The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (4 page)

Finally Bauer returned to Blanchette.

“Where’s Shade?” he asked.

“I’m not on Shade watch this week, Captain.”

Bauer stared down at him. “You know, Blanchette, for a short guy you’re awful fat—anybody ever tell you that?”

“No person now living, sir. A gentleman wouldn’t say it anyway, I know that from reading the ‘Dear Abby’ in the paper.”

“So, you’re a literate man, Blanchette. Have another doughnut and
you’ll be two of them.” Bauer started toward the door, then stopped. “I’m going over to the mayor’s house. He’ll want to be kept informed by the tick-tock on this. When Shade manages to get here you and him talk to the wife and girl, then meet me on Second Street.”

“Sure, Captain.”

In the front room, between the den and the main door, was a large, overstuffed, underused leather chair. Blanchette sank into it, then lit a cigar and waited for Shade. As he smoked he thought about Alvin Rankin. About forty-four, forty-five, a product of Pan Fry, Saint Bruno’s historically black section; smart and tough, blessed with the rare talent to know who to be tough to and who to outsmart; a coming power of the Democratic Party, with increasing clout as Pan Fry residents began to actually vote, rather than put X’s where told to and stay quiet the rest of the decade. Alvin Rankin could have been, Blanchette knew, the first black mayor of Saint Bruno. That was motive number one in flashing neon. The banner of social advancement did not wave at the head of a unanimous throng, and Saint Bruno was, and had long been, a city of tenacious suspicions and disparate convictions. Saint Brunians were imbued with an unfriendly blend of ancestral pride, selfish toughness, and purposeful ignorance that served to produce succeeding generations of only slightly less narrow views than the generation that had laid the bricks that still paved the streets.

Blanchette stared toward the room in which Rankin’s future had been diverted. Yes, he could’ve made it, all right, Blanchette thought. Not with his next breath or two, but by the time he was fifty, fifty-five. It was up to someone else now.

The end of his cigar had a thumb of ash on it, so Blanchette flicked it on the rug, then rubbed it in with his foot. He looked around the room, feeling slightly outclassed by the numerous objets d’art and fashion that he could not even name. Yup, pretty swell place for a smoke who’d never moved away to sing in falsetto or shoot balls through hoops. Hard hustle to get here in this hometown.

Shade walked in and Blanchette stood up.

“Glad you could make it, Shade. Didn’t interrupt you in something
important, I hope. You know, like a date with that slinky brunette you been seein’, there—the one who moves like her back ain’t got no bone. What’s her address again?”

Shade moved past Blanchette without an answer and entered the den. At the sight of Rankin’s body there was a tremor of weakness through his legs. It was unprofessional, he knew, but the shockingly limp postures of the dead were something he would never be hardened to. To make this one more meaningful was the fact that he’d known Rankin slightly.

“Didn’t take any chances, did they?” he said.

“No,” Blanchette said. He moved with a pugnacious waddle that had a limber grace to it, despite his build. “Two bullets—zip, zip—in the back of the head. That usually turns the trick.”

“Who found him?”

“His wife and daughter. They’re across the street.”

“Bauer been here?”

“Just left. He went to hold the mayor’s hand till the bogeyman leaves his dreams.”

Shade examined the room, stepping around the photographer and the fingerprint boys.

“Damn clean piece of work,” Shade said. His brown hair was long, combed back on top, and he brushed at it with his hand, a habit he had when distracted. “It must’ve been a friend, huh.”

“That’s a sickeningly liberal definition, there, Comrade Shade, for a guy pumps two bullets in the back of your head.”

“It’s point-blank,” Shade said. “In his den, watching TV. That sounds like they knew each other to me. Knew each other well enough that old Alvin could relax with him. Or her.”

Blanchette picked up the
TV Guide
and scrutinized it.

“I’d say he was changin’ channels,” he said. “He’s only been dead an hour, maybe two. That’d be my guess, and from what the wife says it’s pretty close.”

Shade was listening with only a fraction of his attention. Alvin Rankin’s house, his death, his limp body, all put Shade in mind of the Rankin he’d
admired since youth. He was much younger than Rankin, but he clearly remembered the audacious teenaged Rankin who’d boldly made the trip down the ridge from Pan Fry toward the river and Frogtown. He’d come alone, and he’d had a proposition for the Frogtown boys: if we all quit pounding each other for sport we’d have less cops around and more spaciousness, you know, and then we could all take care of business. The Sadat of Pan Fry had had a vision and the nerve to give it a try. Shade had been impressed. Of course the older Frogtown boys had stomped the uppity smoke into a near sludge and dumped him from a Chevy at the foot of the Pan Fry hill, but ever since then Shade had paid attention to Rankin’s career. He had been a man to watch, always.

