Pegasus Descending

by James Lee Burke

  “I’m not sure,” I replied.

  “NOPD just tried to serve a warrant at his cottage. It’s empty. The owner says Clete left late last night with a young blond woman. You have no idea where he is?”

  “Nothing specific,” I replied, squinting thoughtfully at the far wall.

  She closed the door behind her so no one could hear her next words. “Don’t let them get their hands on him, Dave. They’re not talking about six months in Central Lockup. It’s Angola on this one. The insurance companies are tired of Clete destroying half of New Orleans.”

  “Glad to know the city is looking out for the right interests,” I said.

  She looked at the crime scene photos and case files spread on my desk. “Where are you doing?” she said.

  “I think maybe I found the key in the murder of Tony Lujan.”

  I DIDN’T TRY to explain it to her. Instead, I went looking for Monarch Little. His next-door neighbor told me Monarch was doing body-and-fender work for a man who ran a repair shop in St. Martinville.

  “You know the repairman’s name?” I asked.

  The neighbor was the same woman who had shown great irritation at Monarch for getting drunk with his friends and throwing beer cans in her yard after his mother died.

  “Monarch done straightened up. Why don’t y’all leave him alone?” she said.

  “I’m not here to hurt him, ma’am.”

  Her eyes wandered over my face. “He’s working for that albino man on the bayou, the one always grinning when he ain’t got nothing to grin about,” she said.

  A half hour later I parked by the side of the sagging, rust-streaked trailer of Prospect Desmoreau, the same albino man who had repaired the Buick that had run down Crustacean Man. Monarch Little was under the pole shed, pulling the door off a Honda that had evidently been broadsided.

  “You’re looking good, Mon,” I said.

  “My name is Monarch,” he said.

  “I need your help.”

  “That’s why you’re here? I’m shocked.”

  “Lose the comic book dialogue. I’m looking for a black guy who rides a bicycle and salvages bottles and beer cans from the roadside. A black guy who might have seen what happened when Yvonne Darbonne died.”

  “The girl who shot herself by the sugar mill?”

  I nodded.

  The sun was in the west, burning like a bronze flame on the bayou’s surface. Monarch was sweating heavily in the shade, his neck beaded with dirt rings.

  “Is this guy on the bike gonna be jammed up over this?” he asked.

  “No, I just want to know what he saw. I’m just excluding a possibility, that’s all.”

  “There’s two or t’ree street people do that. But they’re white. They stay at a shelter.”

  “Quit waltzing me around, Monarch.”

  “There’s this one black guy, he’s retarded and got a li’l head. I mean a real li’l-bitty one. You see him digging trash out of Dumpsters or stopping his bike by rain ditches wit’ cars flying right past him. Know who I mean?”

  “No,” I replied.

  Monarch lifted up his shirt and smelled himself, then wiped the sweat off his upper lip onto the shirt. “He’s retarded and scared of people he don’t know. I better go wit’ you,” he said.

  I started to thank him, then thought better of it. Monarch was not given to sentiment. He was also aware that, rightly or wrongly, I would probably never forget the fact he had been a dope dealer. We walked up the grassy slope toward my truck, his shadow merging with mine on the ground. I saw him smile.

  “What’s funny?” I said.

  “Ever see that old movie about this hunchback guy swinging on the catee’dral bells?” he asked.

  “The Hunchback of Notre Dame?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. The two of us together look like the guy swinging on the bells. See?” he said, pointing at our shadows. “Everybody t’ought the hunchback was a monster, but he had music inside his head nobody else could hear.”

  “You never cease to surprise me, Monarch.”

  If my remark held any significance for him, he didn’t show it.

