The New Iberia Blues

by James Lee Burke

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Lucinda Arceneaux had a chain on one ankle. The medal on it had been pulled off.”

  “I got that. What’s the connection with Hugo Tillinger?”

  “I don’t know, Helen. I’m lost. From everything we hear, Tillinger’s head is full of superstition and general craziness.”

  “Do you know how many people in southern Louisiana wear a charm or religious medal on their body, including you?”

  We had reached a point where we were taking out our anger on each other, which, in a police investigation, almost always signals a dead end in the making.

  “I’ll talk to Sean,” I said.

  “Here’s the rest of it. When Devereaux passed him in the corridor this morning, he went ‘Bow-wow’ and ‘Meow-meow.’ ”

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT THE weather was hot and dry, the end of summer floating like ash on the wind. The sky flickered with heat lightning, like flashes of artillery that began on the horizon and spread silently through the clouds. A drunk plowed into a power pole and knocked out the electricity on East Main, and the three air-conditioning units in my house made a groaning sound and died like sick animals. I took a jar of lemonade from the icebox and rolled it on my face, then sat in my chair on the bayou and drank the lemonade and watched the stars fall out of the sky.

  The phone was ringing and the message light blinking when I came back inside. It was 2:13 a.m.

  “Where’ve you been?” Helen said.

  “Outside.”

  “Need you on Old Jeanerette Road,” Helen said. “Between Alice Plantation and the drawbridge. Hang on. I’ve got to get a news photographer out of here.”

  The location made my stomach flip-flop. It was a short distance from the trailer of Hilary Bienville.

  Helen came back on the line. “We’ve got a body. Or what’s left of it. Haul ass, will you?”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Good question,” she replied.

  Chapter Eight

  THE MOST SURREAL aspect of the scene was the juxtaposition of the antebellum plantation homes on the road, the carriage lamps glowing like candles on a wedding cake, and the drag on the asphalt. It began by the LSU experimental farm and continued in a wet serpentine line almost to the drawbridge, a journey of about half a mile. That was where the vehicle stopped and someone cut the rope that had been cinched around the victim’s neck.

  He lay in the weeds on his side, his eyes open, clotted with blood. Most of his face and hair had been sanded off. His teeth and shoes were gone, his jaw broken. His legs looked like bloody sticks clothed in rags.

  Emergency vehicles, their flashers rippling, lined the road. “There’s no ID on him,” Helen said.

  “His name is Travis Lebeau,” I said.

  “Clete’s snitch?”

  “Just a bumbling, hapless guy.”

  She shined her light on a green teardrop that still remained on the skin. “He was in the AB?”

  “Until they sold him to the Black Guerilla Family.”

  “I can’t believe we’ve got these guys here,” she said. “Wasn’t it the AB that dragged a black man in Texas about twenty years back?”

  “They had white-supremacist tats. Maybe they were AB, maybe not. This isn’t racial.”

  “Yeah, but it’s them.”

  I walked with a flashlight down the trail of blood and skin. The moon had come from behind the clouds and lit the bayou and the cattails and canebrakes in the shallows. There was blood at the base of two oak trees that grew by the road. I hoped Lebeau had been knocked unconscious when he struck them. I clicked off my flashlight and walked back to where Helen was standing.

  “You don’t look good,” she said.

  “Not enough sleep.”

  “Right.”

  “Lebeau tried to sell me information so he could score or get out of town,” I said. “I blew him off.”

  “You didn’t trust his information?”

  “No.”

  “So what were you supposed to do? Give him the money anyway? Put the cork in it, Pops.”

  I clicked on my light again and shone it in Lebeau’s mouth. “I don’t think his teeth were broken on the road.”

  She stared at me.

  “The roots are gone,” I said. “I think his teeth were pulled before he was dragged.”

  I ached for a drink. I think Helen did, too. Wonder why cops bring the job home or to a bar? It’s no mystery.

