DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I don’t argue with the prosecutors who support it. The mouths of the people they represent are stopped with dust. What kind of advocate would not try to give them voice? But what could I possibly do for Jude LeBlanc? He had volunteered for the Garden of Gethsemane, hadn’t he? Everybody takes his own bounce.

  Those were the kinds of thoughts I walked around with in the middle of the day.

  THAT EVENING, at sunset, the sky directly overhead was absolutely blue, the trees in our yard dark with shadow and pulsing with robins who were returning from the North. As we were clearing the dishes from the kitchen table, Alafair happened to glance out the window. “Clete Purcel is in our backyard,” she said.

  He was sitting at the redwood table, watching a tugboat pass on the bayou. Tripod and Snuggs were both on the tabletop, enjoying the evening. Tripod was sniffing the breeze while Snuggs paced up and down, his stiffened tail bouncing off Clete’s face.

  Clete lit a cigarette, something I hadn’t seen him do in months. I went outside and sat down next to him. His face was red, but I couldn’t smell booze on his breath or weed on his clothes. He read my eyes. “I drove back to the Big Sleazy with the top down,” he said.

  “You in the dumps about something?”

  “Courtney and I got a little greedy.”

  “Wait a minute, who’s Courtney again?”

  “Courtney Degravelle, the gal who lives up the street from Otis Baylor’s house, the one who saw Bertrand Melancon almost side-swipe an NOPD airboat.”

  I took the cigarette from Clete’s hand, dropped it on the ground, and mashed it out.

  “Dave, cut me some slack, will you?”

  “Got greedy how?”

  He lifted up Snuggs by his tail and bounced him up and down on his back paws. Snuggs was thick-necked and had short white hair and muscles that rippled when he walked. His ears were chewed and bent, his fur threaded with pink scars. He was profligate in his romantic life and proprietary about his yard. He fought ferocious battles to safeguard Tripod and often slept on the roof at night to make sure no interlopers violated his and Tripod’s turf. Clete was the only person he would allow to take liberties with him, I suspect because Snuggs knew a brother in arms when he saw one.

  “Courtney says she saw a young black guy prowling in the alley behind her house a couple of weeks ago. He was pulling something out of a rafter in a garage. She didn’t think a lot about it until I told her I believed Bertrand Melancon stashed Kovick’s goods somewhere in that alley before he took his brother to the hospital.”

  “You told her all this?”

  “Hey, she’s trying to help. She called me yesterday and says she found some soaked bills in her hedge. Not just a few, bundles of them. I think Bertrand dropped them in the water and they floated down to Courtney’s.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “Seventeen grand and change.”

  “You and Courtney were going to keep it?”

  “I thought about it. What was I going to do, take it to Sidney? What if it wasn’t his? Think he was going to admit that? ‘Not mine, Purcel. You keep it because you’re a great guy.’”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I had a funny feeling about the bills. If they were Sidney’s, why would he keep them in his house? Even if the money was hot, he could launder it through a South American bank. So I took a few bills to Fat Tommy Whalen, remember him, Tommy Orca, used to fence smash-and-grab jewelry and watches for the Carlucci crew? Tommy started going over the bills with a magnifying glass, making all these bubbling sounds of approval, until finally I say, ‘You turning queer for dead presidents?’

  “‘Yeah, “queer” is the word, Purcel,’ he says. ‘the work is beautiful, but it’s queer. Who did it?’

  “Can you believe that? The street pukes not only had the bad luck to rob and destroy Sidney Kovick’s house, the money they got out of it is counterfeit.”

  His account had been long and circuitous, which was always Clete’s method of avoiding an admission of some kind.

  “Back to the subject,” I said.

  “I want to take a bath in lye water. Ever since Katrina hit, I’ve been hearing the sound of little piggy feet running for the trough. Washington insiders are down here by the shitload. Now I’m as dirty as they are.”

  I tapped him between the shoulder blades with the flat of my fist. “You’re the best of the best, cletus. Give the bills back to Courtney Degravelle and tell her to turn them over to the FBI. Stay away from Sidney. End of story.”

