Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

  The park was full of blue spruce and Russian olive trees, and kids from the university, which was only a block away, sailed Frisbees overhead and played rag football. We sat on the mowed grass, high up on the riverbank, so we could look out over the tops of the willows and watch two men who were fishing with worms and spinning rods, throwing lead weights far out into the channel. I saw Clete walk across the bridge with a paper sack hefted in one arm. I got Alafair started on one of the swing sets and then sat back down on the bank. His knees cracked, his stomach hung over his Budweiser shorts, and he grunted hard in his chest when he sat down beside me.

  “You look undressed,” I said.

  “Oh.” He touched his chest and smiled. “I don’t work for Sal anymore. I don’t have to walk around with a piece all the time. Feels good, mon.”

  He twisted the cap off a bottle of Great Falls.

  “Dixie Lee says he didn’t know Dodds was a hit man.”

  “He probably didn’t. Where’d you see Dixie Lee?”

  “He’s living at my house.”

  “I’ll be damned. He cut the umbilical cord? I didn’t think he had the guts. Sal doesn’t handle rejection well.”

  “Dodds may have had a partner, a backup guy. Does Dio have another guy in town?”

  “If he does, I don’t know about it. I know a lot of them, too. At least the ones Sal hangs with. They’re New York transplants who think the essence of big time is playing bridge by the pool with a lot of gash lying around. Hey, dig this. Sal had a bunch of them staying at his motel, and the motel manager is this little Jewish guy who used to run a book for the mob out of a pizza joint in Fort Lauderdale. Of course, the Jew can’t do enough for the dagos because they scare the shit out of him. But he’s got this kid who’s a wiseass college student at Berkeley, and the kid works for his old man as the poolside waiter during the summer. So four of the dagos are playing cards at one of the umbrella tables. And these are big, mean-looking cocksuckers, shades, wet black hair all over their stomachs, big floppers tucked in their bikinis, and they’re giving the kid a terrible time—sending food back to the kitchen, complaining the drinks taste like there’s bathroom antiseptic in them, running the kid back and forth for cigarettes and candied cherries and sun cream for the gash and anything else they think of.

  “Then one guy spills ice and vodka all over the table and tells the kid to mop it up and bring him another deck of cards. The kid says, ‘Hey, I’ve been studying Italian at school this year. What does Eatta my shitta mean?’

  “The old man hears it and slaps his kid’s face in front of everybody. Then he starts swallowing and sweating and apologizing to the dagos while they stare at him from behind those black shades. Finally one of them stands up, hooks his finger in the old man’s mouth, and throws him down in an iron chair. He says, ‘He don’t have manners ’cause you didn’t teach him none. So you shut up your face and don’t be talking to impress nobody. You clean this up, you bring everybody what they want, you sit over there and you don’t go nowhere till we say.’

  “They made him sit out there in the sun like an organ-grinder’s monkey for four hours. Till the kid finally begged them to let the old man go back inside.

  “It’s good to say Ciao, ciao, bambino to the greaseballs. The next time the United States drops an A-bomb on anyone, I think it should be Palermo.”

  “Where’s Dodds?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I want to know if he’s going to be back after me.”

  “First you tell me why you didn’t drop the dime on me.” There was a half grin on his face as he raised the beer bottle to his mouth.

  “No games, Clete.”

  “Because a guy out on bond for murder doesn’t like to introduce cops to his blood-spattered kitchen. Because maybe he knows they might just take the easy route and haul his butt down to the bag. Sounds like your faith might be waning, Streak.”

  “Is that guy going to be back?”

  “That’s one you don’t have to worry about.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Get serious. You don’t need to know any more, Streak. Except the fact that our man didn’t like heights.”

  “What?”

  “Did you ever meet a psychopath yet that wasn’t scared of something? It’s what makes them cruel. Charlie didn’t like high places. At least not the one I showed him.”

  I looked out silently at the river. A Frisbee sailed by overhead.

  “Too grim for you?” Clete said.

  “Did he kill Darlene?”

  “No, I’m convinced that’s one he didn’t do.”

  “Dio, then?”

  “He didn’t know. Put it in the bank, too.”

  I stood up and began brushing the grass off my pants.

  “You’re going to turn to stone on me, huh?” he said.

  “It’s a school night. Alafair has to get home.”

  “Why is it you always make me feel like anthrax, Streak?”

  “You’re right about one thing today. I didn’t call the heat because I didn’t want to be part of another criminal investigation. Particularly when I was left with the problem of explaining how somebody’s blood got smeared all over my walls and stove and floor. Right now I’m going to believe that Charlie Dodds is on a flight to new opportunities in Mexico City. Beyond that, I wouldn’t count on anything, Clete.”

  “I’m going to get the guy that did her. You want to sit around and bite your nails, that’s cool with me.”

  I walked off toward a group of children with whom Alafair was playing tag. Then Clete called after me, in a voice that made people turn and stare, “I love you anyway, motherfucker.”

