”I saw you working out on the speed bag at Red Lerille's Gym,“ he said.
”The trick's to do it without gloves.“ He held out his square, blunt hands, his words bouncing up and down in his throat. ”I used to wrap mine with gauze soaked in lye water. Puts a sheath of callus on the outside like dry fish scale. The problem today is, some faggot cuts his hand on the bag, then you skin your hand on the same bag and you got AIDS, that's what these cocksuckers are doing to the country.“
”What's your problem, Pogue?“
”You gonna dime me?“
”I'm not a cop anymore, remember?“
”So the bar's open,“ he said, and pointed toward a brown Nissan parked by the side of the road.
”I'm tied up.“
”I got the cooler on the backseat. Take a break, chief. Nobody's after your cherry,“ he said.
Up ahead I could see the drawbridge and the bridge tender inside his little lighted house. Emile Pogue tugged his cooler out onto the road, stuck his corded forearm down into the water and melting ice, and pulled out two bottles of Coors.
”No, thanks,“ I said. He twisted off the cap on one bottle and drank it half-empty. His torso looked as taut and knurled as the skin on a pumpkin, crisscrossed with stitched scars, webbed with sinew like huge cat's whiskers above the rib cage. He worked his arms through a sleeveless, olive green shirt. ”You don't like me?“ he said.
”No.“
He pinched his nostrils, flexed his lips back on his gums, looked up and down the road. ”Here's the deal,“ he said. ”You put a stop to what's happening, I'll rat-fuck any grease ball you want, then I'm gone.“
”Stop what?“
”That demented guy, the one looks like a dildo you scrambled, Patsy Dapolito, he thinks Johnny Carp's got a hit on him. It ain't coming from Johnny, though.“ His breath was like a slap, his body aura-ed with a fog of dried sweat and testosterone. He tapped me on the chest with his finger. ”Look at me when I'm talking to you. Sonny killed my brother. So I had a personal and legitimate hard-on for the guy.“
”I hear you.“
”But that ain't why Sonny's back.“ I stared at him, open-mouthed. His eyes had the dead quality of ball bearings. He breathed loudly through his nose.
”Back?“ I said.
”Get you some Q-Tips, open up the wax. Don't tell me what I seen. Look, chief, till you been down in the bush with the Indians, done a few mushrooms with these fuckers, I'm talking about on a stone altar where their ancestors used to tear out people's hearts, don't knock what somebody else tells you he sees.“
”You lost me.“
”I saw him at a camp I use out in the Atchafalaya. I looked out in the trees, inside all this hanging moss, there was a swarm of moths or butterflies, except they were on fire, then they formed a big cluster in the shape of a guy, and the guy walked right through the trunk of a tree into the water. It was Sonny Marsallus, he was burning like hundreds of little tongues of flame under the water. I ain't the only one seen it, either.“
His hand was squeezed like a huge paw around his beer bottle, his mouth an expressionless slit.
”I think we're talking about an overload of acid or steroids, Emile,“ I said.
”You get word to Sonny,“ he said. ”That Mennonite's words… they were a curse. I'm saying maybe I'm damned. I need time to get out of it.“
His breath was rife with funk, his eyes jittering, riveted on mine.
”What Mennonite?“ I said.
Sometimes you pull aside the veil and look into the Pit. What follows is my best reconstruction of his words.
CHAPTER 26
I had thirty guys strung out on the trail in the dark. It sounded like a traveling junkyard. I stopped them at the river, told the translator, Look, we got a problem here, two more klicks we're in Pinkville South, know what I'm saying, we go in, make our statement, then boogie on back across the river, the beer is five hours colder and we let the dudes from Amnesty International count up the score. In and out, that's the rhythm, none of our people get hurt, even the volunteers we took out of the last ville don't need to walk through any toe-poppers. I'm talking to guys here who think the manual of arms is a Nicaraguan baseball player. Look, ace, you got to understand, I didn't target the ville, it targeted itself. They were giving food to the people who were killing us. We warned them, we warned the American priest running the orphanage. Nobody listened. I didn't have no grief with the Mennonite broad. I saw her in the city once, I tipped my hat to her. I admired her. She was a homely little Dutch wisp of a thing working in a shithole most people wouldn't take time to spit on. The trouble came from a couple of liaison guys, officers who spent some time at a special school for greasers at Benning, listen, chief, I was an adviser, got me,
I didn't get paid for interfering, you see these guys walk a dude into a tin shed that's got a metal bed frame in it, they close the door behind them, you'll hear the sounds way out in the jungle and pretend it's just monkeys shrieking. Ellos! they'd yell when we came into the ville, and then try to hide. That was our name. As far as these poor bastards knew, I could have been Pancho Villa or Stonewall Jackson.