  We drove a few miles back down the bayou to a cluster of shacks behind a parking area for harvesting machines and cane wagons. I had not told Monarch the real reason for my interest in the black man Cesaire Darbonne’s neighbor had told us was collecting discarded bottles and cans from the roadside the day Yvonne died. I believed Slim Bruxal had told me the truth when he said Yvonne had deliberately turned the.22 Magnum into her face and had shot herself, and I needed no confirmation of that fact from a witness. But there was a detail in Slim’s story that I had overlooked. He claimed, and I had no reason to doubt him, that Tony Lujan had passed out in the backyard of the fraternity house and was incapable of driving Yvonne home. I had assumed Slim had driven her back to New Iberia in his SUV, but Slim had said Yvonne had taken the.22 out of the glove box. Her diary indicated she didn’t like Slim and had probably avoided him. If she had been riding in Slim’s vehicle, how would she have known a revolver was in the glove box?

  The bottle-and-can collector was named Ripton Armentor. As Monarch had said, he looked like he had been assembled from a box of discarded spare parts. His shoulders were square, his chest flat as an ironing board, and his torso too long for his legs, so that his trousers looked like they had been taken off a midget. Worse yet, his head was not much larger than a shot put. And as though he were deliberately trying to compete with the physical incongruities fate had imposed upon him, he wore a neatly pressed blue denim shirt with a necktie that extended all the way to his belt, giving him the appearance of an inverted exclamation mark.

  He sat on the top step of his gallery and listened to Monarch explain who I was and what I wanted, the cane fields around his house swirling with wind. It was obvious he was retarded or autistic, but paradoxically his expression was electric, one of fascination with the intrigue and sense of adventure that had been brought to his front door.

  “You remember that day, Ripton, when the girl died?” I said.

  “I ain’t seen her die,” he said, eager to be correct and to please, his words rushed yet syntactical.

  “But you know she died that day you were collecting bottles and cans by the mill?” I said.

  “Yes, suh. Heard all about it. Seen it on the TV, too. That’s why I come back the next day.”

  “I’m not quite with you, Ripton,” I said.

  “I gone back by the mill. See, I was way down the street when I heard it. I t’ought maybe it was my bicycle tire. When it pop, it make a sound just like that. In the wind and all, I t’ought it was my tire going pop.”

  “You heard the shot?” I said.

  “Yes, suh. I heard it. Then I seen a car go roaring by. So I went and knocked on Mr. Cesaire’s do’ and tole him what I seen.”

  “You talked to Cesaire Darbonne?” I said.

  “Yes, suh, that’s what I’m saying. I went back and tole Mr. Cesaire about it. A silver car went streaking on by. Gone by like a rocket, whoosh.”

  “What kind of car was it?” I said.

  “A silver one, just like I said.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police about this?” I asked.

  “Mr. Cesaire said I ain’t had to. Since I’d already give him the numbers, he was gonna take care of it. Didn’t need to talk to no police.”

  A flock of crows rose from the cane field and patterned against the sky. “What numbers, podna?”

  “The first t’ree numbers on the license plate. Wrote ’em in down in my li’l book. I keep a li’l book on everyt’ing I pick up from the road ’case the taxman call me in. I still got them numbers inside. You want ’em?”

  I could hear clothes popping on a wash line, or perhaps the sound was in my own ears.

  Chapter 26

  I WENT EARLY to the office the next morning and ran the registration on Tony Lujan’s silver Lexus and looked once again at all my notes concerning Cesaire Darbonne’s backgroun
d. But what stuck in my mind about Cesaire was not written down in a notebook. Instead, it was his absorption as a duck hunter and the fact he had told me the scars on his left hand and arm had come about from a hunting accident. I called Mack Bertrand at the crime lab.

  “I’m doing a little background work on Cesaire Darbonne. Did you tell me he’s a distant cousin of your wife?” I said.

  “That’s right,” he replied.

  “He was in a duck-hunting accident?”

  “Yeah, as I remember. He poked his shotgun barrel into the mud and almost blew his arm off.”

  “What did he do with the gun?”

  “Pardon?”

  “After the barrel exploded, what did he do with it?” I asked.

  “How should I know?”

  “You told me a couple of guys tried to rob his bar and he ran them off by firing a gun in the air.”

  “Yeah, about fifteen years back. Why you pumping me, Dave?”

  “You know why.”

  “Hasn’t the guy had enough grief?”