  I needed some help. I had accomplished virtually nothing on my own; I had been locked up for punching out Sally Dio, had persuaded nobody of my theories, and instead had managed to convince a couple of local cops that I was a gun-wielding paranoid. That night I called Dan Nygurski at his home in Great Falls. A baby-sitter answered and said that he was at a movie with his wife, that she would take down my name and number. He returned my call just after ten, when I was drifting off to sleep with a damp towel folded across the lump on my forehead. I took the phone into the kitchen and closed the hallway door so as not to wake Alafair or Dixie Lee, who was sleeping on the living room couch.

  I told him about Charlie Dodds in my house. About the slapjack across the head, the handcuffs, the Instamatic camera, the survival knife that he had started to shove into my heart. Then I told him about Clete, the working over that Dodds had taken, the rolled rug, and the trip in the jeep probably up a log road in either the Bitterroot Valley or the Blackfoot Canyon.

  “You realize what you’re telling me?” Nygurski said.

  “I don’t give a damn about Dodds. That’s not why I called.”

  “You didn’t tell the cops any of this?”

  “I’m telling you. Do with it what you want. I’ll bet nobody ever finds Dodds, though. Clete’s done this kind of thing before and gotten away with it.”

  “You should have called the cops.”

  “Bullshit. I’d be trying to arrange bond right now.”

  “I’ll have to report this to them.”

  “Go ahead. I think their interest level on a scale of one to ten will be minus eight. Look, Nygurski, there’s somebody else after me or my daughter. He was hanging around her school this morning. Maybe it’s Mapes, maybe it’s another one of Dio’s people. I need some help.”

  “I think it takes a hell of a lot of nerve to ask a federal agent for help after you run around two states with a baseball bat.”

  “We both want the same thing—Sally Dee doing some serious time.”

  “No, you’ve got it wrong. I want to do my job. You want to write your own rules on a day-to-day basis.”

  “Then you give me a solution. You pledge the safety of my daughter, you assure me that I won’t be headed for Angola Farm in about three weeks, and I won’t be a problem to you.”

 
; “What kind of help do you want?”

  “Can you find out if Dio might have another hit man in town?”

  “If he does, we don’t know about it. Maybe he put out the contract and let Dodds hire a backup guy. I tell you, though, if this new guy is working with Dodds, he’s not going to try for any ‘before and after’ stuff, not after Dodds blew it. He’ll go for a clean hit, one that you’ll never see coming. I don’t want to be graphic, but you know how they usually do it—one behind the head, one in the ear, and three under the chin.”

  “Run Mapes for me.”

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “I don’t know. My lawyer says he was in trouble only once, for beating up a kid with a golf club when he was seventeen. But I’ve seen this guy in action, and I can’t believe he hasn’t bumped into the furniture more than once.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “He beat up the kid in Marshall, Texas.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “There’s one other thing. Dixie Lee moved out of Dio’s place. He says he’s through with him. You might talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s your province. How about grand jury testimony? It took guts to walk out on Dio, particularly when he owes him fifteen thou.”

  “When did you decide to start sharing Pugh’s secrets?”

  “He’s probably going to need federal protection sometime. He might be a drunk, but his head sops up information and people’s conversations like a blotter.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s staying with me.”

  “What did you do for kicks as a kid? Swallow thumbtacks?”

  “The guy’s up against the wall,” I said.

  “No, I take that crack back. You’re a slick operator, Robicheaux. Pugh becomes a federal witness, Pugh lives at your house, your house and the people in it go under our umbrella. Right?”

  “Not really.”

  “I hope not. Because we choose the accommodations.”

  “Clever people don’t end up in the mess I’m in, Nygurski.”

  “I think maybe there’s solid truth in that statement. I’ll get back to you. In the meantime you watch your butt.”

  “When can I hear from you about Mapes?”

  “I’m going the extra mile for you. Ease up on the batter, okay? Have a little trust. If you ever get out of this, get your badge back. I think everybody would rather have you inside the tent pissing out the flap rather than the other way around. I’m sure of it.”

  Dixie Lee was up early the next morning and had breakfast with me and Alafair at the kitchen table. He was one of those drunks whose eyes clear and whose skin becomes pink and unlined with only a twenty-four-hour respite from alcohol. This morning his face was shaved and bright, and he wore a pair of pleated, white summer shorts and a white sport shirt with green parrots on it. I walked Alafair to school, then made him go to an AA meeting with me down the street and put his name in with the job-placement service. His mood was not as cheerful on the way back home as it had been earlier.

  “Them people make me nervous, son,” he said. “I feel like a turd floating around in somebody’s soup bowl.”

  “It’s the one place where maybe people can understand guys like us, Dixie.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been to them meets before, and it didn’t take. I think that’s just the way it is with some guys. Jesus pointed his finger at the people he wanted. I ain’t seen nobody point his finger at me. Hey, you remember those jokes we used to tell in the fifties? Like, what’d the bathtub say to the toilet? ‘I get the same amount of ass you do, but I don’t have to take all that shit.’”

  “Come on, partner, what’s really bothering you?”

  “I don’t relate to that fourth-and fifth-step stuff. Where you got to go over all you done wrong and confess everything to somebody. I really don’t dig that at all. I got enough damn guilt without poking at it with a stick.”

