James Burke - Sunset Limited

That is not what happened to Ida Broussard.

Her white dress had turned brown, like cheesecloth dipped in tea, but her skin had the smooth texture and color of an eggplant and her hair was shiny and black on her shoulders and there was no distortion in her expression.

Cool Breeze's hand reached out and touched her cheek. Then he walked away from us, without speaking, and stood on the edge of the graveyard and looked out at the river so we could not see his face.

"How do you explain it?" I said to the pathologist.

"An oil company buried some storage tanks around here in the 1930s. Maybe some chemical seepage got in the coffin," he replied.

He looked back into my eyes. Then he spoke again. "Sometimes I think they wait to tell us something. There's no need for you to pass on my observation."

FRIDAY EVENING BOOTSIE AND I dropped Alafair at the show in Lafayette, then ate dinner at a restaurant on the Vermilion River. But as soon as Alafair was not with us, Bootsie became introspective, almost formal when she spoke, her eyes lingering on objects without seeing them.

"What is it?" I said outside the restaurant.

"I'm just tired," she replied.

"Maybe we should have stayed home."

"Maybe we should have."

After Alafair went to bed, we were alone in the kitchen. The moon was up and the trees outside were full of shadows when the wind blew.

"Whatever it is, just say it, Boots."

"She was at the dock today. She said she couldn't find you at your office. She didn't bother to come up to the house. Of course, she's probably just shy."

"She?"

"You know who. She finds any excuse she can to come out here. She said she wanted to thank you for the shooting lessons you arranged for her. You didn't want to give them to her yourself?"

"Those guys almost killed her. They might pull it off the next time."

"Maybe it's her own fault."

"That's a rough thing to say, Boots."

"She hides behind adversity and uses it to manipulate other people."

"I'll ask her not to come here again."

"Not on my account, please."

"I give up," I said, and went out into the yard.

The cane in my neighbor's field was green and dented with channels like rivers when the wind blew, and beyond his tree line I could see lightning fork without sound out of the sky. Through the kitchen window I heard Bootsie clattering dishes into the dishwasher. She slammed the washer door shut, the cups and silverware rattling in the rack. I heard the washer start to hum, then her shadow went past the window and disappeared from view and the overhead light went off and the kitchen and the yard were dark.

WE WANTED HARPO SCRUGGS. But we had nothing to charge him with. He knew it, too. He called the dock on Sunday afternoon.

"I want to meet, talk this thing out, bring it to an end," he said.

"It's not a seller's market, Scruggs."

"What you got is your dick in your hand. I can clean the barn for you. There's an old nigra runs a barbecue joint next to a motel on State Road 70 north of Morgan City. Nine o'clock," he said, and hung up.

I went outside the bait shop and hosed down a rental boat a fisherman had just returned, then went back inside without chaining it up and called Helen Soileau at her home.

"You want to do backup on a meet with Harpo Scruggs?" I said.

"Make him come in."

"We don't have enough to charge him."

"There's still the college kid, the witness who saw the two brothers executed in the Basin."

"His family says he's on a walking tour of Tibet."

"He killed Mout's dog. Vermilion Parish can charge him with endangering."

"Mout' says he never got a good look at the guy's face."

"Dave, we need to work this guy. He doesn't bring the Feds into it, he doesn't plead out. We fit his head in a steel vise."

"So take a ride with me. I want you to bring a scoped rifle."

She was silent a moment. Then she said, "Tell the old man."

THE BARBECUE PLACE WAS a rambling, tin-roofed red building, with white trim and screen porches, set back in a grove of pines. Next door was a cinder-block motel that had been painted purple and fringed with Christmas lights that never came down. Through the screen on a side porch I saw Harpo Scruggs standing at the bar, a booted foot on the rail, his tall frame bent forward, his Stetson at an angle on his freshly barbered head. He wore a long-sleeve blue shirt with pink polka dots and an Indian-stitched belt and gray western slacks that flowed like water over the crook in his knee. He tilted back a shot glass of whiskey and sipped from a glass of beer.

I stood by a plank table at the edge of the clearing so he could see me. He put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and opened the screen door and lit the cigarette with a Zippo as he walked toward me.

"You got anybody with you?" he asked.

"You see anyone?"

He sat down at the plank table and smoked his cigarette, his elbows on the wood. The clouds above the pines were black and maroon in the sun's afterglow. He tipped his ashes carefully over the edge of the table so they wouldn't blow back on his shirt.

"I heard about a man got throwed out a window. I think one of two men done it. Swede Boxleiter or that bucket of whale sperm got hisself kicked off the New Orleans police force," he said.

"Clete Purcel?"

"If that's his name. You can tell them I didn't have nothing to do with hurting that woman."

"Tell them yourself."

"All this trouble we been having? It can end in one of two ways. That black boy, Broussard, don't testify against the dagos in New Orleans and some people gets paid back the money they're owed.

"The other way it ends is I get complete immunity as a government witness, all my real estate is sold and the proceeds are put in bearer bonds. Not one dollar of it gets touched by the IRS. Then I retire down in Guatemala. Y'all decide."

"Who the hell do you think you are?" I said.

A black man brought a bottle of Dixie beer on a metal tray to the table. Scruggs tipped him a quarter and wiped the lip of the bottle with his palm.

"I'm the man got something you want, son. Or you wouldn't be sitting here," he replied.

"You took money from Ricky Scarlotti, then fucked up everything you touched. Now you've got both the Mob and a crazoid like Boxleiter on your case," I said.

He drank out of the beer and looked into the pine trees, sucking his false teeth, his expression flat. But I saw the muted change in his eyes, the way heat glows when the wind puffs ash off a coal.

"You ain't so different from me," he said. "You want to bring them rich people down. I can smell it in you, boy. A poor man's got hate in his glands. It don't wash out. That's why nigras stink the way they do."

"You've caused a lot of trouble and pain for people around here. So we've decided in your case it should be a two-way street. I'd hoped you'd provoke a situation here."

"You got a hideaway on your ankle?"

"My partner has your face in the crosshairs of a scoped.30-06. She'd looked forward to this evening with great anticipation, sir. Enjoy your beer. We'll catch you down the road."

I walked out to the parking lot and waited for Helen to pull my truck around from the other side of the motel. I didn't look behind me, but I could feel his eyes on my back, watching. When Helen drew to a stop in front of me, the scoped, bolt-action rifle on the gun rack, the dust drifting off the tires, she cocked one finger like a pistol and aimed it out the window at Harpo Scruggs.

TUESDAY MORNING THE SHERIFF called me into his office.

"I just got the surveillance report on Scruggs," he said. "He took the Amtrak to Houston, spent the night in a Mexican hot pillow joint, then flew to Trinidad, Colorado."

"He'll be back."