An hour later I was in a wonderful old bar on Magazine Street, which separated the Garden District from a huge black residential area of paintless, wooden nineteenth-century houses whose sagging galleries and dirt yards reminded me of the Negro quarters on the plantations in Iberia Parish. The bar, like many buildings along Magazine, had a wooden colonnade in front, big windows, and screen doors, and inside was a long mahogany counter with a brass rail, overhead fans, walls filled with Hadacol and Dixie 45 and Dr. Nut signs, Earl K. Long political posters, and a blackboard with the names of major-league teams and ball scores chalked all over it. The owner used to be a submarine pitcher for the Lafayette Bulls in the defunct class-C Evangeline League, and he had never been quite able to extricate himself from yesterday. He sold loose-string Virginia Extra tobacco and cigarettes out of cartons on the shelf, covered the pool tables with oilcloth on Thursday nights and served free chicken gumbo as bar owners often did back in the bayou country, never called the cops to settle a beef, kept hard-boiled eggs in big pickle jars on the bar, and made hot boudin that would break your heart. It was always cool and softly lighted inside, and the jukebox was full of zydeco and Cajun records, and workingmen shot pool in back under a red Jax sign and a tin-shaded swinging light.
Archie, the owner, picked up my empty boudin plate and wiped under it with a rag. He was a dark Cajun with a big round face and a small mouth. His arms were covered with black hair. I motioned with my shot glass for a refill.
"You know why they call them boilermakers, Dave?" he asked. "Because they put pieces of foundry plate in your head, like broken metal teeth."
"Sounds like bad stuff."
"Then one day it chews its way through your brain."
"Can I have another shot of Beam?"
"I don't like to argue against my own profits, but I hate to see you sit on the porch and listen to your liver rot."
"Would it make you feel better if I told you I'm not enjoying it?"
"Ease up tonight. You can have a shithouse of misery any day you want."
I looked away from his face. He was a friend and an honest man, and because I had no defense, I knew I was capable of insulting people, even an old friend, to save my situation.
"I got another problem, too. Your slip's showing," he said.
"What?"
"Wearing a pistol as big as a cornbread pan on your hip gives anxiety to some people."
"Here," I said, unsnapping the holster from my belt. "Stick it under the bar till I leave."
"What the hell is wrong with you, Dave? Are you trying to take a big fall? Why invite more trouble in your life?"
"It came free of charge."
"I'm talking about tonight. They took your badge. That means you can't walk around like Wyatt Earp."
"Do you know anything about a retired general named Jerome Abshire over on Prytania?"
"A little bit. His kid used to come in here."
"Is he a right-wing crazy?"
"No, I don't think so. I always heard he was kind of a classy guy. His kid was a hell of a fine boy, though. He used to come in here with his baseball team when he went to Tulane. He was a big, blond boy with a pitching arm like a whip. He was always arm-wrestling and tussling and having fun. It was a shame he disappeared over there in Vietnam."
"Does anybody know what happened to him?"
"Just a lot of stories. He was captured, he was missing, the Vietcong executed him or something. My boy was over there, but he came back home all right. I tell you the truth, Dave, if I'd lost him, I'd be afraid what I'd do."
"I've got to cruise. We'll see you around, Archie."
"I hope so. Don't crowd the plate when you don't have to, podna."
I drove into the Garden District. The neighborhood was filled with homes that had been built during the 1850s. They were pillared and scrolled, marked with widow's walks and latticework, wide porches and second-story verandas, with brick courtyards and gazebos on the lawns. The streets were lined with oaks, and the yards themselves seemed to explode with every type of Southern flower and tree: blooming myrtle, azalea, bamboo, umbrella and banana trees, elephant ears, hibiscus, tangles of red and yellow roses. I could smell barbecue fires and hear people diving in swimming pools. It was a neighborhood of historical security and endless summer parties that flowed from one thick, clipped lawn onto the next.
