Robicheaux: A Novel

by James Lee Burke

  “You don’t think I can be objective?”

  She looked toward the convenience store and at Labiche walking to his car; she chewed her lip. “Did you do your drinking at home last night or in a bar? Please tell me a bar.”

  “I didn’t say I was drinking.”

  “Get cute with me and I’ll have you on the desk. Get cute with me twice and I’ll have you on suspension.”

  “I don’t know where I went last night. Or what I did.”

  “Show me your hands.”

  “They’re scraped.”

  Her lips were crimped, her chest rising and falling.

  “I’ve beaten them against brick walls when I was drunk,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what the issue is. I always hurt myself.”

  “And a few others. Shit!”

  Cormac Watts walked toward us, the ambulance following him, the weeds whispering under the bumper. Helen turned her back to me. “What do you have, my favorite pathologist?” she said to him.

  “The door was locked,” Cormac said. “Somebody dragged him through the broken window, then went to work on him. I’d say he died of a broken neck and respiratory failure or maybe massive cranial damage. I don’t see any marks characteristic of a weapon, such as a hammer or tire iron.”

  “You didn’t bother to share that with Labiche?”

  “I thought I’d save it for y’all.”

  “How long has the victim been dead?” she asked.

  “Nine or ten hours.” He paused and exhaled loudly.

  “What?” she said.

  “The guy who did this must have been on meth. My guess is he did it with his bare hands. This is somebody who could eat his own pain while he flat tore somebody else apart. Know anybody like that around here?”

  I DIDN’T GO to a noon meeting. I went to the bank and applied for a loan against my house. My house was a humble one, built of cypress in the late nineteenth century, but the one-acre lot was located on one of the most scenic streets in the American South. I suspected the total value was around six hundred thousand dollars.

  “How much you need, Dave?” the banker asked.

  “Around a quarter of a million.”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll send the appraiser out. You’re not headed to Vegas, are you?”

  “In a roundabout way.”

  He looked a bit quizzical, then said, “Have a good one.”

  I ate a ham-and-onion sandwich at home and brushed my teeth, then headed back to my office, not looking forward to the rest of the day. Helen followed me inside. “You’re off the case.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m giving the investigation to Labiche.”

  I sat down behind my desk. “What’s going on?”

  “Labiche interviewed Ms. Dartez. She says you called her husband last night and arranged to meet him at the convenience store and bait shop by Bayou Benoit.”

  I stared at her, my scalp shrinking, a pain like a sliver of glass sliding through my bowels.

  “You don’t remember?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Give me your cell phone.”

  I handed it to her. She opened it and began clicking through my calls with her thumb. She stared into my face and folded the phone. My heart was in my throat.

  “It’s clean,” she said.

  I swallowed.

  “You could have deleted the call,” she said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “How can you say what you did? Did you call the Dartez house on your landline?”

  “I don’t remember doing that. I remember I was going to St. Martinville to sit on the bench under the Evangeline Oak.”

  “Do you know how silly that sounds?”

  “It’s the way I felt at the time.”

  She picked up my right hand and looked at my knuckles. I pulled my hand away.

  “I’m on your side,” she said. “Even if you killed that man, I’m on your side. But don’t lie to me.”

  “I don’t know what I did, Helen. That’s the truth. Does Ms. Dartez have a cell phone or a landline?”

  “A cell.”

  “Did Labiche check it?”

  She looked away from me. “Not yet.”

  “Don’t leave him on the case.”

  “Maybe he’s a little hinky, but he came to us with a clean jacket.”

  “Two black women filed complaints against him.”

  “The same women have filed complaints against bill collectors and their estranged husbands.”

  “They’re probably telling the truth.”

  “Get used to seeing him around.”

  “Thanks for the hand up,” I said.

  “Piss off, Dave.”

  She closed the door quietly behind her, sealing me in an airless vacuum, my sweat cold inside my shirt.

  * * *

  CORMAC WATTS CALLED three hours later. “Hi, Dave. I wanted to update you on the Dartez homicide.”

  “Spade Labiche is handling that.”

  “Oh.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Cause of death, blunt force trauma. Maybe he was stomped and kicked by someone wearing steel-toes. There was a filter-tip cigar stub lodged in his throat, plus a couple of teeth.”

  “That’s it?”

  “He went out hard. What else is there to say?”

  * * *

  IN A.A., WE respectfully refer to normal human beings as flatlanders or earth people. Drunks are space aliens and glow in the dark with phobias and hallucinations and paranoia, at least while they’re on the grog. We also believe that blackouts are a violent neurological reaction to a chemical that an alcoholic’s constitution cannot process, a bit like a firecracker exploding in the brain. As a rule, a person in a blackout has no more governance over himself than a car crashing through the rail on top of a ten-story parking garage.

  After work, I went to Clete’s cottage at the Teche Motel and told him everything. He listened quietly, his big hands cupped on his knees. Through the window, I could see chickens pecking in the yard, a family cooking a pork roast on a spit among the oaks on the bayou, ducks wimpling the water. I felt as though I’d been trapped behind a wall of Plexiglas while the rest of the world went about its business.

