James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'There's nothing for it, Boots. The man didn't do anything to deserve this. We have to help him.'

'All this started with Clete Purcel. He enjoys it. It's a way of life with him. When are you going to learn that, Dave?'

Then she walked into the house and let the screen slam behind her.

I hosed down some boats at the dock, cleaned off the telephone-spool tables after the lunch crowd had left, then finally gave in and used the phone in the bait shop to return Lucinda Bergeron's call. I was told she had gone home sick for the day, and I didn't bother to leave my name. Then I called three criminal attorneys in Lafayette and two in New Orleans. Their fees ran from eighty to one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, with no guarantees of anything.

'You all right, Dave?' Alafair said. She sat on a tall stool behind the cash register, her Houston Astros cap on sideways, her red tennis shoes swinging above the floor. Her skin was dark brown, her Indian black hair filled with lights like a raven's wing.

'Everything's copacetic, little guy,' I said. Through the screened windows the sun looked like a wobbling yellow flame on the bayou. I wiped the perspiration off my face with a damp counter towel and threw the towel in a corner.

'You worried about money or something?'

'It's just a temporary thing. Let's have a fried pie, Alf.'

'Batist is in some kind of trouble, Dave?'

'A little bit. But we'll get him out of it.' I winked at her, but the cloud didn't go out of her face. It had been seven years since I had pulled her from the submerged wreck of an airplane carrying illegal refugees from El Salvador. She had forgotten her own language (although she could understand most words in Cajun French without having been taught them), and she no longer had nightmares about the day the soldiers came to her village and created an object lesson with machetes and a pregnant woman in front of the medical clinic; but when she sensed difficulty or discord of any kind in our home, her brown eyes would immediately become troubled and focus on some dark concern inside herself, as though she were about to witness the re-creation of a terrible image that had been waiting patiently to come aborning again.

'You have to trust me when I tell you not to worry about things, Squanto,' I said.

Then she surprised me.

'Dave, do you think you should be calling me all those baby names? I'm twelve years old.'

'I'm sorry, Alf.'

'It's all right. Some people just might not understand. They might think it's dumb or that you're treating me like a little kid or something.'

'Well, I won't do it anymore. How's that?'

'Don't worry about it. I just thought I ought to tell you.'

'Okay, Alf. Thanks for letting me know.'

She punched around on the keys of the cash register while blowing her breath up into her bangs. Then I saw her eyes go past me and focus somewhere out on the dock.

'Dave, there's a black woman out there with a gas can. Dave, she's got a pistol in her back pocket.'

I turned and looked out into the shade of the canvas awning that covered the dock. It was Lucinda Bergeron, in a pair of faded Levi's that barely clung to her thin hips, Adidas tennis shoes, and a white, sweat-streaked T-shirt with the purple-and-gold head of Mike the Tiger on it. She wore her badge clipped on her beltless waistband; a chrome snub-nosed revolver in an abbreviated leather holster protruded from her back pocket.

Her face was filmed and gray, and she wiped at her eyes with one sleeve before she came through the screen door.

'Are you okay?' I said.

'May I use your rest room?' she said.

'Sure, it's right behind the coolers,' I said, and pointed toward the rear of the shop.

A moment later I heard the toilet flush and water running, then she came back out, breathing through her mouth, a crumpled wet paper towel in one hand.

'Do you sell mouthwash or mints?' she said.

I put a roll of Life Savers on top of the counter. Then I opened up a can of Coca-Cola and set it in front of her.

'It settles the stomach,' I said.

'I've got to get something straight with you.'

'How's that?'

She drank out of the Coke can. Her face looked dusty and wan, her eyes barely able to concentrate.

'You think I'm chickenshit,' she said.

'You were in a tough spot.'

'But you still think I'm chickenshit, don't you?'

'I know you're not feeling well, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't use profanity in front of my daughter.'

'Excuse me. Did you have a reason for not returning my phone calls?'

'When I called back, you were already gone. Look, Sergeant, I appreciate your coming down here, particularly when you're sick. But you don't owe me anything.'

'You've decided that?'

I let out my breath. 'What can I say? It's not my intention to have an argument with you.'

'You sell gas? I ran out down the road. My gauge is broken.' She clanked the gasoline can on the counter.

'Yeah, I've got a pump for the boats at the end of the dock.'

'Your friend, the black man, Batist Perry, they're sticking it to him. Nate Baxter held some information back from you.'

'Alafair, how about telling Bootsie we'll go to Mulate's for supper tonight?'

She made an exasperated face, climbed down from the stool, unhitched Tripod, her three-legged pet raccoon, from his chain by the door, and went up the dock toward the house with Tripod looking back at me over her shoulder.

'The murdered man had his heart cut out,' Lucinda Bergeron said. 'But so did three other homicide victims in the last four months. Even one who was pitched off a roof. He didn't tell you that, did he?'

'No, he didn't.'

'The press doesn't know about it, either. The city's trying to sit on it so they don't scare all the tourists out of town. Baxter thinks it's Satanists. Your friend just happened to stumble into the middle of the investigation.'

'Satanists?'

'You don't buy it?'

'It seems they always turn out to be meltdowns who end up on right-wing religious shows. Maybe it's just coincidence.'

'If I were you, I'd start proving my friend was nowhere near New Orleans when those other homicides were committed. I've got to sit down. I think I'm going to be sick again.'

I came around from behind the counter and walked her to a chair and table. Her back felt like iron under my hands. She took her revolver out of her back pocket, clunked it on the table, and leaned forward with her forearms propped on her thighs. Her hair was thick and white on the ends, her neck oily with sweat. Two white fishermen whom I didn't know started through the door, then turned and went back outside.

'I'll be right with y'all,' I called through the screen.

'Like hell you will,' I heard one of them say as they walked back toward their cars.

'I'll drive you back to New Orleans. I think maybe you've got a bad case of stomach flu,' I said to Lucinda.

'Just fill my gas can for me. I'll be all right in a little bit.' She took a crumpled five-dollar bill from her Levi's and put it on the tabletop.

'I have to go back for my truck, anyway. It's at a dock down by Barataria Bay. Let's don't argue about it.'

But she wasn't capable of arguing about anything. Her breath was rife with bile, her elongated turquoise eyes rheumy and listless, the back of her white T-shirt glued against her black skin. When I patted her on the shoulder, I could feel the bone like coat hanger wire against the cloth. I could only guess at what it had been like for her at the NOPD training academy when a peckerwood drill instructor decided to turn up the butane.

I carried the gas can down to her Toyota, got it started, filled the tank up at the dock, and drove her to New Orleans. She lived right off Magazine in a one-story white frame house with a green roof, a small yard, and a gallery that was hung with potted plants and overgrown with purple trumpet vine. Around the corner, on Magazine, was a two-story bar with a colonnade and neon Dixie beer signs in the windows; you could hear the jukebox roaring through the open front door.