James Burke - Crusader's Cross

He moved quickly along the grassy slope, through a vegetable garden and over a half-collapsed rick fence. Through a side window of the shotgun house he could see a fat black woman rolling pie dough on top of a table.

Nobody had said anything about a woman being home. This gig was starting to suck worse and worse. Maybe he should just blow it off, he thought. But the thought of continuing to pay a point and a half a week on twenty large didn't sit well with him, either.

Then he saw a man get up from his chair and step out on the gallery and speak to the little boy. The little boy began picking up his toys from the yard and putting them in a wagon. Johnny waited in the darkness, the lint from the cane field itching inside his shirt like lines of ants. Why would anybody want to click the switch on a black guy like this, anyway? Twenty large for a guy who probably worked for collard greens and neck bones?

Because Johnny was supposed to do the woman and the kid, too, he thought. Well, screw that. The deal was for the man. What was that joke Jimmy Fig used to make about the door gunner in 'Nam? How can you shoot women and children? It's easy, man, you just don't lead them as much.

Yeah, screw that twice.

The front screen slammed, but Johnny could still see the kid in the yard. Was the man still out front? Again, Johnny smelled an odor that was like sewer gas and humus and leaves that have turned yellow and spotted inside pools of rainwater. It was a pleasant smell, like late fall, except it was still summer and too early for the fireflies that were weaving their smoky circles inside the cedar trees.

Time to boogie, he thought. Pay the vig and find a new gig. Messing with law-abiding people genuinely blew.

He turned to retrace his steps back to his vehicle. Just as he did, he thought he saw a woman moving toward him through the live oaks on the slope. She was barefoot, her dress little more than gauze, her skin glowing, her hair a black skein across her face. He stood transfixed, dumbfounded by the presence of a figure who had escaped from his dreams and who seemed to be approaching him in slow motion, as though until this moment she had not been allowed to be a full participant in his life.

Johnny felt his ankle sink in a depression and the tendon twist against the bone. He bit down on the pain and righted himself, momentarily losing sight of the woman in the trees. Behind him, he thought he heard leaves blowing across the ground or wind rustling in a canebrake. When he turned toward the bayou, a figure stepped out from behind an abandoned privy and swung a short cutting instrument out of the sky, whipping it down with such force that the blow exploded inside his skull like an electrical flash.

He did not remember striking the ground, or the blow that landed on the back of his neck or the one that cut deep into his shoulder. A black man stood above him, cocking his head one way, then another, a hatchet hanging from his right hand. The black man had big half-moon eyebrows and an innocuous pieface; his erratic, jerky motions reminded Johnny of an owl sitting on a branch in a tree.

Taken out by Uncle Remus. What a laugh, he thought.

"Wasn't going to hurt your boy or woman," Johnny said.

The black man leaned over him. "Say again?" he said.

I whack kings. I took out Benny Siegel's cousin, Johnny said somewhere deep inside himself.

Then the barefoot woman who wore only white gauze approached him from the trees, parting the veil of hair on her face with her fingers. She knelt beside him, cupping her hands behind his head, lifting his face to hers. When she put her mouth on his it was cold and dry, as hollow as the grave. Then he felt her tongue slide past his teeth and probe deep inside him, stirring a heat in his genitals he had never experienced before. In the distance he heard a train, one that rattled with light and roared with sound, and he now realized what it was he had always wanted.

The homicide investigation was conducted by the St. Mary Parish Sheriff's Department, and it wasn't until the next morning that Helen Soileau and I went out to the home of Andre Bergeron and interviewed him in the warm shade of a pecan tree. Out in the sunlight I could see the depression and blood splatter in the grass where Jericho Johnny had spent the last few minutes of his life.

"You hit him three times with the hatchet?" I said.

"I ain't counted. Man had a pistol in his hand," Andre replied. "Say, I done tole all this to them others."

"But not to us," Helen said.

"I ain't meaning no disrespect, but ain't y'all just suppose to work inside Iberia Parish?"

"We take a lot of interest in anything that happens on Mr. Val's property, Andre. We'd really appreciate your helping us out, that is, if you'd consent to talk with us," I said.

"I seen the gun in his hand. My wife and li'l boy was in the house. So I done what I had to. His words to me was he wasn't gonna hurt my son or my woman. That's what the man said. Then he died."

"Why do you think he would say that to you?" I asked.

" 'Cause he didn't come here to kill nobody but me. Or maybe he was sent here to kill all of us but he couldn't do it. You tell me."

"You seem like a smart man. Why would a professional hit man be here to kill you or your family?" Helen said.

"It don't make no sense to me, either," he replied.

"Nice spot you have here," I said.

"It ain't bad," he said.

"How'd you get the drop on this dude? I'd say that was pretty slick," I said.

"Seen him out of the corner of my eye. Circled 'round the house, got my tool off the po'ch, and you know the rest."

"I knew this guy, Andre. He worked for money and no other reason. He was the best in the business and charged accordingly. You make somebody mad at you, somebody so mad he'd pay an uptown guy like Jericho Johnny Wineburger to kill you and your family?" I said.

"What I know, me?"

"You don't think he was after Mr. Val?" I said.

"Ax Mr. Val," he replied.

"Thanks for your time, partner," I said, and handed him one of our business cards. "Mr. Val is a man of mystery, isn't he? You know where he might be now?"

"He had an argument wit' a man in the front yard this morning. Man wit' real li'l ears. He flipped the man's tie in his face and told him not to come 'round here no more. Then he went off by hisself."

"By the way, where's the hatchet?" I said.

"Cops took it. I got to get to my chores. Anyt'ing else?"

Helen and I got back in the cruiser and drove down the driveway, past the carpenters repairing the house and the tree surgeons pruning the oaks. Then, for no apparent reason, Helen braked the cruiser and rested her arms across the top of the wheel. Her shirt was stretched tight across her shoulders, the fingers of her right hand flicking at the air, as though she were trying to pick thoughts out of it. The sunlight through the pruned trees was so bright she had put on shades and I couldn't read her expression. "You feel jerked around?" she said.

"Yep."

"Like he was pointing the finger at Val Chalons but pretending not to?"

"That's what it sounded like to me."

She took her foot off the brake and let the idle carry the cruiser toward the highway, the pea gravel ticking under the tires. "Why would Chalons pay to have his handyman hit?" she said.

"Money."

"Money?"

"Money," I said.

"Like Bergeron might have a claim on the estate?"

"You got it."

"Try to make that one stick," she said, easing her foot back on the gas.

As soon as we got back to the department, I found a note in my mailbox asking me to call Jimmie at his apartment.

"Lou Kale was here about thirty minutes ago. He seems a little irrational," Jimmie said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, he thinks I'm involved in some kind of scam with Clete Purcel. He says Purcel is trying to blackmail either him or Val Chalons. What's the deal?"