Look, it got out of control. We were supposed to set up a perimeter, search for weapons, take one guy out in particular, this labor organizer, one object lesson, that's all, they used to call it a Christmas tree, a few ornaments hanging off the branches in the morning, you with me, but the guy runs inside the church and the priest starts yelling at our people out on the steps, and pop pop pop, what was I supposed to do, man? Suddenly I got a feeding frenzy on my hands. You got to look at the overview to see my problem. It's in a cup of mountains, with nobody to see what's going on. That can be a big temptation. In the center of the ville is this stucco church with three little bell towers on it. The priest looks like a pool of black paint poured down the steps. The streets run off in all directions, like spokes on a wheel, and the guys did the priest are scared and start popping anybody in sight. Before I know it, they're down all the spokes, deep in the ville, the circus tent's on fire and I'm one fucking guy. Geese and chickens are exploding out of the yards, pigs squealing, women screaming, people getting pulled into the street by their hair. She comes around a corner, like she's walking against a wind and it takes everything in her to keep walking toward the sounds that make most people cover their ears and hide. I ain't ever going to forget the look in her face, she had these ice blue eyes and hair like white corn silk and blood on her blouse, like it was thrown from an ink pen, but she saw it all, man, just like that whole street and the dead people in it zoomed right through her eyes onto a piece of film. The problem got made right there. I pushed her hard. She had bones like a bird, you could hold her up against a candle and count them with your finger, I bet, and her face was a little pale triangle and I knew why she was a religious woman and I shoved her again. ”This is an accident. It's ending now. You haul your butt out of here, Dutchie,“ I said.
I squeezed her arm, twisted her in the other direction, scraped her against the wall and saw the pain jump in her face. But they're hard to handle when they're light; they don't have any weight you can use against them. She pulled out of my hands, slipped past me, even cut me with her nails so she could keep looking at the things she wasn't supposed to see, that were going to mess all of us up. Her lips moved but I couldn't understand the words, the air between the buildings was sliced with muzzle flashes, like red scratches against the dark, and you could see empty shell casings shuttering across the lamplight in the windows. Then I heard the blades on the Huey before I felt the downdraft wash over us, and I watched it set down in a field at the end of this stone street and the two officers from the special school at Benning waiting for me, their cigars glowing inside the door, and I didn't have any doubt how it was going to go.
They said it in Spanish, then in English. Then in Spanish and English together. ”It is sad, truly. But this one from Holland is communista. She is also very serio with friends in the left-wing press. Entiende, Sen
or Pogue?“
It wasn't a new kind of gig. You throw a dozen bodies out at high altitudes. Sometimes they come right through a roof. Maybe it saves lives down the line. But she was alive when they brought her onboard.
Look, chief, I wasn't controlling any of it. My choices were I finish the mission, clean up these guys' shit and not think about what's down below, because the sun was over the ridges now and you could see the tile roof of the church and the body of the labor organizer hanging against the wall and Indians running around like an ants' nest that's been stepped on, or stay behind and wait for some seriously pissed-off rebels to come back into the ville and see what we'd done.
