James Burke - Pegasus Descending

The killer had been someone for whom cruelty and sexual pleasure were interchangeable, a man who I suspected not only killed for enjoyment but who experienced the moment as a form of benediction bestowed upon him by his own id.

Did this describe Lefty Raguza?

And Clete had not only baited Whitey Bruxal and gotten into it with Raguza, he was in the sack with Trish Klein, an amateur grifter who thought she could use a collection of self-deluded blue-collar kids to bring down her father’s killer.

In the meantime, Lonnie Marceaux was playing both ends against the middle and using both the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department to further his own political ambitions.

I believed Whitey Bruxal and Lefty Raguza had come to Louisiana with the same sense of excitement and expectation generated in hogs when they get a downwind sniff of a trough brimming with swill. We were amateurs and they knew it. They bought politicians and media people for chump change, and fleeced Social Security recipients and twenty-five-dollar-an-hour offshore oil drillers alike, while convincing them that casinos increased their quality of life.

Lonnie Marceaux thought he was going to take Bruxal off at the neck. Inside Lonnie’s worldview, Helen Soileau and I were as important as his fingernail parings. Yesterday I had walked out on a meeting with him, as though somehow that changed the fact he was skewing an investigation to serve his own ends. Maybe it was time to set the record straight in a more definitive fashion. I picked up my phone and called his office. “I’d like to drop by for a minute,” I said.

“What for?” he asked.

“To apologize.”

“People go off half-cocked sometimes. Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“I appreciate your attitude. But I’d like to apologize in person.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Yeah, it is. I’ll be right over.”

When I entered his office he was standing by his desk, putting files in a briefcase. His long-sleeved white shirt had glittering strips in it, like tin ribbons, and it hung on his frame without a fold or crease in it, as though the sense of freshness and efficiency he brought to the job could not be diminished by the heat of the day. He glanced up from his briefcase and grinned. “You don’t have a splinter in your butt about something, do you?” he asked.

“I haven’t been adequately forthcoming with you, Lonnie. I don’t think Monarch Little is our killer. If anybody had motivation to kill the Lujan kid, it was Slim Bruxal or his old man.”

“What motivation is that?”

“Tony Lujan was the weak sister in the death of Crustacean Man. He was going to roll over on Slim.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“I know that Monarch Little is too convenient a target for your office.”

“Is he, now?”

“He’s a gangbanger and dope dealer, and large crowds aren’t going to be saying rosaries for him if he rides the needle. There won’t be a civil rights issue about him, either. Most black civic leaders wouldn’t take the time to piss on his grave.”

“You’re telling me, to my face, I’m framing an innocent man?”

“If you pop Monarch, you win three ways. You clear the homicide, you take a dealer off the street permanently, and you’ve still got Slim Bruxal on an assault beef. You can freeze out the Feds and use Slim to squeeze his old man and by extension Colin Alridge.”

“You know, if it weren’t for your age and the fact we’re both civilized men, I think I’d break your nose.”

“Your magnanimity is humbling, Lonnie, but anytime you’d like to walk into the restroom and bolt the door, I’d be glad to accommodate you.”

“I want you off the case.”

“Talk to Helen.”

“That’s perfect.”

“Run that by me again?”

“If it wasn’t for Helen Soileau, you couldn’t get a job picking up litter in City Park. She’s covered your sorry ass for so long, people think she’s either stopped being a queer or you’re her portable muff diver. But I’m not going to let either her or you-”

That’s as far as he got. I hit him so hard the blow peppered blood across the window glass. He went straight down on his buttocks like a man whose legs had caved into broken ceramic.

THAT DAY I HAD PLANNED to meet Molly at home for lunch. She worked at a Catholic foundation down the bayou that built homes for poor people, and twice a week she prepared an extraordinary lunch before she left for work, then returned home before noon and laid it on the kitchen table so it would be ready when I walked through the door.

Today she had heated up a pot of white rice and a fricassee chicken that had already cooked down into a soft stew of onions, pimientos, floating pieces of meat, chopped-up peppers, and brown gravy. She had set flowery lace mats on the table, and heaped a tight ball of steaming rice in each of our gumbo bowls, and placed jelly glasses and a pitcher of iced tea filled with lemon slices and sprigs of mint in the center. It was a simple meal, but one that few men can come home to at noontime on a workday.

I sat down with her, and she said grace for both of us, one hand touching mine. Snuggs was stretched out on a throw rug in front of a floor fan, his short fur stiffening in the breeze. Through the back window I could see a spray of gold and red four-o’clocks opening in the shade of a live oak and blue jays flying in and out of the sunlight. I filled a spoon with rice and stewed chicken and put it in my mouth.

“What happened to your finger?” Molly asked.

“You mean that little cut?” I replied, removing my hand from the table and picking up the napkin in my lap.

“I don’t call that a little cut. It looks like somebody bit you.”

I laughed and tried to shine her on.

“Dave?”

“Huh?”

“Answer my question.”

“I had a little run-in with Lonnie Marceaux.”

“The district attorney? Clarify run-in.”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” I replied, ignoring the second part of her statement, bending over the bowl, putting another spoonful in my mouth, my eyes flat now.

“You punched the Iberia Parish district attorney?”

“It was more or less a one-shot affair. Hey, Snuggs, you want a piece of chicken?”

Molly was staring across the table now, her mouth open. “You’re playing a joke, aren’t you?”

“He called Helen a queer. He accused me of-” I didn’t continue.

“What? Say it.”

I told her. Then I added, “So I dropped him. I wish I’d kicked his teeth in.”

“I don’t care what he said. You can’t attack people with your fists whenever someone offends you.”

“ Louisiana law allows what it calls provocation. It goes back to the dueling code. Lonnie is a fraternity pissant and should have had his head shoved in a commode a long time ago.”

“What does his fraternity history have to do with anything?”

“It-”

But she wasn’t interested in my response. She rested her forehead on her fingers, her other hand clenched on her napkin, her eyes wet. I felt miserable. “Don’t be like that, Molly,” I said.

“Your enemies know your weakness. You take the bait every time.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“Oh, Dave,” she said, and went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear the water running, then I heard the faucet squeak and the pipe shut down. But she didn’t come out.

“Molly?” I said through the door.

She didn’t answer. Behind me, I heard Snuggs go out the swinging flap I had cut for him in the kitchen door. I drove back to the office in the heat, my lunch unfinished, the sky bitten with dust, my face burning with shame.