James Burke - Sunset Limited

"I bought this property fo'teen years ago from Mr. Alex. He give me a good price, 'cause I already owned the house next do'," he said. "He slept right out yonder on that porch, at least when it wasn't cold, 'cause he rented rooms sometimes to oil-field people."

The yard was neat, with two palm trees in it, and flowers were planted around the latticework at the base of the main house and in a garden by a paintless barn and around a stucco building with a tin roof elevated above the walls.

"Is that a washhouse?" I said.

"Yes, suh, he had a couple of maids done laundry for them oil-field people. Mr. Alex was a good bidness-man."

"You remember a black woman named Ida Broussard, Mr. Plo?"

He nodded. "Her husband was the one been in Angola. He run a li'l sto'." His eyes looked at a cane field beyond the barbed-wire fence.

"She come around here?"

He took a package of tobacco and cigarette papers out of his shirt pocket. "Been a long time, suh."

"You seem like an honest man. I believe Ida Broussard was murdered. Did she come around here?"

He made a sound, as though a slight irritation had flared in his throat.

"Suh, you mean they was a murder here, that's what you saying?" But he already knew the answer, and his eyes looked into space and he forgot what he was doing with the package of tobacco and cigarette papers. He shook his head sadly. "I wish you ain't come here wit' this. I seen a fight. Yeah, they ain't no denying that. I seen it."

"A fight?"

"It was dark. I was working in my garage. She drove a truck into the yard and gone up the back stairs. I could tell it was Ida Broussard 'cause Mr. Alex had the floodlight on. But, see, it was cold wet'er then and he wasn't sleeping on the porch, so she started banging on the do' and yelling he better come out.

"I seen only one light go on. All them oil-field renters was gone, they was working seven-and-seven offshore back then. I didn't want to hear no kind of trouble like that. I didn't want my wife to hear it either. So I went in my house and turned on the TV.

"But the fighting stopped, and I seen the inside light go out, then the floodlight, too. I t'ought: Well, he ain't married, white people, colored people, they been doing t'ings together at night they don't do in the day for a long time now, it ain't my bidness. Later on, I seen her truck go down the road."

"You never told anyone this?"

"No, suh. I didn't have no reason to."

"After she was found dead in the swamp?"

"He was a policeman. You t'ink them other policemen didn't know he was carrying on wit' a colored woman, they had to wait for me to tell them about it?"

"Can I see the washhouse?"

The inside was cool and dank and smelled of cement and water. Duckboards covered the floor, and a tin washtub sat under a water spigot that extended from a vertical pipe in one wall. I placed my palm against the roughness of the stucco and wondered if Ida Broussard's cries or strangled breath had been absorbed into the dampness of these same walls.

"I boil crabs out here now and do the washing in my machine," Mr. Plo said.

"Are those wood stairs out there the same ones that were on the building twenty years ago?" I asked.

"I painted them. But they're the same."

"I'd like to take some slivers of wood from them, if you don't mind."

"What for?"

"If you see Alex Guidry, you can tell him I was here. You can also tell him I took evidence from your staircase. Mr. Plo, I appreciate your honesty. I think you're a good man."

He walked across his yard toward the front door, his face harried with his own thoughts, as wrinkled as a turtle's foot. Then he stopped and turned around.

"Her husband, the one run the li'l sto'? What happened to him?" he asked.

"He went back to prison," I answered.

Mr. Plo crimped his mouth and opened his screen door and went inside his house.

FROM HIS KITCHEN WINDOW Swede Boxleiter could see the bayou through the pecan trees in the yard. It was a perfect evening. A boy was fishing in a green pirogue with a bamboo pole among the lily pads and cattails; the air smelled like rain and flowers; somebody was barbecuing steak on a shady lawn. It was too bad Blimpo nailed him coming out of the graveyard. He liked being with Cisco and Megan again, knocking down good money on a movie set, working out every day, eating seafood and fixing tropical health drinks in the blender. Louisiana had its moments.

Maybe it was time to shake it. His union card was gold in Hollywood. Besides, in California nobody got in your face because you might be a little singed around the edges. Weirded out, your arms stenciled with tracks, a rap sheet you could wallpaper the White House with? That was the bio for guys who wrote six-figure scripts. But he'd let Cisco call the shot. The problem was, the juice was just too big on this one. Taking down punks like Rodney Loudermilk or that accountant Anthony Whatever wasn't going to get anybody out of Shitsville.

He loaded the blender with fresh strawberries, bananas, two raw eggs, a peeled orange, and a can of frozen fruit cocktail, and flicked on the switch. Why was that guy from the power company still messing around outside?

"Hey, you! I told you, disconnect me again, your next job is gonna be on the trash truck!" Swede said.

"That's my day job already," the utility man replied.

They sure didn't have any shortage of wise-asses around here, Swede thought. How about Blimpo in his porkpie hat hooking him to a car bumper and going up to the Terrebonne house and bringing this guy back down to the crypt, like Swede's the pervert, a dog on a chain, not this fuck Terrebonne crawling around on his hands and knees, smoothing out the bones and rags in the casket, like he's packing up a rat's nest to mail it somewhere.

"What are you doing with my slingshot?" Swede said through the window.

"I stepped on it. I'm sorry," the utility man said.

"Put it down and get out of here."

But instead the utility man walked beyond Swede's vision to the door and knocked.

Swede went into the living room, shirtless and barefoot, and ripped open the door.

"It's been a bad week. I don't need no more trouble. I pay my bill through the super, so just pack up your shit and-" he said.

Then they were inside, three of them, and over their shoulders he saw a neighbor painting a steak with sauce on a grill and he wanted to yell out, to send just one indicator of his situation into the waning light, but the door closed quickly behind the men, then the kitchen window, too, and he knew if he could only change two seconds of his life, revise the moment between his conversation with the utility man at the window and the knock on the door, none of this would be happening, that's what two seconds could mean.

One of them turned on the TV, increasing the volume to an almost deafening level, then slightly lowering it. Were the three men smiling now, as though all four of them were involved in a mutually shameful act? He couldn't tell. He stared at the muzzle of the.25 automatic.

Man, in the bowl, big time, he thought.

But a fellow's got to try.

His shank had a four-inch blade, with a bone-and-brass handle, a brand called Bear Hunter, a real collector's item Cisco had given him. Swede pulled it from his right pocket, ticking the blade's point against the denim fabric, opening the blade automatically as he swung wildly at a man's throat.

It was a clean cut, right across the top of the chest, slinging blood in a diagonal line across the wall. Swede tried to get the second man with the backswing, perhaps even felt the knife arc into sinew and bone, but a sound like a Chinese firecracker popped inside his head, then he was falling into a black well where he should have been able to lie unmolested, looking up at the circle of peering faces far above him only if he wanted.