Two guys tried to lift her up and throw her out, but she fought with them. So they started hitting her, both of them, then kicking her with their boots. I couldn't take it, man. It was like somebody opened a furnace door next to my head. This stuff had to end. She knew it, too, she saw it in my eyes even before I picked her up by her shoulders, almost like I was saving her, her hands resting on my cheeks, all the while staring into my eyes, even while I was carrying her to the door, even when she was framed against the sky, like she was inside a painting, her hair whipping in the wind, her face jerking back toward the valley floor and what was waiting for her, no stopping any of it now, chief, and I could see white lines in her scalp and taste the dryness and fear on her breath, but her lips were moving again while I squeezed her arms tighter and moved her farther out into a place where nobody had to make decisions anymore, her eyes like holes full of blue sky, and this time I didn't need to hear the words, I could read them on her mouth, they hung there in front of me even while the wind tore her out of my hands and she became just a speck racing toward the earth: You must change your way.
CHAPTER 27
Clete and I had breakfast the next morning at Victor's on Main. It was cool inside, and the overhead fans made shadows on the stamped tin ceiling.
”What'd he do then?“ Clete said. ”Got in his car and drove away.“
”He confesses to a murder, tells you he sees flames burning under the water, then just drives away?“
”No, he repeated the Mennonite woman's words, then said, “How's that for a mind-fuck, chief?”
“ The restaurant was almost empty, and a black woman was putting fresh flowers on the tables. Clete folded and unfolded his palms, bit down on the corner of his lip.
”You think Sonny's back?“ I asked.
”Back from what? You don't come back. You're either alive or you're dead.“
”What set you off?“
”Nothing.“
”Look, somebody took a shot at Patsy Dap. Maybe with a nine-millimeter. Pogue says it didn't come from Johnny Carp,“ I said.
His green eyes lingered on mine.
”You didn't?“ I said.
”You said it a long time ago. They're all head cases The object is to point them at each other,“ he said.
”You can't orchestrate the behavior of psychopaths. What's the matter with you?“
”I did it when I had a few beers. I told you, nobody fucks my podjo.“ He rolled his fork back and forth on the tablecloth, clicking it hard into the wood.
”What's worrying you?“ I said. ”Pogue's a pro, he's got ice water in his veins. When's the last time a guy like that told you a dead man's trying to cap him?“
* * *
I went to a noon AA meeting and tried to turn over my problems to my Higher Power. I wasn't doing a good job of it. I had stomped and degraded Johnny Giacano in front of his crew, his friends and family. Were I still a police officer, I would have a marginal chance of getting away with it. But because of my new status, there was no question about the choices Johnny had before him. He would either redeem himself in an unmistakable, dramatic way or be cannibalized by his underlings. As assassins, the Mafia has no peer. Their experience and sophistication go back to the Napoleonic wars; the level of physical violence imposed on their victims is usually grotesque and far beyond any practical need; the conviction rate of their button men is a joke. The hit itself almost always comes about in an insidious fashion. The assassin is trusted, always has access, extends an invitation for a quiet dinner with friends, an evening at the track, a fishing trip out on the salt. The victim never suspects the gravity of his situation until, in the blink of an eye, he's looking into a face that's branded with an ageless design, lighted with energies that are not easily satiated. I went to two meetings a day every day that week. When I got home Friday evening, Luke Fontenot was waiting for me in the bait shop. He sat at a table in the corner, in the gloom, a cup of coffee in front of him. Batist was mopping down the counter when I came in. He looked back at me and shrugged, then dropped his rag in a bucket and went outside and lit a cigar on the dock.
”Aint Bertie got rid of her lawyer and signed a quit… what d' you call it?“ Luke said.
”A quitclaim?“
”Yeah, that's it.“
He looked smaller if I the weak light through the screened windows. His hair grew in small ringlets on the back of his neck.
”They give her twenty-five t'ousand dollars,“ he said.
”Does she feel okay with that?“
”She don't want nothing to happen to me or Ruthie Jean.“
His eyes didn't meet mine. His face was empty, his mouth audibly dry when he spoke, like that of a person who's just experienced a moment for which he has little preparation.
