The New Iberia Blues

by James Lee Burke

  I got off the stool and worked my way through the crowd onto the porch and then into the parking lot. In the distance I could see the lights of the sugar mill, the smoke from the stacks an electrified white against a black sky. I wanted to be on a cane wagon in the year 1945, safe with my parents, far removed from the metabolic addiction that had been my undoing since I was sixteen. I heard someone walk on the gravel behind me.

  “You have trouble with that guy, Dave?” Sean said.

  “It was a misunderstanding.”

  “You don’t look right.”

  “I’m off my feed. I’m okay.”

  “You want me to drive you home?”

  “I think Bella Delahoussaye is in danger.”

  “The lady in the band?”

  “I think she may be a target of the guy who killed Lucinda Arceneaux.”

  “Oh, man,” he said. “Bring your truck around. I’ll tell my friends.”

  It’s funny how a simple kid like Sean McClain can make you proud to be an American.

  • • •

  IT BEGAN TO rain as we rolled into the black district of St. Martinville. The streets were wet and shiny, the streetlamps oily inside the mist. Up ahead I could see yellow pools of lightning in the clouds high above the town square.

  “I got to ask you something,” Sean said. “Hit me upside the head, if you want.”

  “What is it?”

  “Was you drinking back there at the club?”

  “I took a swig out of a drink I didn’t order.”

  He stared through the wipers on the windshield. A streetlight cast shadows that looked like rainwater on his face.

  “You don’t believe me?” I said.

  “It’s kind of like saying you didn’t know what the food was on your plate.” He looked at me to see how I would take it, then looked away.

  “You carrying?” I asked.

  “On my ankle. I didn’t mean no offense.”

  “I know that, Sean. You’re a good guy.”

  Yes, he was, and I wished I had not brought him along. Think back on your life. How many major decisions did you actually make? Or better put, how many decisions did you make that at the time seemed inconsequential but down the track had enormous influence on either you or others?

  I pulled to the curb in front of Bella’s cottage. A solitary lamp shone behind a window curtain. Her roof gutters were clogged with pine needles and Spanish moss and spilling over on the walls and windows. I heard Sean unstrap the Velcro holster on his ankle.

  “Stick it in the back of your belt,” I said.

  “Think I’m a hothead?”

  I cut the engine. “In the right circumstances, everyone’s a hothead.”

  We got out in the rain. I had put on a hat. The rain ticked on the brim and blew in my face. Sean wiped his eyes. “Want me to head around back?”

  “Stay behind me.”

  “Somebody give you a tip on this, Dave?”

  “No. No one. It’s just a feeling.”

  “Say that again?”

  I walked ahead of him. I had clipped my nine-millimeter on my belt. I tapped on the screen door and waited. There was no movement inside the house. Through the curtains I could see a lamp on a table by one end of the couch. I thought I could make out a shadowy figure at the far end, but I couldn’t be sure. The buildings on both side of Bella’s cottage were dark, the thick banana plants under her eaves impossible to see through. A bolt of lightning popped on the bayou, illuminating the yard like a flashbulb: The banana plants were as yellow as old teeth and streaked with black mold. Then the yard was dark again. I opened the screen and knocked hard on the inside door.

  “I’m going around back,” Sean said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Barricaded suspect.”

  “No,” I repeated.

  “That’s the protocol.”

  I reached for his arm. “Give it a minute. Don’t do anything you don’t need to do.”

  He pulled away from me. “You’re wrong on this, Dave. I’m going around back.”

  How do you convince a kid in the middle of an electrical storm that an unannounced nocturnal police visit to a neighborhood, particularly a black one, produces fear, and that fear gets people killed?

  He looked over his shoulder to assure me. “I got this covered.” He stepped into the middle of the yard, his hand tucked around the butt of the hideaway resting inside the back of his belt, the rain beading on his face. The clouds flared again, and a man who had been hiding in the banana plants bolted for the street. It made no sense. If the man feared us, why didn’t he run for the alley? Then I remembered that access to the alley was sealed off by a wood fence between Bella’s cottage and the neighbor’s house.

  “Police officer! Halt!” Sean said. He pulled his piece from his belt and pointed it in front of him with both hands. It was a .22 semi-auto.

  “Hold on, Sean!”

  “Son of a bitch has a gun.”

  “Let him go, let him go, let him go.”

  “The motherfucker has a gun. I saw it.”

  “Lower your weapon!” I shouted at Sean.

  The figure turned in the middle of the street; I don’t know why. Maybe he was trying to surrender. But he held his right arm straight out in front of him. Perhaps he was trying to show that he had a gun and was going to set it down. How do you put yourself inside the head of an armed faceless man who can park a pill in the middle of your face with a cat’s-whisker pull on the trigger?

  “Drop it! You hear me? Drop it!” Sean shouted. “Don’t think about it! Do it! Do it! Do it!”

  I saw the man’s wrist start to turn downward. Maybe he was going to set his weapon slowly on asphalt so it wouldn’t discharge. I had my badge out and was holding it so it reflected the streetlamp. I felt the situation begin to correct itself. “Just lower your weapon slowly and set it down and step away from it. We’ll all go home safe.”

