James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'I saw you working out with Zoot,' he said.

'He's a good kid. I hope he does all right here, Tommy.'

'I'm a bad influence?'

'He shouldn't be going up against pros.'

'He got in the ring with that white kid, the one with the dragon tattooed on his belly?'

'Yes.'

'No kidding? That's not bad for a kid whose mother was probably knocked up by a marshmallow.'

'You know how to say it, Tommy.'

'Step into my office,' he answered, smiling. 'I want to talk.'

'I'm on my way out of town.'

'I'll buy you a beer. You want a pastrami sandwich? I got your pastrami sandwich. Forget about the other night. I had too much to drink. Come on, don't be a hard-ass.'

'What's on your mind?'

'On my mind? Somebody hurts your wife, and the next thing I know you're beating up people in my fucking driveway. Hey, it's all right. The Caluccis are scum. I just want to talk.'

I went inside his glassed-in office and sat down in front of his desk. The walls were covered with old prizefight posters and newspaper clippings about fighters that Lonighan had owned or managed. Above a shelf filled with boxing trophies was an autographed photograph of President Reagan, with two crossed American flags tucked behind the frame.

'How did you know about my wife, Tommy?' I said.

'Because Clete Purcel's been all over town, threatening to jam a chain saw up the butt of anybody with information who doesn't pass it on.' He took a long-necked bottle of beer out of a cooler by his feet, wiped off the ice, set the cap on the edge of his desk, and popped it off with the heel of his hand. He offered it to me.

'No, thanks.'

He poured it into a schooner, took a deep drink, and wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his wrist.

'Let me cut to it, Tommy,' I said. 'You're right, a man came to our house and harmed my wife. It was right after you tried to discourage me from working for Hippo Bimstine.'

'I got a hard time believing this, Dave. You think that's how I operate, I got to send degenerates around to hurt the wives of people I respect?'

'You tell me.' I looked directly into his eyes. The cast in them reminded me of light trapped inside blue water. They remained locked on mine, as though wheels were turning over in his brain. Then he looked out the window with a self-amused expression on his face and picked up a sandwich from a paper plate in front of him.

'Is there a private joke you want to share with me, Tommy?'

'Dave, you insulted me at your table, in front of people, then you beat the shit out of a guy with a shovel in my driveway. Then you come to my place of business and tell me I'm sending perverts over to New Iberia to bother your family. What did I do to deserve this? I offered you a fucking business situation. You don't see the humor in that?'

'I remember a line a journalist for The Picayune used about you once, Tommy. I never forgot it.'

'Yeah?'

'You're a mean man in a knife fight.'

'Oh yeah, I always liked that one.' He leaned forward on his elbows. His curly white hair hung across his forehead. 'I want that fucking sub. Anything the mockie's paying you, I'll double.'

'See you around, Tommy.'

'I don't get you. You act like I got jock odor or something. But it doesn't bother you to do business with a fanatic who gets people fired from their jobs.'

'I don't follow you.'

'Your buddy, bubble butt… Bimstine , Dave. He belongs to the Jewish Defense Organization. They don't like somebody, they rat-fuck him where he works.'

'I wouldn't know. I don't like the way you talk about him, though.'

'Excuse me?'

'You take cheap shots, Tommy.'

'Like maybe I'm un-American, an anti-Semite or something?'

'Read it like you want.'

'I was sixteen years old at Heartbreak Ridge. I love this country. You saying I don't-' He stopped and smiled. 'You and me might have to forget we're mature people.'

'You don't know anybody named Will Buchalter?'

'This the guy hurt your wife?'

I didn't answer and stared straight into his face. He set his sandwich on his plate, removed a wisp of lettuce from his lip, then took a sip of beer from his schooner and brought his eyes back to mine.

'What can I say? I'm fighting with cancer of the prostate,' he said. 'You want to know what's on my mind? Dying. You know what else is on my mind? Dying broke. I don't know any guy named Buchalter.'

'I'm sorry to hear about your health problem, Tommy.'

'Save it. That sweaty pile of gorilla shit you call a friend is trying to break me. We get casino gambling in New Orleans, he's gonna own it all. I got to take a piss. Which I do with my eyes closed because half the time there's blood in the bowl. You want a beer, they're in the cooler.'

He opened a small closet that had a toilet inside and, without closing the door, began urinating loudly into the water while he flexed his knees and passed gas like it was a visceral art form.

How do you read a man like Tommy Lonighan?

Heartbreak Ridge, Irish bigotry, right-wing patriotism, morbidity that he used like a weapon, speech and mood patterns that had the volatility of tinfoil baking in a microwave.

The day a person like Lonighan makes sense to you is probably the day you should seriously reexamine your relationship to the rest of the human gene pool.

And on that note I waved good-bye and left before he had finished shaking himself and thumbing his gray sweat trunks back over his genitalia.

I stopped by Clete's office on St. Ann to see if he had found out anything about the man who called himself Will Buchalter.

'If the guy's local, he's low-profile,' Clete said. 'Like below street level. I think I talked to every dirtbag and right-wing crazoid in town. Have you ever been to any of these survivalist shops? I think we ought to round up some of their clientele while there's still time.'

He started to take a cigarette out of a pack on his desk; instead, he put a mint on his tongue and smiled at me with his eyes.

'How about hookers?' I said.,

'The ones I know say he doesn't sound like any of their Johns. I don't think he's from around here, Streak. A guy like this earns people's attention.'

'Thanks for trying, Clete.'

'Hang on. You've got two messages,' he said, taking his feet off his desk and looking at two memo slips by his telephone. 'That black sergeant, Ben Motley, you remember him, he always had his fly unzipped when he was in Vice, he wants you to call him about some dude who electrocuted himself in custody last night-'

'What?'

'Hang on, mon. I got a similar message from this character Reverend Oswald Flat. Isn't that the guy who was out at your bait shop? He's got a voice like somebody twanging on a bobby pin.'

'That's the guy.'

'Well, he called Bootsie and she told him to call here. NOPD picked up some wild man in the Garden District, can you dig this, a forty-year-old guy with tattoos on his head, wearing black leather in August. The autopsy showed he'd been shooting up with speed and paint thinner. How about that for a new combo?'

'What's the connection?'

'He had a silenced.22 Ruger automatic on him and Hippo Bimstine's address in his pocket. We'd better go talk to Motley and this guy with a mouthful of collard greens.'

'We?'

'Let's be serious a minute, Dave. I think you're fucking with some very bad guys. I don't know who they are, why they're interested in this submarine, or what the connections are between this citizens committee and dope dealers in the projects having their hearts cut out. But I'll bet my ass politics doesn't have diddle-shit to do with it.'

'I think this time it might.'

'Anyway, I'm backing your action, Jackson, whether you like it or not.' He leaned back in his swivel chair, grinned, and drummed on his stomach with his knuckles like a zoo creature at play.