  Snuggs did a u-turn, bumping his tail across Clete’s face, waiting for Clete to scratch him between the ears.

  IN THE MORNING I called Betsy Mossbacher’s extension at the FBI office in Baton Rouge and got her voice mail.

  “Sidney Kovick may have had counterfeit money stashed in his house. Some bills washed up in an alley down the street. Again, I’m not sure they’re his. Good luck,” I said.

  I hoped I would not hear from Betsy for a while. She rang back three minutes later. “How do you know about these bills?” she asked.

  “Confidential informant,” I replied.

  “Right.”

  Then I broached the subject that had preyed on my mind since Natalia Ramos had first told me of Jude LeBlanc’s probable fate. “You hear anything about a priest drowning in the Lower Nine?”

  “No.”

  “His name is Father Jude LeBlanc. He was trying to chop a hole in the attic of a church when his boat was stolen from him. Maybe the Melancon brothers and the two Rochons were the guys who took the boat.”

  “A lot of people were washed out to sea,” she said. “I think there’re still hundreds of people under the debris. Some state troopers believe there’re over thirty-five people buried under one building alone. The smell is awful.”

  “There’s more to the story, Betsy. Bertrand Melancon says he saw luminescent bodies under the water in the Lower Nine. You hear of anything like that?”

  “I’d better let you go.”

  “Don’t blow me off. Melancon said Jude LeBlanc caused the bodies to glow. The guy’s got the Furies after him. He saw or did something out there. Maybe he committed a homicide.”

  “These are bad times. Why carry a load that will break your back and not make the load lighter for anybody else? Take care of yourself, Dave.”

  space

  MANY YEARS AGO, United States Senator Huey P. Long, also known as the Kingfish, made a gift of our state to Frank Costello. In turn, Costello subcontracted the vice in Louisiana to a crime family in New Orleans. NOPD and the Mob coexisted in much the same way the Mob had coexisted with legal authority in Chicago and New York. The French Quarter was Elsie the cash cow, and no one was allowed to mess with her. The model was the Baths of Caracalla. Conventioneers from Omaha and Meridian could watch bottomless strip shows on Bourbon. They could spit whiskey and soda on each other in hotel bedrooms and get laid by hookers who looked like movie stars. At Mardi Gras they could frolic with transvestites and twirl their phalluses on the balcony of Tony Bacino’s gay nightclub. If the bill was a little high, few complained. The operational rule was simple: Everyone had a grand time and went home happy. Sin City was safe and all sins committed there were forgiven, courtesy of NOPD and the local chapter of the New Orleans Mafia.

  “Law and order” and “family values” were not abstractions. Murphy artists got thrown off roofs, and jack-rollers and street dips got escorted to the parish line and had their bone structure remodeled. Anyone who stuck up a restaurant or bar frequented either by New Orleans cops or wiseguys got smoked on the spot. No one was sure what happened to child molesters. I always suspected some of them started new incarnations as fish chum.

  Cultural symbiosis was a way of life. The Mob’s leadership was amoral and ruthless, but they always operated in pragmatic fashion. They were family men and adhered to certain rules, one of which was not to attract attention. As businessmen, they understood the imp
ortance of public church attendance, ceremonial patriotism, and the appearance of decency. Most of them kept their word, particularly when they dealt with NOPD. In fact, it was the only currency that allowed them to remain functional.

  This all changed when crack cocaine hit the City. Within two or three years’ time, the walking dead were all over the downtown area. Black teenagers who looked like they had baked their mush in the microwave that morning were wandering around with nine-millimeters, totally disconnected from the suffering and death they sometimes inflicted. New Orleans’s long and happy relationship with the Great Whore of Babylon was over. A kid with the IQ of tapioca pudding might rob you of your money in the St. Louis Cemetery and as an afterthought, for no reason he would ever be able to explain, splatter your brains all over a brick crypt.

