James Burke - Pegasus Descending

“Tommy Lee Raguza? You bet I remember him,” he said.

“He goes by Lefty now.”

“That’s right, he boxed in Raiford. You’ve got a real bucket of shit on your hands, pal.”

“Can you break that down?”

“When it comes to Tommy Lee Raguza, I’m not up to the task. I’ll fax you a psychiatric evaluation from his file. Get this, that psych report came in before we had to cut him loose. It’ll make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.”

The two-page evaluation that came through the department’s fax machine was a study in failure, not simply societal and institutional failure but the kind that reaches all the way back through the evolution of the species. After a long typed description of Lefty or Tommy Lee Raguza’s psychological and behavioral problems, all couched in Freudian terms, the psychiatrist made this handwritten addendum at the bottom:

Medical science does not provide an adequate vocabulary to describe a man like this. He is probably the cruelest human being I have ever had the misfortune to meet. There is no element in his background, environmental or genetic, that would explain the dispassionate level of iniquity in this man and the level of pleasure he takes in injuring both people and animals. Frankly, I think this man is evil and should be separated from human society for the rest of his life. Unfortunately that will probably not happen.

This was the man now living in Acadiana, where parishioners still make the sign of the cross when they pass a Catholic church and cannot believe that an American president would lie to them.

I went back to work on Bruxal and ran his name through Google. I found information there that told me far more about him and his present intentions than his criminal jacket did. His name had appeared in several articles published in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, the Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Whitey Bruxal had become a major player in Louisiana ’s blossoming casino industry.

Gambling, like prostitution and every other imaginable vice, has a long history in the state. In the nineteenth century the gambling halls along Canal were perhaps the most notorious in the country, not only for their lucrativeness but also for the number of knifings and shootings that took place inside them. The Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard, who fired the first shot on Fort Sumter, made a fortune after the war as the head of the state lottery. Governor Huey P. Long literally gave Louisiana to Frank Costello, who in turn empowered a crime family in New Orleans to set up and control all organized vice throughout the southern half of the state. The gambling machines were made by a Mob-owned company in Chicago, but the credit line that purchased them came from right here in New Iberia.

During the mid-1950s, the most despised man in the state was an attorney general who tried to shut down the brothels and deep-six the slots out in the Gulf. The gambling joints and cathouses in St. Landry Parish were run by the sheriff. Every pool hall and blue-collar bar from Lake Charles to the Mississippi line contained football cards, punchboards, and payoff pinball machines. Cops in uniform worked as card dealers and bartenders in nightclubs that deliberately served minors. I could go on, but what difference does it make? The illegal gambling industry of the past is nothing in comparison to its legalized descendant.

A few years back our governor, who supposedly was in debt millions of dollars to the Vegas syndicate, proved himself a great friend to casino gambling in Louisiana. Today, he and his son are serving time in a federal penitentiary, along with our last three state insurance commissioners. No matter. From Shreveport on the northwestern tip of the state to Lake Charles in the south, the casinos and racetracks soak up all the Texas trade they can get their hands on. New Orleans takes the trade from everywhere, including old people the casinos bus into town from retirement homes in Mississippi. The Indians on the rez are happier than pigs rolling in slop. In fact, everyone is delighted with the new era of gaming in Louisiana, except, of course, the uneducated and the compulsive who lose their life’s savings and the owners of bars and restaurants who have to shut down their businesses because they can’t compete with the giveaway prices at the casinos.

I went into Helen’s office and told her about my encounter with Whitey Bruxal and his friend Lefty Raguza at Victor’s Cafeteria.

“Bruxal doesn’t like the way we’re handling things?” she said.

“He thinks his son and Tony Lujan are getting dumped on. I told him the black kids might go down on the firearms charge.”

“The lab says there are a half-dozen different prints on the nine-millimeter we found in the trash can. So far nobody from McDonald’s has been willing to identify which black kid was holding it. I don’t think the D.A. is going to carry the ball very far on this one.”

“It looks like Bruxal is mixed up with some floating casinos and a couple of tracks here. I think a lot of big players from Florida have found a new home in Louisiana. Bruxal’s hunting on the game reserve.”

She nodded slowly, as though respectfully absorbing my words. But I knew I was bringing problems and complexities into her day that she didn’t need. She had heard it all before, and nothing I said would ever change the historical problems of our state. I only wish I had listened more often to my own counsel.

“Trish Klein is here to take Bruxal down, Helen. She was switching out dice at the new casino,” I continued.

“Good. We’ll let Calamity Jane take care of it.”

“Who?”

“That FBI field agent, Betsy Mossbacher. She was just in here.” Helen glanced at her watch. “She’s due back here in six minutes. Talk with her, then get her out the door.”

“Something happen?”

“You might say that,” she replied.

EXACTLY SIX MINUTES LATER Betsy Mossbacher was at my office door. She wore Levi’s and boots and a black western shirt with pearl-colored snap buttons. Her face had the taut intensity of someone who has just been slapped.

“Would you like to sit down?” I asked.

“This won’t take long-”

I cut her off. “If something is going on between you and my boss, I don’t want to get caught in the middle of it,” I said.

“She called the FBI ‘Fart, Barf, and Itch.’”

“That’s an old NOPD heirloom.”

“I don’t care what it is. I told her we expect a degree of professionalism from her and her department, unless I walked into the tongue-and-groove club by mistake.”

“You said that to Helen Soileau?”

She widened her eyes and took a deep breath. “You don’t seem to get what this investigation is about. This Klein woman is trouble-for us and herself. But she seems to have special status with you because of your relationship with her dead father.”

“We already covered that, Agent Mossbacher.”

“Your friend Clete Purcel helped her elude a surveillance in a casino where she was switching out the dice. But you didn’t relay that information to us.”

“I don’t think that’s my job.”

I could see the heat intensify in her face. “Listen, we have a couple of large issues on the burner-Whitey Bruxal and the robbery of a savings and loan. I don’t know how much you know of Bruxal, but he’s an extremely intelligent man and not to be underestimated. You know who Meyer Lansky was?”

“The financial brains of the Mob.”

“Bruxal used to hang in a Miami coffee shop called Wolfie’s. Lansky would challenge anyone in the place to stump him with a mathematical problem. The only person who ever did it was Whitey Bruxal. Lansky was so impressed, he used to take Bruxal fishing with him on a charter. God, I need a drink of water. Why do I have days like this?”