Robicheaux

by James Lee Burke

  I used a stopwatch to compute the time it would take for the pickup driver to traverse the distance from the bend to the point of impact if he were driving the legal limit. The math led to only two possible conclusions: Either Molly ran the Stop sign, abandoning all reason; or she looked to the left, saw nothing coming, then looked to the right, saw the road was clear, and turned left without looking again and got crushed.

  But Molly never ran stop signs. She would never willingly break a law of any kind. The skid marks, now washed away, were no longer than eighteen inches in length, indicating the pickup driver saw her car only seconds before the collision. Everything in me told me that Molly probably failed to double-check the two-lane before she started her turn, and the pickup driver lied and was coming much faster than forty-five miles an hour. The causes of the crash were shared ones.

  Like many victims of violent crimes who never find justice, I became obsessed with speculations I could not prove. I told myself that Molly’s fate could have been worse, that the Toyota could have burst into flame while she was conscious and trapped inside, that she could have spent the rest of her life as a vegetable or disfigured beyond recognition or left a quadriplegic. I soon began to gaze into space at the office, in the middle of conversation, on a street corner, my hands balling, while others stared at me with pity and concern.

  I had never confronted the driver or even spoken to him, because he was part of an official investigation, and my contacting him would have been improper. But the day after I talked with Fat Tony, I drove up the Teche to what were called the Quarters, outside the little town of Loreauville. The Quarters were composed of cabins and shotgun houses that went back to the corporate-plantation era of the nineteenth century. Most of them were painted a yellowish gray and aligned in rows on dirt streets with rain ditches and bare yards where whites and people of color lived in harmony and seemed to enjoy the lives they had. On weekends the residents barbecued and drank beer on their small galleries, washed their cars in the yard, and flew kites and played softball in the streets with their children. I don’t mean to romanticize poverty. The Loreauville Quarters were a window into my childhood, a time when few people in the community spoke English and few had traveled farther than two parishes from their place of birth. It wasn’t a half-bad world in which to grow up.

  I found his name, T. J. Dartez, on a mailbox. I slipped my badge holder and my clip-on holster from my belt and put them under the seat, and stepped across the rain ditch into his yard. An old washing machine converted into a barbecue pit was smoking on the gallery, a chicken dripping in the coals. I heard children’s voices in back. I walked up the dirt driveway. A dented washed-out blue pickup was parked in a shed. An unshaved man in work pants and a clean strap undershirt was lobbing a Wiffle ball at two little girls armed with plastic baseball bats. His hair was black and greasy and curly on the back of his neck. He turned around, smiling. The stub of a filter-tipped cigar was clenched in his teeth. I had never seen him before.

  “You looking for somebody?” he asked.

  “Are you Mr. Dartez?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  I stared at him. I don’t know for how long. The little girls looked about six and eight. They had both gone silent. “I need to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  I glanced at the girls. “A serious matter.”

  “Y’all go he’p your mama,” he said.

  His house looked like a boxcar, a poorer version of mine, set up on cinder blocks. The girls went up the wooden steps and let the screen slam behind them.

  “You’re from the agency?” he said.

  “What agency?”

  “The bill-collection one.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  He looked at nothing. “You’re him, ain’t you?”

  “I don’t know who ‘him’ is.”

  “The husband of the woman in the accident.”

  “Yes, that’s who I am.”

  “What you want wit’ me?”

  “You know who Tony Nemo is?”

  “Who?”

  “You may not know him, but he knows you. He says you ran over a child in Alabama.”

  “That’s a damn lie.”

  “It didn’t happen?”

  “I got a DWI for driving drunk in a school zone there. I didn’t hurt nobody. I don’t drink no more, either.”

  “But you were driving faster than forty-five when you hit my wife, weren’t you?”

  Through the screen, I could see his wife and children staring at us. These were people for whom bad luck was not an abstraction but a constant; a knock on the door, a puff of wind, and their lives could be up the spout.

  “You always got your eye on the speedometer when you’re driving at night?” he said. “I think I was driving forty-five. I cain’t say for sure. She come out of the dark.”

