James Burke - Dixie City Jam

The phone rang on the counter.

'Detective Robicheaux?'

'Yes.'

'This is Monsignor DeBlanc. I'm sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. You called about Sister Marie?'

'Yes, Marie Guilbeaux.'

'Right. Is something wrong?'

'I'm not sure, really. I'm working a strange case now… Sister Guilbeaux keeps showing up around here at odd times.'

'I'm sorry, I'm confused. What do you mean "showing up"?'

'Just that . She seems to take an inordinate interest in things that aren't her affair.'

'You mean she's been in New Iberia recently?'

'Yes.'

'I don't understand. Marie went back home to Napoleonville three months ago. She's had some severe problems with her health.'

I paused a moment. 'What does this lady look like, Monsignor?'

'Good for her age, I guess, but, well, time has its way with all of us.'

'Her age?'

'She's almost seventy years old. How old do you think she is?'

After I hung up I sat at the kitchen table and stared out the back screen at the orange wafer of sun descending into the smoke from the smoldering cane stubble. Why hadn't I seen it? She had been outside the intensive care unit when Clete and I had interviewed Charles Arthur Sitwell, who later was launched into the next world with an injection of water and roach paste. Even Alafair had felt there was something wrong about her, that she was a harbinger of trouble and discord.

I looked again at the empty sherry bottle and cans in the trash. When the bedroom door opened in the hallway I didn't even bother to turn around. There was no point in trying to go to a step meeting tonight. Bootsie's fears and anxieties had obviously sent her into a relapse; maybe tomorrow we'd give it another try. Or maybe I simply had to let go of her for a while, turn her over to my Higher Power, and let her bottom out. How could I demand more of her than had ever been demanded of me? But regardless of what I chose to do, anger would serve no purpose, and would only reinforce her determination to stay drunk.

I smelled the alcohol and the odor of cigarettes even before I felt the warm breath against my cheek, the touch of fingernails in my hair and on my scalp, the soft caress of a woman's breasts against the back of my neck. Then I felt the mouth and tongue in my ear, the tapered hand that slid down my chest toward my loins, and I turned and looked up into the face of the woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux.

'Tough day when they take the scales from your eyes?' she said. Her hand reached out to touch my hair. I pushed it away.

'Where are Bootsie and Alafair?' I said.

'The wifey's passed out. Doesn't she send your daughter off with the black man when she decides to go on the grog?'

I walked into the hall and opened the bedroom door. Bootsie was asleep, half undressed, on top of the sheets, her face twisted into the pillow. The curtains popped in the silence.

The woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux stood in the center of the kitchen, putting lipstick on in front of her compact mirror. She wore sun-faded jeans, sandals, a beige terry-cloth pullover with a dipping neckline, and a gold chain with a pearl around her throat.

'Did you know the little wife has something of a pill problem?' she said, her eyes still fastened on the mirror.

'Who are you?'

She crimped her lips together in the mirror and clicked the compact closed.

'Want to find out?' she said. She smiled. Her eyes seemed to darken, like charcoal-colored smoke gathering inside green glass. She unsnapped the top of her jeans, exposing the pink edge of her panties, then reached behind her back and unhooked her bra. 'Sit down in the chair, Dave. It's time someone does something nice for you.'

I dumped her purse on the breakfast table. In it were car keys, an empty aspirin tin, a roll of breath mints, a perfume spray bottle, and a doeskin wallet. In the wallet was over six hundred dollars, and a Social Security card and driver's license with the name Marie Guilbeaux on them. The address on the license was in uptown New Orleans, back toward the levee. There were no credit cards.

'Do you like everything to be so hard?' she said, and moved her tongue in a circle inside her lips.

She worked her bra out from under her pullover and laid it over the chair top, then clasped her hands around the back of my neck and pressed her stomach against me. 'I have a feeling the wifey hasn't been treating you right,' she said.

'Where's your automobile?'

'Down by the dock.'

'Is anyone with you?'

'No.' She flexed her loins against me.

'I'll tell the wrecker service not to scratch it up,' I said, turning her in a half circle.

'What?'

'The guy we contract to haul cars into the pound is careless sometimes.' I pulled her forearms behind her. Her wrists were narrow and pale, and the undersides were lined with thin green veins. I snipped the handcuffs on each wrist, then stuffed her bra in the back pocket of her jeans.

'The offer's still open. With handcuffs. Think about it, Dave. Ouu,' she said, and made a pout with her mouth. 'You might even like it better than climbing on top of a drunk sow.'

'Try it on our jailer, Marie,' I said. 'He's a three-hundred-pound black homosexual. Maybe you can turn him around.'

The next morning at the department I picked up a cup of coffee and a doughnut by the dispatcher's cage and called Clete at his office in the Quarter. The sun was shining, and there was dew on the grass and trees outside my window. I had called him twice the day before and hadn't gotten an answer.

'The tape on my machine's screwed up. What's happening?' he said.

I told him about my conversation in the restaurant with Tommy Lonighan.

'You sound mad,' he said.

'I am.'

'What's the big deal?'

'I warned you about provoking these guys.'

'Look, Dave, what's "open hit" actually mean? Nothing. It's something these greasebags like to mouth off about while they're stuffing linguine in their faces. A real whack is when they bring in a mechanic, a mainline button man, a full-time sociopath, from Miami or Houston, and this guy knows he either leaves meat on the sidewalk or he's the next guy for the cooling board.'

'Clete-'

'Drop it, mon. Max and Bobo are always blowing gas. It's time they both get their snouts stuck in the commode.'

'I just don't believe you. Why don't you go stand in the middle of the streetcar tracks?'

'Okay, big mon, you've warned me. Listen, has Motley called you yet?'

'No.'

'Dig this. Ole Mots stopped thinking about food and cooze and being black long enough to do some real detective work.'

'I think Motley's turned out to be a good guy.'

'That's what I was saying. Is there static on the line or something? Yesterday afternoon he got some chest waders from the fire department, and he and I splashed out into that swamp in Lafourche Parish. It took a while, but we found it.'

'Found what?'

'The armored vest. The guy who cut open the two lowlifes with the chain saw, we found where he got out of the water on a levee not far from Larose. There were depressions in the mud that Sasquatch could have left. Anyway, about two hundred yards back into the swamp he'd dumped the vest by a sandbar. There were a half-dozen pieces of buckshot in the plates.'

'Why would he be wearing a vest?'

He laughed, then took the receiver away from his mouth and laughed again.

'You want to let me in on it?' I asked.

'You're beautiful, Streak. There's a secret that everybody seems to know except my old podjo from the First. You're one of the most violent people I've ever known. Why do you think Buchalter would wear a vest? You've probably got him spotting his Jockeys.'

'Thanks for going out there, Clete.'