James Burke - The New Iberia Blues

“I got to say something,” Clete said.

“Go ahead.”

“I want to believe Butterworth isn’t a suicide and our guy is still out there. I want to believe that because I planned to blow up his shit. No, worse than that. I want to take him down in pieces.”

“So?”

“So, nothing. You talked to Butterworth before he did the Big Exit. If someone was holding a gun on him, he could have sent you a signal any number of ways.”

“Maybe it was that statement about reading between the lines.”

“Titty babies who beat up hookers like to sound profound. The truth is, they’re titty babies who beat up hookers, usually small ones.”

“He was listening to a recording of Jazz at the Philharmonic and maybe playing along with it. He might have stopped to clean his mouthpiece. Why would he suddenly call me up and commit suicide?”

“Suicide isn’t a rational act. I knew mercenaries in El Sal. They were all looking for the boneyard. They just didn’t know it. You know what I think?”

“No.”

“Butterworth and Cormier had some kind of complicated relationship going on. I also think we’ll never know. We’ll never know what it is either.”

Maybe he was right; maybe not. I didn’t care. I had always believed in Desmond in the same way I’d believed in Bella Delahoussaye. They came from the Louisiana I loved, and I loved Louisiana in the same way you love a religion. You don’t care if your obsession is rational, and you’re not bothered that your love is partly erotic. The Great Whore of Babylon is a commanding mistress. Once she widens her thighs and takes you inside her, she never lets go.

“Forget the crypt,” Clete said. “Go to the res.”

“Why the res?”

“The casino is there, and probably some of the scum-suckers out of Jersey who have been backing Desmond’s films. Maybe they brought their skanks and he can get his knob polished before he continues his life as a great artist.”

We found Desmond Cormier in the late afternoon on the piece of hardscrabble land where his grandparents had run a general store; now the land was pocked with sinkholes and overgrown with persimmon trees and palmettos and swamp maples cobwebbed with air vines and storm trash blown out of the Atchafalaya Basin. Desmond was standing by a Humvee, staring at the shadows near an inlet that had turned red in the sunset. Behind us, I could see the glow of the casino in the distance.

I think the images he saw were not the ones I described. I believed he was looking into the past at the skinny twelve-year-old boy who roped cinder blocks to each end of a broomstick under a white sun and began creating a body that would put the fear of God into the bullies who tormented him on the school bus. I suspect he wondered about the fate of the bullies who taunted him and shoved him onto the gravel. Some were probably dead, some stacking time in Angola, some cleaning floors with mops and pails. If he ran into them, they probably would not connect him with the boy they had mocked. One thing I was sure of: If Desmond did meet them, he would treat them with kindness.

That’s why he angered me. He had the capacity to do enormous good in the world. But he handed out his gifts one coin at a time, and never with anonymity, unless you counted his payment for Lucinda Arceneaux’s crypt.

His talent had received global recognition, but his faith in his creativity was not enough to make him forswear the illegal money that powered his artistic enterprises. And enterprises they were. Without the sweaty multitudes and the satisfaction they demanded for the price of a theater ticket, Desmond probably would have been running an independent company filming lizards in the Texas Panhandle.

I parked on the faint outline of the dirt track that traversed the property, and asked Clete to stay in the truck.

“You got it,” he replied, and tilted his porkpie hat down on his eyes.

I walked up behind Desmond. He showed no awareness of my presence, even though I knew he heard me.

“What’s the haps?” I said.

He grinned in the same way he could light up a room when he was a kid. “How’s it going, Dave?”

“Hard to say, things have been moving so fast. It looks like Antoine Butterworth killed Smiley Wimple, then popped himself.”

“Whoa.”

“You haven’t heard?”

“What was that about Antoine popping himself?”

“He called me from your house, then parked one under his chin. That’s what it looks like.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“If it’s any consolation, he praised your name before he pulled the plug.”

Desmond was facing me now, his sleeves rolled, his forearms pumped and vascular. “Don’t be cynical, Dave. Antoine is my friend.”

“Your ‘friend’ may have arbitrarily murdered Smiley Wimple.”

“What do you mean, ‘arbitrarily’?”

“That’s what the only witness says. Wimple’s gun misfired, and Butterworth didn’t have to kill him, although a prosecutor would never be able to prove that.”

Desmond rubbed at his nose. “You’re not jerking me around? Antoine’s dead?”

“Unless he’s been resurrected.”

“Where is he?”

“Probably on a slab.”

“You’re a callous man.”

“He told me someday I would be able to read between the lines. Have any idea what he meant?”

“No.”

“Where does your money come from?” I asked.

“Half a dozen sources, all of them legitimate.”

“You might have a Maltese cross tattooed on your ankle, but you’ll never be Geoffrey Chaucer’s good knight,” I said. “I don’t care how many showers you take, you’ve still got shit on your nose.”

He turned his face to the wind, his hair lifting, his wide-set eyes devoid of light, his expression as meaningless as a cake pan, his torso a piece of sculpted stone inside his shirt. Had he swung on me, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“He suffered?” he said.

“Butterworth? Maybe. He was listening to a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert before he signed off.”

“That sounds like him. He loves Flip Phillips.”

“The man I talked to was sweating ball bearings.”

“He was an artist,” he said. “In his way, a dreamer.”

“When he wasn’t hanging up working girls on coat hooks. You’re going to Arizona tomorrow?”

“At sunrise.”

“Make all the pictures you want,” I said. “I’m going to get you.” I walked away.

“You think you can hurt me?” he called to my back. “After what’s happened here? That’s what you think?”

I got into the truck and started the engine. Clete had been drowsing. “Hey! What’s going on with Cormier?” he asked.

“He was shocked and indignant,” I replied.

We drove back to the two-lane and headed home, an orange sun dissolving into the wetlands, threaded with smoke from stubble fires.

Early Sunday morning, Cormac the coroner called me at home. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“What’s the problem?” I said.

“I’ll probably have to declare Butterworth’s death a suicide, but it bothers me.”

“Why?”

“The broken tooth your friend Purcel found in the door track. The bullet went in behind the jaw and traveled upward through the tongue and the palate in a clean line. It’s possible the bullet deflected off the tooth, except I don’t see the evidence.”

“Call it like you see it,” I said.

“Here’s my other problem: I talked to the prosecutor last night. I think everyone wants to shut the book on this one.”

“Wimple and Butterworth get bagged and tagged, and everyone goes home happy?”

“People are people,” he said. “What’s your opinion?”