James Burke - Pegasus Descending

He bent over to pick up the weights again. I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt like concrete under his shirt. “Forget the Mr. Universe routine for a minute. You want to take this kid down, I’ll help you. In the meantime, you watch your back.”

“Since when y’all started going out of your way to jam up rich white boys?”

“Slim Bruxal is a special case.”

“Yeah, he special, all right. That’s why the FBI been trying to plug my dick into a wall socket. They after his old man, ain’t they?”

“Maybe. What’ve they got on you?”

“Some agents come by my house. They say they might be looking at me for t’ree-strikes-and-you-out.”

“How many adult convictions do you have?”

“Two. But right now I’m a li’l warm on a deal wasn’t my fault. My cousin hid his works at my house so his P.O. wouldn’t catch him wit’ them. I didn’t know they was there. A DEA narc busted my cousin and my cousin give me up. His syringe and spoon and a half ounce of tar was under my lavatory. So they say I either flip or I go down for the whole ride. That’s life wit’out no parole, Mr. Dee.”

He hefted up the weight bar and curled it toward his sternum, releasing it slowly so that the tension built unmercifully in his forearms, his face impassive to the pain burning in his tendons.

He put on a good show, but he was caught and he knew it. The Feds would probably squeeze him until blood was coming out of his fingernails. I wondered how stand-up Monarch really was. Enough to do mainline time? If the FBI flipped him, they wouldn’t use him just on the Bruxal case, either. He would become a permanent rat, at the beck and call of the Bureau whenever they wanted him.

Monarch had made his own choices and I couldn’t feel sorry for him. He wasn’t an addict; he was a dealer. He robbed his customers of their souls and profited off the misery of his own people. But he was not without certain qualities, and he didn’t ask for the kind of world he had been born into.

He did ten curls and dropped the weights in the dirt. I tapped his upper arm with my fist. “You take steroids?” I asked.

“You ever see steroid freaks take a shower at the health club?”

“Come to think of it, no,” I replied.

“That’s ’cause they don’t take showers at the health club. That’s ’cause their package usually looks like smoked oysters.”

“Nine months to a year ago, somebody did a hit-and-run on a guy out in the parish. I wondered if you heard of anyone needing body or fender work about that time, somebody who didn’t want to go to a regular shop?”

“I could ax around. That gonna buy me some juice wit’ the t’ree-strikes-and-you-out sit’ation?”

“Probably not.”

“Then don’t hold your breat’.”

I looked at him for a long time. “You’re an intelligent man. You could be anything you want to be,” I said.

“So?”

“Why don’t you wise up and stop taking it on your knees from white people?” I said.

“Say that again?”

“The people you work for live in mansions in Miami and the Islands. While you pimp and deal product on street corners for chump change, they’re depositing millions in offshore accounts. You take the weight and stack the time for white guys who wouldn’t wipe their ass with you.”

“Ain’t nobody talks to me like that. Nobody, Mr. Dee.”

“Somebody better, because you’re about to become a professional snitch or a bar of shower soap in Marion Pen. We’re talking about jailing with the Aryan Brotherhood, Monarch. In Marion, they eat gangbangers for bedtime snacks.”

Even in the deep shade of the oak tree, I thought I saw his pulse beating in his throat.

THAT NIGHT I DREAMED of horses galloping in a large dusty pen, without sound, their muscles rippling like oily rope. In the distance were meadows and softly rounded green hills and a fast-running stream that was bordered by cottonwood trees. In the herd were buck-skins, palominos, piebalds, Appaloosas, Arabian creams, duns, bays, sorrels, and strawberry roans, their mouths strung with saliva, their collective breath like the pounding of Indian war drums. The sky was forked with lightning, the air pungent with the promise of rain. But there was no water inside the pen, only heat and clouds of dust and powdered manure. Then a red mare lifted out of the herd on extended wings, her rear hooves kicking open the pen gate as she rose into the sky. Suddenly, in the dream, I heard the sound of the other horses thundering toward the stream and the shade of the cottonwoods.

In the morning I could not get the dream out of my head. It was Saturday, and Molly, Clete, and I had planned to go fishing at Henderson Swamp that afternoon. But I told Molly I had to run an errand first, and I went to the office and pulled out my file on Yvonne Darbonne. One of the crime scene photos had been taken at an angle to her body, so even though she lay on her side in the position of a question mark, the lens was pointed directly at her face and chest.

A red winged horse was emblazoned on the front of her T-shirt, and through a magnifying glass I could make out the name of a racetrack inside the folds of the fabric under her breasts. It was the name of the new track and casino north of Lafayette where Trish Klein had been switching out dice at the craps table.

I looked at my watch. It wasn’t quite noon. Clete was supposed to meet Molly and me at the house at two. There was still time for a visit to the home of Bello Lujan and his son, Tony.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER I was standing on the front porch of the Lujan house, just outside Loreauville, the sun winking at me through a mimosa tree, the wind puffing a fringed pale green canopy by the bayou’s edge, where a buffet table was covered with half-eaten food and empty Cold Duck bottles. Tony answered the door-barefoot, shirtless, a towel hung around his neck, his hair still wet from a shower. Behind him, I saw a college-age girl thumbing through a magazine on a couch. She looked at me uncertainly, then picked up her drink glass and went into the kitchen. Tony still had not spoken.

“You’re not going to ask me in?” I said.

“Yes, sir, sure,” he said.

“Y’all have a party last night?” I said, stepping inside. Mounted on the staircase wall was a mechanical apparatus that would allow a seated infirm person to ride up and down the stairs.

“My parents did. They hosted my fraternity and our little sisters,” he replied.

“Your little sisters?”

“It’s a sorority we call our little sisters.”

“Where are your parents?”

“My father went to New Orleans for the rest of the weekend. My mother is upstairs. You want to talk to her?”

“No, my question is to you, Tony. Say, who’s your friend back there in the kitchen?”

“A girl I go to UL with.”

“Was she a friend of Yvonne Darbonne, too?”

A flush of color spread across his cheeks. But I had come to believe that Tony Lujan was less shy and awkward than he was fearful and ridden with guilt.

“I’m not sure what you’re saying,” he said.

I didn’t pursue it. “Actually, I came out here because of a photo taken of Yvonne before she was put into a body bag. She was wearing a T-shirt with a winged horse on it. Know the one I mean?”

“I gave it to her,” he replied. “It’s a promo shirt from the new casino and track. My dad’s an investor in it. He’s partners with Mr. Bruxal. That’s how I got to know Slim. My dad was going to give Yvonne a job in the restaurant.”

“That’s funny. Your father told me he didn’t know her.”

His face drained. “I thought maybe you were here about those black guys. My dad thinks they might try to file a civil suit and milk us for whatever they can get. That’s why I thought you wanted to talk to my parents.”