Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

  And I wasn’t going to let Tess Regan have the final statement, either. You don’t walk out of a room on someone, with tears in your eyes, as though he’s an ogre, unless you want to inflict a certain amount of damage. I ate lunch, then told her that over the phone. Then I asked her to have dinner with me and Alafair at a restaurant that evening.

  “I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to be unkind to you. I just don’t understand you,” she said.

  “Stop hiding behind that elementary-school-teacher stuff.”

  “You stop talking to me like that.”

  “Don’t treat me like I fell through a hole in the dimension, either.”

  “You’re an incredible person. You can’t say everything that’s on your mind to somebody, then ask them out to dinner.”

  “I’ve been straight with you, Tess. I’m indebted to you for the care you’ve given Alafair. I respect and like you. I don’t want you to be unaware of that fact. That’s all I had to say. We’ll leave it at that.”

  She paused a moment, then, away from the receiver, cleared her throat.

  “I have a PTA buffet at five-thirty,” she said. “We could go out for dessert later, if you’d like to.”

  That evening I shined my loafers, put on a pair of seersucker slacks, a long-sleeved blue shirt with a red-and-black-striped tie, and Alafair and I picked her up in the truck at seven-thirty. She lived on the bottom floor of an old orange-brick apartment building, with a wood porch and thick wood columns and an enormous white-trunked birch tree in the front yard. She wore beige sandals and a print dress covered with small blue and pink flowers. We went to an outdoor café by the river and had ice cream and Black Forest chocolate cake, and I paid for it with my MasterCard, hoping that it hadn’t been canceled yet. It rained briefly; now the sky looked like an ink wash above the mountains and I could see lightning striking hard on a distant ridge.

  Alafair was overjoyed at the thought of Tess Regan and me being together. But it wasn’t a romantic overture on my part. Or at least that was what I told myself, although she was surely good to look at. I think she reminded me of one of those girls whom Catholic boys were always told, when I was growing up, that they should marry. I doubt that a girl of that kind ever existed, but we believed she did, anyway. Before I met Darlene, I was involved seriously with only three women in my adult life. My first wife was from Martinique, a descendant of French Huguenots, or probably iconoclasts who liked to smash statues in cathedrals. She tired quickly of living with a drunk, for which I couldn’t blame her, but she also tired of living on a policeman’s salary and became fond of wealth and clubhouse society. She married a Houston geologist, and the last I heard they lived in River Oaks and raced quarter horses at Rio Dosa.

  Annie was not only the best woman I ever knew; she was also the best human being. I called her my Mennonite girl, sewn together from cornflowers and bluebonnets. Her faults were those of excess—in love, forgiveness, worry over others, faith that goodness would always prevail over evil. She was seldom if ever critical of others, and when their views didn’t coincide with her eccentric Kansas vision of the world, she saw them as victims of what she called weirdness, a condition that she saw virtually everywhere.

  I became involved with Robin Gaddis after Annie’s death. She was a stripper and sometime-hooker on Bourbon Street, but she was brave in her way and kind and gave much more than she received. What some will not understand is that it takes courage to grow up in a place like the welfare project by the old St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans. Ask a tourist who has visited that cemetery in anything less than a large group, even in broad daylight. Or if one is suicidal and would like to have a truly existential experience, he might try walking through Louis Armstrong Park, right next to the welfare project, at night. Robin’s body was outraged in many ways long before she began taking off her clothes for men simply for money. I don’t know where she is today. I wish I did. I have two Purple Hearts. I believe they belong much more to Annie, Robin, and Darlene than they do to me.

  The wind began to blow, and in the fading twilight I could see the smoke from the pulp mill flatten in the valley west of town and smell its odor like a tinge of sewage in the wet air. We drove Tess Regan back to her apartment house, and I walked her to her door. The porch light was on, and there was a sheen in her auburn hair, and her shoulders looked pale against her pink-and-blue-flowered dress.

