James Burke: A Morning for Flamingos

I didn't have to go far. His van was in a ditch opposite the old seismograph drill barge that was sunk at an angle on the other side of the river. I stopped my truck, stuck Tony's.45 inside my belt, and walked up on the driver's side of the van. The light was gray through the trees, and the air had the cold smell of a refrigerator that has been closed up too long with produce inside. The driver's door was partly open, and the dashboard and steering column were littered with chips of broken glass, and painted with blood.

I pulled the door wide open and pointed the.45 inside, but the van was empty. Twelve-gauge shotgun shells, their yellow casings red with bloody finger smears, were scattered on the passenger's seat and on the floor. A paintless, narrow, wooden footbridge, with a broken handrail and boards hanging out the bottom, spanned the river just downstream from the drill barge. Deep foot tracks led from the opposite side of the bridge along the mudbank through the morning glory vines and cypress roots to the starboard side of the barge, which rested at an upward angle against the incline.

The slats on the bridge were soft with rot, and three of them burst under my weight as loud as rifle shots. The river's surface was dented with water dripping from the trees, and the incoming tide on the coast had raised the river's level, so that the line of dried flotsam along the bank waved on the edge of the current like gray cobweb.

I walked along the bank through the underbrush to the bow of the barge, where the drill tower sat. The hull was rusted out at the waterline, and there were tears in the cast-iron plates like broken teeth. I grabbed hold of the forward handrail and stepped over it onto the deck. The deck was slippery with moldy leaves and pine needles, and somebody's boots had bruised a gray path from the gunwale to the door of the pilothouse.

I put my.45 in my left hand, slipped Tony's out of my belt with my right, and pulled the hammer back on full cock with my thumb. The inside of the pilothouse was strewn with leaves and empty wood crates that once held canned dynamite, primers, and spools of cap wire. In one corner were the shriveled remains of a used condom, and somebody had spray-painted on the bulkhead the initials KKK and the words Joe Bob and Claudine inside a big heart. At the rear of the pilothouse were the door and the steel steps that led down into the engine room.

I put my back against the bulkhead and looked around the corner and down the steps into the half-flooded room below. The water was black and stagnant and streaked with oil, and somebody had tried to retrieve the huge engine on a hoist, then abandoned his task and left it suspended on chains and pulleys inches above the water.

Then I heard something move in the water, something scrape against the hull.

"You're under arrest, Boggs," I said. "Throw your shotgun out where I can see it, then come up the steps with your hands on your head."

It was silent down below now.

"If you're hurt and can't move, tell me so," I said. "We'll have you in a hospital in Slidell in a half hour. But first you've got to throw out the shotgun."

The only sounds were the rain dripping in the water and the tree limbs creaking overhead. Sweat ran out of my hair, and the wind blowing through the windows was cold on my face.

"Look, Boggs, you're in an iron box. It all ends right here. If I open up on you, there's no place you can hide. Use your head. You don't have to die here."

Then I heard him moving fast through the water, from out of a corner that was tilted at an upward angle against the bank, into full view at the bottom of the steps, his neck and shoulder scarlet with blood, his face and threadlike hair and drenched T-shirt strung with algae and spiderwebs. But he was hurt badly, and the tip of the shotgun barrel caught on the handrail of the steps just as I began firing down into the hold with both pistols.

The bullets ricocheted off the steps and the hull, sparking and whanging from one surface to the next. He dropped the shotgun into the water and tried to cover his face and head with his arms. But he lost his balance on the sloping floor and toppled forward into the machinist's hoist and suspended engine block. The chains roared loose from the pulleys, and Jimmie Lee Boggs crashed against the flooded bottom of the hull with the engine block and the tangle of chains squarely on top of his loins and lower chest. The blood drained from his face, and he reared back his head and opened his mouth in an enormous O like a man who couldn't find words for his pain.

I set both pistols on the floor of the pilothouse and walked down the steps into the water. The water was cold inside my socks and against my shins, and from one corner I smelled the sweet, fetid odor of a dead nutria whose webbed feet bobbed against the hull. The waterline was up to Boggs's neck, his grease-streaked hands rested on top of the block like claws, and he breathed as though his lungs were filled with some terrible obstruction.

I reached down under the water and caught the end of the crankshaft with both hands and tried to lift it. I strained until my shirt split along my back, and I slipped on the layer of moss and algae that covered the floor and stumbled sideways against the hull. My knee hit the side of his head.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He cleared his throat and rubbed one eye hard with his palm, but he did not speak.

"Can you move at all?" I said.

He shook his head.

"I've got a jack in the truck," I said. "I'll go get it and come back. But you're going to have to do something for me, Jimmie Lee."

His elongated spearmint-green eyes looked up into mine. The pupils were like tiny burnt cinders.

"Can you talk to me?" I said.

"Yeah, I can talk." His voice was thick with phlegm.

"When I come back I want you to tell me what happened to Hipolyte Broussard. I want you to tell me who stuffed that oil rag down his mouth. Are we agreed on that?"

"Why do you give a fuck?"

"Because Tee Beau Latiolais is a friend of mine. Because I'm a police officer."

His eyes looked away at the rust-eaten line of holes in the hull. Where there had been light from the outside, the river current was now eddying inside the barge. His face was bright with sweat.

"Get me out of here, man. The tide's coming in," he said.

I climbed hurriedly up the steps, got the jack and a three-battery flashlight out of the equipment box in the bed of my truck, made my way back across the footbridge, and climbed back down into the engine room. I clicked on the flashlight and balanced it on a step so that the beam struck the hull above where Boggs was pinned. His skin looked bone-white against the blackness of the water.

I wedged the base of the jack between the tilted floor and the side of the hull and fitted the handle into the ratchet socket. I snugged the top of the jack against the engine block and started pumping the handle.

"Come on, Boggs, talk to me. It's not a time to hold back," I said.

He strained his chin upward to keep it out of the water.

"The colored kid didn't kill the redbone. Fuck, man, get the sonofabitch off me," he said.

"Who did?"

"The woman did."

"Which woman?"

"Mama Goula. Who do you think, man?"

"How do you know this, Jimmie Lee?"

"I was out there. The redbone was under the bus, banging on the brake drums, yelling at the kid. The bus fell on him and the kid took off running. Come on, man, I'm busted up inside."

"Keep talking to me, Jimmie Lee."

"Mama Goula had brought some chippies out to the camp. She found the redbone and poked the rag down his throat with her thumb."

I felt the engine block move slightly; then the jack handle slipped out of the socket and my knuckles raked against the hull. Boggs pushed with both hands against the block, his neck cording with the strain.