Dead Man (19 page)

He snapped his fingers, the blonde opened the drawer of the bedside table, gave him ballpoint pen and paper. He sat down on
the bed to write the directions.

“Lafayette… Breaux Bridge… Henderson… Follow the levee to…” The blonde was on her knees in front of
him, busy fingers undoing the sash of his robe. “Right turn or… I see. Over the pontoon bridge. Gravel road… mmm-hmm… All
right… crossroads store. Road ends. Yes, I’ve got all that.”

He broke the connection, dialed three digits. The blonde’s hands were inside his pajama pants, stroking him erect. He said
to the phone, “Trask? We’re going after that bitch, you and Nicky be ready to roll in ten minutes…” Trask must have said
something, because he listened for a moment, then snapped, “No, I want to be there to watch her die. Before she does, I’m
going to…” He caught his breath and his threats against Vangie died as the blonde took him in her mouth. He told the phone,
“Make that twenty minutes,” and tossed it aside.

The Lafayette bus ran west along the I-10 causeway on trestles high in the air. The causeway had been built about twenty years
before on a Southern Pacific Railroad bed laid in 1908. Even now it was the only road that cut across the vast Atchafalaya
Swamp. On the empty seat beside Vangie was the attache case; her arm lay protectively over it like the arm of a mother cradling
her infant. Her face, reflected in the window, seemed superimposed on the wetlands below the causeway.

She wanted to cry. Poor scared Jimmy, she’d talked him into stealing the bonds to get back at Maxton for what he’d made her
do, and they’d grabbed the money and run. And now Jimmy was dead. She was alone with the bonds and she would be too afraid
to ever do anything with them.

Because of Dain. Treacherous, betraying Dain had made her believe he was giving her time to work on Jimmy, then… She’d be
more afraid of Dain than of Maxton, because Dain could find her again, except by now he’d be flying off with his blood money
in hand…

Dain had pulled off to the side of that same causeway and was out of his car to lean on the steel railing and stare. The Atchafalaya
had struck him like a blow, as if somehow here
was his destiny, as if here he would find all his answers. He found it fitting that the eye of devastating Hurricane Andrew
had come ashore in this area in 1992.

Now he faced his own devastation here in this breathtaking 2,500 square miles of bayous and lakes and waterways and swamps.
Forests of cypress and tupelo and ash and willow and live oak—some flooded, some not. Every kind of game from bear to wild
pig. Crabs and crawfish and bass and catfish. Cottonmouths and gators and snapping turtles to take off your fingers while
the mosquitoes flayed you alive.

How Marie would have loved to be standing here with him right now on the edge of this unknown, hot, wet, tropical world! Probably
Vangie, who’d been born here, was feeling that same lift of delight right now…

Dain straightened up abruptly. For the first time in five years he had thought of Marie as Marie, not as icon. In his last
nightmare, it had been Vangie blown away by the hitman’s shotgun. What the hell was happening to him?

Dain shivered in the warm dawn air, turned back to his car. He had a lot of miles to go and had no real idea of what he would
do when he got there. Wherever there was going to be.

The bus stopped at the Lafayette depot with a hiss of air brakes. Vangie was first off, minus her blonde wig and slanty eyeglass
frames. A few steps away from the bus she spun around in a series of uninhibited circles, attache case in hand, long raven
hair flying out from her head. She was suddenly ravenous.

The Ragin’ Cajun was a workingman’s sort of cafe, big and boxy, the walls mostly bare except for beer ads. She chose a table
near the back facing the door to see anybody coming at her. At the next table were two Cajun men in work clothes, with seamed
outdoor faces and callused hands cut and scarred from trotlines. How many Sunday mornings as a little girl had she eaten in
this very cafe with her papa and
maman?

When a pudgy teenage waitress brought her the mandatory cup of fragrant chicory-rich coffee, Vangie didn’t even
have to look at the menu. Ten minutes later she was tearing into eggs and sausage patties and grits and hot biscuits smothered
in country gravy, washing it all down with her third cup of coffee.

A man about her own age, very husky, very Cajun, dressed in work clothes, put coins in the jukebox, punched buttons with the
speed of long familiarity. He was thick and square, with laughing eyes and black curly hair and a wide shiny nose on which
the pores were visible. Just as he started past Vangie’s table she leaned back from her cleaned plate and drew a big breath
of contentment.