  “Thank you for this evening,” she said, and she touched me lightly on the arm with her fingers and let them rest there for perhaps three seconds. Her green eyes were warm and genuine, and I wondered if she had been rehearsing for a long time to be that Catholic girl the nuns and the brothers had told us about.

  We drove under the dark shadows of the trees toward our house, and the glow from the street lamps looked like long slicks of yellow light ironed into the street’s wet surface. I turned the corner onto our block while Alafair kept looking out the passenger window at a pair of headlights behind us.

  “That same car stopped down from Miss Regan’s,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That car stopped behind us while you were talking to Miss Regan on the porch.”

  I parked in front of our house. The street was dark, and the strings of lights on the sawmill across the river shone on the water’s surface.

  “Don’t get out of the truck,” I said, and I reached under the seat for my .45. The vehicle behind me pulled to the curb, and the driver cut the headlights just as I stepped out of the cab with the automatic held behind my leg.

  Clete stuck his head out of the window of his Toyota jeep, his mouth grinning, a white billed cap cocked over his eye.

  “Hey, can you tell me where I can catch the St. Charles streetcar?” he said. “What have you got hidden behind you, noble mon? Are we into heavy shit here?”

  “What are you doing following me?”

  “I was on my way over and just happened to see you on the other street. Slow your pulse down, Streak.” He got out of the Toyota and stretched and yawned. He wore a purple and gold LSU football jersey with a big tiger’s head on the front. His love handles stuck out from the sides of his blue jeans. He reached back through the car window and took out a pint of whiskey in a paper bag, unscrewed the cap, and took a neat drink.

  “Who was the broad?” he said.

  I didn’t answer him. I walked Alafair into the house, turned on all the lights, looked in each of the rooms, and came back outside. He sat on the steps, smoking a cigarette, the pint bottle by his knee.

  “Who’s the new broad?” he said.

  “Wrong word.”

  “All right, who’s the lady?”

  “Just a friend, one of the teachers at the school. She looks after Alafair sometimes.”

  “I wonder why she isn’t homely. Probably just a coincidence.”

  “What are you up to, Clete?”

  “Nothing. Maybe I just want to talk a minute. You got a minute, don’t you?”

  I sat down next to him on the steps. Against the lights on the sawmill, I could see the outline of suitcases and a couple of rolled sleeping bags in the back of his jeep. He took his billfold out of his back pocket and began counting through a thick sheaf of twenties in the bill holder.

  “How you doing on money?” he said.

  “Not bad.”

  “I bet.”

  “I’ve still got my credit cards.”

  “You remember that time I dropped a deuce at Jefferson Downs? You lent it to me so Lois wouldn’t find out.”

  “You paid it back. When we took that charter fishing trip out of Gulfport.”

  “Not quite. I didn’t pay the guy.”

  I looked at him.

  “He was a lousy guy. He ran us up on the sandbar, he didn’t bring enough bait, his mate was a smartass. You think I’m going to give a guy like that four hundred dollars?” he said.

  “Thanks, Clete. I don’t need it right now.”

  He folded a stack of bills between his fingers and
shoved them into my shirt pocket.

  “Take it and stop irritating me.”

  “It looks like you’re packed up.”

  “You can’t ever tell.”

  “What are you doing, partner?”

  “I think my greatest potential lies in population control and travel. Who’d you tell about Charlie Dodds?”

  “The DEA.”

  “I knew it.”

  “The agent said he was going to the locals with it, too.”

  “Big deal. But I knew you’d do it, Streak. You’ll always be a straight cop.”

  “There’s worse things.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m just talking about myself. I’ve got to go inside now. You want to come in?”

  “No, thanks. I think I’ll just take a drive somewhere, maybe eat a steak.”

  “You’ve been lucky so far, Clete. Walk away from it.”

