James Burke - The New Iberia Blues

“We have champagne and soft drinks and cold cuts and potato salad over on the table,” he said. “Let’s put something in the tank, shall we?”

“Maybe we should talk business first,” Bailey said.

“Whatever I can do to help,” he said.

“It’s about Lucinda Arceneaux,” she said.

The light went out of his face.

“We’re pretty sure she knew people among your group,” I said. That was a lie, but that’s the way it works. You stretch the spider web across the doorway and hope the right person will walk through it.

“Like who in our group?” he said, looking around.

“She was young, idealistic, and naive,” I said. “A country girl full of dreams about Hollywood. Think any of these guys would latch on to a girl like that?”

“You’re tarring everybody with the same brush, Dave,” he said. “You put me in mind of those guys back in the fifties. Joe McCarthy and Nixon and the like.”

“Nothing so grandiose,” I said. “There’s a Texas convict on the ground here. His name is Tillinger. He’s a convicted killer. He believed Lucinda Arceneaux knew movie people who could help him get off death row. He headed here, to the place where she lived and where you’re making a film.”

“This is over my head,” Desmond said.

In the background I saw Antoine Butterworth and Lou Wexler arguing. Wexler was wearing white slacks. He had flattened his hands and stuck both of them into his back pockets, like a baseball manager giving it to an umpire. He stepped away from Butterworth and came toward us, flicking his fingers as though looking for a towel. “You’ve got to get that bloody sod off my back before I shove his head in one of these crawfish holes,” he said to Desmond.

“No more of this, Lou,” Desmond said.

“Very sorry to bring a problem to you,” Wexler said. “I thought you were the director.”

“What’s the issue?” Desmond said.

“I told him you wanted to pick it up at oh-six-hundred tomorrow,” Wexler said. “The weather forecast is perfect. We’ll have clouds across a pink sky, the shadows on the salt grass. The tide will be out, the sand slick, and driftwood sticking up like bones. The bastard doesn’t get it. He says the union will complain.”

“I’ll talk to him. We shoot at oh-six,” Desmond said. “No more spit fights.”

“I knew him in Africa, Des,” Wexler said. “He was afraid of the wogs and afraid of his own shadow. You ever meet a coward who wasn’t a backstabbing shit?”

“We don’t have that language on the set,” Desmond said.

Wexler looked at Bailey and me as though seeing us for the first time. “Sorry, all.”

“Forget it,” Desmond said. He put his arms over both Bailey’s shoulders and mine. “Let’s have something to eat.”

“We’ll pass on the food,” I said. “What’s that stuff about the wogs?”

“Lou likes to throw around mercenary references,” Desmond said. “Actually, he and Antoine made their money in video games.”

“What kind of video games?” I said.

“Urban guerrilla themes. Blowing things apart. A bit like Grand Theft Auto, ” he replied.

“Themes?” I said.

“Come on, Dave,” he said. “Be a sport and enjoy life. Have some fun on the set. It’s like Burt Reynolds once told me: ‘Why grow up when you can make movies?’ ”

“Is that why you make them?” I said.

The sun was like a giant ruby nestled in a clump of purple clouds on the tip of the wetlands. He looked at me, his eyes full of thoughts I couldn’t read. “No, that’s not why I make them. Not at all.”

“So tell us why,” Bailey said.

“They allow you to place your hand inside eternity. It’s the one experience we share with the Creator. That’s what making films is about.”

I was sure at that moment that Desmond Cormier lived in a place few of us would have the courage — or perhaps the temerity — to enter.

After work the next day, Sean McClain pulled his pickup into my driveway, a pirogue in the bed. Two cane poles were propped on the tailgate. He didn’t get out. “Take a ride with me to Fausse Point.”

He had never asked me to go fishing before. “Anything going on?” I asked.

“Thought we’d entertain the bream. Last time out, I hooked myself in the neck with a Mepps spinner. Thought I’d keep it simpler, cane pole — style.”

I had no idea what was on his mind, but I knew it wasn’t fish. “Why not?” I said.

We drove up the Loreauville Road through fields of green cane channeled with wind, the sky marbled with purple and scarlet rain clouds. We put the pirogue in at Lake Fausse Point. I sat in the bow and he sat in the stern, and we paddled along the edge of dead tupelos that resonated like conga drums when you knocked on them. I unhooked the line at the base of my cane pole and threaded a worm on the hook, and swung the line and bobber and small lead weight next to the lily pads. The wind had dropped, and the water was as flat and still as a painting.

“There’s something maybe I should tell you,” Sean said.

“I thought you might.”

“You did?”

“You shot one of your colleagues?” I said.

“Maybe I was working up to it.”

I turned around and looked at him. “I was kidding.”

“No, I ain’t shot nobody,” he said. “Although maybe I was thinking about it. There’s some what needs it.”

“Can you please tell me what we’re talking about?”

“I was having coffee at the doughnut place, and some guys was shooting off their mouths about Miss Bailey. One guy in particular. He said she got her job on her back.”

“Which guy?”

“The one who got off on that charge at the parish prison.”

“Axel Devereaux?” I said.

“I told him a couple of things maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“Like what?”

“That he put me in mind of a shit-hog ear-deep in a slop bucket. That he’d better shut his face before I went upside his head.”

“Devereaux isn’t a man to provoke,” I said.

“I done it.”

“You did what?”

“Went upside his head with the paper-napkin dispenser. It knocked him out of the chair.”

“You hit Axel Devereaux with a napkin dispenser?”

“I also stepped on his face and told him he’d better stay where he was at before I mashed his ear into a grape.”

“You’re not putting me on?”

“No, sir. He wet his pants. Literally.” He glanced at the water by the lily pads. “There’s something on your line.”

The bobber traveled across the surface in a straight line, without sinking, making a V, then sank out of sight. I lifted the pole and pulled a sunfish out of the water and swung it flopping into the boat. I wet my hand and unhooked the fish and lowered it below the surface and watched it disappear into the murk like a gold and red bubble. I turned around on the seat and looked at Sean. He was too good a kid to get mixed up with men who never should have been given a gun or a badge.

“Talk to Helen,” I said.

“I ain’t a snitch.”

“You don’t want a guy like Devereaux as an enemy.”

“Him and his friends will let me go through a door and get shot, won’t they?”

“That’s the way his kind work.”

“If you was in the cafeteria, what would you have done?”

“Probably the same thing.”

“Somehow that don’t make me feel any better.”

“You’re stand-up, Sean. Nobody can take that from you. Secretly, Devereaux fears you.”

“You should have been a preacher.”

“If you have any more trouble with these guys, let me know.”

“Nope.”

“Nope, what?”

“My old man always said you got to carry your own canteen. I only told you because I thought you had a right to know what Devereaux and them others is up to.”