He glanced at her appreciatively, then did a double take as his eyes slid up across her face.

“Vangie?” he exclaimed. “Vangie Broussard?”

She looked up at him, tears sprang to her eyes. She said in a voice full of wonder, “You, Minus?”

“Dat’s me,” he admitted.

“How long has it been?”

“Dat mus’ be ten year. How your
maman
and papa?”

“I just got off the bus.”

“You ain’t seen ‘em yet?” He grabbed her arm, dragged her to her feet. “Den me, I tak off de morning work, drive you home
to see dem…”

The beat-up old ‘75 Ford 250 pickup with the 4
x
4 option went along the dirt track on top of the high levee. There was pasture
to the right, a narrow twisting bayou, well below flood stage now, to the left. When it reached an intersecting T-road of
gravel, the pickup went down across the bayou on a one-way pontoon bridge, very narrow, its tires thumping, drumming on the
bed of the bridge. On the far side it plunged into thick forest on a narrow road shaded by the hardwoods. Vangie was looking
about in unalloyed delight, her face very open and innocent.

“I’d forgotten how much I love this old swamp!” She half turned toward Minus on the wide vinyl seat patched with long strips
of silvery duct tape. “I’m goin’ back to the old camp on my papa’s fishing ground off Bayou Noire, and just fish and hunt
and trap crabs…”

Half an hour later, the truck broke out of the forest. It went along the gravel road to a narrower dirt track coming up from
the low slow brown reach of the Atchafalaya River to form a “T.” There was a little country store with a faded BROUSSARD’S
sign on the front and a converted houseboat tacked to the rear as living quarters. Toward the road were rough dearhound kennels.

They bounced down the dirt track; it dead-ended at the riverbank, below which a couple of boats were pulled up on a narrow
earth landing area. Minus stopped on the gravel apron in front of the store with a squeal of worn brake shoes.

Vangie got out with her attache case, stood looking up at Minus through the still-open doorway. “You come in, see Maman?”

Minus shook his head, tapped the watch on his wrist.

“Gotta work.
Ce soir
I be back, we all drink some beer.”

Vangie gave him a big grin.
“Tu dis.”

She slammed the door of the pickup, stood waving as it made a U-turn and went back the way it had come. She hesitated a moment,
then trudged across the gravel turnaround toward the store with an almost frightened look on her face.

Vangie climbed the rough unpainted wooden steps worn smooth by countless hunters’ boots, crossed the narrow plank
galerie
to press her nose against the screen door. No one was visible. She pulled it open, entered, it slammed three diminishing
times behind her, tinkling the attached bell. She set down her attache case carelessly beside the cash register on the front
counter as a woman called from somewhere in the rear of the store.

“You wait one little minute,
non?”

Vangie started at the remembered voice. “Sure.”

Just as it had been during a thousand daydreams in a hundred strip joints over the past decade. Shotguns and rifles upright
in a cabinet behind a front counter that held fishing lures, hooks, nets, line, rifle and shotgun shells. From the ceiling
hung rows of muskrat and nutria traps. Below a small black-and-white TV blurrily showing a lively Creole talk show, a large
screened box stood on four legs. It contained thousands of live crickets for sale as bait; a light inside
kept them actively chirping and jumping against the screen sides.

“Not a single thing different,” muttered Vangie to herself.

She bent over the cricket box to wrinkle her nose at the remembered acrid smell. She straightened, belatedly went back for
her attaché case, wandered down the aisle toward the rear where the voice had come from. There was a showcase with hard candies
and tinned fancy cakes and a giant glass jar of pickled eggs on top. She sucked a piece of candy as she moved past another
case filled with buckets, tubs, tinware, white-ash hoops for hoop nets, netting for gill nets and trammel nets, wire poultry
netting for crawfish traps.

Through an open doorway in the right wall were three rough wooden steps down to a small damp room where a row of live-bait
boxes took up the space except for a plank walkway around them.

Maman, in her mid-forties and blessed with remnants of Vangie’s same beauty, was bent over one of the bait boxes with a small
scoop net in her hand. She was a warm, vital woman with a lined, bright, open face, wearing a cotton dress of no particular
style. She glanced up at Vangie in the door frame at the head of the steps, then back at her work with a small wry welcoming
smile.