  “You ought to come up to the Nine Mile House at Alberton with me. They’ve got steaks you can cut with a spoon. Watch out for that schoolteacher. Those kind will marry you.”

  I watched him drive away in the darkness. I went into the kitchen and put the folded sheaf of bills from my pocket on the table. Then I looked at the bills again and counted them. Some of the bills were fifties, not twenties. He had given me over six hundred dollars.

  Later that night, Dixie came home with a black-and-white television set that he had bought for ten dollars, and was watching a late show on the couch in his underwear when the phone rang. I sat up sleepily on the edge of the bed and looked out at him in the lighted hallway as he answered the phone. His hairy stomach protruded over the elastic of his candy-striped shorts. He put his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver.

  “It’s that DEA Polack in Great Falls,” he said. “You want me to tell him you’re bombed out?”

  “That’s all right,” I said, took the phone from him, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.

  “What’s up, Dan?” I said.

  “I’m just glad to find you home.”

  “I’m glad to be home, too. My watch says it’s one in the morning.”

  “An hour ago, somebody took a shot at Sally Dee. They damn near got him, too. The sheriff over there is going to have you high up on his list.”

  “Give him a call in the morning, will you, and tell him what time you got ahold of me. I don’t want any more dealings with that guy.”

  “Sure. Hey, the deputy who called me said Sal’s real shook up. The shooter got up on the knoll above the house and parked a big one right through the kitchen window while Sal was drinking a glass of milk and eating cookies at the table. It blew glass and parts of a flowerpot all over him. Guess who wants police protection now?”

  “What do they have so far?”

  “Not much. They know about where the shot came from. That’s about it.”

  “No witnesses?”

  “Not so far. You got some ideas?”

  “Put it this way. How many people wouldn’t like to see him cooled out?”

  “No, no, let’s be a little more candid here.”

  “My speculations aren’t of much value these days.”

  “We’re talking about Purcel.”

  “He was here earlier tonight.”

  “How much earlier?”

  “Three hours.”

  “That’d give him time to get up there, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it would.”

  “You think he did it, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, ole Sal’s on the other end of the stick now. I wonder how he’s going to handle it.”

  “He’ll bring in some more of his hired shitheads. I’m real tired, Dan. Is there anything else?”

  “Stay clear of Purcel.”

  “You better tell that to the Dio family. I wouldn’t want Clete hunting me.”

  “I don’t think these guys want advice from the DEA. It’s not a federal situation, anyway. Sometimes you get to sit back and watch the show.”

  I went back to bed and slept until the sun came up bright in my eyes and I heard the Saturday morning sound of children roller-skating out on the sidewalk.

  For one morning I didn’t want to think about my troubles, so when the lady next door gave me a venison roast, Alafair and I packed my rucksack for a picnic, took Dixie Lee with us, and drove down into the Bitterroot Valley to Kootenai Creek Canyon. The sky was cloudless, a hard ceramic blue from the Sapphire Mountains all the way across the valley to the jagged, snow-tipped ridges of the Bitterroots. We walked two miles up a U.S. Forest Service trail by the streambed, the water white and boiling over the rocks, the floor of the canyon thick with cottonwoods and ponderosa pine, the layered rock walls rising straight up into saddles of more pine and peaks that were as sharp as ragged tin. The air was cool and so heavy with the smell of mist from the rocks, wet fern, pine needles, layers of dead cottonwood leaves, logs that had rotted into humus, that it was almost like breathing opium.

  We climbed down the incline of the streambed and started a fire in a circle of rocks. The stream flattened out here, and the current flowed smoothly over some large boulders and spread into a quiet pool by the bank, where we set out cans of pop in the gravel to cool. I had brought along an old refrigerator grill, and I set it on the rocks over the fire, cut the venison into strips, put them on the grill with potatoes wrapped in tinfoil, then sliced up a loaf of French bread. The grease from the venison dripped into the fire, hissed and smoked in the wind, and because the meat was so lean it curled and browned quickly in the heat and I had to push it to the edge of the grill.