  I thought I saw the man’s knees start to bend. I thought I saw a smile of recognition on his face. But I also saw the barrel of the Luger tilt upward as he started to squat down.

  Sean starting shooting, pop-pop-pop-pop, four or five or maybe seven rounds, I couldn’t count them. The bolt on his .22 semi-auto locked open on an empty chamber.

  The man with the Luger went straight down like a puppet released from its strings.

  “Fuck!” Sean said.

  I stepped off the curb. A car was coming down the street, its headlights sweeping across us. Hugo Tillinger was on his back, wearing a suit coat over a T-shirt, his face unshaved. His body looked like a broken question mark. There were two entry wounds in his throat, one in his chest, and one above his ear. His hand fluttered at his throat. A large red bubble issued from his mouth. The Luger lay by his side. I pushed it away with my foot and squatted down, my knees aching.

  “Where’s Bella?” I said.

  His eyes closed and opened.

  “Answer me. What did you do to her?”

  He shook his head. His teeth were red. A guttural word was trying to climb out of his voice box.

  Sean was standing beside me. “Dave, I didn’t want to do it.”

  I pulled him away from Tillinger. “Now’s not the time for it.”

  “I begged him to drop it. I never drew down on anybody.”

  “Put your piece away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s an emergency kit behind my front seat. Get the reflectors and the flashlight and flares and light up the street. The first-aid kit is under the seat. I’m going inside.”

  “Dave, I didn’t want to. You know that, right? He’s gonna make it, isn’t he?”

  “Listen to me. He dealt it. It was a righteous shoot,” I said. “I saw him raise the gun. You identified yourself and told him to drop his weapon. He refused the command. Your life was in danger. Say that last part back to me.”

  “My life was in danger?”

  “Say it again.”

  “My life was in danger.” />
  “End of story. You copy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get a bandage on his throat.”

  I got out my cell and called in the ambulance request and the shots-fired as I walked around to Bella’s back door. I draped a handkerchief over my hand and, with my thumb and one finger, turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Gas was hissing from the burners and oven. I clicked on my penlight. Bella’s acoustic guitar was on the floor, the sound box stomped into kindling, the neck broken in half, the bridge and strings a rat’s nest. A candle in a red votive was flickering in an open cupboard. I pinched out the candle, turned off the gas, and broke out the windows with a skillet.

  I walked into the living room and picked up the lamp on the table by the couch and held it above my head, sending the shadows back into the walls. Bella was sitting on the far end of the couch, her hands in her lap, her wrists fastened with ligatures, each of her eyes X-ed with tape. Her head rested on her shoulder as though she had dozed off on a streetcar in New Orleans at the end of the day. Except this was not New Orleans and she was not on a streetcar and her neck had been broken and a long-stemmed brass chalice with a rose in it had been fitted into her hands.

  I called Bailey on my cell phone. “Need you in St. Martinville, two blocks south of the square. Bella Delahoussaye has been murdered. Sean McClain put at least four rounds in Hugo Tillinger.”

  “How did this happen? I mean, about Sean.”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  “Tillinger is the perp?” she said.

  “I don’t know. The gas was on. A candle was burning ten feet away.”

  “You think he did burn his family to death and was doing a repeat?”

  “That’s why I need you up here.”

  “You okay?”

  “The killer put her in ligatures, taped her eyes so she looks like a cartoon character, and broke her neck.”

  Bailey arrived twenty minutes later. The medics were loading Tillinger in the back of their unit. Bailey came up the steps, wearing khakis and half-topped boots and a kerchief tied on her head, her badge hanging from a cord around her neck. The St. Martin detectives had already been through the cottage. The coroner was out of town. Bailey pulled on her latex and squatted down so she could look directly into Bella’s face. She stood up and lifted the hair off the back of Bella’s neck.

  “No contusions or bruising except for one abrasion on the left side, like a necklace or chain was torn off it,” she said. “I think whoever killed her hooked one arm around her head and snapped the vertebrae. He either has military training or has done it before.”

  “The last time I saw her, she was wearing a Maltese cross,” I said.

  “Like Hilary Bienville?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who killed her, if it wasn’t Tillinger? There was no one else around, correct?”

  “No one we saw.”

  “So why was he here?”

  I shook my head.

  “What happened with Sean?” she said.

  “Later.”

  Two St. Martin detectives in suits were standing in the doorway. One was smoking a cigarette. At my request, they had waited to remove the body.

  “Say, if you guys have a Ziploc, I’ll bag the chalice and the rose for you guys,” Bailey said.

  The detective who was smoking flipped his cigarette into the yard. “There on the front seat of the cruiser. Knock yourself out.”

  “Thanks. Oh, flag your cigarette butts, will you?” she said. “I’d hate for the guys at the lab to get your DNA mixed up with a homicidal maniac’s. You guys didn’t use the toilet, did you?”

  They stared at her as they would a space creature. I put a Ziploc in her hand. She removed the chalice and the rose from Bella’s fingers and slipped it inside.

  “He made her the Queen of Cups,” she said. “Hilary Bienville didn’t meet the standard, so he substituted this poor lady for his sacrificial offering.”