  “That fact won’t change what happened. What did Cesaire do with the shotgun after it exploded?”

  “Ask him. I’m signing off on this.”

  “Sorry to see you take that attitude, Mack.”

  “The guy is already down for one murder and you want to put Tony Lujan’s on him, too?” He hung up.

  I searched the department computer but found nothing on an attempted robbery at the bar run by Cesaire Darbonne. I spent the next two hours searching through our paper files with the same result. Then I called a retired plainclothes by the name of Paul LeBlanc who had worked for the department forty years before deafness and diabetes forced him to hang it up. Now he lived in an assisted-care facility by Iberia General and at first did not recognize my name.

  “Dave Robicheaux,” I said. “I was with NOPD before I went to work for Iberia Parish. I used to own a bait shop and boat-rental business south of town.”

  “The one wit’ drinking problems?” he said.

  “I’m your man.”

  “How you doin’?” he said.

  “You remember an attempted robbery at a bar owned by Cesaire Darbonne? It was a ramshackle hole-in-the-wall joint up the bayou. We’re talking about maybe fifteen years back.”

  “No,” he said.

  “You have no memory of it?”

  “That wasn’t what I said. It wasn’t fifteen years back. It was seventeen. The spring of 1988.”

  “What happened?”

  “Wasn’t much to it. A couple of colored men tried to pry the back window while Cesaire was mopping up. He come out the back do’ and chased them out in a cane field. Fired a shell in the air. I think they were after booze instead of money. I don’t think I even wrote it up.”

  “You didn’t write it up?”

  “No, I don’t think I did.”

  “What kind of weapon did Cesaire fire in the air, Mr. Paul?”

  “Cain’t hear you. The earpiece on this phone ain’t no good.”

  “You said he fired a shell, Mr. Paul. Did Cesaire fire a shotgun over these fellows’ heads?”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “Was it a cut-down twelve-gauge?”

  The phone was silent. “Sir?” I said.

  “I’m in my years now. My memory ain’t that good.”

  “We’re not talking about an illegal gun charge, Mr. Paul. This is a homicide investigation. Was Cesaire in possession of a sawed-off shotgun?”

  “Yes, suh, he was.”

  “Thank you.” I started to lower the receiver into the cradle.

  “Mr. Robicheaux?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I been knowing Cesaire Darbonne fifty years. He’s a good man.”

  He was a good man, I said to myself.

  After I hung up, I went into Helen’s office. “I think I got taken over the hurdles. I think Cesaire Darbonne murdered Tony Lujan,” I said.

  She sat back in her chair, widening her eyes.

  “I found a witness to the Yvonne Darbonne homicide. A retarded black man by the name of Ripton Armentor saw a silver car speeding away after he heard a gunshot. He wrote down three numbers from the license tag. He gave them to Cesaire Darbonne the next day.”

  She closed then opened her eyes. “Oh, boy,” she said, more to herself than to me.

  “I did some more research into Cesaire’s history, too. Seventeen years back, a plainclothes investigated an attempted break-in at Cesaire’s bar. Cesaire was in possession of a cut-down twelve-gauge that he probably salvaged from a shotgun that exploded on him after he got some mud in the barrel.”

  “Cesaire followed Tony the night Tony was supposed to meet Monarch?”

  “That’s my guess. He blew Tony apart, then planted the weapon in Monarch’s car.”

  “Why Monarch’s?”

  “Because everyone knows Monarch was selling dope to white teenagers. The autopsy showed Yvonne was full of drugs when she died. Cesaire probably blamed Monarch for her death as much as he did Tony.”

  “We’re going to look like idiots going back to the grand jury on this guy for another homicide. It’s like we don’t have anyone else in the parish to charge for unsolved crimes,” she said.

  “Want me to talk to Lonnie?”

  “Screw Lonnie. We need to clean up our own mess.” She studied a legal pad on her desk, her fingers on her brow. “I just got off the phone with the FBI in New Orleans. They pulled a cell phone transmission out of the air on Lefty Raguza. They think he’s in Iberia or St. Martin Parish.”

  “Lefty wants payback for the beating he took?”

