James Burke: Pegasus Descending

“In your dreams,” she said.

BUT THE HUMOROUS MOMENT with Betsy Mossbacher soon gave way to the realities of my own departmental situation and the political ambitions of Lonnie Marceaux. Just before quitting time, he called Helen’s office and said he wanted to see both of us at 8 a.m. the next day. He refused to discuss the content of the meeting so we would be kept wondering or perhaps, even better, apprehensive and anxiety-ridden until the next morning. When Helen pressed him, he replied, “Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll all have a better perspective tomorrow.”

He was in fine spirits when we showed up, tilting back in his chair, his fingers crisscrossed in a pyramid, his carefully clipped hair gleaming with brilliantine. “How is everyone this morning?” He beamed.

“What’s up, Lonnie?” Helen said.

“It’s time to move forward, much more aggressively than we have been,” he said as soon as we were seated.

“Move forward with what?” Helen said.

“An arrest in the homicide of Bello Lujan,” he said.

“Arrest whom?” I said.

He rested his chin on the backs of his fingers, staring good-naturedly out the window. “Dave,” he said patiently.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“We’ve got the murder weapon with fingerprints all over it. We’ve got the motive. We’ve got a suspect with no alibi. But I can tell you also what we haven’t got,” he said.

“I’ll bite,” I said.

I could see a tic inside his feigned air of tolerance and goodwill. “What we don’t have is somebody under arrest,” he said. He rocked his chair back and forth, the spring going scrinch, scrinch, scrinch. “Why don’t we have somebody under arrest? I think you’re a member of that wandering group of penitents, the incurably liberal-hearted, Dave. Because you believe Cesaire Darbonne is a simple man of the earth, one who has already suffered a terrible tragedy, it would be a collective sin of enormous magnitude if we arrested him for killing the man who raped his daughter. Maybe I’m unfair to you, but I believe you’re a sucker for any tale that involves social victimhood.”

“I don’t believe Cesaire knew Bello raped his daughter.”

“You don’t believe? The last time I checked, the grand jury decides those kinds of things.”

“How would Bello have known?” I said.

“Somebody told him?” he replied.

“We found a neck chain and crucifix and G.I. can opener near the crime scene that belongs to one of Whitey Bruxal’s gumballs, a guy from Jamaica by the name of Juan Bolachi,” I said.

“Yeah, I know all about that and it doesn’t mean dick,” Lonnie said before I could continue.

“We’ve got scrapings from under Bello ’s fingernails,” I said. “It’s just a matter of-”

“A matter of getting this guy Bolachi in custody is what you’re trying to say, right? Unfortunately, he’s not in custody and all you’ve got is speculation,” Lonnie said. “Everyone has skin tissue under their nails. It doesn’t mean the skin tissue came from a killer, for God’s sakes.”

My hands were beginning to tremble with anger. I pressed them flat against my knees, below the level of his desktop, so Lonnie couldn’t see them. “Cesaire Darbonne is an innocent man,” I said, all of my arguments spent, my grandiose declaration itself an admission of defeat.

Lonnie touched at a speck of saliva on the corner of his lip and looked at it. “The warrant will be ready at one p.m. today,” he said. “Helen, I want Dave to serve it. It’s his case. He should see it through to its conclusion.”

He pulled on an earlobe and studied the far wall.

Then I realized Lonnie had found his means for revenge. He didn’t care whether Cesaire Darbonne was guilty or not. The case was prosecutable and for Lonnie that was all that mattered. His butt was covered and I had to place under arrest a man whose personal tragedy weighed heavily upon me. I didn’t like Lonnie, but I thought he had a bottom beyond which he didn’t go. His ambition, his manipulation of uneducated people, his pandering to fear and the lowest common denominator in the electorate were all sickening characteristics in themselves but not without precedent in either national or state politics. Now I realized what bothered me most about Lonnie. He didn’t care about either the place or the people whom he professed to love and was capable of mocking them while he simultaneously did them injury.

“One day this is going to be over, partner, and we’ll all have different roles,” I said, getting up from my chair.

“Want to interpret that for me?” he said, slouched back in his chair, still smiling.

“No, I don’t,” I replied.

“I didn’t think so,” he said.

“Dave, would you wait for me out in the hallway?” Helen said.

I walked down to the watercooler and had a drink. Through the window I could see the Sunset Limited running down the tracks, hours off schedule, passengers eating breakfast in the dining car. At one time we literally set our watches by the Sunset Limited. It ran every day, from Los Angeles to Miami and back again, and somehow assured us that we were part of something much larger than ourselves-a country of southwestern vistas and cities glimmering at sunset on the edge of vast oceans, where the waves broke against the skin like a secular baptism. It was the stuff of mythos, but it was real because we believed it was real.

The last car on the train clicked down the tracks and disappeared beyond a row of shacks.

The door to Lonnie’s office was half open and I saw him rise to his feet, placing a pen and his glasses in his shirt pocket, indicating he had to be somewhere else and that it was obviously time for Helen to go. The hush inside the office was of a kind that comes before a clap of thunder or a violent act you never anticipate.

“We’re professional people, Helen. We need to drop this and concentrate on the job and not the personal problems of one individual,” Lonnie said.

“Not just yet,” she replied. “I want you to have a clear understanding about my position on a couple of matters. Number one, I couldn’t care less about your opinion of me. I think you’re a fraud and a bully, and like most bullies, you’re probably a coward. Number two, you couldn’t shine Dave Robicheaux’s shoes. If you ever try to demean him again, or use the power of your office to hurt him in any fashion, I’m going to personally rip your ass out of its socket and stuff it down your throat.”

You could have worse friends than Helen Soileau.

I PLACED CESAIRE under arrest after lunch. I cuffed his wrists in front of him rather than behind him and allowed him to drape a windbreaker over his hands before I put him in the back of the cruiser. But there was no disguising his level of humiliation and shame. If I ever saw a broken man, it was Cesaire Darbonne.

After he was booked for capital murder, I walked with him to a holding cell and asked the guard to lock me inside with him and to give me a few minutes.

“This is a part of the job I don’t like, Mr. Darbonne,” I said. “I don’t believe you killed Bello Lujan. But even if you did, I and others like me would understand why you did it, even if we considered it wrong.”

“It ain’t your fault, no.”

“Look me in the face, sir.”

He stared at me from the iron bench on which he was seated, perhaps unsure whether my request had contained a veiled insult.

“Tell me again you didn’t know Bello Lujan assaulted your daughter,” I said.

“A man who got to repeat himself don’t respect his own word,” he said.

He looked at the tops of his shoes.

“I suspect your bail could be as high as a quarter million dollars. Do you have any kind of collateral you can offer the court?” I said.