Jerome Gaylan Abshire's home was no exception. The brick walk was lighted by burning candles placed inside paper bags in the flower beds, and through the tall windows beyond the front porch I could see the guests crowded in a large living room lighted by chandeliers. The loud conversation reached all the way to the street. A band was playing on the lawn somewhere in back.
Why not? I thought. I had on a coat and tie. Archie was right. Why crowd the plate when it was just as easy to throw the bat at the pitcher's head?
I parked the car up the street and walked back to the party. The sidewalk was buckled and peaked by the enormous roots that grew under the concrete. I buttoned my coat so my .45 wasn't apparent, combed my hair, flattened my tie with the palm of my hand, and walked up the brick entrance with my eyes fixed steadily on the face of the man checking invitations at the door.
He probably worked for a security service and was not accustomed to handling anybody more serious than college party-crashers.
"I don't have an invitation. I'm the New Orleans heat," I said.
"May I see your identification?"
"Here's a quarter. Call the First District and tell them Lieutenant Dave Robicheaux is here."
"I think you're drunk, sir."
I brushed past him, went to the bar, and picked up a glass of champagne off a tray. The rooms were furnished with French antiques, gold and silver grandfather clocks, deep purple divans with scrolled walnut frames, oil portraits of a Southern military family that went back to the War of 1812. The blond hardwood floors were waxed to a shine that looked like clear plastic. Every tabletop, brass candelabra, ashtray, glass light chimney, and polished strip of seamed woodwork gleamed as though it had been rubbed incessantly with soft rags.
The people in the room were an older crowd, undoubtedly wealthy, confident in themselves and their friends and the world of manners and success in which they lived. The women had bluing in their hair and wore glittering evening dresses, and their throats and wrists dripped with jewelry. In their white tuxedo coats, the men gave you the impression that age was no more a physical problem in their lives than the remote struggles of the poor. It was obvious that I didn't belong there, but they were too polite to look directly at me.
But the security man at the door was talking with two others who looked like rent-a-cops, and all three of them were staring at me. I put down my empty champagne glass, picked up another, and walked out the French doors onto the back patio, where a half-dozen black cooks in white jackets were making mint juleps and barbecuing a pig impaled on a roasting spit. The wind rustled through the oaks, the banana trees, the bamboo border of the lawn, and ruffled the unlit water in the swimming pool that was as dark as burgundy wine. One of the elderly black cooks fanned the barbecue smoke away from his face with his hand.
"Where's the general gone to?" I asked.
"He having his julep in the library with the other gentlemens," he said.
"I don't want to go back through that big crowd. Is there another way I can get to the library?"
"Yes suh. Go back through the kitchen. The girl tell you where it's at." I walked across the clipped lawn, went through a huge Colonial-style kitchen with brick in the walls, where three black maids were making hors d'oeuvres, and came out in a hallway. I could see the library door partly opened and two men with highball glasses in their hands talking to somebody who sat in a chair with his legs crossed. I recognized one of the standing men immediately. I pushed the door, sipped out of my champagne glass, and smiled at the three of them.
The general had gained weight since the newspaper photograph was taken, but his skin was still deeply tanned and
glowing with health, the white hair was cut GI, and his acetylene-blue eyes looked at you with the unflinching clarity of a man who was never inhibited by complexity or moral doubt.
"How are you doing, General?" I said. "It's amazing who might drop in on a cocktail party these days. I'm speaking about myself, of course. But what are you doing with a character like Whiplash Wineburger? Most people call the Orkin Company if they see this guy anywhere near their neighborhoods I'll take care of it," Wineburger said, and moved his hand to the table phone.
"It's all right," the general said.
"I don't know about that," I said. "I think some of your cadre are starting to unravel. I've got a couple of Polaroids of Bobby Joe Starkweather lying out behind his fish camp. You can have them for postcards."
"You'll be treated as a guest in my home, even though you came here uninvited. You can go back to the bar, or you can leave."
"I'm comfortable here."
"You've had too much to drink, or perhaps you're simply obsessive," he said. "But there's no point in your being here."
