James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'He was what?'

'Standing in our closet, watching us while we slept.'

'Jesus Christ, Dave.'

'He cut the back screen, prized out the deadbolt, walked around in the house, and I never heard him.'

Clete sat back in his chair.

'This guy's a new combo, mon,' he said. 'I thought if he ever came back, it'd be to cool you out.'

'You think the real problem is y'all don't have no idea of what you're dealing with?' Oswald Flat said.

We both looked at him. His clip-on bow tie was askew on his denim shirt. His pale eyes looked as big as an owl's behind his glasses.

'You cain't find that fellow 'cause maybe he ain't human,' he said. 'Maybe y'all been dealing with a demon. You ever consider that?'

'I can't say that I have,' I said.

'It's the end of the millennium,' he said.

'Yes?' I said.

'Son, I don't want to be unkind to you. But when the brains was passed out, did you grab a handful of pig flop by mistake?'

He paused to let his statement sink in.

'The prophesy is in Nostradamus. The Beast and his followers are going to be loosed on the earth,' he said. 'Call me a fool. But you're a policeman, and the best you got ain't worth horse pucky on a rock, is hit?'

I looked back at him silently. His short, dun-colored hair was combed neatly and parted almost in the center of his scalp. His washed-out eyes never blinked and seemed wide with a knowledge that was lost on others.

The waiter set plates of deep-fried pork chops, greens, and dirty rice in front of him and Clete.

'You're not going to eat?' Oswald Flat said.

'No, thanks.'

'I offended you?'

'Not at all,' I said.

Clete lowered his fork onto his plate and looked toward the rear of the restaurant again.

'It looks like the Vitalis twins are about to finish their lunch. I don't know if they should slide out of here that easily,' he said.

'Let it go,' I said.

'Trust me.'

'I mean it, Clete. Baxter's got you in his bombsights. Don't play his game.'

'You worry too much, big mon. It's time to check out the jukebox and the ole hippy-dippy from Mississippi, yes indeed, Mr. Jimmy Reed. I'll be right back.'

Clete strolled to the rear of the restaurant, past the Caluccis' table, his eyes never registering their presence. He dropped a quarter into the jukebox and punched off 'Big Boss Man,' then began snapping his fingers and slapping his right palm on top of his left fist while he scanned the other titles. The back of his neck looked as thick as a fire hydrant.

The preacher's gaze moved back and forth from Clete to the Caluccis. His false teeth were stiff and white in his mouth.

'He'll be all right, Reverend. Clete just likes to let people know he's in the neighborhood,' I said.

But Oswald Flat didn't answer. There were pools of color in his cheeks, nests of wrinkles at the edges of his eyes.

'You play guitar?' I said.

'I played with Reno and Smiley, I played with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys. Hit don't get no better than that,' he said. But his eyes were riveted on the Caluccis when he spoke.

Clete sat back down, his green eyes dancing with light, while Jimmy Reed sang in the background.

The Caluccis were watching him now. Clete made a frame of his hands, with his thumbs joined together, tilting the frame back and forth, sighting through it at Max and Bobo, the way a movie director might if he were envisioning a dramatic scene. Then he began pointing his finger at them, grinning, tapping it in time to 'Big Boss Man's' driving rhythm.

'Knock it off, Clete,' I said.

'They need to know they've been ratted out, mon. You never let a shit bag forget he's a shit bag. You got to keep them buttoned down under the sewer grates, big mon.'

'You're both good fellows, but one is as wrongheaded as the other,' Oswald Flat said.

'Excuse me?' Clete said.

'You don't outwit evil. You don't outthink hit, you don't joke with hit, no more than you tease or control fire by sticking your hand in hit.'

'You all right, Reverend?' I said.

'No, I ain't.'

His sun-browned, liver-spotted hands were flat on the table-cloth. His nails looked like hooked tortoiseshell.

'What's the trouble, partner?' I said.

'They took my boy.'

'Who?' Clete said.

'He come back from Vietnam with needle scars on his arm. Wasn't no he'p for hit, either. Federal hospitals, jails, drug programs, he could always get all the dope he needed from them kind yonder. Till he killed hisself with hit.'

The music on the jukebox ended. Clete looked at me and raised his eyebrows. Oswald Flat slipped the purple rose out of the dimestore vase in the center of the table and sliced off the green stem with his thumbnail.

'Hey, hold on, Brother. Where you going?' Clete said.

Oswald Flat walked toward the rear of the restaurant. He moved like a crab, his shoulders slanted to one side, the rose hanging from his right hand. The Caluccis were finishing their coffee and dessert and at first did not pay attention to the man with the clip-on bow tie standing above them.

Then Max stopped talking to a woman with lacquered blond hair next to him and flicked his eyes up at Oswald Flat.

'What?' he said. When Flat made no reply, Max said it again. 'What?'

Then Bobo was looking at the preacher, too.

'Hey, he's talking to you. You got a problem?' he said.

The people at nearby tables had stopped talking now.

'Hey, what's with you? You can't find the men's room or something?' Max said.

The blond woman next to him started to laugh, then looked at Oswald Flat's face and dropped her eyes.

'Y'all think you're different from them colored dope dealers? Y'all think hit cain't happen to you?' the preacher said.

'What? What can happen?' Max said.

'Your skin's white but your heart's black, just like them that's had hit cut out of their chests.'

The restaurant was almost completely silent now. In the kitchen someone stopped scraping a dish into a garbage can.

'Listen, you four-eyed fuck, if Purcel and that cop sent you over here-' Max began.

Oswald flipped the purple rose into Max Calucci's face.

'You're a lost, stupid man,' he said. 'If I was you, I'd drink all the ice water I could while I had opportunity. Hell's hot and it's got damn little shade.'

The Reverend Oswald Flat picked up his guitar case, fitted his cork sun helmet on his head, and walked out the front door into a vortex of rain.

As I crossed the wide, brown sweep of the Mississippi at Baton Rouge and headed across the Atchafalaya Basin toward home, I thought about Oswald Flat's speculation on the elusiveness of Will Buchalter.

It seemed the stuff of an Appalachian tent revival where the reborn dipped their arms into boxes filled with poisonous snakes.

But the preacher's conclusion that we were dealing with a demonic incarnation was neither eccentric nor very original and, as with some other cases I've worked, was as good an explanation about aberrant human behavior as any.

Ten years ago, when Clete and I worked Homicide at NOPD, we investigated a case that even today no one can satisfactorily explain.

A thirty-five-year-old small contractor was hired to build a sun-porch on a home in an old residential neighborhood off Canal. He was well thought of, nice-looking, married only once, attended church weekly with his wife and son, and had never been in trouble of any kind. At least that we knew of.

The family who had contracted him to build the addition on their house were Rumanian gypsies who had grown wealthy as slum-lords in the black districts off Magazine. Their late-Victorian home had polished oak floors, ceiling-high windows, small balconies dripping with orange passion vine, a pool, and a game room with a sunken hot tub.

They thought well enough of the contractor to leave him alone with their fifteen- and twelve-year-old daughters.