Robicheaux: A Novel

by James Lee Burke

  He went out the door and didn’t bother to close it. I looked at the photos of the hit-and-run on I-10. The homeless man who was killed was run over by not one but two cars, neither of which slowed down as they ground his body into the asphalt. Who were the drivers? Perhaps someone I’d meet on the street or see in church or watch sacking my groceries and never have a clue.

  MY HOME GROUP of Alcoholics Anonymous met in a small frame house on Center Street right across from old New Iberia High. Most of the regulars were provincial and decent and middle-income people who simply wanted to live better lives, free of alcohol and alcoholism. Their histories were seldom dramatic. Few had been arrested for driving while intoxicated or causing a disturbance in public. Sometimes their sensibilities were tender.

  At the meeting, I owned up to slipping, or what we call “going out.” The room was dimly lit, the street empty of traffic, a freight train creaking slowly through town on Railroad Avenue. As I told the group how I had found the pirogue wedged against the dock at the foot of my property, and how I had drifted up the bayou and under the drawbridge to the bar-and-grill, I felt the oxygen leave the room. I had years of sobriety. I went regularly to meetings and worked the steps and sponsored other alcoholics, and yet I’d chosen to get drunk again and destroy not only my own life but also the faith and trust of my fellows.

  Previously, I had told Alafair that I’d gone out because I’d wanted to. It wasn’t quite that simple. I’ve always believed that alcoholism and depression are first cousins. This isn’t an excuse. It’s part of the menu. No one who has not experienced clinical or agitated depression, coupled with psychoneurotic anxiety, can appreciate a syndrome that, in an earlier time, was treated with a lobotomy. It’s a motherfucker, no matter what you call it or how you cut it. There’s blood in your sweat; your head feels like a basketball wrapped with barbed wire; you’d eat a razor blade for a half cup of Jack or a handful of reds or a touch of China white. There’s another alternative: the Big Exit, with both barrels propped under the chin, the way Hemingway did it.

  For me, the presences that the early Celts tried to keep inside the trunks of trees by knocking on wood always came out in the evenings, particularly in spring and summer, when the crepe myrtle and the pale green of a weeping willow seemed at odds with each other. In the croaking of the frogs, the dying of the light, the tide rising along the banks of the Teche, I felt a sensation like spiritual malaria imprisoning my soul. In an instant the sky would turn to carbon. I think that’s why I sometimes went out to Spanish Lake at sunset. I would see the boys in butternut sloshing through the flooded stands of cypress and willows, and somehow their loss became mine, allowing me to join the dead and escape the spiritual death I couldn’t describe to others.

  I didn’t try to explain these things to my friends at the Solomon House meeting in New Iberia, Louisiana. As I spoke, their eyes were downcast, their hands folded in their laps. Their embarrassment and pain were palpable. I did not tell them of the blackout, because I had burdened them enough. After the meeting, they shook hands with me and patted me on the back. I didn’t deserve to be in their presence, or at least that was how I felt. I also wondered what they would think if I told them they may have been sitting next to a murderer.

  * * *

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, I walked down to our old redwood picnic table by the bayou, where Alafair was typing on her laptop. The trees were quaking with hundreds of robins, and a blue heron was standing in the shallows, pecking at its feathers. I hadn’t intended to disturb Alafair, but she heard my footsteps in the leaves. “Hi, Dave. Just the man I want to see. I started a treatment for a screenplay.”

  “Really?”

  “Levon Broussard wrote a historical novel about his ancestor, a Confederate soldier who taught a slave girl how to read. It’s probably one of his best books, but no one pays it much attention.”

  I knew nothing of screenplays and had not read Levon’s book about his ancestor. “Sounds like an interesting story.”

  “It would make a great independent film.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I didn’t ask permission.”

  “Do high school kids have to ask an author’s permission to write a book report about the author’s work?”

  “It isn’t a legal problem unless I go to a producer or director with it or pretend that I represent Levon. I just thought he might be touchy.”

