Bring Him Back Dead (12 page)

Mullen swaggered down the corridor. A moment later, high heels clicked on the cement floor. Then, carrying the same wicker basket, escorted by Deputy de la Ronde, Olga looked in at him through the bars of the cell.

“Your wife with some lunch,” De la Ronde said. He unlocked the door. “The sheriff said she could come in. Just why I don’t know.”

Olga gave the basket to Latour and perched birdlike on the very edge of the bunk. “Thank you.” She smiled at De la Ronde. “You have been very kind.”

The deputy shrugged and walked back the way he’d come.

Olga added to Latour,. “It is more substantial this noon. I had more time to prepare it.”

Latour sat beside her. There were hot baking-powder biscuits and crisp fried chicken in the basket. It had been the night before since he’d really eaten. He was hungry. He ate, alternating chicken legs and thighs with bites of sweet-potato pie.

“You don’t have to do this, honey. We feed our prisoners in this country.”

“But not such food as this?”

“No. Not such food as this.”

Latour continued to eat. At least one good thing had come out of the mess he was in: He felt closer to Olga than he had in two years. It was easier to talk.

“What did you think of the hearing this morning?” he asked her.

She was frank. “It was not very nice. Especially when the men read what the girl said you did to her.”

“I’m sorry you were in the courtroom.”

“I was ashamed to be there.”

“She’s mistaken. I didn’t do it. Believe me.”

Olga wasn’t entirely convinced. “So you told me before court. But if you are not guilty, why do they keep you here?”

“Because I have to stand trial.”

“For killing the old man and doing what the girl says you did?”

“That’s right.”

“But why did not Mr. Avart tell them that you did not do it?”

Latour tried to explain. “He did. That’s what a not-guilty plea means.”

Olga shook her head. “This I do not understand. Mr.
Avart, as your attorney, had the right to address the court?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did he not tell them this morning that this thing could not be?”

“He did.”

“No. All he did was make a speech that made all the people hate you. All around me I could feel hate. Why did he not tell them you did not need this girl, that you had just been with me?”

“For one thing, I didn’t tell him.”

“You are ashamed for having made love with your wife?”

Latour was amused. “Of course not. And if you’re willing, I want you to testify at my trial as to just what happened before I went out there.”

“Why did you go out there?”

“To assure myself that the girl was safe.”

“You told him that?”

“I did.”

“Then why did he not tell the court?”

“Because it was just a preliminary hearing and Jean didn’t think it was wise. He thought it best for us to save our ammunition.”

“Ammunition?”

“My side of the story.”

“He preferred to let them think what everyone in town is thinking?”

“What are they thinking?”

“That you are the same man who abused three other girls in a similar manner.”

Latour lost his appetite. “Where did you hear that?”

“Georgi told me. He heard it in one of the drinking places.”

“He would.”

“This is not true?”

“Of course not.”

Olga persisted. “You have nothing of which to be ashamed?”

“No.”

“Then why did you not stand up and say it in court?
Why did you not shout it to the people? Why did you continue to let them think what they are thinking?”

“I did. I pleaded not guilty.”

Olga shook her head. “That is not the same. A man who has nothing to fear shouts his innocence from the rooftops.”

There was sense in what she was saying. Latour admitted it. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have insisted on stating my side of the story. But Jean didn’t think it was wise.”

Olga wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “He is your friend?”

“My good friend.”

Olga started to say something more and changed her mind. Instead, woman-like, she reverted to the subject that was of the most interest to her. “These other girls who were abused …”

“What about them?”

“It was not you who abused them?”

“No.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

Olga, as always, was practical. She asked simply, “Then if your needs are not satisfied elsewhere, why do you not come to me more often than you do?”

Latour hoped De la Ronde wasn’t listening. He cracked his knuckles, embarrassed. What could he tell her? That he was too proud to accept begrudged favors, that every time he took her he had a feeling that she despised him for availing himself of his marital rights after the way he had failed to live up to his promises to her?

