The New Iberia Blues

by James Lee Burke

  “No, join me.”

  “I’ve already eaten. I’ll take just a few minutes.”

  “Come in the kitchen. Is something wrong?”

  “I was talking with my daughter this evening.”

  She pointed at a chair by the table. The kitchen was bright and clean, every surface wiped down. Through the window I could see the long green sweep on the yard and the shadows of the trees on the grass and the reflection of lights on the bayou. My body felt strange, my skin dead, my ears humming. I did not know why I was there. My legs were turning to rubber. I sat down.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Desmond Cormier wants to cast you in his film, even though he knows you’re investigating a homicide that might involve people he works with.”

  “He hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

  “I’m sorry for breaking in on you like this.”

  She put a sandwich and two scoops of potato salad on her plate, then set a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses on the table. “Will you please tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “There are two or three bad guys in the department,” I replied. “One of them is Axel Devereaux.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s a misogynist.”

  “You think I care about a man like that?”

  “He may have poisoned Sean McClain’s animals.”

  “Ugh,” she said. “Is somebody going to do something about that?”

  “There’s no proof.”

  “Every thought in that man’s brain is on his face. What’s he doing in the department, anyway?”

  “From what I gather, you grew up in a traditional neighborhood in New Orleans, Bailey,” I said.

  “I’m not making the connection.”

  “In Vietnam we used to say ‘It’s Nam.’ Same thing here. This is Louisiana. That means we’re everybody’s punch. Wars of enormous consequence are fought in places nobody cares about.”

  “You don’t have to protect me, Dave. Or patronize me.”

  “I believe you. I’d better be going.”

  She looked at her food. She hadn’t touched it. “How long has your wife been gone?”

  “Three years.”

  “A car accident?”

  “I’d call it a homicide. Why do you ask?”

  “My husband died when he was only twenty-five,” she said. “He was in Iraq, but he had to come home to get killed. I know what it’s like to lose someone and be alone.”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “Don’t pretend,” she said.

  “Desmond is right. You look like the actress who played Clementine in the Henry Fonda movie.”

  “I guess I’ll have to see it sometime.”

  “Stay away from those guys, Bailey. They’re sons of bitches.”

  “I’ll try to watch out for myself.”

  I didn’t know if she was being ironic or trying to be polite. I half-filled my glass with tea and drank it down. “I’ll see you Monday morning.”

  “Come by anytime. Can I drive you home?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be decades younger. I wanted to be everything except what I was. Unfortunately, at a certain age, wanting something you can’t be or wanting what you can’t have can become a way of life.

  • • •

  WHEN I GOT home, Alafair and Lou Wexler were sitting in rocking chairs on the gallery.

  “Where have you been?” Alafair said.

  “I took a walk.”

  “How about telling me next time?” she said.

  “How do you do, Mr. Robicheaux?” Wexler said.

  “I’m solid. How about you?”

  “It’s a lovely night,” he said.

  “Y’all are going to Arizona on Tuesday?” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, rocking back and forth.

  “In your private plane?”

  “Actually, I rent it,” he said. “I get a corporate break.”

  “Is that how it works?” I said. “I think I’ll incorporate my pickup truck.”

  “Come in and let’s have some pecan pie, Dave,” Alafair said.

  “I have to make a call on a bartender I insulted.”

  “You did what?” she said.

  “A black guy who bartends at that blues joint on the bayou,” I said. “I told him he should adopt a mop and pail as his coat of arms.”

  “You didn’t,” Alafair said.

  “I was in a bad mood.”

  “Don’t go there,” she said.

  “I won’t be long.”

  She got up from the chair. It rocked weightlessly behind her. “Please.”

  “You worry too much,” I said.

  “Can we go along?” Wexler said.

  “No need. They cater to a rough trade,” I said. “You know how Louisiana is.”

  “Try a couple of ports in West Africa,” he said.

  “That’s right, you and Butterworth were mercenaries,” I said.

  “I was a security contractor. Butterworth was a degenerate fop.”

  “You like war, Mr. Wexler?”

  “No, I hate it. I also bloody well hate those who profit from it.”

  “Security contractors don’t?” I said.

  “With respect, sir, we saved the lives of thousands who would have been massacred in their villages.”

  “That’s a noble endeavor,” I said. “Top of the evening to you.”

  I got into my truck and fired up the engine. Alafair walked to my window. The belt on the fan was squealing, the gearshift knob throbbing in my palm. Wexler remained on the gallery. “You either end this attitude or I won’t be back,” she said to me.

  “Security contractor, my ass,” I said.

  “I mean it, Dave.”

  My heart was a lump of ice.

  • • •

  I DROVE TO THE blues bar on the bayou. The night was sliding into the hours when the psychological metabolism in certain people shifts into reverse and the worst in them comes out and they feed fires that warp and reconfigure who they are. The sky was black, the air dry and full of dust, the parking lot lined with gas-guzzlers. A man and woman were arguing by the entrance. The woman hit him and stormed away. He grinned at her, grabbed his package, and said, “Bite.”