  John Dillinger, while being booked at the Crown Point, Indiana, jail, was asked by a newsman what he thought of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He grinned lopsidedly and replied, “They’re a pair of punks. They’re giving bank robbery a bad name.” In New Orleans the respectable criminal infrastructure of the city was being replaced by pipeheads and street pukes. They were the new “punks” and they were ruining the fun for everyone.

  But some members of the old order clung to the old ways and refused to accept the fact they were dinosaurs. One of these was a 585-pound pile of whale sperm by the name of Fat Tommy Whalen, also know as Tommy Orca and Tommy Fins. He wore ice-cream linen suits and had slits for eyes. His neighborhood country club revoked his membership after he cannonballed off the diving board and sent a tidal wave into a wedding party and knocked the bride into a flower bed. His family vehicle was an SUV whose undercarriage was supported by tank springs. The youngest of his five children, his daughter, weighed over three hundred pounds. Years ago, every Wednesday and Saturday night, Tommy took the entire Whalen family to an all-you-can-eat, six-dollar buffet in Metairie and drove the owner out of business. He was a Damon Runyon character I had shared a box with at the racetrack, a gelatinous cartoon of a human being who smelled of baby power and lilac water and mouth spray. But the dope culture had been the bane of respectable illegal enterprise in New Orleans, and Tommy’s personal code had gone down the toilet with the city’s.

  The shorter version? Clete Purcel had managed to walk into an airplane propeller.

  The general story made the Times-Picayune; the particulars came to me from a New Iberia paramedic who had gone to work in New Orleans right after the storm.

  Tommy Fins arrived at Sidney Kovick’s flower store in Algiers in fine style, resplendent in white slacks that would fit a rhino and sky-blue silk shirt and flowing polka-dot necktie. One of Sidney’s hired help, Marco Scarlotti, opened the door of the SUV for him, as though royalty were arriving, and walked with him to the entrance of the store. The morning was still cool, the green-and-white-striped canopy above the display window filling with the breeze off the river. Marco opened the door wide for Fat Tommy to enter. “Sidney is running a few minutes late. Have some coffee and chocolate doughnuts. We got a shitpile of them,” he said.

  “Yeah, I could use a snack. Thanks, Marco.”

  “You got it, Tommy. You’re looking good. Looks like you lost a few pounds.”

  But while Tommy Orca had been talking to Marco, he had not kept his attention focused on the width of the doorway. Before he realized it, he had wedged himself inside the door frame, his buttocks splayed on one jamb, his stomach and scrotum crushed into the other. “You got to give me a push, Marco,” he wheezed.

  Marco began shoving from behind, squatting down, pushing with his shoulder as though loading a horse onto a trailer. Then his fellow bodyguard Charlie Weiss came from the back of the shop and began pulling on Tommy’s arm, twisting it in the socket.

  “Your face don’t look too good. You okay?” Marco said. “Get him a glass of water, Charlie.”

  “He weighs enough as it is. Christ, his legs are giving out. Stand up, Tommy. This is not the place to sit down. Oh shit,” Charlie said.

  By the time the paramedics arrived at the store, Tommy’s enormous girth had settled into the door frame like a partially deflated blimp. His lips were filmed with spittle, his breath an agonized gasp.

  “Hang on, buddy. We’re going to knock out the wall,” a paramedic said.

  But Tommy wasn’t listening. His face was pouring sweat, his eyes focused on Marco’s. “I’m fucked,” he said.

  “No, we’re getting you out, Tommy. Just hang on, man,” Marco said.

  Tommy breathed in and out, as though deliberately oxygenating his blood. “Listen, tell Sidney that Clete Purcel has got his queer. Tell Sidney to take care of my family.”

  Then Tommy the Whale closed his eyes and swam out to sea, leaving Clete with a millstone hung around his neck. Chapter 15

  O TIS BAYLOR CAME into my office early monday. He wore slacks and suspenders, a long-sleeved white shirt and a tie, and seemed to radiate the freshness of the morning. But obviously he did not want me to misinterpret the purpose of his visit. “I have a question that needs to be resolved,” he said.

  “Sit down.”

