James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'I have some tea made. Come inside,' she said.

The porcelain and yellow plastic surfaces of her kitchen gleamed in the sunlight through the windows, and the sills rang with red and blue dime-store vases. I sat at the breakfast table and watched her twist a handful of ice cubes in a towel and batter them on a chopping board with a rolling pin, then fill two tall glasses with the crushed ice and mint leaves and tea. The straps of her bra made a hard line across the wash-faded thinness of her denim shirt.

She turned toward me with the drink glasses in each hand. Her eyes looked at mine, and her expression sombered. She sat down across from me and folded her hands.

'I think you're a good person, Dave. That means some things aren't your style,' she said.

'I look like I have a clandestine agenda?'

'I've lived single for a long time. You recognize certain things in people. Even without being told.'

'I don't know if that's too complimentary.'

'Purcel was here yesterday.'

'There's a warrant on him.'

'I'm still suspended. I should worry about a warrant on Clete Purcel?'

'Why was he here?'

'He says one of the Caluccis' greasers will testify Nate Baxter's on a pad. He told me about your trouble at home.'

'Maybe some people should stay out of my private life.'

'Oh, that's perfect. Your closest friends shouldn't worry about you or try to help you?'

I felt my lips crimp together. I looked away from her unrelenting stare.

I stood up and took my seersucker coat off the back of the chair.

'Give me a call if Buchalter shows up,' I said, and walked toward the front door.

She followed me. The sun made slats of light on her face, causing her to squint as she looked up at me.

'Don't leave like this,' she said.

I took a breath. Her hair was scintillated with silver threads and curved thickly on her cheeks.

'What am I supposed to say, Lucinda?'

'Nothing. You're a good man. Good men don't need to say anything.'

The door was wide open so that nothing she did was hidden from view. She put her arms around my neck and bent my face to hers, raising herself on the balls of her feet, her knees pinching together, her thighs flexing and pressing against me unavoidably; then she kissed me on the cheeks, the bridge of the nose, the eyes, and finally once, a light adieu, on the mouth, as her hands came loose from my neck and my face felt as though it were covered with hot red dimes.

The chorus that condemns violence is multitudinous and unrelenting. Who can disagree with the sentiment? I think we're after the wrong enemy, though. It's cruelty, particularly when it's mindless and visited upon the defenseless, that has always bothered me most about human failure. But my viewpoint isn't exceptional. Anyone in law enforcement, social work, or psychiatric rehab of any kind carries with him or her a mental notebook whose pages never dim with the years.

Sometimes in the middle of the night I remember cases, or simply incidents, of twenty years ago that come aborning again like sins which elude remission, except either the guilt is collective in nature or the deed such a pitiful and naked admission of our tribal ignorance and inhumanity that the mere recognition of it leads to self-loathing.

Stephen Crane once suggested that few people are nouns; instead, most of us are adverbs, modifying a long and weary sequence of events in which the clearly defined culprit, with black heart and demonic intent, seldom makes himself available for the headsman.

I remember: a cop in the Lafayette police station laughing about how a friend rubbed his penis all over a black woman's body; a black street gang who videotaped their beating of a retarded Pakistani so they could show their friends their handiwork; an infant burned all over his body, even between his toes, with lighted cigarettes; a prosperous middle-class couple who forced the husband's parents to eat dog food; high school kids who held a drunk against a barroom picture window, then punched him through the glass; women and children sodomized, a coed shot through the face in Audubon Park (after she had surrendered her money), animals set on fire, a wounded cop flipped over on his back by his assailant, who then put a pillow under his head and slit his throat with a string knife.

I sincerely believe that we're attracted to films about the Mafia because the violence and evil portrayed in them seems to have an explanation and a beginning and an end. It's confined to one group of people, who in their fictional portrayal even have tragic proportions, and we're made to believe the problem is not endemic to the species.

But I think the reality is otherwise.

A random act of cruelty opened a door in the case I probably would not have gone through by myself.

It had started to sprinkle when I stopped at Igor's on St. Charles for a po'-boy sandwich and to call Bootsie and tell her I was headed home.

'Call Ben Motley, Dave. He's left two messages,' she said.

'What's he want?'

'Something about Tommy Lonighan.'

'How you doing?'

'Fine.'

'You want to go out to eat tonight?'

'Sure. What's the occasion?' she said.

'Nothing special.'

'Is anything wrong?'

'No, why do you think that?'

'Because you always suggest going out to dinner when you feel guilty about something.'

'Not me.' I looked out at the rain striking against the half-opened windows of the streetcar.

'I'm sorry about last night,' she said.

'See you later, kiddo.'

'Hang on to your butt in the Big Sleazy.'

That's more like it, Boots, I thought.

I called Motley at headquarters in the Garden District.

'I got a strange story for you, Robicheaux,' he said. 'We've had some fag bashers running around the city. A couple of them are UNO pukes; the others are just ugly and stupid or probably latent queerbait themselves. Anyway, they're always on the prowl for fresh meat down in the Quarter. This time they picked up a transvestite on Dauphine and took him to a camp out in St. Charles Parish. I think he blew a couple of them, then they got him stinking drunk, pulled his clothes off, and poured pig shit and chicken feathers all over him. Nice boys, huh?

'Anyway, the transvestite is no ordinary fruit. He looks like Frankenstein in a dress and panty hose. He starts sobering up and realizes this isn't a Crisco party. That's when he starts ripping puke ass, I mean busting slats out of the walls with these guys. The pukes made an instant conversion to law and order and called the sheriffs office.

'Right now Frankenstein's in a holding cell, scared shitless. Guess who he called to bail him out?'

'Lonighan?'

'Right. Then twenty minutes go by, and guess who calls back on the fruit's behalf?'

'I don't know, Ben.'

'A lawyer who works for the Calucci brothers. That's when the St. Charles sheriff called us. Why do the Caluccis want to help a cross-dresser with feathers and pig flop in his hair?'

'Is the guy's name Manuel?'

'Yeah, Manuel Ruiz. The sheriff thinks he's a lobotomy case. He's probably illegal, too.'

'How long has he been in custody?'

'Two hours.'

'I'll get back to you. Thanks, Ben.'

An hour later Manuel Ruiz was still in the holding cell, a narrow, concrete, barred room with a wood bench against one wall and a drain hole and grate in the floor. There were dried yellow stains on the grate and on the cement around the hole. He was barefoot and wore a black skirt with orange flowers on it and a torn peasant blouse with lace around the neck; his hair was matted and stuck together in spikes. His exposed chest looked as hard and flawless in complexion as sanded oak.

'You remember me, Manuel?' I asked.

The eyes were obsidian, elongated, unblinking, lidless, his wide, expressionless mouth lipsticked like a fresh surgical incision.