DR07 - Dixie City Jam (41 page)

'Save the comic book dialogue for after your trial. There's an
amateur theatrical group at the women's prison in St. Gabriel. You'll
fit right in.'

'I keep having this dream. There's a pump handle in it. It
feels hard in my hand, and it has moisture dripping off it. I wake up
all hot, thinking of a big dark policeman. I get hot even talking about
it. What's my dream mean, Dave?'

'I'll say adios now, Marie. Then I'll unplug the phones. Enjoy
the time you have left with Buchalter. I bet he really knows how to
capture a lady's, heart.'

There was a pause, then I heard a match strike against an
abrasive surface, the match head hissing, and her breath exhaling.

'Run the coordinates in the personals of
The
Times-Picayune
,' she said. 'If you don't, we reach out and
touch someone. No, not the sow or the little girl. Maybe the boogie and
her son; maybe your uncontrollable friend, Purcel. Will would love to
spend a few hours alone with Mr. Purcel.'

'Be careful what you pray for.'

'You're so clever. And the wifey so sweet. I'm glad you're in
the tropics where the sheep don't freeze up.'

I eased the receiver down in the cradle, then unplugged the
phone jacks in both the kitchen and living room.

I undressed down to my skivvies and sat on the bed next to
Bootsie in the dark. She was sleeping on her stomach, and I ran my hand
down the smooth taper of her back and over her rump and bare thighs.
Her skin felt hot, almost feverish, but she did not respond to my
touch. Outside the window, the trees thrashed and swelled in the dry
wind. I lay on top of the sheets and stared upward into the darkness,
the backs of my fingers resting against Bootsie's leg, the words of the
woman named Marie Guilbeaux like an obscene tongue in my ear.

The next morning I got up early and
drove back to New Orleans.
I stopped first at the library, or morgue, of
The
Times-Picayune
, then drove down St.
Charles and found Hippo Bimstine working behind the candy counter at
one of his drugstores in the Garden District. He wore a starched gray
apron over his white shirt and tie and rotund stomach, and his hair was
oiled and combed as tight as wire, his thick neck talcumed, his face
cheerful and bright.

Hippo had the confident and jolly appearance of a man who
could charm a snake into a lawn mower.

'Another nice day,' he said.

'It sure is,' I said.

'So why the dark look? You dump some money at the track?' His
smile was inquisitive and full of play.

'I guess I get down when I find out a friend has tried to
blindside me.'

'What are you talking here?' He tried to look me steadily in
the eyes.

'Max Calucci's been saying peculiar things about you, Hippo.'

'Consider the source.'

'I am. He's got no reason to lie. He says Tommy Lonighan told
him you removed some stuff about the Nazi U-boat from the public
library.'

'I'm under arrest for library theft?'

'Buchalter and his buttwipes used up my sense of humor,
partner.'

'We're talking in hieroglyphics here. You're mystifying me,
Dave.'

'I found a nineteen fifty-six
States-Item
story on Jon Matthew Buchalter's death in the files at
The
Times-Picayune
. When
The States-Item
folded, all its records were kept by
The Picayune
.
But I was careless and missed the story the first time around. I have a
feeling it's the one you took from the public library.'

'So you tripped over some big revelation from a rag of
thirty-five years ago?'

'Not really. Jon Buchalter was raving on his deathbed about a
large gold swastika on board a downed U-boat. Is that the secret you've
been keeping from me?'

He considered for a moment and scratched at his neck with one
finger. 'Yeah, that's about it. You satisfied?'

'No.'

'It's supposed to weigh forty-two pounds. It's got a gold
wreath around it, and the wreath is set with jewels. Big fucking deal,
huh?'

'You were willing to let me get involved with Nazis so you
could salvage the gold in a World War II wreck?'

'You got some kind of malfunction with your thought processes,
Dave. You keep forgetting it was you tried to squeeze every spendolie
you could from a finder's fee.'

'I don't let my friends hang their butts in the breeze for
money, either, Hippo.' I picked up a roll of mints from the counter and
set a half-dollar down on the glass. 'Thanks for your time. See you
around.'

I turned to go. Outside, the streetcar rattled down the
neutral ground in the sunshine.

