James Burke - In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

I walked to the filling station on the corner, called the dispatcher, and told him to have a wrecker tow the limo into the pound.

Then I went inside the restaurant, which gleamed with chrome and silverware and Formica surfaces, and walked past the long table where two waitresses were in the process of serving Julie and his group their breakfast. Cholo saw me first and started to speak, but I looked straight ahead and continued on into the men's room as though they were not there.

I washed my face with cold water, dried it with paper towels, and combed my hair in the mirror. There were flecks of white in my mustache now, and lines around my eyes that I hadn't noticed only a week before. I turned on the cold water and washed my face again, as though somehow I could rinse time and age out of my skin. Then I crumpled up the damp paper towel in my hand, flung it into the trash can, fixed my tie, put on my coat and sunglasses, and walked back into the restaurant.

Showtime, Julie, I thought.

Even sitting down, he towered above the others at the head of the table, in a pink short-sleeve shirt, suspenders, and gray striped slacks, his tangled black hair ruffling on his brow in the breeze from the fan, his mouth full of food while he told the waitress to bring more coffee and to reheat Margot's breakfast steak. Cholo kept trying to smile at me, his false teeth as stiff as whale bone in his mouth. Julie's other hoods looked up at me, then at Julie; when they read nothing in his face, they resumed eating.

"Hey, lieutenant, I thought that was you. You here for breakfast?" Cholo said.

"I was just passing by," I said.

"What's going on, Dave?" Julie said, his mouth chewing, his eyes fixed on the flower vase in front of him.

"I had a long night last night," I said.

"Yeah?" he said.

"We found a girl in a barrel down in south Vermilion Parish."

He continued to chew, then he took a drink of water. He touched his mouth with his napkin.

"You want to sit down, or are you on your way out?" he said.

Just then I heard the steel hook of the wrecker clang somewhere on the limo's frame and the hydraulic cables start to tighten on the winch. Cholo craned his head to look beyond the angle of the front window that gave onto the street.

"I always thought you were standup, Feet," I said.

"I appreciate the compliment, but that's a term they use in a place I've never been."

"That's all right, I changed my mind. I don't think you're standup anymore, Feet."

He blew up both his cheeks.

"What are you trying to say, Dave?"

"The man I work for got a bunch of phone calls yesterday. It looks like somebody dropped the dime on me with the Kiwanis Club."

"It ain't a bunch I got a lot of influence with. Talk with Mikey Goldman if you got that kind of problem."

"You use what works, Julie."

"Hey, get real, Dave. When I want to send a message to somebody, it don't come through Dagwood Bumstead."

Outside, the driver of the wrecker gunned his engine, pulled away from the curb, and dragged the limo past the front window. The limo's two front tires, which were totally deflated and still on the asphalt, were sliced into ribbons by the wheel rims.

Cholo's mouth was wide with unchewed scrambled eggs.

"Hey, a guy's got our car! A guy's driving off with the fucking limo, Julie!" he said.

Julie watched the wrecker and his limo disappear up the street. He pushed his plate away an inch with his thumb. One corner of his mouth drooped, and he pressed against it with his napkin.

"Sit down," he said.

Everyone had stopped eating now. A waitress came to the table with a pitcher of ice water and started to refill the glasses, then hesitated and walked back behind the counter. I pulled out a chair and sat at the corner of the table, a foot from Julie's elbow.

"You're pissed off about something and you have my fucking car towed in?" he said.

"Don't park in front of fire plugs."

"Fire plugs?"

"Right."

"I'm getting this kind of dog shit because of a fucking fire plug?"

"No, what I'm wondering, Julie, is why you and Cholo have to hit on a small-town teenage hooker. Don't y'all have enough chippies back in New Orleans?"

"What?"

"Cherry LeBlanc," I said.

"Who the fuck is Cherry LeBlanc?"

"Give it a break and stop acting like you just popped out of your mama's womb."

He folded his napkin, placed it carefully by the side of his plate, pulled a carnation out of the flower vase, and pinched off the stem.

"You calling me a pimp?" he said. "You trying to embarrass me in public. That's what this is about?"

"You didn't listen to what I said. We just found another murdered girl. Cholo knew about the murder of the LeBlanc girl, and he said you did, too. Except you lied about it when I mentioned her to you."

His eyes drifted lazily to Cholo's face. Cholo squeezed his hands on his wrists.

"I'm all lost here. I'm-" he began.

"You know what the real trouble is, Dave?" Julie said. He flipped the carnation onto the tablecloth. "You never understood how this town worked. You remember anybody complaining about the cathouses on Railroad and Hopkins? Or the slot machines that were in every bar and restaurant in town? Nobody complained 'cause my old man delivered an envelope to certain people at the end of every month. But those same people treated our family like we were spit on the sidewalk.

"So you and that FBI broad went around town stirring up the Bumstead crowd, shoving a broomstick up their ringus, and your boss man called you in to explain the facts of life. But it's no fun finding out that the guys you work for don't want to scare a few million dollars out of town. So you fuck my car and get in my face in a public place. I think maybe you should go back to work in New Orleans. I think maybe this shithole is starting to rub off on you."

The manager had come from behind the glass cashier's counter and was now standing three feet from me and Julie, his clip-on bow tie askew, his tongue wetting his lips.

"Sir, could you gentlemen lower your, I mean, could you not use that language in-" he began.

Julie's eyes, which were filled with a black light, flipped up into the manager's face.

"Get the fuck away from my table," he said.

"Sir-" the manager said.

"It's all right, Mr. Meaux. I'm leaving in just a second," I said.

"Oh, sad to hear it," the woman Margot, said. Except Cholo, the other hoods at the table smiled at her humor. She wore a sundress, and her hair, which was bleached the color of ash, was pulled back tightly on her head. She smoked a cigarette and the backs of her arms were covered with freckles.

"You want to come down to the office and look at some morgue pictures? I think that'd be a good idea," I said. "Bring your girlfriend along if you like."

"I'm going to say this just once. I don't know none of these girls, I don't have nothing to do with your problems, you understand what I'm saying? You said some ugly things to me, Dave, but we're old friends and I'm going to let it slide. I'll call a couple of cabs, I'll pay the fine on my car, I'll buy new tires, and I'll forget everything you been saying to me. But don't you never try to get in my face in a public place again."

One of his hoods was getting up, scraping back his chair, to use the restroom.

I folded my sunglasses, slipped them into my shirt pocket, and rubbed the burning sensation in my eyes with my thumb and forefinger.

"Feet, you're full of more shit than a broken pay toilet," I said quietly.

The hood rested his hand on my shoulder. He was perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, lithe and olive-skinned, his dark hair boxed on his neck. A long pink scar, as thick as a soda straw, ran down the inside of one arm.

"Everybody's been pretty polite here," he said.