James Burke - The Tin Roof Blowdown

But nothing seems to happen either outside or inside the cottage, and the man in the panel truck is becoming restless, turning his radio on and off, starting and restarting his engine.

What to do? Clete asks himself. Take down Rochon as a penny-ante bail skip or gamble that the Melancon brothers will show up? When the storm makes landfall late tomorrow night or early Monday morning, the lowlifes will either go to work looting the city or be blown like flotsam in every direction. Either way, it will be almost impossible to get a net over Rochon and the Melancons.

Clete decides it’s Showtime.

He puts an unlit cigarette in his mouth, combs his hair in the mirror behind the bar, and fits on his porkpie hat. His cream-colored slacks are pressed, his oxblood loafers shined, his Hawaiian shirt taut on his massive shoulders. A hideaway.25 is Velcro-strapped to his ankle, a slapjack and penlight in one trouser pocket, a set of cuffs in the other. He wishes he were on a plane, lifting above highways that are clogged with automobiles, buses, and trucks, their headlights all pointing north. Or over in New Iberia, where he has a second office and a room he rents at an old motor court on East Main. But you don’t surrender the place of your birth either to evil men or natural calamity, he tells himself, and wonders if he will feel the same in twenty-four hours.

“You decided to meet a lady friend after all?” Jimmy says.

“No, I got an appointment in the street with a piece of shit that should have been a skid mark on the bowl a long time ago,” Clete says. “If it gets rough outside in the next few minutes, I don’t want NOPD in on it. You with me on that?”

“At this bar, nine-one-one is a historical date.”

“You’re a beaut, Jimmy. Put a couple of inner tubes on the roof.”

“What about you?”

“Ever hear of circus elephants drowning in New Orleans? See, no precedent.”

Clete steps out on the sidewalk. The light has gone out of the sky, and clouds are rolling blackly over his head. He can feel the barometer dropping rapidly now and he smells an odor that is like sulfur or rotten eggs or water beetles that have washed into the sewer grates and died there. Andre Rochon stares straight ahead, his wrists resting idly on the steering wheel, but Clete knows that Rochon has either made him for a cop or a bondsman and is deciding whether to brass it out or fire up his truck and bag-ass for North Rampart.

Clete crosses the street and opens his badge holder and hangs it in front of Rochon’s face. “Step out of the vehicle and keep your hands where I can see them,” he says. “That’s not a suggestion. You do it or you go to jail.”

His words are all carefully chosen, indicating in advance to Rochon that he has viable choices, that with a little cooperation and finesse he can skate on the nonappearance and have another season to run.

Rochon steps out onto the asphalt and closes the door behind him. He wears tennis shoes without socks and paint-splattered slacks and an LSU T-shirt scissored off at the midriff and armpits. His arms are scrolled with one-color tats. He smells of funk and the decayed food in his teeth. His face is narrow, a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. He strokes the exposed skin of his stomach, as a narcissist might. He probes his navel with one finger. “You a PI, blood?” he says.

Clete glances at the streetlight on the corner, his eyelashes fluttering. “See, people don’t give me nicknames, particularly when they’re racial,” he says. “Right now you’re standing up to your bottom lip in pig shit. In the next minute, one of two things will happen. You’ll either give up the Melancon brothers or you’ll be on your way to Central Lockup. If you want to be on the bottom floor when the hurricane hits, I’ll try to arrange that.”

“Eddy and Bertrand already evacuated. I’m just here to see ’bout my nephew. I’m telling the troot’, man.” Rochon presses his palm against his sternum, his face earnest.

“See, you’re doing something else that bothers me. George W. Bush spreads his hand on his chest when he wants to show people he’s sincere. You think you’re George W. Bush? You think you’re the president of the United States?”

Rochon is confused, his eyes darting back and forth. “Why you leanin’ on me like this? ’Cause of something Eddy and Bertrand done?”

“No, because you skipped your court appearance and burned Nig and Wee Willie for your bond. You also smell bad. Willie and Nig don’t like people who don’t shower or brush their teeth and who smell bad. They got to spray the chairs every time you come in their office. Now you’ve disrespected them on top of it.”

“Man, you been drinkin’ the wrong stuff.”

Clete’s hands feel dry and stiff at his sides. He opens and closes his palms and wets his lips. He can feel a dangerous level of anger building inside him, one that has little to do with Andre Rochon.

“Get on your cell and tell Eddy and Bertrand to pull the rag out of their ass and get over here,” he says.

“I ain’t got their number.”

“Really? Well, let’s see what you do got.”

Clete throws him against the side of the truck and shakes him down. When Rochon tries to turn his head and speak, Clete smashes his face into the paneling, so hard he dents it.

“Shit,” Rochon says, blood leaking from his nose across his upper lip. “I ain’t did nothing to deserve this.”

“What do you have in the truck?”

“Nothing. And you ain’t got no warrant to go in there, nohow.”

“I work for a bond service. I don’t need warrants. I can cross state lines, kick your door in, and rip your house apart. I can arrest and hold you anywhere I want, for as long as I want. Know why that is, Andre? When someone goes your bail, you become his property. And if this country respects anything, it’s the ownership of property.”

“I ain’t holding, man. Do what you want. I ain’t did nothing here. When this is over, I’m filing charges.”

Clete opens the driver’s door and shines his penlight under the front seats and into the back of the truck. The homemade plank floor in back is bare except for a coil of polyethylene rope that rests on a spare tire. A stuffed pink bear with white pads sewn on its paws is wedged between the floor and the truck’s metal side.

Clete clicks off the light, then clicks it on again. The images of the rope and the stuffed animal trigger a memory of a newspaper story, one that he read several weeks ago. Did it concern an abduction? In the Ninth Ward? He’s almost sure the story was in the Times-Picayune but he can’t remember the details.

“Who belongs to the stuffed bear?” he says.

“My niece.”

“What’s the rope for?”

“I was putting up wash lines for my auntie. What’s wit’ you, man?”

Behind him Clete hears an automobile with a gutted muffler turn the corner. “I’m taking you to Central Lockup. Get that grin off your face.”

Then Clete hears the car with the blown-out muffler accelerating, a hubcap detaching itself from one wheel, bouncing up onto a sidewalk. He turns just as the grillwork of a 1970s gas-guzzler explodes the open door of the panel truck off its hinges and drives it into Clete’s face and body. For just a moment he sees two black men in the front seat of the gas-guzzler, then he is propelled backward into the street, his skin and hair speckled with broken glass. He lands so hard on the asphalt his breath is vacuumed out of his chest in one long, uncontrollable wheezing rush that leaves him powerless and gasping. The gas-guzzler mashes over his porkpie hat and fishtails around a corner at the end of the block. As Clete tries to shove the door off his chest, Andre Rochon fires up his panel truck and roars away in the opposite direction, his red taillights braking once at the intersection before disappearing into the darkness.