James Burke: Cadillac Jukebox

Bootsie and I drove past the LaRose company store, with its oxidized, cracked front windows and tin-roofed gallery, where barrels of pecans sat by the double screen doors through which thousands of indebted tenants had passed until the civil rights era of the 1960s brought an end to five-dollar-a-day farm labor; then we turned into a white-fenced driveway that led to the rear of the home and the lawn party that was already in progress against a backdrop of live oaks and Spanish moss and an autumnal rose-stippled sky that seemed to reassure us all that the Indian summer of our lives would never end.

While the buffet was being laid out on a row of picnic tables, Buford organized a touch football game and prevailed even upon the most reluctant guests to put down their drinks and join one team or another. Some were from the university in Lafayette but most were people well known in the deceptively lighthearted and carnival-like atmosphere of Louisiana politics. Unlike their counterparts from the piney woods parishes to the north, they were bright, educated, openly hedonistic, always convivial, more concerned about violations of protocol than ideology.

They were fun to be with; they were giddy with alcohol and the exertion of the game, their laughter tinkling through the trees each time the ball was snapped and there was a thumping of feet across the sod and a loud pat of hands on the rump.

Then a white-jacketed black man dinged a metal triangle and everyone filed happily back toward the serving tables.

"Run out, Dave! Let me throw you a serious one!" Buford hollered, the football poised in his palm. He wore tennis shoes, pleated white slacks, the arms of his plum-colored sweater tied around his neck.

"That's enough for me," I said.

"Don't give me that 'old man' act," he said and cocked his arm to fire a bullet, then smiled and lofted an easy, arching pass that dropped into my hands as though he had plopped it into a basket.

He caught up to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Wow, you feel like a bag of rocks. How much iron do you pump?" he said.

"Just enough to keep from falling apart."

He slipped the football out of my hands, flipped it toward the stable. He watched it bounce and roll away in the dusk, as though he were looking at an unformed thought in the center of his mind.

"Dave, I think we're going to win next month," he said.

"That's good."

"You think you could live in Baton Rouge?"

"I've never thought about it."

Someone turned on the Japanese lanterns in the trees. The air smelled of pecan husks and smoke from a barbecue pit dug in the earth. Buford paused.

"How'd you like to be head of the state police?" he asked.

"I was never much of an administrator, Buford."

"I had a feeling you'd say something like that."

"Oh?"

"Dave, why do you think we've always had the worst state government in the union? It's because good people don't want to serve in it. Is the irony lost on you?"

"I appreciate the offer."

"You want to think it over?"

"Sure, why not?"

"That's the way," he said, and then was gone among his other guests, his handsome face glowing with the perfection of the evening and the portent it seemed to represent.

Karyn walked among the tree trunks toward me, a paper plate filled with roast duck and venison and dirty rice in one hand, a Corona bottle and cone-shaped glass with a lime slice inserted on the rim gripped awkwardly in the other. My eyes searched the crowd for Bootsie.

"I took the liberty," Karyn said, and set the plate and glass and beer bottle down on a table for me.

"Thank you. Where'd Boots go?"

"I think she's in the house."

She sat backward on the plank bench, her legs crossed. She had tied her hair up with a red bandanna and had tucked her embroidered denim shirt tightly into her blue jeans. Her face was warm, still flushed from the touch football game. I moved the Corona bottle and glass toward her.

"Nope."

"You want a Coke?"

"I'm fine, Karyn."

"Did Buford talk to you about the state police job?"

"He sure did."

"Gee, Dave, you're a regular blabbermouth, aren't you?"

I took a bite of the dressing, then rolled a strip of duck meat inside a piece of French bread and ate it.

Her eyes dilated. "Did he offend you?" she said.

"Here's the lay of the land, Karyn. A hit man for the New Orleans mob, a genuine sociopath by the name of Mingo Bloomberg, told me I did the right thing by not getting involved with Aaron Crown. He said I'd get taken care of. Now I'm offered a job."

"I don't believe you."

"Believe what?"

"You. Your fucking presumption and self-righteousness."

"What I told you is what happened. You can make of it what you want."

She walked away through the shadows, across the leaves and molded pecan husks to where her husband was talking to a group of people. I saw them move off together, her hands gesturing while she spoke, then his face turning toward me.

A moment later he was standing next to me, his wrists hanging loosely at his sides.

"I'm at a loss, Dave. I have a hard time believing what you told

Karyn," he said.

I lay my fork in my plate, wadded up my paper napkin and dropped it on the table.

"Maybe I'd better go," I said.

"You've seriously upset her. I don't think it's enough just to say you'll go."

"Then I apologize."

"I know about your and Karyn's history. Is that the cause of our problem here? Because I don't bear a resentment about it."

I could feel a heat source inside me, like someone cracking open the door on a woodstove.

"Listen, partner, a guy like Mingo Bloomberg isn't an abstraction. Neither is a documentary screenwriter who just got whacked in the Quarter," I said.

His expression was bemused, almost doleful, as though he were looking down at an impaired person.

"Good night to you, Dave. I believe you mean no harm," he said, and walked back among his guests.

I stared at the red sun above the sugarcane fields, my face burning with embarrassment.

IT was raining hard and the traffic was heavy in New Orleans when I parked off St. Charles and ran for the colonnade in front of the Pearl. The window was steamed from the warmth inside, but I could see Clete Purcel at the counter, a basket of breadsticks and a whiskey glass and a schooner of beer in front of him, reading the front page of the Times-Picayune.

"Hey, big mon," he said, folding his paper, grinning broadly when I came through the door. His face was round and Irish, scarred across the nose and through one eyebrow. His seersucker suit and blue porkpie hat looked absurd on his massive body. Under his coat I could see his nylon shoulder holster and blue-black.38 revolver. "Mitch, give Dave a dozen," he said to the waiter behind the counter, then turned back to me. "Hang on a second." He knocked back the whiskey glass and chased it with beer, blew out his breath, and widened his eyes. He took off his hat and mopped his forehead on his coat sleeve.

"You must have had a rocky morning," I said.

"I helped repossess a car because the guy didn't pay the vig on his bond. His wife went nuts, said he wouldn't be able to get to work, his kids were crying in the front yard. It really gives you a sense of purpose. Tonight I got to pick up a skip in the Iberville Project. I've got another one hiding out in the Desire. You want to hear some more?"

The waiter set a round, metal tray of raw oysters in front of me. The shells were cold and slick with ice. I squeezed a lemon on each oyster and dotted it with Tabasco. Outside, the green-painted iron streetcar clanged on its tracks around the corner of Canal and headed up the avenue toward Lee Circle.