James Burke: Pegasus Descending

BUT RHETORIC IS rhetoric and a poor substitute for putting away people who belong in jail. That afternoon, as I drove home, I realized that all my investigative efforts since the spring would result in few if any meaningful convictions. Without a confession, I doubted if Cesaire Darbonne would ever do time for the murder of Tony Lujan. The same with Slim Bruxal. I believed he had killed Crustacean Man with a baseball bat, but the case had already grown cold and there was no forensic connection between Slim and the hapless man who had been struck by the Lujan family’s Buick. Worse, Whitey Bruxal and Lefty Raguza would never be punished for the executionlike slaying of my friend Dallas Klein, a murder I had been too drunk to prevent.

I helped Molly prepare supper, then I fed Snuggs and Tripod on the back steps. It was shady and cool under the trees, and the wind blowing from the bayou stiffened their fur while they ate. I pulled Snuggs’s tail playfully and bounced him gingerly on his back paws. “How you doin’, soldier?” I said.

He glanced back at me, his head notched with pink scars, then returned to his food.

“How about you, Tripod? You doin’ okay, old-timer?” I said.

Tripod smacked his chops and had no comment.

I wished life consisted of just taking care of animals, the earth, and one’s family and friends. In fact, that’s what it should be. But it’s not, and the explanation for that fact is not one I have ever been able to provide.

“Ready to eat?” Molly said through the screen window.

“Sure,” I said, and went back inside.

It was 6:10 p.m. and Molly was in the bathroom when the phone on the kitchen counter rang. Outside, the light in the trees was the color of honey, the tidal current in the bayou flowing inland, the surface networked with serpentine lines of dead leaves.

“That you, Mr. Robicheaux?” the voice said.

“Cesaire?” I said.

“This connection ain’t good. I’m at a pay phone not far from Whiskey Bay. I seen your friend wit’ a blond woman. He was driving a pink Cadillac convertible wit’ a white top.”

“Right, that’s Clete Purcel. You saw him?”

“Yes, suh. But that ain’t why I called. A couple of gangsters followed him and the woman out of a parking lot in front of a bar. One of them was the father of Tony Lujan’s friend.”

“Whitey Bruxal?”

“I ain’t sure of his name. I just know his face. He called the man wit’ him ‘Lefty.’ This guy Lefty’s face looked like a busted-up flowerpot. I t’ought I ought to tell you about your friend.”

“Why are you at Whiskey Bay, Mr. Darbonne?”

“I got a camp here. Is your friend gonna be okay?”

AFTER I CLOSED the bedroom door, I removed my cut-down twelve-gauge pump from the closet, sat on the side of the bed, and pushed five shells loaded with double-aught buckshot into the magazine. I strung my handcuffs through the back of my belt, clipped on my holster and 1911-model United States Army.45, Velcro-strapped my.25 automatic on my ankle, and picked up the receiver from the telephone on the dresser. I paused for a moment, thinking of Clete and the alternatives his situation offered, then replaced the receiver in the cradle without punching in a number. I heard the doorknob twist behind me.

“What are you doing?” Molly asked.

“That was Cesaire Darbonne. I think Whitey Bruxal and Lefty Raguza have followed Clete and Trish Klein to a camp in the Basin.”

“Call the department.”

“Clete’s wanted by NOPD. He’ll be locked up.”

“That’s Clete’s problem.”

“It may be a false alarm,” I said, starting toward the door.

“You simply accept the word of Cesaire Darbonne? A man you believe mutilated the body of a college student with a shotgun?”

“I’ve got my cell. I’ll call you.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Not on this one.”

“Don’t do this, Dave.”

“If you don’t hear from me in two hours, call nine-one-one.”

Perhaps my attitude was willful and even cruel, but I had a terrible sense that maybe this time Clete’s luck had finally run out. That thought caused a sensation in my throat that was like swallowing glass.

IT TOOK ME almost an hour to reach the levee area where Cesaire had called from. He was waiting in his truck in front of a bar that had been knocked together from unpainted plywood and covered with a tin roof that had been peeled off a barn. On the other side of the levee was a wide bay flanged by flooded woods. To the north I could see car lights crossing the elevated highway that traversed the massive network of bayous, rivers, oxbows, lakes, and cypress swamps that comprised the Atchafalaya Basin. The sky was piled with clouds that had turned purple and gold in the sun, the miles of flooded trees bending steadily in the wind. As I got out of my truck, a smell like burning garbage struck my face.

“Can you show me where they went?” I asked.

“Down the levee and back in them woods,” he said, pointing. “There’s high ground back in them gum trees and palmettos. It don’t never go underwater unless it storms real bad.”

I didn’t shake hands with him, which is considered a personal affront in South Louisiana. But as Molly had suggested, it would have been foolish to dismiss the darker side of this man’s nature. When people seek vengeance, they dig up every biblical platitude imaginable to rationalize their behavior, but their motivations are invariably selfish. More important, they have no regard for the damage and pain they often cause the innocent.

“Why you doing this, Mr. Darbonne?”

“You went my bond. You treated me decent. You cared about my li’l girl.”

“I did those things because I thought you had been unjustly accused. You didn’t kill Bello Lujan, did you?”

“No, suh.”

“But you murdered his son.”

His turquoise eyes were empty, unblinking, his face devoid of any emotion I could detect. “I ain’t never tole you ot’erwise,” he said.

“Then you planted the weapon in Monarch’s car and set fire to it,” I said.

“He ain’t selling dope no more.”

“I wish you had trusted me, Mr. Darbonne.”

“To do what? Still ain’t nobody in jail for what they done to my li’l girl.”

How do you explain to a man whose daughter has killed herself that there is no “they,” that the pitiful, guilt-driven man who raped her was a victim himself, that the fraternity boys who gangbanged her couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag, that Slim Bruxal, who had the feral instincts of a vicious street punk, had acted with a degree of conscience and tried to return her safely home? How do you deal with the moral authority of ignorance?

“You’re not setting me up, are you, partner?” I said.

“What you talking about, you?”

“Get in,” I said.

We drove down the levee, the wind buffeting the truck. Out in the swamp I could see black smoke rising out of the trees from trash or stump fires, then flattening above the canopy.

“Turn down the grade,” Cesaire said, pointing at a steep set of vehicle tracks that led down the side of the levee into stands of gum and persimmon trees.

As we dipped down the smooth green incline of the levee, I could see the sunset through the canopy, the leaves of the cypress ruffling in silhouette. But the poetic moment was lost as soon as we entered the shade. Inside the heated enclosure of the woods, an ugly stench hung in the air, one that called to mind a dead bird caught in a flaming chimney.

I drove at least two hundred yards on top of dried-out humus and layers of leaves that had turned gray with damp rot. The trees were strung with air vines, the ground dotted with palmettos. In the distance I could see ponds of water, like greasy oil slicks among the tree trunks, and a spacious cabin elevated on cinder blocks, wind chimes and birdhouses hanging from the eaves of the peaked tin roof.