  “Her lights weren’t on?”

  He tried to hold his eyes on mine. “I cain’t remember.”

  “Your lawyer told you to say that?”

  “Suh?”

  “You heard me.”

  His expression turned into a pout, like a child’s. “I ain’t got nothing else to say.”

  “I hear you tried to pump State Farm.”

  “I missed eight days of work. Who’s gonna pay for that? You?”

  “My wife was a nun in Central America,” I said.

  His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  “She was a former sister. She devoted her life to helping the poor.”

  “She’s a farmer—?”

  How do you get angry at a man who cannot understand or speak his own language?

  “If you were me, what would you do, Mr. Dartez? What would you feel?”

  There was a big thickly leafed shade tree by his garage. It was filled with wind, its leaves dark green against an orange sun. He stared at it as though he wanted to hide inside its branches. “This guy you call Tony? He’s a dago gangster you using to scare me?”

  “How do you know he’s a gangster?”

  “I know what goes on.”

  “I’m telling you he took an interest in you. I’m not sure why. I told him to butt out. I’m telling you to learn who your friends are.”

  “You’re my friend? A man who comes to my house and scares my wife and children?”

  I stepped closer to him. I couldn’t help my feelings, the surge of bile in my stomach, the visceral disgust I felt for his ignorance, my desire to do things with my fists that were ultimately a confession of defeat. He stepped back. “My old lady is calling the cops.”

  The wind shifted. I could smell his odor, the barbecue smoke on his skin, the grease in his hair. “You lied to the state trooper. Until you admit your part in the accident, you’ll never have peace.”

  “I’m sorry your wife is dead. She come at me. I didn’t do nothing wrong. If you won’t accept that, go fuck yourself.”

  “You had your warning,” I said.

  “My family heard that. What’s the sheriff gonna say if I call him and tell him that? Answer me that. Yeah, I didn’t think so. Fuck you twice.”

  I walked away, the sugarcane fields and the horizon tilting, my long-sleeve white shirt peppered with sweat, a war taking place in my chest that I knew I would never win.

  * * *

  CLETE HAD TWO offices, one in New Orleans, one in New Iberia. When he worked out of his New Iberia office, he rented a cottage at the Teche Motel on East Main, down the bayou from my house. When I woke Sunday morning, there were clouds of thick white fog bumping against the tree trunks in the backyard, like cotton on the floor of a gin. I saw a raccoon on top of Tripod’s hutch, its coat shiny with dew. I went to the back door and looked through the screen. The coon had climbed into an oak tree and was looking at me from atop a limb. I pushed open the screen. “Tripod?”

  Then he was gone. I went outside in my pajamas and slippers and looked up at the branches but saw no sign of him. I went back inside and dressed and ate breakfast and went to M
ass at St. Edward’s. When I returned home, Clete’s metallic-purple Cadillac was parked in the driveway, the top up, his stocking feet sticking out the back window. He was asleep on the backseat with a pillow over his face. He smelled like a beer truck.

  I went inside and made coffee and warmed a pan of milk and put four cinnamon rolls in the oven, then went into the backyard again and looked for the coon. Tripod had died years ago, but I often dreamed of him in my sleep, as I did my other pets, and I wondered if animals, like people I’ve known, have ways of contacting us again. A half hour later, Clete came through the back door, his face wrinkled on one side by the pillow, his eyes bleary.

  “You just hit town?” I said.

  “I’m not sure what I did. I was drinking Jack with a beer back in Morgan City, then my lights went out. You got a beer?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll drink kerosene if you’ve got it.” He sat down at the breakfast table. He was wearing his porkpie hat and the long-sleeve tropical shirt he had bought in Miami. “You got any uppers?”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “You want me to go?”

  “No, I fixed you some breakfast. Just don’t get sick on the floor.”

  “Something weird happened yesterday. I was trying to think my way through it. That’s why I was drinking depth charges. You know, when you’re arguing with yourself and wondering if you’re letting somebody work your crank. My head feels like a basketball.”