  “Just tell him what you’re doing. If he doesn’t like it, put the project aside.”

  “You don’t think he’d mind?”

  “He’s an admirer of your work. He’ll probably be happy.”

  “How you feeling?” she said.

  “Fine.”

  She searched my face. “No, you’re not. You didn’t sleep.”

  “I’ve had worse problems.”

  “You didn’t kill that fellow, Dave.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I know you. Your war has always been with yourself, not others. I’m going to find out who’s behind this.”

  “Bad idea. And lay off the analysis, will you?”

  “There are people who hate you and will do whatever they can to destroy you. It’s foolish to pretend otherwise.”

  “I don’t know how my fingerprints got on Dartez’s window glass. Outside of the crime scene, I’d never seen his truck except at his house. I didn’t touch it.”

  “I don’t care if your prints were on it or not,” she said. “You didn’t kill him. You get those thoughts out of your head.”

  She stared at me boldly, as though words and righteous anger could change reality.

  * * *

  THAT SAME MORNING, Clete put down the top on his Caddy, placed his saltwater rod and reel and an icebox load of beer and food into the backseat, and headed for the Gulf by way of Jennings and the trailer home of Kevin Penny. The shed that housed Penny’s dirt bike was scorched by the fire I had set; the curtains were closed on the trailer’s windows; there was no sound or movement inside. Clete got out of the car and picked up several pieces of gravel and pinged them one at a time against the trailer.

  Penny opened the door in his pajamas, his eyes rheumy, his face unshaved. There was a knot above one eye and an angular orange and purple bruise across his face where I had caught him with the pool cue. “What do you think you’re doing, asshole?”

  “Want to go fishing?” Clete replied.

  “Are you off your nut?”

  “Have a beer.”

  Penny stepped out on the stoop, looking both ways. He was barefoot. A young woman hovered in the shadows behind him, peeking over his shoulder.

  “Where’s your friend?” he asked.

  “Which friend?”

  “The one who attacked me with a pool cue.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Clete said. “Kev, did I ever jam you?”

  Penny seemed to consider. “No. What about it?”

  “I need your help. I’m being honest, here.”

  “I got company right now.”

  “I can see that. She’ll understand. Right, lady? Can I borrow Kevin for a couple of minutes?”

  “You finally fry your mush?” Penny said.

  “You got around in Miami. You knew everybody in the life.”

  “That was then.”

  “You know who my daughter is?”

  “No, I don’t know who your daughter is. I don’t give a shit, either.”

  “Her name is Gretchen Horowitz.”

  “The fuck.”

  “That’s straight up. She’s in Syria making a documentary about the refugees.”

  “The Gretchen Horowitz I knew blew heads for the greaseballs.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  Penny pushed the woman back inside and closed the door behind him. “What’s the angle?”

  “No angle. Your son is going to be with you shortly. We come from the same background, Kev. People knocked us around. When we grow older, we want to get even. Then
we see somebody who reminds us of ourselves, and we get mad at them because we think they caused the injuries we had to suffer.”

  Penny stepped closer to Clete, his nostrils flaring. His eyes were red-rimmed and seemed receded beyond the sockets, as though he lived inside a husk. “You think I’m gonna welcome my kid home by beating him up?”

  “You hurt him pretty bad before. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”

  “I’ve been to anger management class.”

  “That’s like managing bone cancer. The people who peddle that stuff are douchebags. It’s like listening to Pee-wee Herman talk about weight lifting.”

  “This from you?” Penny said.

  “Yeah, because I’m the dumb asshole who messed up his daughter and made an assassin out of her. I owe her a debt. That’s why I’m trying to tell you. Get on the square and do right by your kid.”

  “I’m gonna take to him to Disney World and Six Flags. I’ve got a job driving over the road. Maybe I’ll take him on the road with me.”