  • • •

  WE HAD NO leads. Travis Lebeau had been staying at a men’s shelter in Lafayette. No one there remembered seeing him the day of his death. He was a loner, had no family or friends, and took little interest in the other men at the shelter. We put his mug shots in local newspapers and on television and asked anyone with information about him to call the department.

  On Friday I got a call from a bartender in North Lafayette named Skip Dubisson. At one time he had been a pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals farm system, but he’d lost an arm in Iraq and now worked at a low-bottom bar in Lafayette’s old unofficial red-light district north of Four Corners. “I’m pretty sure your guy was in here, Dave. The one whose picture you put on TV.”

  “Travis Lebeau?” I said.

  “He didn’t give his name. But yeah, same guy, a week ago. He wanted to set up a tab. I think he wanted to get laid, too.”

  “Did he come in with anyone? Make any friends, female or otherwise?”

  “I didn’t pay that much attention,” he said. “My regulars keep me busy, know what I mean?”

  “You’ve had some bad dudes in?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “The Aryan Brotherhood?”

  “Who knows? Everybody’s got sleeves these days, all blue, wrist to the pits, lots of swastikas. Race-baiting is back in style.”

  “This isn’t about race.”

  “In this place everything is about race,” he said.

  I drove to Lafayette in my pickup rather than a cruiser and parked in front of the club. It was a wretched place on a backstreet, the parking lot full of flattened beer cans, the trash barrels overflowing and crawling with flies. I went inside and stood at the bar. Skip saw me from the far end and poured a Dr Pepper in a glass packed with ice and dropped two cherries and an orange slice into it and set the glass on a napkin in front of me. His upper left arm was fitted with a prosthesis. The IED that took his arm had also disfigured the side of his face, puckering the tissue like a heat burn on a lamp shade. But he was still a handsome man, as though defined by an internal radiance rather than his wounds. I’d never once heard him complain or even make mention of his war experience. “How’s business in New Iberia?” he asked.

  “Just the usual effluent. Want to check out some of our clientele?”

  My iPhone was loaded with mug shots of outlaw bikers and members of the Klan, Christian Identity, Aryan Nations, the American Nazi Party, and the AB. I watched as Skip scanned through them.

  “Is it coincidence that all these guys look stupid?” he said.

  “That’s a pre-prerequisite.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’ve never seen any of them.”

  “You said Lebeau wanted to get laid.”

  “He was definitely the guy hanging on to a couple of soiled doves.”

  “Can I talk to them?”

  He scratched his face with his prosthetic hand. “I don’t remember which ones he talked to, Dave. He was drunk and didn’t have any money. I felt sorry for him.”

  “He didn’t have trouble with anyone?”

  “No. What was he inside for?”

  “Manslaughter knocked down from first-degree homicide.”

  “He was actually dragged behind a car?”

  “Somebody pulled his teeth first.”

  “Jesus, I thought Iraq was bad. Sorry I couldn’t be more help. You want another Dr Pepper?”

  “There’re two more photos I’d like you to look at.” I clicked on the unshaved fro
nt-view and side-view mug shots of a man in prison whites that I had gotten from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

  “Yeah, he was in here,” Skip said. “A nice-looking guy. A little edgy. He wasn’t shopping for the trade. I wondered what he was doing here. He drank soda pop.”

  “That’s Hugo Tillinger. He’s an escapee from the Texas penal system. You’re sure he was here?”

  “Yeah, last week.”

  “Was he with Travis Lebeau?”

  Skip looked into space, then back at me. Someone was tapping on the bar for another drink. Skip served him and came back. “I remember him because he sat alone at the end of the bar and ordered a soft drink. When a working girl came on to him, he was polite but not interested. In a dump like this, it’s trick, trade, or travel. It puts me in a bad spot sometimes. I mean, telling people to beat it.”

  “You told Tillinger to leave?”

  “I let him slide. He seemed like a nice guy. That attitude gets me in trouble with the boss.”