  “What are we talking about, Clete?”

  “That douchebag called me.”

  “Which douchebag?”

  “The one who tried to evict me—Jimmy Nightingale. He says we can work out my problem on the reverse mortgage. I can refinance and let his company have a quarter-acre lot I own in Biloxi. He’ll also introduce me to a stockbroker who’ll let me buy some surefire winners on the margin. I asked him why he was doing all this. He says because you talked to him.”

  “I did.”

  “You don’t think he’s trying to shaft me?”

  “He wants me to introduce him to Levon Broussard.”

  Clete looked blank for a moment. “The writer who’s got the wife with outstanding bongos? She jogged by my office a couple of times. I hear she’s nuts.”

  “Has anyone ever used the term ‘arrested development’ to you?”

  “Yeah, the marriage counselor who was screwing my ex while he was counseling us. You think I should take the deal?”

  “What’ll happen if you don’t?”

  “The guys I owe in Vegas and Reno are real shitheads. Guys I used to work with. Use your imagination.”

  “I have thirty thousand at Vanguard. You can have it.”

  “That would be like putting a bicycle patch on the rip in the Titanic.”

  I placed the rolls on a plate and set them and a butter dish and a cup of coffee and milk on the table. “Eat up.”

  “You’re the best, noble mon,” he replied.

  No, Clete was. But no one would ever convince him of that.

  * * *

  CLETE CHECKED IN to his cottage at the Teche Motel, and I called the home of Levon Broussard and his wife, Rowena. Levon had been on the New York Times bestseller lists for twenty years, and Rowena’s raw-edged paintings and photography were loved by many people in need of a cause and a banner. The only reason I had been given their private number was Levon’s admiration for the novels by my daughter, Alafair. The couple lived up the bayou from me in a spacious home built of teardown South Carolina brick, with floor-to-ceiling windows and ventilated green storm shutters and a wide gallery. The house stayed in almost permanent shadow inside a half-dozen live oaks hung with Spanish moss.

  Rowena answered the phone.

  “Hello, Miss Rowena,” I said. “It’s Dave Robicheaux. Is Levon there?”

  There was a beat, the kind that makes you wonder what kind of expression is on your phone party’s face.

  “I’ll get him,” she said, and dropped the receiver on a hard surface.

  “Hello?” Levon said.

  I told him that Jimmy Nightingale wanted to take us to dinner.

  “What’s he want with us?” Levon said.

  “You’re a famous writer. He’s written some screenplays. Maybe he wants to do business.”

  “Isn’t Nightingale hooked up with the casino industry?”

  “Among other things.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “He’s helping Clete Purcel out of a jam. As a favor, he asked for an introduction.”

  “So you’re being charitable at my expense?”

  He had me. “You’re right. Forget I called.”

  “Is Alafair there?”

  “She’s living in Bodega Bay.”

  I could hear him breathing against the receiver. Levon was known for his reluctance to say no to anyone when asked for money or to help with a personal problem. In fact, he seemed to live with conflicting voices in his head. “I don’t like these casino people, Dave. They put the Indians’ face on their operations, but most of them are out of Jersey.”

  “So is Bruce Springsteen,” I said.

  “How important is this?”

  “Clete has screwed himself financially six ways from breakfast. Jimmy Nightingale can probably get him out of it. We’re talking about one hour at a dinner table.”

  I heard him blow out his breath. “When?”

  “Six-thirty tomorrow night at Clementine’s. I’ll call Jimmy and set it up.”

  “Give Alafair my best. I love her new book.”

  Before I could reply, he eased the receiver into the cradle.

  * * *

  HELEN SOILEAU WAS in her third term as sheriff, a period when the Iberia Sheriff’s Department and the city police had merged. She had started her career as a meter maid with the NOPD and had worked her way up to patrolwoman, then returned to New Iberia, her birthplace, and worked as my plainclothes partner in our small homicide and felony assault unit. Helen defied all conventions and categorizations. Years ago a smartass told her at our department Christmas party that she had the perfect body for a man. She slapped him off the stool, slammed his head into the bar, then picked him up and propped him on the stool and placed a drink in his hand. “No hard feelings,” she said.