  I went inside and sat in the shadows at the end of the bar. The singer who called herself a Mississippi nigger was playing an instrumental with two Creole men who wore porkpie hats and firehouse suspenders and puff-sleeved pink dress shirts that looked as fresh as roses. My bartender friend with the waxed mahogany knob for a head drummed his fingers in front of me. “What’ll it be, chief?”

  “I look like I have feathers in my hair?” I said.

  “Same question. You want some ribs? You want a beer? What d’you want?”

  “I made a crack about a mop and pail and Stepin Fetchit.”

  “I was all busted up about that.”

  “I apologize.”

  “I ain’t got all night.”

  “Give me a diet Dr Pepper.”

  “This ain’t a soda fountain.”

  “Give me a Dr Pepper and give the lady on the bandstand whatever she’s having.”

  “She drinks double Scotches and milk.”

  “Then give her that. One other thing?”

  “What?”

  “Has Hilary Bienville been in?”

  “The working girl? I hear she not taking any friction, get my meaning?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lloyd.”

  “You’re a charmer, Lloyd.”

  “You need to see a psychiatrist, man.”

  “You’re probably right. Give me a plate of ribs and dirty rice,” I said, pushing a twenty at him.

  Ten minutes later, the singer with the scar like a snake wrapped around her neck sat down next to me, the double Scotch in one hand, a glass of milk in the other. She wore a black skirt and a cowboy vest and a brocaded maroon shirt and enough jewelry to rattle.
She sipped from the Scotch, her eyes fixed on me. “Thanks, baby. Where you been?”

  “Hanging around.”

  She touched my can of Dr Pepper. “You drink that?”

  “That’s what I’m drinking tonight.”

  “You go to meetings?”

  “For quite a while. I’m not a good example, though.”

  “Church and all that jazz?”

  “I figure it beats blowing my brains out.”

  “What are you doin’ in here, baby?”

  “I need to know who Hilary Bienville’s manager is.”

  “Ax her.”

  “She doesn’t want acid in her face?”

  “Don’t be shopping around for information ain’t nobody gonna give you,” she said.

  “You never told me your name.”

  “Bella.”

  “Bella what?”

  “Delahoussaye.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  She rattled her jewelry. “Know what that sound is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Same sound you make when you walk,” she said. “You dragging a chain, honey-bunny, just like me.”

  “You read minds?”

  “I can read yours.”

  “I owe a debt to some people who have no voice,” I said. “That’s because they’re in the cemetery. Or buried in a body bag in a rain forest on the other side of the world.”

  “You won’t do them no good by joining them.”

  I pushed my plate toward her. “Want some ribs?”

  “You think you’re too old?”

  “Old for what?”

  “Me.”

  “My wife was killed in a car wreck three years ago. I spend most of my time alone.”

  She looked into space. “The dead don’t care. The world is for the living. You got to take your shot.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” I said.

  She poured her Scotch into her milk; it swirled like caramel against the glass. She drank the glass empty, her eyes closed, the lids covered with blue eye shadow. She got up from the bar stool. “I get off at two. Hang around.”

  “You don’t know me. I could be a dangerous man.”

  “But you ain’t.”

  As I went out the door, I heard her singing a song written by Big Mama Thornton and made famous by Janis Joplin. It was one of despair and loss and unrelieved misery, one that maybe only a black woman of Thornton’s era could adequately understand. The song was “Ball and Chain.”

  At two a.m. I pulled up to the side door of the club.

  • • •

  BELLA DELAHOUSSAYE STARED at me in the headlights, then got in and closed the door without speaking.

  “Where’s your guitar?” I asked.

  “Locked up. What’s that you got?”

  “A bouquet and a box of chocolates.”

  “Everything is closed.”

  “Not Walmart.” I started the engine. “Where do you live?”

  “In St. Martinville.”

  “First I want to take you somewhere else,” I said.

  “I ain’t choicey. Except about my men.” She touched my thigh.

  I drove to a cemetery in St. Martin Parish, not far from a large lake and a wetlands area that bled into the Atchafalaya Swamp. The moon was down, the sky black and swirling with dust from the fields. Oddly, the lake glowed with a luminosity that seemed to radiate from beneath the water. When I was a child, we believed the loup-garou lived under the lake and was responsible for the disappearance of both animals and people.

  I cut the engine and took a second bouquet from behind the seat and walked to the passenger side of the truck and opened Bella’s door.

  “What are we doing?” she said.

  “Need to show you something.”

  She stepped onto the ground, a little off balance. I fitted my hand around her upper arm. I could feel the muscle twitch, see a glint of fear in the corner of her eye. She pulled away from me. I took a penlight from my pocket and clicked it on. “That yonder is my wife’s crypt.”

  “Why you showing it to me?”

  “Her name was Molly. She was a Maryknoll nun in El Salvador and Guatemala. Friends of hers were murdered there. Our government abandoned them, even covered up for their killers.”

  “Why you telling me this?”

  “I want you to understand what I mean when I say I owe the dead a debt. My wife spent her life helping others. A bad man T-boned her with his truck at high speed. There were no witnesses. The bad man put the blame on her and got away with it. He’s dead now. I didn’t kill him, but I wanted to.”