"You should have stuck with regular army, General. These guys working for you wouldn't even measure up to Mafia standards. Wineburger here is a jewel. One time a naive cop down at the First District asked him to defend some indigent Haitians, and he said, 'I'm full up on food stamps.' It's the amateurs that kill the IPs."
"What do you know about IPs?"
"I was in Vietnam, too, except my outfit went out of its way to protect innocent people. I don't think you can say the same."
"How dare you!" he said.
"Cut the gentlemanly rancor. You've got Sam Fitzpatrick's blood painted all over you, and I'm going to nail you for it."
"Ignore him. He's a lush," Wineburger said.
"I'll give you something else to work on, too," I said. "I visited the father of that nineteen-year-old girl that Segura's people murdered. I wonder if you'd like to confront him and explain why she had to lose her life over some elephant game you and your cretins are playing."
"Get out."
"You lost a son in Vietnam. I think if he were alive he'd consider you a disgrace."
"You leave my home. Don't you ever enter it again."
"You'll get no rest from me, General. I'm going to be the worst thing in your life."
"No, you won't, Robicheaux," Wineburger said. "You're a motormouth and you smell bad. You're just a jitterbird that everybody is bored with."
"Whiplash, how do you think you got in here? Because you're a brilliant attorney? Most of these people don't like Jews. They're paying for your ass right now, but when they don't need you anymore, you might end up like Bobby Joe or Julio. Think about it. If you were the general, would you keep a lowlife like yourself around?"
"Turn around. Some of your colleagues want to talk with you," Wineburger said.
Two uniformed street cops stood behind me. They were young, and they had their hats off and were uncomfortable at their situation. One of them tried to smile at me.
"Bad night, huh, Lieutenant?" he said.
"Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm wearing my rock-'n'-roll cassette, though. Just unbutton my coat and pull it out."
His hand brushed across my stomach, almost like a caress, and eased the .45 out of my belt holster.
"Walk this way with us. We'll go out the side door," he said. "But we'll have to cuff you in the car."
"It's all right," I said.
"Hey, Robicheaux, call that colored bondsman on Rampart. He gives credit," Wineburger said.
I glanced back at the general, whose tanned brow was webbed with wrinkles as he stared intensely into space.
They booked me into the drunk tank downtown. I woke up with the first gray light on an iron bunk whose gray paint was covered with scratched and rusted names and obscenities. I sat up slowly, holding the bunk on each side of me, and smelled the rancid odor of stale sweat, cigarette smoke, alcohol, urine, vomit, and the seatless and caked toilet in the corner. The floor and all the bunks, which were suspended from wall chains, were filled with snoring drunks, demented street people, barroom brawlers still flecked with blood, a few genuine badasses, and anxiety-ridden, middle-class DUIs who later would expect to be treated with the courtesy due good Kiwanians.
I walked in my socks to the toilet and leaned over it. Names had been burned into the yellow paint of the ceiling with cigarette lighters. My eyes watered from the reek of the toilet, and my hangover had already started to tighten the veins in my head like a hatband. Ten minutes later a guard and a trusty in white fatigues opened the barred door and wheeled in a stainless-steel food cart loaded with powdered scrambled eggs, grits, and black coffee that tasted like iodine.
"Hors d'oeuvres time, gentlemen," the guard said. "Our accommodations are humble, but our hearts are warm. If you're planning to stay for lunch today, we're having spaghetti and meatballs. Please do not ask for doggy bags. Also, even though it's a temptation, don't try to take the food home in your pockets."
"Who the fuck is this guy?" asked a soldier sitting on the floor. His tie hung loose around his neck, and the buttons were torn off his shirt.
"He's a pretty good guy," I said.
"Some place for a fucking comedian," he said, and I flipped his cigarette butt off the wall above the toilet.
I waited until the trusty had passed out the paper plates of eggs and grits and he and the guard had gone back out the door, then I went to the bars and clicked my ring against the metal to get the guard's attention. He looked at me without expression, blinking his eyes to hide either recognition or his embarrassment.