  She had blond hair cut short at the neck, and she never dyed it; she wore slacks and sometimes makeup and sometimes not. Her love affairs included a dalliance with a female informant (which almost destroyed her career), a circus owner, a male masseuse, a feminist professor, and Clete Purcel.

  The silence between her sentences was often louder than her words. She didn’t carry a throw-down or jam the perps, and as a consequence, she usually learned more from them than others did with coercion. I believed she had several personalities, one of which was a sexual adventurer whose eye sometimes strayed over me. I didn’t care. My feelings about Helen were the same as my feelings about Clete: I believed their virtues were poured from a crucible whose heat couldn’t be measured.

  Monday morning she called me into her office. Through the window I could see Bayou Teche, the sunlight dancing on the surface, a concrete boat ramp on the far side. Her gaze lifted to mine. She had a ballpoint gripped in her right hand. She clicked it over and over.

  “I got a call from T. J. Dartez’s lawyer,” she said.

  “I suspected that was coming.”

  “He says you threatened his client.”

  “Not true.”

  “What were you doing at his house?”

  “I told him I thought he was speeding when he hit Molly’s car. I told him he wouldn’t have any peace until he owned up.”

  Her thumb pressed and released the button on top of the ballpoint, click-click, click-click. “Those were your words?”

  “More or less.”

  “You know what a good liability lawyer could do with that?”

  “I had another reason for being there. Tony Nine Ball offered to do some damage to him, maybe take him of
f the board.”

  “You had a conversation with Tony Nemo about killing T. J. Dartez?”

  “No, I had a conversation with him about a Civil War sword. On the other subject, I told him to stay out of my business. He said Dartez ran over a child in Alabama.”

  “This isn’t coming together for me, bwana.”

  “Tony likes to pretend he’s in tight with cops. He bought a sword at a flea market. It belonged to one of Levon Broussard’s ancestors. He either wants to make some money off it, or he wants to get close to Levon. Tony has been involved with two or three film productions. He’s a self-serving, greedy, fat shit. He’s not a complex man.”

  She gave me a look and let the ballpoint drop on the blotter. “Keep clear of Dartez and Nemo.”

  “I plan to.”

  She stared into my face, her expression flat. As often was the case, I had no idea what she was thinking or who presently occupied her skin. Her hair looked lighter, sun-bleached, perhaps, thicker and more attractive, as though she had been out on the salt.

  “Buy me lunch, Pops, and don’t give me any more of your trash,” she said.

  JIMMY PICKED ME up in a limo, and we drove up Loreauville Road and turned in to the long driveway of the Broussard home. The carriage lamps on the gallery were lit, the floor-to-ceiling windows glowing from the lighted chandelier in the hallway. The wind was up, and the trees were filled with shadows that seemed to battle one another. Three of his live oaks were registered with a national conservation society and named Mosby, Forrest, and Longstreet, perhaps indicating a tired and old and depressing Southern obsession with the illusion that war is grand. But I had a hard time thinking of Levon in that fashion.

  He avoided crowds and formal social situations and conventional thinking, and he had a pathological aversion to people who asked questions about his work. He seldom spoke specifically of his family, but supposedly, they were related to Oliver Hazard Perry, John Mosby, Edmund Burke, and John Wilkes Booth. He said he’d grown up in Galveston, or Lake Charles, or Lafayette, or maybe all three, I’m not sure. He was one of those paradoxical individuals who became notorious for his obsession with privacy. He had lived in the tropics and had known leftists in Mexico and DEA agents in Colombia and CIA operatives who flew for an airline headquartered in Fort Lauderdale. Why he had been drawn into the edges of the New American Empire, no one knew. With his tall frame and genteel manners and kind face and egalitarian attitudes, he seemed to personify virtue. Strangely, although they looked nothing alike, he and Jimmy Nightingale made me think of bookends that belonged on the same shelf.