Blanchette tapped Shade on the shoulder.

“Looks to me like he was turnin’ from ‘Nightline,’ there. Must’ve got bored hearin’ how the Israelis and PLO still won’t kiss and make up, even though we’re all anxious for the wedding party. So he gets up to turn to something else.” Blanchette flicked a thumbnail on the guide. “I’d say he was switchin’ over to forty-one for the late movie, which was
The Good Humor Man
.”

“Why do you figure that? Or is it just a chubby guy’s intuition?”

Blanchette held his hands to the sky and shrugged.

“That’s what I’d’ve turned to. I loved that movie when I was a kid. ‘Niat pac levram.’ Saw it at the old Fox, you know.”

“I’d forgotten that, How,” Shade said. “That was 1953, wasn’t it? I remember I went to the library that day, instead.”

“Yeah,” Blanchette said. “You got that book, 101
Bad Jokes,
didn’t you? Then you memorized it.”

Shade began moving the furniture, searching for shell casings. He was getting the details of the room straight in his mind.

“There’s no sign of forced entry?” he asked.

“None. Not unless a delinquent genie misted through the keyhole. No scratches on the locks, no crowbar work.”

The intimacy of such crimes, the friend with a gun, a grudge, and the natural opportunities to get even, gave them an aspect of tragedy that other crimes lacked.

“It had to be someone he knew and trusted.”

“Rene,” Blanchette said, “he was black, but he was still a pol, you know. They play the game just like Irish ward bosses, or German congressmen, buddy. It’s their job to be approachable by people with a vote. That’s why they get the vote. All that does, far as I can see, is narrow it down to members of his own party.”

“That,” Shade said, “is a suggestion that will no doubt have the county chairman giggling shrilly into his brandy snifter.”

With her hands spread on either side of herself, Mrs. Cleo Rankin leaned back on the couch, her head held high, and met Shade’s gaze with unmistakable suspicion. Her hair was feathered at the sides and back, with a wave on top. Mocha skin was contrasted skillfully with red glossy lipstick and white jewelry.

“That’s everything I told the captain. That’s all there is.”

“Did Janetha notice anything?” Shade asked.

“She came in behind me. I’m not certain that she even clearly saw—what I saw. She’s upstairs now.”

“Alvin carry a lot of cash on him?” Blanchette asked abruptly. “Was it a habit of his to flash a roll down at the corner store, places like that?”

Cleo’s eyes darkened.

“After he’d parked his pink Cadillac, you mean?” she asked.

“I didn’t mean that,” Blanchette said with no apology in his tone. “But his wallet is gone. It’s the only thing that is, too.”

Cleo slid her glance from the detectives and studied the wall.

“I don’t think he was killed for his wallet,” she said.

“But we all know that even two hundred or so is pretty attractive around here,” Shade said.

“You mean that’s the price of murder here, amongst us degenerates of Pan Fry? That
is
what you mean?”

“Or Frogtown,” Shade said. “Or a lot of other places with prettier names.”

Cleo lifted her head and paused, then made a decision. She reached
into her black leather handbag on the couch beside her. Her hand came out clutching a beige wallet.

“It was in his pocket,” she said, and handed it to Shade.

“Mrs. Rankin,” Shade said. “Did you tamper with anything else over there? It’s important to know.” Crimes were tough enough, Shade thought, without misdirections created by family members of the victim. “It would’ve been better if you’d left it there.”

Blanchette stood next to Shade as they examined the wallet.

“Empty,” Blanchette said. “The friend who nailed him was a triple threat—friend, killer, and thief.”

“No,” Cleo said. “Here.” She pulled a wad of cash from her purse and extended it to Shade. “I took the money out of the wallet.”

“Why did you do that?”

Cleo’s face became taut, then bitter. “I didn’t want the first police on the spot to have a big scuffle over who gets it, that’s why!”

“Hunh,” Shade grunted. He knew there were thieves in uniform, cops who picked up a few watches at suicide scenes, and a bottle or two of liquor that seemed to be handy. He’d seen it happen once, and that cop wouldn’t be doing it again. “That was the first thing that occurred to you when you saw your man smeared on the floor?”