  “Think hard. Did you see him talking to Lebeau?”

  “Yeah, maybe. I can’t be sure.” He closed and opened his eyes. “It seemed like they knew each other.”

  “Did Tillinger leave with anyone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I was about to give up.

  “But he said something weird.”

  “Like what?”

  “ ‘You ought to be in the movies.’ I said, ‘You wising off?’ He said I had him wrong, that he had some movie connections with people who got Hurricane Carter out of jail. He said I was photogenic. I told him to get his eyes examined.”

  “That’s Tillinger. That’s our guy.”

  “What was he in for?”

  “Burning his wife and daughter to death.”

  Skip blew out his breath. He poured the remainder of the Dr Pepper can into my glass. “You know what’s the most depressing aspect of my job?”

  “No.”

  “Cleaning the bathroom at two a.m. and thinking about the people who were in there,” he said. “Ever have that feeling?”

  Every day, I thought. But I didn’t say it.

  • • •

  I WENT BACK TO the department. On the way to my office, I passed Axel Devereaux in the corridor. He looked through me. When a guy like Devereaux looks through you, you’d better watch your ass.

  “Axel?”

  He turned around.

  “Want to meet somewhere and talk this out?” I said.

  “Talk it out? I feel like ripping your face off.”

  “Because I hit you?”

  “No, because you’re a goddamn liar.”

  “I lied about what?”

  “Me killing Sean McClain’s pets. You spread it around.”

  “You mocked him,” I said. “You imitated the sounds of his cat and dog.”

  “Whoever told you that is a liar. Just like you.”

  “At my age, I don’t have a lot to lose, Axel. Know what I mean?”

  “You’ll see me coming, asshole. I ain’t a sneak that goes around bad-mouthing people.”

  Unless you are familiar with the nature of Southern white trash, you will not understand the following: They are a genetically produced breed whose commonality is a state of mind and not related to the social class to which they belong. Economics has nothing to do with their origins or their behavior. You cannot change them. They glory in violence and cruelty and brag on their ignorance, and would have no problem manning the ovens at Auschwitz. That’s not hyperbole. When I looked into Axel’s eyes, I knew my slap across his face had been a slap across his soul and that one day I would pay for it.

  “You dealt the play when you disrespected my partner,” I said. “But I shouldn’t have struck you. For that I apologize. That also means I’m done.”

  He put a toothpick in his mouth, then removed and stared at it, a glint in his eye. “So you got no problem.”

  I walked away, then glanced back at him before entering my office. He was still standing in the corridor, by himself, silhouetted against a window like a black cutout without features or humanity.

  • • •

  I HAD THREE OPEN homicide files on my desk: Lucinda Arceneaux floated out to sea on a cross; Joe Molinari hanged in a shrimp net from a tree; and Travis Lebeau tortured and dragged to death. In terms of forensic evidence, we had nothing that would necessarily connect one case to the other. But the histrionic nature of each homicide couldn’t be denied. There were also threads that seemed to overlap. The man Lucinda Arceneaux tried to get off death row had broken out of a prison hospital and come here rather than a large urban area where he could hide more conveniently. He’d also gone out of his way to tell a bartender he knew people connected to the film industry. The man who had befriended him, Travis Lebeau, had ended up dead. But where did Joe Molinari fit in? His life had been lived almost invisibly. Had he been selected randomly by a lunatic and posed to represent the Hanged Man in the tarot, or had Bailey Ribbons and I let our imaginations go unchecked?

  Normally, the motivation in any premeditated homicide involves sex or money or power or any combination of the three. The similarity in the Arceneaux and Molinari homicides was the lack of motivation and the possibility of religious fanaticism bordering on madness. The horrible death of Travis Lebeau may have been simply a revenge killing by the AB. But the fact remained that his friend was the escaped convict Hugo Tillinger, and Tillinger was a friend of Lucinda Arceneaux’s. Tillinger had known both people, and now both were dead.