  “A man named Ronald Bledsoe came by my house Saturday, un-announced and uninvited. He said he’s a private investigator working for the state. He showed me a gold badge and an ID card with his photograph on it. Is this something the state is doing?”

  “I’m not sure. What did this fellow want?”

  “He said he’s investigating the shooting of those black kids. He asked me if one of them had gone up my driveway. I told him I didn’t know. He asked me if I’d found any items on my property that might have been stolen from other people’s homes.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That if I’d found stolen goods anywhere, I would have turned them over to the authorities. He said my neighbor had seen one of the looters in my driveway.”

  “Which neighbor?”

  “At first he didn’t want to tell me. Then he said it was Tom Claggart. I didn’t like this man’s manner, Mr. Robicheaux.”

  “It’s Dave.”

  He ignored my correction. “I think this man is a fraud. He’s a strange-looking fellow. He has strange eyes.”

  I took a yellow legal pad out of my desk. “Did he leave a business card?”

  “No. I didn’t ask for one, either.”

  “Would you describe him, please?”

  “He’s a tall white man, bald, with a long face that’s sunken in the middle. His mouth is a funny color, like it has rouge on it, or it doesn’t go with his skin. He’s got a soft voice and accent, the kind people from the Carolinas have. His eyes are green. My daughter was working in the yard. He kept looking at her. I don’t want this guy around my house again.”

  “If he comes back, tell him to leave. If he doesn’t, call us.”

  “You’ll come out?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all I needed to know.” He started to rise from his chair.

  “I wanted to ask you a question on another subject,” I said, pushing aside my legal pad as though our official business were over. “In the army the first military weapon I fired was the ’03 Springfield.”

  He was standing up now, waiting for me to pull the string.

  “It’s a fine rifle. Did you leave yours behind in New Orleans?” I said.

  “No, it’s in my house in New Iberia. You want to see it?”

  “I thought maybe I could shoot it sometime.”

  “Be my guest. You must have a lot of time on your hands,” he said.

  After he was gone, I stirred my pen in a circle on my ink blotter. Otis Baylor was either an innocent man or a very smart one. If he or a member of his family had shot the two looters, the temptation would have been to lose the probable murder weapon in the event the round was found embedded in a house or tree trunk across the street. But I suspected Otis did not get where he was by doing the predictable.

  I pulled the file on the shooting from my metal cabinet and looked back a
t the notes on my interview with the next-door neighbor, Tom Claggart. Claggart had said he had been sound asleep and had not heard the shot that crippled Eddy Melancon and killed Kevin Rochon. But the man calling himself a private investigator claimed Claggart had told him he saw one of the looters emerge from Otis Baylor’s driveway. If the PI was telling the truth, Claggart had lied to either me or the PI.

  Why?

  I didn’t know.

  EARLY TUESDAY MORNING Clete Purcel woke to the sound of birdsong in his cottage at the motor court. In its shabby way, his home away from home was a grand place, straight out of another era, with no telephones in the rooms, shaded by live oaks, the slope down to the bayou spangled with autumnal sunshine. He fixed coffee and dropped a ham steak and three eggs in a frying plan and brushed his teeth and shaved while his food cooked. Then he opened the blinds and looked out upon his Caddy, its top spotted with bird droppings. It sat where he had parked it the previous night, under a spreading live oak. A tall man whose waxed bald head seemed unnaturally elongated was studying it, a knuckle poised on his chin. He leaned down and looked at the wire wheels and the rusted chrome on the back bumper and the Louisiana tag filmed with dried mud. He wiped the film from one number on the tag with his thumb, then dusted off his fingers.

  “Can I help you with something?” Clete said from his doorway.

  “I was admiring your vehicle. I restore vintage cars as a hobby,” the man replied. He had heavy eyebrows, like half-moon strips of animal fur that had been glued onto an expressionless face. “I own a Rolls-Royce. But I love Cadillacs, too. Where’d you get yours?”

  “A movie company was making a film in New Iberia. They sold off all their vehicles when they left town.”

  “I wish I could have gotten in on that,” the man said. “My name is Ronald Bledsoe. What’s yours?”