  “You think you did it?” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you fantasize about doing it when you weren’t drinking?”

  “No.”

  “When’s the last time you ripped up somebody while you were drunk?”

  “Never.”

  “That’s my point. I don’t buy this. Who’s the last person you talked to before you blacked out?”

  “A barmaid.”

  “At the joint on the bayou?”

  “Her name was Babette.”

  “You walked home? You didn’t drive?”

  “Right.”

  “Then you decided to go to St. Martinville?”

  “I was thinking about the way things used to be. I was thinking about my mother and father and fishing in a pirogue. It’s just the foolish way I get sometimes.”

  “Listen, big mon. I know your thoughts before you have them. Look at what you just told me. You were thinking about the best times in your life. You weren’t thinking about killing a guy. You’re not a killer, Dave. Neither of us is. We never dusted anybody who didn’t deal the hand. You got that? I don’t want to hear any Dr. Freud dog shit.”

  “Freud was a genius,” I said.

  “That’s why he stuck all that coke up his nose.”

  “I applied for a loan on the house.”

  “You did what?”

  “The banker said it wouldn’t be a problem. If any collectors try to lean on you, let me know. I don’t have a lot to lose right now.”

  “I think Jimmy Nightingale is part of this,” he said.

  “Why Nightingale?”

  “Maybe he thinks you’re on to him.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything. He’s dirty. Mayb
e you know something about him he doesn’t want other people to hear.”

  “I told him what you said about Kevin Penny. About Penny bringing dope and girls to Nightingale’s home.”

  “That would do it,” Clete said.

  “Killing someone? I don’t believe that.”

  “When are you going to wake up about that guy?” Clete said. He went to the icebox and took out a quart bottle of beer and began chugging it, then paused. “Excuse me for doing this in front of you, but it’s my feeding time. Plus, I can’t stand listening to you protect a silver spoon con man like Nightingale.”

  “I’d like to talk with Kevin Penny,” I said. “Where’s he in custody?”

  “He isn’t. The guy he cut across the face decided he doesn’t remember who mutilated him. Penny lives in a shithole south of Jennings.”

  I took a Dr Pepper out of the icebox and sipped it while Clete finished his beer. Outside, I heard raindrops as fat as nickels clicking on the canvas top of Clete’s Caddy.

  * * *

  IT WAS STILL raining when Clete and I got off I-10 at Jennings and drove south to an Airstream trailer perched on blocks by a pond dark with sediment and coated with floating milk cartons and raw garbage. A dirt bike was parked in an open-sided shed. Clete cut the lights and took his .38 white-handled snub-nose from his shoulder holster and put it under the seat, then removed a sap and a pair of brass knuckles from the glove box and slipped them into his slacks.

  “Leave your piece,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “If it goes down and Penny gets his hand on a gun, he’ll kill everybody in the room. When we have time, I’ll show you a video of what he did to three black guys on the yard at Quentin.”

  “He’s not your ordinary pimp?”

  “Penny is not your ordinary anything.”

  Clete knocked on the door. I was wearing a raincoat and a rain hat pulled down on my eyes. A man with a complexion like mold on a lamp shade opened it. His expression seemed to shape and reshape itself as though he couldn’t make up his mind about what he was seeing. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, his cargo pants buttoned under the navel. The inside of the trailer was a wreck.

  “What do you want?”

  “A few minutes, Kev,” Clete said. “This is my friend Dave Robicheaux.”

  His eyes seemed to burn into my face. Then his expression lightened. “You a cop?”

  “Why do you think that?” I said.

  “They walk like their underwear is too tight or they got a suppository up their ass.”

  “I treated you righteous, Kev,” Clete said. “Lose the hostility.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “Jimmy Nightingale’s cousin says she fired you. I didn’t think that was right. She also said you were a yardman. That didn’t ring right, either. Help me out here.”

  His eyes went from Clete to me and then to Clete again. “That bitch said that?”

  “You got it.”

  “Come in.”

  He closed the door behind us. “Sit down.”

  A half-eaten pizza lay in a delivery box on a breakfast table. A television set rested in the sink. A bed against the wall was layered with skin magazines. I tried to keep my expression neutral.

  “Why you looking at me?” he said.

  “Clete showed me your sheet,” I said. “You were in three mainline joints. But you don’t have any tats.”

  “Pencil dicks need tats. Want to find the biggest sissy on the yard? Check the guy with sleeves. What’d that bitch say?”

  “Let’s back up a little bit,” Clete said. “Jimmy Nightingale told Dave he didn’t know you.”

  “He’s a liar.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Clete said. “I told Dave you were no yardman, either.”

  “I was the chauffeur.”

  “You delivered dope and girls to Nightingale’s house?” I asked.

  “I’m supposed to answer that question? To a cop? What’s with all this Nightingale stuff?”

  “The Jeff Davis Eight,” I said.

  “Oh, boohoo time again,” he said. “Those whores got themselves killed.”

  “How do you figure that?” I said.

  “They’re skanks. They’re stupid. They go out on their own. Independence and the word ‘whore’ don’t go together.”

  “They need a pimp?” I said.