  After we ate, Dixie Lee and Alafair found a pile of rocks that was full of chipmunks, and while they threw bread crumbs down into the crevices I walked farther down the stream and sat by a pool whose surface was covered by a white, swirling eddy of froth and leaves and spangled sunlight. Through the cottonwoods on the other side of the stream I could see the steep, moss-streaked cliff walls rise up straight into the sky.

  Then a strange thing happened, because she had never appeared to me during the waking day. But I saw her face in the water, saw the sunlight spinning in her hair.

  Don’t give up, sailor, she said.

  What?

  You’ve had it worse. You always got out of it before.

  When?

  How about Vietnam?

  I had the U.S. Army on my side.

  Listen to the voices in the water and you’ll be all right. I promise. Bye-bye, baby love.

  Can’t you stay a little longer?

  But the wind blew the cottonwoods and the light went out of the water, and the pool turned to shadow and an empty pebble-and-sand bottom.

  “Don’t be down here talking to yourself, son,” Dixie Lee said behind me. “You’ll give me cause to worry.”

  I didn’t have to wait long to learn how Sally Dio would try to handle his new situation. He called me that evening at the house.

  “I want a meet,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “We talk some stuff out.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “Look, man, this is going to get straightened out. One way or another. Right now.”

  “What have I got that you’re interested in?”

  “I ain’t interested in anything you got. What’s the matter with you? You got impacted shit in your head or something?”

  “I’m busy tonight. Plus, I don’t think I want to see you again, Sal.”

  I could almost hear his exasperation and anger in the silence.

  “Look, I’m making an effort,” he said. “I’m going the extra mile. I don’t have to do that. I can handle it other ways. But I’m treating you like a reasonable man.”

  I deliberately waited a good five seconds.

  “Where?” I said.

  “There’s a bar and restaurant in Missoula, the Pink Zebra, right off Higgins by the river. It’s in an alley, but it’s a class place. Nine
o’clock.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  “Listen, man—”

  I hung up on him.

  Later, I put the .45 back under the seat of the truck, dropped Alafair off at the baby-sitter’s, then drove to the Pink Zebra downtown. It was located in a brick-paved alley that had been refurbished into a pedestrian walkway of small cafés and shops and bars that offered philodendron and brass elegance more than alcohol.

  I went inside and walked past the espresso machines and a row of booths that had copper champagne buckets affixed to the outside. The brick walls and the ceiling were hung with gleaming kettles and pots of ivy and fern, and in the back was a small private dining room, where I saw Sally Dio at a table with two men whom I hadn’t seen before. But they came out of the same cookie cutter as some I had known in New Orleans. They were both around thirty, heavier than they should have been for their age, their tropical shirts worn outside their gray slacks, their necks hung with gold chains and religious medals, their pointed black shoes shined to the gloss of patent leather, their eyes as dead and level and devoid of emotion as someone staring into an empty closet.

  I stopped at the door, and one of them stood up and approached me.

  “If you’ll step inside, Mr. Robicheaux, I need to make sure you’re not carrying nothing that nobody wants here,” he said.

  “I don’t think we’ll do that,” I said.

  “It’s a courtesy we ask of people. It’s not meant to insult nobody,” he said.

  “Not tonight, podna.”

  “Because everybody’s supposed to feel comfortable,” he said. “That way you have your drink, you talk, you’re a guest, there ain’t any tensions.”

  “What’s it going to be, Sal?” I said.

  He shook his head negatively at the man next to me, and the man stepped back as though his body were attached to a string.

  Sal wore a cream-colored suit, black suspenders, and an open-necked purple sport shirt with white polka dots. His ducktails were combed back on the nape of his neck, and he smoked a cigarette without taking his hand from his mouth. He looked at me steadily out of his blade-face, his stare so intense that the bottom rim of his right eye twitched.