”That lawyer from Lafayette, the one use to work for Sweet Pea Chaisson, Jason Darbonne, and some men from New Orleans come out to the place last night,“ he said. ”They was standing by the gum trees, where the graves use to be, pointing out toward the train track. I went outside and ax them what they want. They say we got to be gone in thirty days, that strip of houses ain't gonna be nothing but broken bo'rds and tore-up water pipe. I tole them I ain't heard Moleen Bertrand tell me that, and the last I heard Moleen Bertrand own this plantation. One of them men from New Orleans say, ‘We was gonna copy you on all the documents, boy, but we didn't have your address.’ I said, ‘Moleen Bertrand tole my aunt she can stay on long as she likes.’ They didn't even hear me. They went on talking like I wasn't there, talking about pouring a foundation, cutting roads down to the train track, doing something with electric transformers. Then one guy stops the others and looks at me. ‘Here's twenty dollars. Go down to the sto' and get us some cold beer. Keep a six-pack for yourself.’ You know what I said? ‘I ain't got my car.’ That's all the words I could find, like I didn't have no other kind of words, except to make an excuse for not running their errands. So the guy say, ‘Then go on in the house. You got no bid ness out here.’ I said, ‘Moleen Bertrand done already talked to Aint Bertie. Tall wasn't there, so maybe y'all don't know about it.’ Then the same guy, he walked real close to me, right up in my face, he was a big, blond guy with hair tonic on and muscles about to bust out of his shirt, he say, like we was the only two people on the earth and he knew exactly who he was talking to, he say, ‘Listen, you dumb nigger, you open your mouth again and you're gonna crawl back up those steps on your hands and knees.’“
Luke raised his coffee cup, then set it back down without drinking from it. He looked through the screen window at the line of cypress trees across the bayou, at the sky above it that was like a crimson-streaked ink wash. His face had the lifeless quality of tallow.
”But that's not it, is it?“ I asked.
”What ain't?“
”You've known white men like that before. You were stand-up even in the death house, Luke.“
”I called Moleen Bertrand at his office this morning. His secretary say he's in conference. I waited till eleven o'clock and called again. This time she say let me get your number. At three o'clock he still ain't called back. The next time I tried, she say he done gone for the day. I axed if he gone home. She waited a long time, then she say, ‘No, he playing racquetball over in Lafayette.‘ I knew where he play at. I was going in the front door when him and three other men was coming ou
t, carrying canvas bags on their shoulders, their hair wet and combed, all of them smiling and stepping aside to let a lady pass. Moleen Bertrand shook hands with me and gone right on by. Just like that. Just like I was some black guy maybe he seen around once in a while.“
I got up from the table and turned on the string of lights over the dock. I heard Batist folding up the Cinzano umbrellas over the spool tables. Luke opened and closed his hand on a fifty-cent piece in his palm. Its edges left a circular print almost like an incision in his gold skin. I sat back down across from him.
”I don't think Moleen is in control of his life,“ I said.
”He saved me from the electric chair. Didn't have nothing to gain for it, either. How come he start lying now?“
”He's involved with evil men, Luke. Get away from him.“
”I ain't worried about me.“
”I know you're not,“ I said. Then I said, ”Where is she?“
”Out at the house, packing her new clothes, talking about some place in the Islands they're going to, pretending everything all right with Aint Bertie, pretending he fixing to come by anytime now.“
”I wish I had an answer for you.“
”I ain't ax you for one. I just wanted you to know something befo'hand. It ain't gonna end like Moleen want it to.“
”You'd better explain that.“
”You don't know Ruthie Jean, suh. Nobody do. Specially not Moleen Bertrand.“
He went out the screen door and walked down the dock under the string of light bulbs. I picked up the fifty-cent piece he had left for the coffee. It felt warm and moist from the pressure of his hand.
* * *
Saturday morning I was reading the newspaper on the front steps when Helen Soileau's cruiser came up the dirt road and turned in my drive.
She closed the car door behind her and walked through the shade like a soldier on a mission, her dark blue slacks and starched white shirt, badge and black gunbelt and spit-shined black shoes and nickel-plated revolver as unmistakable a martial warning as the flat stare and the thick upper arms that rolled like a man's.
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