'You righteous cocksucker,' he said behind me. A woman with a
magazine cupped in her hand replaced it on the rack and walked away.

'Excuse me?' I said.

'When you guys got nothing to support your own argument
against a Jew, you always take your shot about money. It takes a while,
but you always get to it.'

'You set me up, Hippo.'

'Fuck you I did.' He came around the edge of the counter. He
touched his finger against my breastbone. 'You want the rest-of the
story? The gold in that swastika was pried out of the mouths of Polish
Jews. It was a gift from Heinrich Himmler himself. You know what else's
supposed to be in that sub? Hitler's plan for the United States. I
don't let any man talk down to me because I'm a Jew, Dave. I don't want
you in my store.'

'I'll try my best to stay out of your life.' He went back
behind the counter and began knocking open rolls of change and shaking
them into the cash drawer. Then he stopped and slammed the drawer shut
with the flat of his pudgy hand. I walked outside, my face burning, the
eyes of a half dozen people fastened upon me.

Lucinda Bergeron was sanding the wood
steps on the back of her
house. The air was sunny and warm, and her hair looked damp and full
with the heat from her body and her work. She wore flip-flops and a
denim shirt that hung over her pink shorts, and blades of grass stuck
to the tops of her feet. She kept glancing up at me while she sanded.
The tiny gold chain and cross around her neck were haloed with
perspiration against her black skin.

'You go back on duty tomorrow?' I said.

'That's right. All sins forgiven.'

'How do you feel?'

'You know, one foot in front of the other, a day at a time,
all that jazz.'

I brushed off a step where she had already sanded and sat
down. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and wrapped a fresh piece of
sandpaper around a block of wood. She made a circle with her thumb and
forefinger and smoothed the paper against the grain.

'I want you to be careful, Lucinda.'

'Worry about yourself, hotshot.'

'It's a mistake to be cavalier about Buchalter, or Schwert, or
whatever his name is. There's nothing predictable about this guy or the
woman working with him.'

She raised her eyes to mine while her arm and hand kept a
steady motion against the step, 'I can't tell you how much I'd love the
opportunity,' she said.

'When you're forced to… to pop a cap in the line of
duty, something happens to you, at least if you're not a sociopath
yourself. The next time it goes down, you get sweaty, you hesitate, you
doubt your motivations. It's a dangerous moment.'

'You think I'll freeze up?'

'You tell me.'

'I don't have doubts about the man who hurt my child, believe
me.'

'When are you going to quit calling Zoot a child?'

'When I feel like it, Mr. Smart-ass.' She smiled, then worked
the nozzle loose from the hose, turned on the faucet, and drank, with
her body bent over, the backs of her thighs tight against her shorts,
the water arching bright across her mouth. She wet a paper towel and
wiped her face and neck and dropped it into a paper sack filled with
garden cuttings.

'I have some tea made. Come inside,' she said.

The porcelain and yellow plastic surfaces of her kitchen
gleamed in the sunlight through the windows, and the sills rang with
red and blue dime-store vases. I sat at the breakfast table and watched
her twist a handful of ice cubes in a towel and batter them on a
chopping board with a rolling pin, then fill two tall glasses with the
crushed ice and mint leaves and tea. The straps of her bra made a hard
line across the wash-faded thinness of her denim shirt.

She turned toward me with the drink glasses in each hand. Her
eyes looked at mine, and her expression sombered. She sat down across
from me and folded her hands.

'I think you're a good person, Dave. That means some things
aren't your style,' she said.

'I look like I have a clandestine agenda?'

'I've lived single for a long time. You recognize certain
things in people. Even without being told.'

'I don't know if that's too complimentary.'

'Purcel was here yesterday.'

'There's a warrant on him.'

'I'm still suspended. I should worry about a warrant on Clete
Purcel?'

'Why was he here?'

'He says one of the Caluccis' greasers will testify Nate
Baxter's on a pad. He told me about your trouble at home.'

'Maybe some people should stay out of my private life.'

'Oh, that's perfect. Your closest friends shouldn't worry
about you or try to help you?'

I felt my lips crimp together. I looked away from her
unrelenting stare.

