James Burke - The Glass Rainbow

I could not tell Alafair that I remembered moments out of her childhood that she considered of little consequence today or didn’t remember at all: the burning day I pulled her from the submerged wreck of an airplane piloted by a priest who was flying war refugees out of El Salvador and Guatemala; her pride in the Donald Duck cap with the quacking bill we bought at Disney World; her first pair of tennis shoes, which she wore to bed at night, embossed on the appropriate tips in big rubber letters with the words “left” and “right”; her ongoing war with Batist, the black man who ran our bait shop and boat rental, because Tripod would not stay out of Batist’s fried pies and candy bars; her horse, Tex, who threw her end over end into our tomato plants; Alafair, at age six, mallet-smashing boiled crabs at a screened-in restaurant by Vermilion Bay, splattering everyone at the table; Alafair, at age nine, fishing with me in the Gulf, casting two-handed with a heavy rod and saltwater reel like it was a samurai sword, almost knocking me unconscious with the lead weights and smelt-baited treble hook.

Do you approach your daughter and tell her that no man has the right to track his feet through a father’s memories of his daughter’s young life?

I walked home in the dark. The streetlamps were back on and the wind was up, and the frenetic shadows of the live oaks and the moss in their limbs made me think of soldiers running from tree trunk to tree trunk in a nocturnal woods, but I had no explanation why.

THE PHONE RANG at shortly after two in the morning. The caller sounded drunk and black and belligerent. I told him he must have misdialed, and started to hang up on him.

“No, I got the right number. Elmore said to call you. He’s got to talk to you again,” the caller said.

“You’re talking about Elmore Latiolais who’s in prison in Mississippi?”

“Yeah, I was in there wit’ him. I got out yesterday.”

“So you stopped by a bar and got loaded, then decided to call me up in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t mean no kind of disrespect, but I’m going out of my way to make this call. Elmore seen a picture of a white guy in the newspaper. He said he was sure this white guy had been around his sister’s house.”

“What’s the significance of the white guy?” I said.

“Again, I ain’t meaning to disrespect you, but Elmore’s sister was Bernadette. She was killed. This guy tole Bernadette he was gonna make her and her grandmother rich. She come to visit Elmore in jail, and she showed Elmore a picture of her and this white guy together. He’s a famous guy, maybe a great humanitarian or somet’ing like that. Maybe he’s been in the movies. I ain’t sure.”

“Elmore thinks Herman Stanga killed his sister. What’s the white guy got to do with anything?”

“Elmore says the white guy knows Herman. I got to take a leak, man. You got what you need?”

“Give me your name. I’ll meet you tomorrow in a place of your choosing.”

“Lookie here, Elmore said send you a kite. That’s what I done. Elmore showed the picture to Captain Thigpin and axed him to call you again. You ain’t had no call from Captain Thigpin, have you?”

“No.”

“’Cause Captain Thigpin ain’t gonna be he’ping a black man on his road gang to bring down a rich white man. In the meantime, Elmore is going crazy in there. He keeps saying nobody cares about his sister. He says he’s got to get out and find the people that cut her t’roat. ‘She was just seventeen.’ That’s what he keeps saying over and over, ‘She was just seventeen.’”

At this point I expected the caller to hang up. He had probably told me all he knew and was obviously tired, in need of a restroom, and wanting another drink.

“Lookie, the reason Elmore axed me to call you and not somebody else is simple,” the caller said. “You said you was sorry for his loss. Ain’t none of the hacks tole him that, but you did. I tole Elmore he better quit doing what he’s doing or they gonna cool his ass out. But Elmore ain’t a listener.”

I WENT TO work early the next morning determined not to be drawn into problems outside my jurisdiction. Three years ago parish and city law enforcement had merged for budgetary reasons, and my office was now located in City Hall, on Bayou Teche, with a grand view of a religious grotto and wonderful oak trees next to the city library and, across the water, the urban forest that we call City Park. The sky was blue, the azaleas still blooming, wisteria hanging in clumps on the side of the grotto. I picked up my mail, poured a cup of coffee, and started in on the paperwork that waited daily for me in my in-basket.

But I could not get my two A.M. caller off my mind. In my wallet I found the cell-phone number of Captain Jimmy Darl Thigpin and punched it into my desk phone. My call went instantly to voice mail. I left a message. By eleven A.M. I had not received a reply. I tried again. At three in the afternoon I tried again. This time he picked up, but he offered no explanation for not having returned my earlier calls. “Is this about Latiolais?” he said.

“Yes, sir. I had a call last night from a man who says Latiolais has some new information regarding his sister’s homicide.”

“How does a convict on a brush gang come up with ‘new information’? Isn’t it about time to give this a rest, Mr. Robicheaux?”

“The caller said Elmore Latiolais had seen a newspaper photo of a white man who knew his sister and is connected with a pimp and drug dealer here by the name of Herman Stanga.”

“I don’t know anything about this.”

“Latiolais didn’t tell you about the photo?”

“No.”

“He made no mention of it to you?”

There was a pause. “I usually say things once. I do that because I tell the truth and I’m not used to having my word questioned.”

“Can I talk with Latiolais?”

“You want me to put a nigra inmate on my cell phone?”

“Or you can have him call me collect on a landline.”

“He’s in lockup.”

“There’s no phone in your facility?”

“He doesn’t have phone privileges there. That’s why we call it lockup.”

“Why is he in lockup?”

“He was acting like he had some jackrabbit in him.”

“I need to speak to him, Cap.”

“If you want to believe that boy’s lies, that’s your right. But I got a half-dozen inmates on my gang who would cut your throat for a dollar and lick the cut clean for an extra fifty cents, and I don’t have time to be worrying about that little halfwit. I hope this is the last conversation we have on the subject.”

“We can’t promise that, Cap. We were hoping to get your cooperation.”

“Who is ‘we’?” he said. Then the line went dead.

Through my open door I saw the sheriff, Helen Soileau, pass in the corridor. She came back and propped one arm on the jamb. She was a trim, firm-bodied woman, attractive in an androgynous way, her expressions often enigmatic, as though she were vacillating between two lives even while she was looking into your face. “I was at a function in Lafayette last night,” she said. “Timothy Abelard was there. He said you and Clete had been out to his house yesterday.”

“That’s true.”

“What was Clete doing with you?”

“He came along for the ride.”

She stepped inside the office and closed the door behind her, then sat down on the corner of my desk. She was wearing tan slacks and a pink shirt and her gun belt and half-top brown suede boots. “Clete is in a lot of trouble, Dave. But this time he’s not going to drag his problems into our workday. Got me?” she said.

“My trip to the Abelards was off the clock.”

“That’s not the point.”