  Tillinger was the only lead we had. Skip, my bartender friend, had said Tillinger was a nice guy. A jury in Texas had thought otherwise. But what did we actually know about him?

  He may or may not have killed his family. He was argumentative and had inflexible moral attitudes. He had probably broken into three fishing camps but had taken little of value and seemed to have no record of dishonesty. Skip had said he didn’t belong in a bar that was one cut above a hot-pillow joint. A Texas gunbull had called him a lying son of a bitch you shouldn’t turn your back on.

  All of which added up to take your choice.

  • • •

  THAT EVENING I went home late and stood at the back of my property and threw moldy pecans into the current and watched them sink out of sight. Snuggs sat by my foot, sniffing the breeze, his tail draped over my loafer. I heard Alafair walk up behind me. “What’s goin’ on, big guy?”

  “Eighty-six the big-guy stuff, please.”

  “I signed on with Desmond’s group,” she said. “I might be going out to Arizona.”

  “Sorry—what?”

  “I’m going to do the rewrite on the script. I’m also going to have a small acting role.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “I’ll be flying out to the location with Lou next week.”

  “Lou Wexler?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “What about it?”

  “He’s old.”

  “He’s older than I am. That doesn’t mean he’s old.”

  “It’s your life, Alf.”

  “Why do you have to say that, Dave?”

  “I don’t trust these guys. When they get what they want, they’re gone. Every time, without exception.”

  “So I should stay away from the movie business? How about publishing? Should I stay away from publishing houses?”

  I arced a pecan into the middle of the bayou. “I’m at a dead end on three homicides. One thing I’m sure of, however: Antoine Butterworth is mixed up in them.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” she said. “Besides, Lou hates his guts.”

  “Why do you call this guy by his first name?”

  “It’s what people do when they know each other. I don’t mean in the biblical sense, either. You think Desmond is corrupt?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then maybe you won’t mind that he wants to cast Bailey Ribbons.”

  “That’s her business.” I threw a pecan into the bayou.

&nbs
p; “You have feelings for her?”

  “Cut it out, Alafair. When are you leaving?”

  “Tuesday. Lou has a private plane.”

  “Have a good trip.”

  I picked up Snuggs and put him on my shoulder and walked back to the house and opened a can of cat food for him and fed him on the step. Mon Tee Coon was nowhere in sight. Then I washed my hands in the sink and went out the front door without saying goodbye or telling Alafair where I was going. I walked down East Main in the twilight, under the canopy of live oaks, past the city library, counting cadence in my head, and went inside the Little River Inn and sat at a table at the back of the dining room, my mind filled with thoughts and desires that boded well for no one.

  Chapter Nine

  “YOU EATING TONIGHT, Dave?” the waiter asked.

  “What do you have that’s cold?” I said.

  “Iced tea?”

  “What else have you got?”

  “Whatever you want,” he replied.

  “You have French vanilla ice cream?”

  “Sure. Want anything on it?”

  I gazed out the window, a fleeting tic in my eye. “What do you have?”

  “Crème de menthe, brandy and chocolate, plain chocolate, butterscotch.”

  There was an oak tree wrapped with tiny white lights in the backyard. The sky was purple, a sliver of moon hanging by the evening star.

  “I don’t want anything,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just sit here a minute.”

  “You got it, Dave,” he said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  After the waiter was gone, I went to the restroom, then out the door. I kept walking through town, past the Shadows and across the drawbridge at Burke Street, and on up Loreauville Road to an Acadian-style cottage that sat on a one-acre green lot on the bayou. All the lights were on. I twisted the bell.

  “Why, Dave. Come in,” Bailey said when she answered. She was dressed in sandals and stonewashed jeans and a shirt printed with faded flowers.

  I stepped inside.

  “Where’s your truck?” she said.

  “I was out for a walk.”

  “On Loreauville Road?”

  The living room was immaculate. I could smell food on a stove. “I’m sorry if I caught you at supper.”