  “Take it a step at a time. You don’t have to do that now. Besides, haven’t you owned up to a lot of things already? You told me some pretty honest stuff when you were in the hospital in Lafayette.”

  “I got all kinds of things that make me ashamed. Hell, I knew Sal was no good when I met him in the pen. He was a geek. But he had bread, a lot of dope, and he liked me. So I didn’t have to sweat the wolves and the swinging dicks and the guys who’d blow out your candle if they ever thought you snitched for the boss man. So I pretended not to see what went on in our cell. I wrote it off. A lot of guys turn homosexual inside the joint. I didn’t go for it myself, but I didn’t knock the guys who did. So Sal had a punk. Big deal, I thought. The fucking system does it to guys. That’s what I said to myself. So I’d take a walk when this Mexican kid would come to our cell. It wasn’t my business, right? Except something very weird started happening.”

  We sat down on the front steps of my porch. Birds flew in and out of the shade. There was no wind, and the maple trees looked green and bright and stiff against the sky.

  “You see, in that kind of relationship, in the pen, I mean, the punk is disposable,” Dixie Lee said. “A pair of pork chops. All right, it’s sickening stuff, but that’s the way it is. But this kid was a real lover for Sal. He’d bring lipstick and women’s underwear to the cell, and he’d wash and comb Sal’s hair and then they’d hang a blanket down off the top bunk and really go at it. Except the kid turned out to be a lot more than Sal’s punk. Sal really fell for him. The kid always had cigarettes, candy bars, ludes, magazines, an easy job in the infirmary, safe-conduct pass with the badasses. Then the kid started acting like a celebrity, walking around with a little pout on his face, making cow eyes at some very dangerous guys in the shower. A couple of guys told Sal he’d better straighten out his punk, but it wasn’t too long before everybody knew that this kid could jerk Sal around any way he wanted to.

  “The problem was some black guys wanted to take over Sal’s drug action. But he had too many mean guys working for him, and they knew he was connected on the outside, too, so they always walked around him. Then the kid started making him look like a douche bag, and they decided it was time for them to get into some serious pharmaceutical sales. Sal had been bringing in about four or five hundred bucks a week, which is a lot of money in the joint, and in three weeks’ time the blacks cut that in half. His mules came around the cell like scared mice and asked him what he was going to do about it, since the blacks were telling them they were out of the business for good, and Sal tried to blow it off and tell them everything was cool and that he was bringing in a load of Afghan skunk that would cook brains all over the joint.

  “But everybody was laughing at him behind his back. The kid treated Sal like he was the punk instead of the other way around, and in the meantime he was hanging with a couple of other yard bitches who were anybody’s punch, and the three of them would go swishing around the place while the kid talked in a loud voice about Sal like he was some Dagwood Bumstead the kid put up with.

  “But somebody called up Sal’s old man in Galveston, and the shit hit the fan. The old man came up to Huntsville, and I don’t know what he said to Sal in the visiting room, but whatever it was it put the fear of God in him. His face was white when he came back to our cell. He sat up all night smoking cigarettes on the side of his bunk, and in the morning he puked his breakfast out on the work detail. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, ‘I got to do something.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Something I don’t want to do.’

  “So I said, ‘Don’t do it.’ Then he said, ‘I’m a made guy. When you’re a made guy, you do what they tell you.’

  “See, that’s that dago stuff. They got some kind of ritual with knives and blood and magical bullshit, and they get to be made guys, which means they can smoke cigars at front tables in Vegas and pretend they’re not a bunch of ignorant fish peddlers anymore.

  “Two days later, right before lockup, Sal went to the kid’s cell, where the kid was reading a comic boo
k on his bunk with another fairy. He told the other kid to take off, then he took a piece of pipe out of his pants and beat that Mexican boy almost to death. He broke his nose, busted out his teeth, cauliflowered his ears, hurt that boy so bad his mother wouldn’t know him.

  “When he come back to the cell he had his shirt wadded up in his hand to hide the blood. After lights-out he tore it up in strips and flushed it down the toilet. In the morning he was all smiles, like he’d just made his first jump in the airborne or something. That kid was in the hospital three weeks. They shaved his head bald and put a hundred stitches in it. He looked like a lumpy white basketball with barbed wire wrapped all over it.

  “Then Sal put out the word the kid was anybody’s bar of soap. You know what that means in the joint for a kid like that? They’re some cruel, sick sonsofbitches in there, son. That kid had an awful time of it. I don’t like remembering it.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Dixie?”

  “Because most of them people at the meet are just drunks. Liquor’s only part of my problem. I lived off a guy like Sal. The reason I done it was because it was easy. You can’t beat lobster and steak every day, plus the sweet young things were always ready to kick off their panties. If I didn’t cut it with the oil business, life was still a pure pleasure around Sal’s swimming pool. It didn’t have nothing to do with liquor or dope. It has to do with a lack of character.”

  “It’s part of the illness. You’ll learn that if you keep going to meetings,” I said.