  “No, they need plastic surgery. Why you keep looking at me like that?”

  “You’re an interesting guy.”

  “What’s with this guy, Purcel?”

  “Dave is all right, Kev.”

  “Yeah? This stuff about the cousin? She ain’t Jimmy’s cousin. She’s his sister or half sister.”

  “Let’s stick to the subject,” I said. “In your opinion, who killed the eight women?”

  “They were in the life, man.”

  “Why’d Jimmy’s secretary fire you?” I said.

  “She came on to me. I told Jimmy. Who cares about any of this?”

  There was a dull intensity in his eyes that’s hard to describe or account for. You see it in recidivists or in lockdown units where the criminally insane are kept, although you are never sure they are actually insane.

  “I like your accent,” I said. “Did you grow up in New Orleans?”

  “I’m from New York.”

  “Want to give us the name of the company bank account you were using as a drop?” I said.

  But I had lost his attention. “What you got in your slacks, Purcel? A blackjack? You’re shitting me?”

  “I always carry one. Take it easy.”

  “I’m done talking. I’m gonna finish my dinner.”

  “You see Tony Squid around?” Clete asked.

  “At the aquarium.”

  “Is Tony doing more than pour concrete for Jimmy Nightingale?” Clete said.

  Penny kicked open the door, letting in the rain. “Youse both get out.”

  “Clete told me you had a son,” I said.

  I saw the alarm in Clete’s face.

  “What about him?” Penny said.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Nothing. He went to a home.”

  “For irreparably damaged children?” I said.

  He pared his thumbnail with the tine of a fork, then raised his eyes to mine. His lips curled as though he were preparing to speak, but he didn’t utter a word. Somehow I felt I was gazing into the face of an old enemy.

  Clete and I went down the wood steps into the rain. Clete looked back over his shoulder. He took a breath. “He’s got a hard-on for you, Dave. If you come out here again, carry a drop.”

  “He’ll cap a cop he’s met one time?”

  “He’s got a brain like flypaper. He doesn’t let go.”

  “I feel like going back in there.”

  “Let’s have a burger and some coffee. Don’t argue.”

  “What’d he do to his son?”

  “The kid is too scared to talk. Penny is supposed to get him back in two weeks.”

  He started the Caddy. We drove slowly past the trailer and the pond blanketed with floating trash.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, my first visitor in the office was Spade Labiche. He looked energized, glowing with his new assignment, a notepad in his hand. “Got a second, Dave?”

  “What’s up?”

  He sat down without being asked and peeled back his notebook. “I want you to know everything I’m doing. Maybe you can explain a couple of things as we go along.”

  “Okay.”

  “We pulled the phone records for calls made to the Dartez number night before last. None were made from your cell or your landline. Except one came in from a pay phone at a filling station in St. Martinville. At just about the time Ms. Dartez says her husband talked to you and said he’d meet you out by Bayou Benoit.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “You had a snootful?” he said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Helen
has to do her job, Robo.”

  “Yeah, I was loaded.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said, writing in his notebook. “So you were going to iron some things out with Dartez? About your wife’s death?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  He looked up at me. “Can you give me something to work with here?”

  “So you can exclude me?”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “Do you have any witnesses?”

  “I’m not supposed to discuss that. We’ve got to tow your truck in. Are you solid with that?”

  “What for?”

  “An anonymous tipster said he saw a beat-up blue truck slam the rear end of a black truck close to the convenience store. You told Helen you were headed to St. Martinville. So we got to have a look at your truck, Robo.”

  “I don’t know who gave you permission to give me a nickname, but I advise you to stop using it.”

  “Ease up on the batter, bubba.”

  “Get out of my office.”

  He flipped the notebook shut. “Have it your way.”

  “I plan to.”

  But I was all rhetoric. The truth is, the backs of my legs were shaking.

  * * *

  THE ELECTRIC TIGER caught up with me at eleven Saturday night. That’s what I used to call the heebie-jeebies. I first got them in Vietnam, along with the malaria I picked up in the Philippines. I came home with a hole in my chest and a punji scar like a flattened worm on my stomach and shrapnel in my hip and thigh that set off alarms when I went through metal sensors. The real damage I carried was one nobody saw. I’d hear the tiger padding around the house at three or four in the morning, then he’d sniff his way into the bedroom, glowing so brightly that the air would glisten and warp and my eyes would sting.

  The strange phenomenon about alcoholic abstinence is that while you’re laying off the hooch and working the program, your disease is doing push-ups and waiting for the day you slip. You can ease back into the dirty boogie or hit the floor running, but I promise you, the electric tiger, or your version of it, will come back with a roar.

  My truck was in the pound, but I had a rental parked in the driveway. I drove to a liquor store in Lafayette and bought a pint of vodka, a bottle of Collins mix, a jar of cherries, a plastic cup, a small bag of crushed ice, and drove into Girard Park, next to the University of Louisiana campus, and got serious. The vodka went down cold and warm and sweet and hard as ice, all at the same time. When I closed my eyes, a lantern lit up the inside of my head, as if I had punched a hypodermic loaded with morphine into my arm.