  What about his schooling? Clete thought. What about the loss of friends his own age? What about the fear that probably lived in him every mile on the road? But Clete knew the situation was hopeless. The boy’s fate was probably sealed; the blows to the face and head and back would start a short while after the boy came home.

  “Who’s the woman in the trailer?” Clete said.

  “Miss Prime Cut. You want sloppy seconds? She wouldn’t mind.”

  Penny wasn’t being sardonic or ironic. He was serious. Clete felt a rubber band pop behind his eyes. “I don’t think we’re communicating. My vocabulary isn’t up to the job sometimes. Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school?”

  “Yonkers and the South Bronx. Why?”

  “What’d your father do?”

  “He was a baker. He made bread. My mother was a seamstress. What, you think my parents were trash?”

  “No, I don’t think that,” Clete said.

  “So what is this about? We’re doing family counseling here? If so, mission accomplished.”

  Clete pointed at a thicket of persimmon trees on the bank of a coulee that meandered into a dry rice field. “The decomposed body of a black girl was found in there. One of the Jeff Davis Eight.”

  “I wasn’t living around here when that happened.”

  “I think you were, Kev. I dream about those girls.”

  “My son and I will bring you a souvenir from Six Flags,” Penny said. “Don’t be mixing in my family life no more, Purcel. It can bounce back on the wrong people. Like you say, maybe I’ll lose it again. Then you’d really have some thumbtacks in your head, wouldn’t you?”

  Penny went back into the trailer. The young woman stared at Clete like a drowning woman watching a lifeboat paddle away. Penny slammed the door.

  * * *

  I HATED THE thought of interviewing Rowena Broussard. Her story and behavior were of a kind no ambitious prosecutor wants to touch. The particulars that would come out in the trial were a defense attorney’s delight; I knew defense and liability lawyers who would drink out of a spittoon. They would be lining up at Jimmy Nightingale’s door.

  I made an appointment Sunday afternoon at the Broussard home. Normally, I tried to avoid working on the weekends. But I suspected Levon and Rowena already considered me unfocused and preoccupied, since, like most civilians, they had no idea how many open cases a detective has on his desk at any given moment.

  I parked my truck in front of their home on Loreauville Road. The yard had just been cut, the oak leaves ground into tiny gold and red and brown pieces on top of the grass. The hydrangeas were blooming in the shade, the bougainvillea bloodred on the trellises, the posts on the wide steel-gray gallery wrapped with Mardi Gras beads.

  Rowena answered the door. She was wearing huaraches and faded jeans low on her hips and a workout halter and a bandana twisted around her brow. Her forearms and the backs of her hands were flecked with paint. She didn’t speak. At least not to me. “He’s here, Levon!” she shouted over her shoulder.

  “May I come in, please?” I said.

  “Come in.”

  “Thank you.” I stepped inside. “I need to apprise you of your rights about a couple of things, Miss Rowena.”

  “Where do you want to do it?”

  “Do what?” I said.

  “Talk to me or whatever.”

  “Wherever you like,” I said. “You can have a lawyer or a female officer present. Anytime you feel uncomfortable, we can take a break or simply discontinue the discussion. Our intention is to give the prosecutor’s office the best information available.”

  I thought I had been as accommodating as I could. Perhaps I wished she would not cooperate and allow me to drop the investigation. I didn’t think I had ever seen a woman look more strangely at the world. She made me think of a thick-bodied, frightened bird trapped in a small cage.

  “Levon wants to be with us,” she said.

  “I’d prefer you and I talk first.”

  “Go tell him that. He’s at the end of the hall.”

  “Didn’t you just call him?” I asked.

  “Watch the steps.”

  The center of the house was raised on pilings, the ornate baths and rooms with tester beds and Levon’s office on a lower level. The hallway was long and lined with bookshelves and glass cases containing antique firearms. The woodwork in all the rooms was done with restored century-old cypress and radiated a soft, polished glow like browned butter. Levon’s office was enormous and filled with light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two big fans circulated slowly on the ceiling; there were bamboo mats on the carpet that creaked dryly under my shoes. Outside, windmill palms and banana fronds and chest-high philodendron were threaded with moisture. I felt I had walked into a 1940s Sydney Greenstreet film.