  “No, the Feds think he and Whitey Bruxal are going to try to get Whitey’s money back by peeling the skin off Trish Klein’s pretty ass.”

  She saw the look on my face. “That’s the language this FBI jerk used. Don’t blame me,” she said. “Where’s Clete Purcel, Dave? Don’t lie to me, either.”

  I didn’t have to lie. I didn’t know. Not exactly, anyway.

  THAT NIGHT, Molly and I went to a movie and had dinner in Lafayette. The summer light was still high in the sky when we drove back home, and I could see fishermen in boats out on Spanish Lake, the cypress snags shadowing on the water against the late sun.

  “You worried about Clete?” she asked.

  “A little. If NOPD gets their hands on him, they’re going to put him away.”

  “He’s always come through before, hasn’t he?”

  “Except that’s not what he wants. He’s been committing suicide in increments his whole life. He tries to keep the gargoyles away with booze and aspirin and wonders why he always has a Mixmaster roaring in his head.”

  I could feel her eyes on me. Then I felt her put away whatever it was she had planned to say.

  “Buy me some ice cream?” she asked.

  “You bet,” I replied.

  The next morning was Friday. I called Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine and Clete’s offices in both New Iberia and New Orleans and was told that Clete was out of town and that his whereabouts were unknown. The only semblance of cooperation came from Alice Werenhaus, the part-time secretary and former nun at the office on St. Ann in the Quarter.

  “He’s fine, Mr. Robicheaux. He doesn’t want you to worry,” he said.

  “Then why does he keep his cell turned off?”

  “May I be frank?”

  “Please.”

  “He doesn’t want you compromised. Now stop picking on him.”

  “I think his life may be in danger, Miss Alice.”

  She was quiet a long time. “Mr. Purcel will always be Mr. Purcel. He won’t change for either of us. I’ll do what I can. You have my word.”

  So much for that.

  My other ongoing problem was Cesaire Darbonne. I had gone bond for a man who was probably innocent of the murder he was accused of committing and guilty of a homicide for which he wasn’t charged. The greater irony was that the boy Cesaire had probably murdered was not responsible for his daug
hter’s death and the man he had not killed was.

  After lunch I went to Lonnie Marceaux’s office and told him everything I had learned about Cesaire Darbonne’s probable guilt in the murder on Tony Lujan.

  “Nobody can screw up a case this bad. Are you drinking again?” he said.

  “Glad to see you’re handling this in the right spirit, Lonnie. No, I’m not drinking. But since you went full tilt on insisting we indict an innocent ian for Bello Lujan’s death, I thought I should drop by and give you a heads-up.”

  “Me a heads-up?”

  “Yeah, because the shitprints lead right back into your office.”

  “I think you have your facts wrong. Of course, that’s no surprise. Scapegoating others is a symptom of the disease, isn’t it?”

  “Say again?”

  “It’s what alcoholics do. Scapegoating other people, right? It’s always somebody else’s fault. My office acted on the information you provided, Dave. You want to contest the factual record, have at it. I think you’re long overdue for an I.A. review.”

  I glanced out the window at the storm clouds building in the south and the tops of trees bending in the wind. “At my age I don’t have a lot to lose. There’s a great sense of freedom in that, Lonnie,” I said.

  “Care to explain that?”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  I BELIEVED WHITEY BRUXAL had set up Cesaire Darbonne for the murder of Bellerophon Lujan. But my speculation, and that’s all it was, posed a problem I had not yet resolved: If Whitey had indeed framed Cesaire, how did Whitey know that Bello had probably raped Cesaire’s daughter, giving Cesaire motivation to take his life?

  I went to see Valerie Lujan for an answer. She was obviously preparing to go somewhere when I pushed the bell and the maid opened the front door.

  “I won’t take much of your time,” I said.

  She was in her wheelchair, wearing a yellow dress that matched her hair, a lavender corsage pinned on her shoulder. A picnic basket containing a pink cake and two bottles of champagne and two glasses rested on the tabletop behind her. “Let him in,” she said to the maid.