James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'Dead end,' he said. 'Her address is in an apartment building that a wrecking ball went through six months ago.'

'Did you ask around the neighborhood about her?'

'I'm in a phone booth in front of a liquor store that has bullet holes in the windows. There's garbage all over the sidewalk. As I speak I'm looking at a collection of pukes who are looking back at me like I'm an albino ape. Guess what color these pukes are? Guess what color the whole neighborhood is.'

Judge Robert Dautrieve presided over morning court, that strange, ritualistic theater that features morose and repentant drunks who reek of jailhouse funk, welfare cheats, deranged drifters, game poachers, and wife abusers whose frightened wives, with blackened eyes, dragging strings of children, plead for their husbands' release. Almost all of them are on a first-name basis with the bailiffs, jail escorts, bondsmen, prosecutors, and court-assigned attorneys and social workers, who will remain the most important people they'll ever meet. And no matter what occurs on a particular day in morning court, almost all of them will be back.

Judge Dautrieve had silver hair and the profile of a Roman legionnaire. During World War II he had been a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor at Sword Beach, and he had also been a Democratic candidate for governor who had lost miserably, largely due to the fact that he was an honorable man.

The woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux filed into court on the long wrist chain with the other defendants from the parish jail. Her clothes were rumpled and her face white and puffy from lack of sleep. On the back of her beige pullover was a damp, brown stain, as though she had leaned against a wall where someone had spit tobacco juice. When the jail escort unlocked her wrist from the chain, she straightened her shoulders, tilted her chin up, and brushed her reddish gold hair back over her forehead with her fingers. Her face became a study in composure and serenity, as if it had been transformed inside a movie camera's lens.

I sat three feet behind her, staring at the back of her neck. She turned slowly, as though she could feel my eyes on her skin.

'Tell Buchalter we've got his vest,' I said.

But she looked past me toward the rear of the courtroom, as though she had never visited one before, her gaze innocuous, bemused, perhaps a bit fearful of her plight. To any outside observer, it was obvious that this lady did not belong on a wrist chain, or in a jail, or in a morning court that processed miscreants whose ongoing culpability and failure were as visible on their persons as sackcloth and ashes.

Her lawyer had once been with the U.S. Justice Department. He now represented drug dealers and a PCB incinerator group. His bald head was razor-shaved and waxed, and he had humps of muscle in his shoulders and upper arms like a professional wrestler. His collar and tie always rode high up on his thick neck, which gave him a Humpty-Dumpty appearance.

'Tell Buchalter his prints were all over the vest,' I said to the nun impersonator's back. 'That means he's going down on premeditated double homicide. Nasty stuff, Marie. Lethal injection, the big sleep, that kind of thing.'

She looked straight ahead, her face cool, almost regal, but her lawyer, who was talking to another man at the defense table, glanced up, then walked over to where I sat, his eyes locked on mine.

'What is it that makes you think legal procedure has no application to you?' he said. His body seemed to exude physical power and the clean athletic-club smells of deodorant and aftershave lotion.

'I was just asking your client to pass on a message to one of her associates,' I said. 'He cut open two guys with a chain saw. These were his friends. He's quite a guy.'

'You're harassing this woman, Detective. You're not going to get away with it, either.'

'It's always reassuring to know you're on the other side, Counselor.'

'You, sir, belong in a cage,' he said.

For thirty minutes I watched the judge go through the process of trying to heal cancer with Mercurochrome, his face sometimes paling, his eyes glazing over when a stressed-out defendant would launch into an incoherent soliloquy intended to turn his role into that of victim.

I went out for a drink of water, then took a seat not far from the prosecutor's table. Five minutes before the nun impersonator had to enter her plea, the prosecutor looked at me impatiently, then gathered up a file folder and walked back to where I sat. He was a rail of a man, with a tic in his gray face, who made his daily nest in the high-tension wires. He kept tapping the file folder on my knee.

'This isn't shit. What the hell have y'all been doing?' he said.

'Her address is phony. Does that help?'

'It's shit and you know it. You guys spend your time fucking your fist, then blame us when they walk.'

'How about kicking it down a couple of notches, Newt?'

'You want my job? You tell us we've got the bride of Dracula in the parish jail, but I'm supposed to walk in here with nothing but my dork in my hand. Dautrieve's not in the mood for it, believe me.'

'She had an empty aspirin tin in her purse. I sent it to the lab this morning. Maybe there's a residue that indicates she was in possession.'

'An empty aspirin container? That's the kind of evidence I'm supposed to work with here? Do you live in a plastic bubble?'

'She's hooked up with Nazis. I'd bet my butt on it, Newt.'

'I've got news for you. You are. She's talking about suit. She said you tried to get in her bread when you busted her. That was a smart touch, sticking her bra in her back pocket, Dave. She's also talking about deprivation of civil rights, slander, and sexual assault while in the bag. How's that sound? And in two minutes I get to stand up in front of the court and get buggered by that greasy shit hog she hired. Y'all really fill out my day.'

'Don't let her get out of here, partner.'

'Break my chops.'

Judge Dautrieve was fixing his glasses on his nose and trying to keep the ennui out of his face by the time the woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux stood before him, her lawyer by her side. He listened attentively to the prosecutor, one finger propped against a silver eyebrow. Then his eyes went from the prosecutor to me and back to the woman.

'This isn't April Fools' Day, is it, gentlemen?' he said.

'Your Honor, we believe this lady to be a serious flight risk,' the prosecutor said. 'She has no ties to the community, we believe she's using an alias, and the address on her driver's license has proved to be a fraudulent one. She's also a potential suspect in a homicide case. We request maximum bail.'

'Your Honor, my client claims she was sexually molested by Detective Robicheaux,' the woman's lawyer said. 'She was humiliated, put in a holding unit with lesbians who tried to assault her, then verbally harassed by Detective Robicheaux in this very courtroom. There's nothing to substantiate the charge against her, except the word of Detective Robicheaux, who himself may face criminal charges.'

The judge suppressed a sigh, took off his glasses, and beckoned with both hands. When no one moved, he said, 'Approach, approach, approach. It's late, gentlemen. The Three Penny Opera here needs to conclude. That means you too, Detective Robicheaux.'

The two attorneys and I stood close to the bench. Judge Dautrieve leaned forward on his forearms and let his eyes rove over our faces.

'Would any of y'all care to explain what we're doing?' he said. 'Is this part of a Hollywood movie? Do I need a membership in the Screen Actors Guild? What homicide are you talking about, sir?'

'The ex-convict who was murdered at Iberia General, Your Honor,' the prosecutor said. 'He was part of a neo-Nazi group of some kind. The woman was seen at the hospital in a nun's veil, close by the man's room.'