“Too much
tracas
for little-little money,
to dis?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Vangie softly. “Jesus, do I know.”

With a twirl almost like Vangie’s when she was dancing, Maman spun around at the sound of Vangie’s voice. A slow radiant smile
illuminated her features. She dropped her little scoop net, darted toward her daughter with open arms.

“Vangie! So beautiful you have become!”

They met at the foot of the steps; Maman enfolded Vangie in her arms. Vangie felt a flush mantling her features, embarrassed
and ashamed to be bringing her big-city trouble to this place.

“Ten years you gone,” exclaimed Maman, stepping back from their embrace. Her eyes twinkled. “You bring me some pretty little
grandchildren,
non?”

Vangie gave an uneasy laugh. “Um… not quite yet, Maman.”

Maman held her at arm’s length, impressed and pride-filled. She looked over Vangie’s shoulder, saw the attaché case.

“A secretary to an important man, my Vangie?”

“Ah…
non,
Maman. A… singer. And a… a dancer…”

“Singer? Dancer? Maybe I see you on the TV?”

“Uh… not quite yet, Maman.” She added uncomfortably, “I’d… like to stay for a while…”

“Stay? Of course you stay!” Maman gestured toward the front of the store. “Ten year ago you walk out dat door, you. Now you
back, Maman gonna keep you, not let you go!”

She nodded happily to herself and bent again over the live-bait tank. She deftly scooped the dead shad from the surface with
her little net and tossed them aside, casting sideways glances at Vangie and speaking with her eyes on her work.

“You think Maman not know how hard it is to make your way in dat outside world, dere? You got some trouble, Vangie, you tell
your
maman,
we fix it up real quick,
non?”

“Yeah, I got trouble, Maman…” She paused, added, “No trouble with the law, trouble with some men who want…” She paused again.
“They don’t know where I am, so I just need a… place nobody outside the parish knows about, okay?”

Maman winked at her gaily. “Okay, you,” she said.

They both laughed. Vangie spoke in a new tone.

“
Et
Papa? Where’s he?”

Maman laid aside her scoop and straightened up. She looked at Vangie with great love and pride in her face. She took her daughter’s
arm. “Out checkin’ de set lines, where else? Dat catfish, he been runnin’ real good, him.”

“Where?” demanded Vangie eagerly.

“Bayou Tremblant, by dat
boscoyo
knee of cypress where Dede catch de ten-poun’ bass on dat little-little perch hook.” They mounted the steps together. “We
got time for one
demitasse
of
café, non?
Den you go surprise him, you.”

Vangie only nodded silently, her eyes blurred with tears of relief and love and release and safety. She was moved beyond anything
she could have imagined. Arms around one
another, they went toward the living quarters at the back of the store.

Dain stopped the car nose-up next to a couple of others on the steep grassy side of the levee above the Breaux Bridge boat
landing. As he got out and locked it he could see, downslope beyond him, a concrete boat launching ramp and a U-shaped dock
with a dozen outboard motorboats moored. On the
galerie
of the store a couple of loungers paused in their checker game to look at him and make comment with appropriate gestures.

He went down the bank on his slippery leather-soled oxfords to the edge of the water, moving warily, obviously out of his
element. Stepping onto the dock, he stopped dead. Inverness was sitting in a flat-bottom scow moored to the dock, grinning
at him like Brer Rabbit from the briar patch. Dain walked out with deliberation, seeking his stance.

Inverness was going to be a complicating factor, for sure. He was a cop, with a cop’s ways. On the other hand, maybe without
him Dain would discover nothing at all in this unfamiliar world—he would be as competent in this environment as he was in
any other. Dain stopped on the dock above him.

“Back to San Francisco, huh?” said Inverness ironically.

“Change of plans, but how about you? I thought you’d accepted Zimmer as a suicide, pure and simple.”

“We still need Broussard’s statement. Since she’s Cajun, I figured she’d hightailed it for home. Most of ‘em do when they
think they’re in trouble. Course I’m not telling you anything new, since you’re here too.”

“A manhunter’s intuition,” said Dain, ironic in turn, then he had to chuckle. “It was her name. Broussard. Cajun. Originally,
the Acadians. Run out of Nova Scotia by the British in the seventeen hundreds. French descent. Still speak a patois. Evangeline.”