He said, “It’s difficult to explain.”

Olga’s voice was small. “It must be. This I do not understand. Have I ever refused you?”

“No.”

“Did I refuse you last night?”

“No,” Latour admitted. He tried to express what he felt. “And it was very beautiful.”

Tears filled Olga’s eyes and overflowed on her cheeks. She made no effort to brush them away. “Then why did you not tell me so? Why did you leave my arms and dress
and go out into the night at two o’clock in the morning? Georgi says there can be but one reason.”

“What’s that?”

“That you do not really care for me, that you are sorry you took me for your wife. That to you I am but a convenience to be used when none of your other women are available.”

Latour protested. “But that isn’t so. There aren’t any other women.”

“This I am supposed to believe?”

“You have to believe me, darling.” Latour realized, shocked, that it had been two years since he’d used a term of endearment, since he’d called her anything but Olga. “I mean that, sweetheart. I — ”

He attempted to take her in his arms. Olga stood up and pushed him away from her. For a moment he thought she was going to slap him.

“Now you call me darling. Now you call me sweetheart. In a cell. When you are accused of murder and rape.”

“I didn’t kill Lacosta. I never even touched the girl.”

“I don’t care,” Olga said. “I don’t care what you are accused of doing. I am not thinking of that.” She cried harder. “I am thinking of what you have done to us, to me.”

Latour made another attempt to take her in his arms and again Olga evaded his embrace.

“No,” she said coldly. “Please. I would much rather you did not touch me. So I am not being a dutiful wife, I am sorry. But there are times when even a wife has to express the normal feelings of a woman.”

She turned and left the cell, her heels making small clicking sounds as she walked down the long corridor without once looking back.

Latour watched her until De la Ronde opened the steel door separating the cell block from the office and closed it behind her. Then he returned to his bunk and sat studying the prison bars.

If Olga’s anger welled from the source he thought it did, he’d been an even bigger fool than the dead Lacosta.

More important to both of them, he’d wasted two years of their lives.

“Now you call me darling. Now you call me sweetheart. In a cell.”

The fault was his, not hers. Olga had reason to feel the way she did.

E
ARLY AFTERNOON
passed and the evening shadows began to lengthen. Olga didn’t bring him his supper. Latour ate the jail fare, hard fried bream and the inevitable soggy grits. He washed it down with a tin cup of weak coffee, eating not because he was hungry, but because he wanted to conserve his strength.

It could be he would need it.

If what he was thinking was correct, night would bring a mob to howl around the old jail, perhaps to do more than howl.

If time was of the essence, and he was beginning to believe it was, whoever had tried to kill him and, failing that, had framed him couldn’t afford to allow him to live to be tried by due process of law.

The hell of it was he still couldn’t figure how anyone could possibly gain by his death. If Olga felt the way he thought she felt, she didn’t want to remarry. That eliminated Georgi.

Sheriff Belluche and Tom Mullen had eliminated themselves. And when he died wouldn’t matter to some punk he’d pushed around.

Despite the reporters and mobile television unit that Tom had mentioned, business went on as usual. There was the usual blare of brass and tinkle of pianos on Lafitte Street. The cells around him began to fill with the lesser offenders. There was nothing else Sheriff Belluche and the deputies under him could do. They were caught up in the vicious circle of their own making. From now on, anything they did was wrong.

None of his fellow prisoners were friendly. The drunks
and brawlers despised him for having, in their opinion, been two-faced, for talking one way and acting another. The arrested hustlers and good-time Mabels hated him for another reason. To them sex was something to be sold or given away, not taken. Rapists undermined the very foundation of their business.

A hard-faced brunette with a long page-boy bob best summed up their opinion. Locked in the cell across the hall, the cell in which the other girl had been, she asked:

“Why didn’t you spend ten dollars and have yourself a good time? Girls like me spend twenty years growing what we have.” To her it was purely an economic problem. “Then guys like you come along and take it for nothing. If you were so damn hard up, there isn’t a girl in town who wouldn’t have given you credit. Or maybe you’re one of these unnatural guys who’re queer for pain. I had a guy once who offered me fifty dollars if I’d let him whip me. But at least he offered to pay for it.”

