James Burke - Cadillac Jukebox

"I did a five-minute mile this morning. How about that?" he said, a smile breaking on his mouth.

"You better ease up, partner," I said.

"I just need to lie down. One hour's sleep and I'm fine."

I looked at Karyn's face. It was composed now, the agenda, whatever it was, temporarily back in place.

We walked Buford down to a suite on the top floor and put him in bed and closed the door behind us.

"He's talking to a state police convention tonight," Karyn said, as though offering an explanation for the last few minutes. Through the full-glass windows in the living room you could see the capitol building, the parks and boulevards and trees in the center of the city, the wide sweep of the Mississippi River, the wetlands to the west, all the lovely urban and rural ambiance that came with political power in Louisiana.

"Is Buford on uppers?" I asked.

"No. It's… He has a prescription. He gets overwrought sometimes."

"You'd better get him some help, Karyn."

I walked through the foyer to the door.

"You're going?" she said.

She stood inches from me, her face turned up into mine. The exertion of getting Buford into the room had caused her to perspire, and her platinum hair and tanned skin took on a dull sheen in the overhead light. I could smell her perfume in the enclosure, the heat from her body. She leaned her forehead into my chest and placed her hands lightly on my arms.

"Dave, it wasn't just the alcohol, was it? You liked me, didn't you?"

She tapped my hips with her small fists, twisted her forehead back and forth on my chest as though an unspoken conclusion about her life was trying to break from her throat.

I put one hand on her arm, then felt behind me for the elongated door handle. It was locked in place, rigid across the sweating cup of my palm.

Aday later Clete Purcel's chartreuse Cadillac convertible, the top down, pulled up in front of the sheriff's department with Mingo Bloomberg in the passenger's seat. Clete and Mingo came up the walk, through the waiting room, and into my office. Mingo stood in front of my desk in white slacks and a lemon yellow shirt with French cuffs. He rotated his neck, as though his collar were too tight, then put a breath mint in his mouth.

"My lawyer's getting me early arraignment and recognizance. I'm here as a friend of the court, so you got questions, let's do it now, okay?" he said. He snapped the mint in his molars.

"Mingo, I don't think that's the way to start out the day here," Clete said.

"What's going on, Clete?" I said.

Clete stepped out into the hall and waited for me. I closed the door behind me.

"Short Boy Jerry gave me two hundred bucks to deliver the freight. Don't let Mingo take you over the hurdles. Jerry Joe and NOPD both got their foot on his chain," he said.

I opened the door and went back in.

"How you feel, Mingo?" I said.

"My car was boosted. I didn't drown a black girl. So I feel okay."

"You a stand-up guy?" I said.

"What's that mean?"

"Jerry Ace is giving us an anchovy so we don't come back for the main meal. You comfortable with that, Mingo? You like being an hors d'oeuvre?" I said.

"What I don't like is being in New Orleans with a target painted on my back. I'm talking about the cops in the First District who maybe stomped a guy's hair all over the cement… I got to use the John. Purcel wouldn't stop the car."

He looked out the glass partition, then saw the face looking back at him.

"Hey, keep her away from me," he said.

"You don't like Detective Soileau?" I said.

"She's a muff-diver. I told her over the phone, she ought to get herself a rubber schlong so she can whip it around and spray trees or whatever she wants till she gets it out of her system."

Helen was coming through the door now. I put my hand on her shoulder and walked her back into the corridor.

"Jerry Joe Plumb made him surrender," I said.

"Why?" she said, her eyes still fastened on Mingo.

"He's tied up somehow with Buford LaRose and doesn't want us in his face. Mingo says he's getting out on his own recognizance. I think he's going to head for our witnesses."

"Like hell he is. Has he been Mirandized?"

"Not yet."

She opened the door so abruptly the glass rattled in the frame.

A half hour later she called me from the jail.

"Guess what? Shithead attacked me. I'll have the paperwork ready for the court in the morning," she said.

"Where is he?"

" Iberia General. He fell down a stairs. He also needed twelve stitches where I hit him with a baton. Forget recognizance, baby cakes. He's going to be with us awhile."

"Helen?"

"The paperwork is going to look fine. I went to Catholic school. I have beautiful penmanship."

Clete and I ate lunch at an outdoor barbecue stand run by a black man in a grove of oak trees. The plank table felt cool in the shade, and you could smell the wet odor of green cordwood stacked under a tarp next to the stand.

"Because I was up early anyway, I happened to turn on the TV and catch 'Breakfast Edition,' you know, the local morning show in New Orleans," he said. His eyes stayed on my face. "What the hell you doing, Streak?"

"Aaron Crown bothers me."

"You went on television, Dave, with this Hollywood character, what's-his-name, Felton, whatever."

"I was taped here while he interviewed me on the phone, then it was spliced into the show."

"Forget the technical tour. Why don't you resign your job while you're at it? What's your boss have to say?"

"I don't think he's heard about it yet."

"You don't take police business to civilians, big mon. To begin with, they don't care about it. They'll leave you hanging in the breeze, then your own people rat-fuck you as a snitch."

"Maybe that's the way it's supposed to shake out," I said.

He drank from a bottle of Dixie beer, one eye squinting over the bottle at me. "Something else is involved here, mon," he said.

"Don't make it a big deal, Clete."

"It's the broad, isn't it?" he said.

"No."

"You got into the horizontal bop once with her and you're worried you're going to do it again. So you got rid of temptation with a baseball bat. In the meantime maybe you just splashed your career into the bowl… Wait a minute, you didn't pork her again, did you?"

"No… Will you stop talking like that?"

"Dave, rich guys don't marry mud women from New Guinea. She's one hot-ass piece of work. We all got human weaknesses, noble mon. All I got to do is see her on TV and my Johnson starts barking."

"You were a fugitive on a homicide warrant," I said. "The victim was a psychopath, and his death was a mistake, but the point is you killed him. What if you hadn't beat it? What if you were put away for life unjustly?"

He wiped a smear of barbecue sauce off his palm with a napkin, looked out at the sunlight on the street.

"This guy Crown must mean a lot to you… I think I'm going to Red's in Lafayette, take a steam, start the day over again," he said.

An hour later the sheriff buzzed my extension and asked me to walk down to his office. By now I was sure he had heard about my appearance on "Morning Edition," and all the way down the corridor I tried to construct a defense for conduct that, in police work, was traditionally considered indefensible. When I opened the door he was staring at a sheet of lined notebook paper in his hand, rubbing his temple with one finger. His Venetian blinds were closed, and his windowsill was green with plants.

"Why is everything around here hard? Why can't we just take care of the problems in Iberia Parish? Can you explain that to me?" he said.

"If you're talking about my being on 'Morning Edition,' I stand behind what I said, Sheriff. Aaron Crown didn't have motivation. I think Buford LaRose is building a political career on another man's broken back."