  “What does the rose mean?” I said.

  “A Freudian would probably say it’s sexual. But nobody listens to Freud anymore. What’s in the rest of the house?”

  “He destroyed her guitar in the kitchen.”

  “Any sign of forced entry?”

  “No.”

  “So he probably knew her. He taped her eyes because he’s a coward. He used X’s to degrade her. He bears animus toward the arts or music or creativity. He left the gas on and a candle burning so the house would blow up.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I think this has Tillinger’s stamp on it,” she said.

  “Because Tillinger tore heavy-metal posters off his daughter’s wall?”

  “Because the state of Texas believes he burned up his family.”

  “Earlier today Clete and I saw a guy with a rifle in a boat. He was looking at us through a telescopic sight.”

  Her eyes roved over my face. “Want me to take it from here?”

  “You think I’m imagining things?”

  She put her arm in mine. “Walk with me.”

  We went into the kitchen together. The wind was blowing through the windows I had broken, the linoleum shiny with glass. “How well did you know the woman?”

  “Well enough.”

  “You won’t hurt my feelings.”

  “She was an artwork, a Creole Venus rising from the sea with a guitar hanging around her neck.”

  “I smelled alcohol on Sean.”

  “He’s a one-beer kid. It wasn’t a factor.”

  “I also smell it on you.”

  “I picked up a drink by mistake.”

  She ran her hand down my arm and wrist and squeezed my hand and pressed her forehead against my shoulder. “If Tillinger didn’t do this, we’ll find the guy who did and gut him from his liver to his lights and hang him on a fence post. I promise you.”

  • • •

  THE AMBULANCE DROVE away with Tillinger. The plainclothes who’d flipped his cigarette in the yard was Jody Dubisson. He wore sideburns and had hair that looked like a black plastic wig, and chewed gum constantly and probably had something wrong with his wiring, but he wasn’t a bad guy. “The perp was trying to tell me something. I put my notebook and a felt-tip in his hand.”

  “We don’t know he’s the perp,” I said.

  “Yeah, Spider-Man probably did it. Want to take a look?”

  I opened the cover of the notebook. Tillinger had scrawled “AB” and “PRO” and “UNC” and “JAIL” on the first page.

  “Mean anything to you?” Dubisson said.

  “ ‘AB’ could stand for Aryan Brotherhood. The rest of it could mean anything.”

  He handed me two sticks of gum. “One for you and one for the kid.” He raised his eyes to mine. “Get me?”

  “Alcohol wasn’t a factor in the shooting.”

  “Did I say it was? You look like shit.”

  “It’s part of my mystique.”

  “Your what?” he asked.

  “Did you know Bella?”

  “Saw her a couple of times on the street. She was a juju woman or something?”

  I looked at the sky. It was roiling with black clouds. “I like to think she’s with the stars.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Robicheaux.”

  I put my finger on the first page of his notebook. “Can I have that?”

  “You can copy it. This is our collar.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  AT 10:17 ON Monday morning, Helen came down to my office. “I just got off the phone with the authorities in Texas. Guess what?”

  “They’re no longer in a hurry to get Tillinger back,” I said.

  “How’d you know?”

  “His medical care could run into millions.”

  She pulled up a chair. “Go over everything again.”

  I did as she said. Helen was a good cop, in my experience second only to Clete Purcel, and not someone you took over the hurdles. But I didn’t want Sean McClain hurt worse than he alre
ady was.

  “You left a bar and went to Delahoussaye’s house because you had a feeling?” she said.

  “That’s correct.”

  “You know how that will sound to others?”

  “That’s their problem.”

  “Sean McClain had been drinking at the club?”

  “He wasn’t impaired.”

  “How about you?”

  “I picked up a cup I shouldn’t have,” I said.

  Her jaw tightened.

  “Here’s the long and short of the shooting,” I said. “Tillinger pointed his weapon at us. Sean told him to drop it over and over.”

  “Tillinger pointed his gun at you or in your direction?”

  “That’s too fine a distinction,” I said.

  “I think you’re holding back on me.”

  She was right. Tillinger probably had thought I was in his corner. He was probably going to lower the weapon and place it on the asphalt. There may have even been a smile on his face. Then Sean had started firing. Maybe if he had waited two seconds more, the Luger would have been on the asphalt and Tillinger would have had his hands in the air.

  “I wish I hadn’t taken Sean with me,” I said. “If it’s on anybody, it’s on me.”

  “It’s an imperfect world, bwana. But we’re stuck with it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “St. Martin Parish thinks this is open and shut,” she said.

  “Based on what?”

  “Tillinger was at the scene with a gun in his hand. That might be a clue.”

  “Were there prints on the chalice?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Did Tillinger have gloves on his person?”

  “Jody Dubisson says he’s still looking,” she said.

  “This is a crock and you know it,” I said.

  “Simple people like straight lines.”

  “I think Tillinger was carrying the Luger to protect Bella, not to take her life.”

  “How would Tillinger know the killer was headed to her place?”

  “Maybe Tillinger was following him. He probably would have made a good cop. Helen, Tillinger is a human being. The guy we’re dealing with doesn’t have a category.”