I stood up and took my seersucker coat off the back of the
chair.

'Give me a call if Buchalter shows up,' I said, and walked
toward the front door.

She followed me. The sun made slats of light on her face,
causing her to squint as she looked up at me.

'Don't leave like this,' she said.

I took a breath. Her hair was scintillated with silver threads
and curved thickly on her cheeks.

'What am I supposed to say, Lucinda?'

'Nothing. You're a good man. Good men don't need to say
anything.'

The door was wide open so that nothing she did was hidden from
view. She put her arms around my neck and bent my face to hers, raising
herself on the balls of her feet, her knees pinching together, her
thighs flexing and pressing against me unavoidably; then she kissed me
on the cheeks, the bridge of the nose, the eyes, and finally once, a
light adieu, on the mouth, as her hands came loose from my neck and my
face felt as though it were covered with hot red dimes.

The chorus that condemns violence is
multitudinous and
unrelenting. Who can disagree with the sentiment? I think we're after
the wrong enemy, though. It's cruelty, particularly when it's mindless
and visited upon the defenseless, that has always bothered me most
about human failure. But my viewpoint isn't exceptional. Anyone in law
enforcement, social work, or psychiatric rehab of any kind carries with
him or her a mental notebook whose pages never dim with the years.

Sometimes in the middle of the night I remember cases, or
simply incidents, of twenty years ago that come aborning again like
sins which elude remission, except either the guilt is collective in
nature or the deed such a pitiful and naked admission of our tribal
ignorance and inhumanity that the mere recognition of it leads to
self-loathing.

Stephen Crane once suggested that few people are nouns;
instead, most of us are adverbs, modifying a long and weary sequence of
events in which the clearly defined culprit, with black heart and
demonic intent, seldom makes himself available for the headsman.

I remember: a cop in the Lafayette police station laughing
about how a friend rubbed his penis all over a black woman's body; a
black street gang who videotaped their beating of a retarded Pakistani
so they could show their friends their handiwork; an infant burned all
over his body, even between his toes, with lighted cigarettes; a
prosperous middle-class couple who forced the husband's parents to eat
dog food; high school kids who held a drunk against a barroom picture
window, then punched him through the glass; women and children
sodomized, a coed shot through the face in Audubon Park (after she had
surrendered her money), animals set on fire, a wounded cop flipped over
on his back by his assailant, who then put a pillow under his head and
slit his throat with a string knife.

I sincerely believe that we're attracted to films about the
Mafia because the violence and evil portrayed in them seems to have an
explanation and a beginning and an end. It's confined to one group of
people, who in their fictional portrayal even have tragic proportions,
and we're made to believe the problem is not endemic to the species.

But I think the reality is otherwise.

A random act of cruelty opened a door in the case I probably
would not have gone through by myself.

It had started to sprinkle when I stopped at Igor's on St.
Charles for a po'-boy sandwich and to call Bootsie and tell her I was
headed home.

'Call Ben Motley, Dave. He's left two messages,' she said.

'What's he want?'

'Something about Tommy Lonighan.'

'How you doing?'

'Fine.'

'You want to go out to eat tonight?'

'Sure. What's the occasion?' she said.

'Nothing special.'

'Is anything wrong?'

'No, why do you think that?'

'Because you always suggest going out to dinner when you feel
guilty about something.'

'Not me.' I looked out at the rain striking against the
half-opened windows of the streetcar.

'I'm sorry about last night,' she said.

'See you later, kiddo.'

'Hang on to your butt in the Big Sleazy.'

That's more like it, Boots, I thought.

I called Motley at headquarters in the Garden District.

'I got a strange story for you, Robicheaux,' he said. 'We've
had some fag bashers running around the city. A couple of them are UNO
pukes; the others are just ugly and stupid or probably latent queerbait
themselves. Anyway, they're always on the prowl for fresh meat down in
the Quarter. This time they picked up a transvestite on Dauphine and
took him to a camp out in St. Charles Parish. I think he blew a couple
of them, then they got him stinking drunk, pulled his clothes off, and
poured pig shit and chicken feathers all over him. Nice boys, huh?