Cleo flinched. She picked a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table, and lit it with a heavy silver lighter. “Alvin was successful and I’ve always been thankful for that. You don’t know how thankful. But because of his work we never left Pan Fry. And I’ve never forgotten that I grew up here, know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Shade said. “I think maybe I do.”

“When I was a girl we lived over here about four blocks, with a patch of mud for a yard and three families in the house. One day I was helping my grandmother make a mulberry cobbler. Her heart gave up while she was carrying the cobbler to the oven. She dropped, the cobbler dropped, and I went screaming for help. I was fifteen,” she said with a rueful laugh. “Old enough to know better. But I didn’t. Finally two policemen came. I still remember one of them named Burris. Ugly redhead, you know, with freckles like a disease. Well, they stood over
grandmother and looked down at her awhile, then said, ‘Auntie Sally, she ain’t gonna finish that cobbler.’ They started looking around the room. It was amazing that I was the only one home that day, and they walked around the house until they came to a big old carved clock we had. It’d been in the family for years. ‘Go down to Lehman’s Store and call the dinge ambulance,’ Burris said. And I did, like that might help her somehow. When I got back the police were gone, grandmother was still laying where I’d left her, and there was a big empty spot where the clock used to be.”

There was silence, then Blanchette shuffled his feet and raised himself from against the wall where he’d slouched.

“What a sad story,” he said. “Where’re the Kleenex?”

“See?” Cleo said, pointing at Blanchette. “I probably saved the peace by hiding that cash. He’d pocket it in a minute.”

After hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, Blanchette rocked back on his heels and grimaced.

“It’d be my job to collect evidence,” he said. “I think it’s
here
, or in there. That’s the manual, and I live by the book. Anybody can see that.”

Cleo stood and smoothed her skirt. She walked to the door and held it open.

Shade stuffed the cash into the wallet, then followed her to the door.

“I really have nothing more to say,” Cleo told them.

“Sorry for your tragedy, there,” Blanchette said as he passed her and stepped out onto the lawn.

Blue and red lights twirled in the night, and white uniforms were moving a sheet-covered litter from out of the house across the street. Many voices filled the air, some terse, some entertained, and some angry. A crowd had gathered, but it was largely silent, listening to the officials on the scene.

“Get some rest,” Shade said.

“You just do your job.”

“You don’t even have to tell us that, lady,” Blanchette snapped.

“Hey,” Cleo said. She held her hand out, palm up. “The cash, please.”

Shade stroked his hair, and shook his head very slowly.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “But it’s evidence now.”

Cleo stiffened and withdrew her hand.

“You are
so
right,” she said.

The two detectives studied one another for a moment, then Blanchette shrugged. Shade turned around and handed the wallet to Cleo.

“I don’t have to do this,” he said. “But I am.”

Cleo accepted the wallet, then backed inside the doorway.

“You got some guilt,” she said. “That’s all it is.”

Then she firmly swung the door closed.

3

S
HADE AND
Blanchette drove through the streets of Pan Fry, past small wooden homes that wobbled from the century or more of hard living that they’d seen, past three-story group housing where half the apartments had windows rotting out and the other half had neatly painted window boxes full of red and yellow flowers. Occasionally there was a minor leap upscale, and there would be a prim, crisply clean, color-coordinated house, with a carport and a chain-link fence.

“How,” Shade said. “I’ve got to ask you this. Just what is the edge in rudeness? What advantage do you think it gives you?”

After an amused and amiable grunt, Blanchette said, “I could give a good reason. I know one. I mean, I could say it’s because that stirs people up, makes them blurt things that make my job easier. I could tell you that one.”

“But you won’t.”

“Not to you, here in the dark and all alone. I mean, the truth is, people bug the shit out of me half the time. Their bullshit bores me. I don’t mind a little bullshit but, you know, you ought to astonish me with it, not nod me off.” Blanchette looked at Shade and winked. “You know that. The ones that really get me are the ones who say, ‘Society made me do it,’ ” Blanchette mimicked. “ ‘I didn’t have a bicycle when I was eight, Your Honor, so naturally I can’t be blamed for hammerin’ nails through the nun’s head and rapin’ the priest when I was twenty.’ Shit, man, I grew up on dirt, and now I work for more of it.”