  Levon was bent over the keyboard on his desk, which ran the entire length of one wall, with a crucifix at either end. The Civil War sword that had belonged to his great-grandfather lay next to his computer. He saved the material he was typing and turned around. “Sorry to keep you waiting. If I stop in the middle of a paragraph, I can’t put it together again.” He looked at the paragraph again. I had to wonder about his priorities.

  “Miss Rowena said you’d like to sit down with us. I’m afraid that’s not the way we need to proceed.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s embarrassing for the victim. The victim is inclined to hide information. Third parties start interjecting themselves into the issue.”

  “The issue? What kind of talk is that?”

  “The kind I use when I speak to an intelligent man whom I’m treating as such.”

  The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled. No matter how old Levon grew, he always looked young. He was also an innocent, even though he had worked for Amnesty International and had been jailed in Cuba and Guatemala. But I use the term “an innocent” in a different fashion. Like George Orwell, he believed the human spirit was unconquerable. He also subscribed to Orwell’s belief that people are always better than we think they are. But sometimes his idealism and innocence led him into arrogance and elitism.

  “Take it easy with her, will you?” he said. “She had a hard go of it last night. Nightmares and such. A black hand coming through a window.”

  “A what?”

  “Nothing. She has bad dreams, Dave. What the hell do you expect?”

  “I’ll let you know when we’re finished,” I replied.

  He looked back at the page on his monitor, his attention somewhere else.

  I returned to the living room. Rowena was sitting in front of a giant brick fireplace and chimney, staring at the ashes caked on the andirons. “You’ll have to excuse the way I look. I was painting. Can we go up to my studio?”

  I followed her upstairs to a spacious room with huge windows that looked down on the bayou and on live oaks that were so huge and thickly leafed that you felt you could walk across their tops. The sun’s reflection on the water was like li
ght wobbling in a rain barrel. She sat down at a card table and wiped at her nose and raised her eyes. “So ask me.”

  I sat down across from her. “You drank about four Manhattans before you left the lounge?” I said.

  “I had a couple of drinks earlier, too, before I went to the supermarket.”

  “Did you fall down outside the lounge?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I wondered if you hurt yourself.”

  “Who said I fell down?”

  “This isn’t a time to hold back, Miss Rowena. The prosecutor is your ally. Don’t let him go into court with incomplete information.”

  “Jimmy Nightingale told you I fell down? You’re saying that’s how I got the marks on my body?”

  “It’s the question others will ask.”

  “Nightingale put those marks on me,” she said. “He’s salting the mine shaft, isn’t he? What a piece of shit.”

  “Let me be straight up with you. The defense attorney will probably be a woman. Gender buys jury votes from the jump. She’ll say you didn’t call 911, you accepted a ride back to your car from the man you claim assaulted you, you didn’t go to the hospital, you didn’t have a rape kit done, and you showered, taking DNA possibilities off the table.”

  “I told Levon.”

  “Told him what?” I asked.

  “I told him you’d side with that bloody sod whom people around here think so highly of.”

  “That isn’t how we work, Miss Rowena.”

  “Stop calling me ‘Miss.’ I don’t like your plantation culture. If your ancestors had their way, we’d all be picking their cotton.”

  “My ancestors were already picking it. What happened on the boat, Rowena?”

  “You didn’t hear enough on that video? You know what it’s like to be filmed while you describe how someone ran his tongue all over you?”

  “Tell me again.”

  “He shoved me on the bunk. I tried to get up. I was stone drunk and couldn’t defend myself. I felt his knees come down on me. He ripped off my panties. Then he did all the things I described on that fucking tape.”

  Her eyes were misting. The blood had drained from her cheeks into her throat.