"Is arraignment at eight?" I asked.
"They'll put you on the wrist-chain then. I don't know what time they'll get to you." He almost said "Lieutenant," but he clamped his lips tightly.
"Who's on the bench this morning?"
"Judge Flowers."
"Oh boy."
"You want a lawyer with you?"
"No, not just yet. Thanks, anyway, Phil."
"You bet. Hang tough. It's going to be all right. Everybody's got a right to a hard night sometimes."
An old man with a wild, tobacco-stained beard sat down beside me on the iron bunk. He wore plastic cowboy boots, jeans that fit him like balloons, and a denim shirt cut off at the armpits.
"You ain't gonna eat your food?" he said.
"No. Go ahead."
"Thanks," he said, and began putting the dry eggs in his mouth with a plastic spoon. "The spiders starting to crawl around in your head?"
"Yep."
"Look down in my boot," he said. "The hack missed it when they shook me down. Take a snort. It'll swat them spiders right back into their nest."
I looked down at the pint bottle of whiskey inside his boot. I breathed deeply and ran my tongue over my cracked lips. My own breath was stronger than the smell of the drunk tank. It wouldn't be long before I would start sweating and shaking, maybe even going into the dry heaves. I wondered what I would look like in front of Judge Flowers, a notorious morning-court jurist who could put the fear of God into a drunk with his gavel.
"I'll pass right now, but I appreciate it, partner," I said.
"Suit yourself. Don't let them shake you up, though, son. I been up in front of this court so many times they don't even mess with me. The judge gives me thirty days and tells me to get out. That ain't nothing. We got them by the short hairs."
A half hour later, Sergeant Motley stood at the tank door with the guard. He smoked a cigar and looked on quietly while the guard turned the key in the lock. He wore his shirt lapels pressed back so the hair on his black barrel of a chest stuck out like wire.
"Come with us, Robicheaux," he said.
"Zoo visitors aren't allowed in until this afternoon," I said.
"Just come along," he said.
I walked between him and the guard to the far end of the jail corridor. A trusty was damp-mopping the floor, and our shoes left wet imprints where he had cleaned. Sunlight came through the windows high up on the c
orridor wall, and I could hear traffic out on the street. The guard turned the lock on an individual cell. Motley's weight made him breathe as though he had emphysema.
"I got you transferred to a holding cell," he said.
"What for?"
"You want somebody in that tank to make you?"
I stepped inside the cell, and the guard locked me in. Motley remained at the door, his cannonball head beaded with perspiration from the heat outside.
"What are you up to?" I asked.
"I've been in your shoes. I think they're putting a RotoRooter up your hole, and all you've got going for you is your own balls. That's okay, but after a while they get ground down to the size of marbles."
"I have a hard time buying this."
"Who asked you to? We never got along. But I'll tell you a story, Robicheaux. Everybody thinks I let those seven guys die in that elevator to save my own buns. I was responsible, all right, but not because I was afraid. I didn't have the key to the chain. I didn't have the fucking key. I climbed up out of the shaft to find somebody with a master. When we pried the doors open, they looked like smoked oysters in there. Whether you believe me or not, that's some hard shit to live with."
"Why don't you tell that to somebody?"
"You know why I didn't have the key? I got a freebie that morning from one of Julio Segura's broads and she rolled me. The key was in my billfold."
"You tried to get them out, Motley."
"Tell that to everybody in the courthouse and the First District. Tell it to Purcel. He's always got clever things to say to a black man."
"What's he been doing?"
"I don't like those guys in Internal Affairs any more than you do. In my opinion, Purcel is operating in their area. I don't drop the dime on other cops, not even racists, so I don't comment on Purcel."
"He's not a racist."
"Wake up, Robicheaux. You got to get hit in the face with it? The guy's got a hard-on all the time. Quit the Little Orphan Annie routine."
"You're determined to make people love you, aren't you?"
DR01 - The Neon Rain Page 15