  Bella pushed her hair into a curl behind her neck. Her eyes were elongated, more like an Asian’s than a black woman’s; they seemed to take on a wet sheen, like the darkness in the lake. “I don’t want to be disrespectful, hon, but I ain’t up for this kind of gig.”

  I walked to the crypt and squatted and placed the flowers in a vase by the name plate. I stood up, my back creaking. “I lost another wife to men who killed her rather than me. Her name was Annie. For the rest of my life, I have to find justice for Molly and Annie. I’ve killed several men as a result. I’m glad I did, and I think the world is a better place for it. In the nocturnal hours, I sometimes want to kill more men. That’s how I feel tonight. But in the morning I won’t feel that way.”

  “Ain’t you figured it out yet? I’m in the life. I’m the kind of people you hate.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re an artist.”

  “You learn the blues at the crossroads, darlin’. There ain’t no going back once you been there.”

  “Don’t let anyone sell you that crap, Bella. Who’s Hilary Bienville’s pimp?”

  “The pimp is a middleman. Hilary don’t have no middleman, just a piece of trash wit’ a badge looking out for her.”

  “Axel Devereaux?”

  “Wasn’t me said it,” she replied. “Take me home, please. I don’t sing the blues, I live them. Ain’t shooting you a line, darlin’.”

  We arrived at her small house in St. Martinville just as a thundershower blew through town and clattered like hail on my truck. I put a raincoat over our heads and ran with her to the door, then said good night and drove back to New Iberia.

  Chapter Ten

  I SLEPT LATE ON Saturday morning and woke to birdsong and sunshine in the trees. Alafair was gone and had not left a note. Snuggs was sitting on the back steps, his white coat smudged with mud, a cut like a three-inch piece of red string threaded through his fur. I wiped him off with paper towels and dressed his wound and took him inside and fed him on the floor. The cut was jagged, as if he’d hooked himself going over a chain-link fence.

  “You okay, old fella?” I said, stroking his head.

  I went outside and looked for Mon Tee Coon. There was no sign of him. I called Clete and told him of my conversation with Bella Delahoussaye the previous night and my worries about my animals.

  “Axel Devereaux is shaking down local hookers?” he said.

  “On one level or another. Maybe they’re just hauling his ashes.”

  “You think he hurt your coon?”

  “He probably killed Sean McClain’s pets.”

  “Everyone thinks that?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he’d do the same to yours when he’d be the first guy people would suspect?”

  “He’s a sociopath and a sadist,” I said. “He can’t change what he is. If he’s not cruel to an animal, he’ll be cruel to a person.”

  “How about if I break his wheels?”

  “That’s out.”

  “You called me, Dave.”

  “Sorry I did.”

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” he said.

  “I’m like you. I want to do it the old-time way. But we can’t.”

  “Speak for yourself,” he said. He hung up.

  I called him back. “I apologize.”

  “Quit tormenting yourself, big mon. We handle the actio
n. They deal the play, we scramble their eggs.”

  Wish it worked that way, I thought. But I didn’t try to argue.

  • • •

  ON MONDAY MY office phone rang at 8:06 a.m.

  “Detective Robicheaux speaking,” I said.

  “I tried to get you all weekend,” a man’s voice said. “Nobody would give me your number.”

  “That’s because it’s unlisted,” I said. “Who is this?”

  “Never mind who I am. You’re the guy working the Travis Lebeau homicide, right?”

  “I’m one of them.”

  “You figure the AB did it?”

  “You need to tell me who you are, partner.”

  “No, you need to listen. Maybe the AB caught up to Travis, maybe not. Or maybe some of your own people did it.”

  I punched in Helen’s number on my cell phone and placed the phone on my desk so she could overhear my conversation with the man as soon as she picked up. “Am I talking to Mr. Tillinger?” I asked.

  “Call me Hugo. You know my history, right? The fire, the trial, me busting out of that hospital?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I didn’t kill either my daughter or my wife. I wouldn’t harm a woman or a child under any circumstance.”

  “Why’d you come here?”

  “To find Miss Lucinda. To ask her for money so I didn’t have to steal it, then get as much gone from here as I can.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “That’s why I called. I aim to get those who done it.”

  “We don’t have any leads,” I said. “Maybe I can establish a back channel with you.”

  “Yeah, in a heartbeat. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “A guy who’s con-wise, a fellow who perhaps went down on a bad beef.”

  There was a brief silence. “Did Miss Lucinda suffer?”

  “She wasn’t tortured or violated, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But she suffered?”

  “She was injected with heroin. Maybe she just went to sleep.”

  “But she suffered just the same, didn’t she?”

  “You know the answer to that,” I said.

  “Who’s the last person she saw?”

  “We ask the questions,” I said.

  “It’s done a lot of good, hasn’t it.”

  “She was supposed to get on a flight from Lafayette to Los Angeles. She never boarded the plane.” Again the line went silent. “Did she talk to you about movie people?” I asked.