Latour didn’t bother to answer her.

The hot night of the delta pulled moist, black shades over the high, barred window of his cell. It was almost eight o’clock when Bill Ducros opened the door and locked Jean Avart in with him.

The attorney looked strained and worried. He was profusely apologetic. “I’m sorry, Andy. I’ve been working all day trying to get a lead on why someone might want to frame you into a situation like this. I’ve talked to every barman and pea-eye in town.”

“With what success?”

“None.”

Avart sat on the bunk beside him and put his brief case on the floor. “According to the men with whom I’ve talked, you’ve been a pain in their necks by trying to enforce law in a town in which there is no law. But none of them stand to gain a thing by framing you. In fact, in view of the stink that’s been created, they’re wondering just how long it will be before they have to lock their doors and move on.”

“How’s the situation on the street?”

“You want me to be frank with you?”

“Of course.”

“Not so good,” Avart said flatly. “The boys are beginning to gather on the corners and in the bars. To hear them talk, you’d think it was the first time a girl had ever been raped.” He was again apologetic. “And it seems they’re afraid that because you and I are members of the two oldest families in the parish, a fix is in the making.”

“You know better than that.”

“I know and you know, but they don’t.” The lawyer spread his hands. “Not that it does any good now, but I’m beginning to wish I had told our side of the story at the hearing. It may be that we won’t get a chance to use the ammunition we saved.”

A hard lump formed in Latour’s stomach. His throat felt constricted.

“They wouldn’t dare.”

Avart continued to be frank. “I wish I could think that. But the statement that Mrs. Lacosta gave to one of the reporters this afternoon hasn’t helped things any. According to her, you’re a fiend. According to her story, you used every part of her body but her ears.”

Latour fought a desire to be sick.

Avart put a cigarette in his mouth. “The hell of it is, her story coincides in almost every detail with the stories told by the other three girls who were abused during the past two years. Which means, when we do go to trial, we’ll really be fighting four cases instead of one. Do you happen to remember where you were on April fifteenth and November second of last year? And March sixth of this year?”

Latour shook his head. “Unless a man needs and is planning an alibi, how would he remember where he was on any given date?”

“True.”

“Mullen stopped in for a few minutes this noon and said you’d suggested that he and Jack check on Rita in Ponchatoula.”

“That’s right. On her morals. Her reputation for veracity. The possibility that either she or some former lover might have killed Lacosta and be trying to palm off the killing on you.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Possibly.” Avart stood up and paced the cell. “But I
have to have something to work on. You know I consider myself a fairly capable attorney. But the way things stand right now, your trial is going to be a farce.”

He ticked off the items on his fingers. “An old man makes an open confession that he is unable to satisfy his young wife sexually. He gets so drunk he passes out and you are obliged to drive both of them home. The young wife admits that during your first visit, while she was changing into something cooler, you accidentally saw her in the nude.”

The big vein in Latour’s temple began to throb. “Where did you learn that?”

“It was in the statement she gave to a reporter.”

“Did she tell him she practically offered herself to me? That we made a tentative arrangement to drive up to Grand Isle this morning?”

“Not in the statement I read.”

“Well, she did and we did.”

“That’s interesting if we can prove it. But I don’t see how we can. All we have to go on are the known facts.” Avart continued to enumerate them.

“Some hours after you drove her home and left, at two o’clock in the morning, she was awakened by a knocking on the screen door of the trailer. A man’s voice she recognized as yours demanded entrance. Because she was sleeping in the nude, she hesitated long enough to put on a robe. A moment later the knocking awakened her husband. He staggered out, demanding to know what was going on. Before she could inform him, the screen door was wrenched open and two shots were fired. Then you, presumably, ripped off the robe she was wearing and threw her down on the floor and abused her.”