his Mercedes.

I headed down the four-lane toward Franklin and five miles outside New Iberia felt a front tire on my pickup go soft and begin to wobble. I pulled to the shoulder and changed the tire in the rain. It was almost 11:30 when I got to the St. Mary Parish Courthouse. Across the street I saw the restored pink Cadillac I had seen in City Park the previous night. A curious black man holding an umbrella was bent down by the driver’s window, admiring the interior.

“Do you know who owns this?” I asked.

“A man who got a lot of money,” he replied.

I went inside the courthouse and peeled off my raincoat in front of a coffee stand run by a blind man. I had no way of knowing the amount of Clete’s bail, but obviously it would be high, and the 10 percent bondsman’s fee would probably clean out my checking account and part of my savings. Of course, my paying a bondsman’s fee was predicated on the assumption a local bondsman would be willing to write a bond on Clete, whose past record included fleeing the United States on a murder warrant.

“You want a cup of coffee, Dave?” the blind man behind the counter said.

“Yeah, sure, Walter,” I said, distracted by a brown-haired little girl, no older than six or seven, sitting on a bench by the courtroom entrance. A small teddy bear, a red ribbon with a silver bell on it tied around the neck, was perched on her lap. Where had I seen her before? Then I remembered, with a rush of shame. It had been at Gunner Ardoin’s house, on the morning I had rousted him last fall, chambering a round in the .45, sticking it in his face, causing him to soil himself while his little girl watched.

I walked up to her, my raincoat slung over my arm. “Is your daddy here?” I asked.

“He’s inside the big room,” she replied.

“What’s he doin’there?”

“Helping Clete.”

“You remember me?” I asked.

“You’re the man who pointed a gun at my daddy.”

I went inside the courtroom just as the morning’s proceedings were breaking up. Clete was talking to a local attorney while a deputy put cuffs on him for his trip back to jail. The judge left the room for his chambers, and among the people filing out in the corridor I saw Gunner Ardoin.

“Clete’s going back to lock-up?” I said.

“Just till he bonds out,” Gunner said.

“How much is his bond?”

“Fifty grand,” he said.

“How’d he put it up?”

“He didn’t. I did.”

“You went a fifty-thou bond?”

“You don’t watch the news? I hit the Powerball last week. Three million bucks. I bought him that pink Caddy out front, too.”

I looked at him, stupefied. He walked past me and took his little girl by the hand. “Want something to eat? Clete’s going to meet us outside in a few minutes,” he said.

“Why not?” I replied.

A half hour later the four of us were eating gumbo at a checker-cloth-covered table inside a cafe one block from the courthouse. The pink Cadillac convertible was parked outside, rainwater standing up in beads as big as marbles on the waxed surface.

“I appreciate it, Gunner, but I can’t accept it,” Clete said.

“The title’s already in your name, man,” Gunner said.

“We’ll have to change that,” Clete said.

Gunner looked at a spot on the far wall of the cafe. “There’s something I didn’t mention. A couple of guys I was inside with needed a place to crash. Remember Flip Raguzi, used to run a chop shop for the Giacanos over in Algiers? He started a grease fire on the stove.

It sort of changed the way your kitchen and the ceiling look.”

“You let Flip Raguzi stay in my place? This guy has diseases scientists haven’t found names for,” Clete said.

“What’s he talking about, Daddy?” the little girl asked.

Clete shut his eyes, then opened them. “Give me the keys,” he said.

One of my favorite lines of all time, one excerpted from a 1940s song understood readily by all those who experienced the human and economic realities of the Depression and war years, goes as follows: “You don’t get no bread with one meatball.”

“What’s funny?” Gunner said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Take a walk with me, will you?”

We went outside and stood under a canvas awning, the mist blowing in our faces.

“That’s a decent thing you did for Clete, Gunner,” I said.

“I don’t use that name anymore,” he said.

“How about Father Jimmie? You do the right thing by him, too?” I said.

“Matter of fact, I did. But that’s my business.”

“I respect that, Phil. But I need your help, too. Know a woman named Theo Flannigan?”

“Jumpin’ Merchie’s old lady? I know who she is, but I don’t know her personally.”

“Was she writing scripts for Fat Sammy Figorelli?”

He shook his head. “No, but she might as well have. Her books were lying around the set. The director would lift the dialog from the love scenes in her books. So a bunch of degenerates, that includes me, were doing sixty-nines on each other and talking like Shakespeare.”

“Why would the director pick her work to steal from?” I asked.

“A guy named Ray was involved. His girlfriend was my co star I never saw him, but I think he was the same guy who’d call me and tell me where to pick up my meth delivery to the projects.”

Ray?

Why hadn’t I seen it? William Ray Guillot, lately of Franklin, Louisiana, now having his blood drained and replaced with formaldehyde.

“You’re sure Theo wasn’t part of Fat Sammy’s action?” I said.

“Ever see one of Fat Sammy’s films?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to,” he said. “Let’s go inside. Clete needs to drive me and my daughter to the airport in Lafayette. I’m buying a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. You get to town, have a free dinner on me.”

“You’re a stand-up guy, Phil.”

“I’m out of the life. I’m a millionaire. What’s a few bucks to show some gratitude?”

I started to say something else, but he cut me off.

“I got your drift. Give it a rest,” he said.

I drove back to my house on East Main and tried to put the LeJeune family and Junior Crudup out of my mind, but I couldn’t rest. I did not believe Max Coll killed Will Guillot, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Castille LeJeune had been unduly happy when I went to his home, as though with a broad sweep of a broom he had gotten rid of a large problem in his life. In fact, I believed Castille LeJeune was about to get away with at least one if not two additional homicides.