by Day Keene
“Rita.” He called more loudly this time.
The white blur on the sofa moved as the girl sat up. Her voice was throaty. “Yes?” Then she realized the voice had come from outside the trailer and she said, “Who are you? What do you want? Go away.”
Latour identified himself. “It’s Latour. Unlock the door and let me in. I want to talk to Jacques.”
There was a rustle of nylon as if the girl were slipping into a robe. The rustle came closer to the screen. “How do I know you’re Latour?” she asked.
He flashed the light on his face.
“I hoped you’d come back,” she said simply.
Latour was sorry that she was going to be disappointed. “I just want to talk to Jacques.” He tugged at the locked screen door impatiently. “Come on. Open up. Let me in.”
Rita came still closer to the door. Either she hadn’t heard what he said or her mind was still fogged with sleep. “Shh. For God’s sake, not so loud,” she whispered. “You’ll wake up Jacques.”
Her warning came too late. The sibilant whispering and the knocking had already awakened the old man. There was a squeaking of bedsprings as he sat up. He sounded comparatively sober.
“What the hell is going on out there?”
“Now you’ve torn it,” Rita whispered. “This will probably cost me a beating.”
Lacosta clomped down the narrow aisle of the trailer. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Latour started to answer him and suddenly lost the power to form words.
The blow came from one side behind him. He heard, rather than felt, the vicious thud of the blackjack against the back of his head. It was a strange, hollow sound and the blow left him mentally alert but completely inarticulate.
His flashlight fell from his hand. His cigar dropped from his slack lips and hissed wetly in the mud.
The blackjack swung again and he and Olga were in a free fall, their close-coupled bodies attempting to keep contact as they fell, and Olga was screaming, not in rapture this time, but in terror.
Latour wondered why Olga was screaming. This was what she’d wanted.
Then his fall ended abruptly and he was lying alone in the mud, his dying cigar burning a brand on his cheek.
His body twitched once, convulsively.
Then he lay face down, inert, in the weeds growing out of the mud in front of the trailer.
A deep silence drowned out the screams still battering at his subconscious.
Chapter Nine
THERE WAS a small rubbery substance in Latour’s mouth. It felt like a hollow baby’s nipple. He tried to spit it out and someone hit him on the side of the head.
“Blow, you bastard,” Jack Pringle said. “Blow hard.”
Latour did as he was ordered, then opened his eyes with an effort. He was sitting on a straight-backed chair in Sheriff Belluche’s office, surrounded by a circle of familiar but unfriendly faces.
Jack Pringle was studying the gauge of the drunkometer set up on Belluche’s desk. “Well, we know one thing,” the night deputy said. “His pretending to be drunk is just a gag. Most of the whisky is on the outside.”
Latour spat out the tube in his mouth. His lips felt numb. It was difficult for him to form words and more difficult for him to get them out of his mouth.
“What goes on here?” he asked.
One of the men broke the circle and slapped his face with a calloused palm. “He asks us what goes on. Suppose you tell us.”
Latour tried to orient himself. He hadn’t the least idea of how he’d got from the clearing to Sheriff Belluche’s office. The pain in his head made it impossible for him to think coherently.
“Tell you what?” he asked.
Mullen’s florid face swam into the limited range of his vision as the beefy first deputy swung a chair away from the wall and straddled it, facing him. “Come off it, Andy.”
“I’ve nothing to come off of.”
“You don’t remember a thing?”
“No,” Latour said thickly. “The last I remember I was standing in front of the door of Jacques Lacosta’s trailer.”
Sheriff Belluche was standing in back of Mullen. The old man ran his fingers through his lank white hair. “Of course, I could be wrong, but from where I stand, I’d say there goes the ball game. Even if we wanted to, there’s no way we can hush this up.”
“Not very well,” Mullen agreed. “The siren on that ambulance sure didn’t sound like the bell of a Good Humor man. The story is all over town by now. And by morning it will be all over Louisiana. Out-of-state papers please copy.”
Latour wished he knew what they were talking about.
Mullen turned back to him. “You admit going out to the Lacosta place? That’s where you were headed when you left me?”
The pain in his head was still intense, but some of the fog lifted from Latour’s mind. “That’s right.”
“Did you make any stops on the way?”
“One stop.”
“Where?”
“At Big Boy’s.” Latour tried to work the cotton out of his mouth. “I wonder if I could have a drink.”
Pringle took a bottle of Bourbon from the bottom drawer of Belluche’s desk and handed it to Todd Kelly. “Give him a belt. It won’t hurt him. According to the reading on the gauge, he hasn’t enough alcohol in him to make a sick parakeet giddy.”
Kelly held the bottle to Latour’s lips. “Go ahead. Drink. Then you have a lot of talking to do. And talk straight. The thing I hate most in this world is a sanctimonious son-of-a-bitch who talks out of both sides of his mouth.”
The whisky escaped Latour’s mouth and trickled down his chin. He raised his hands to steady the bottle and discovered that his wrists were manacled. “What’s the idea of the cuffs?”
Kelly screwed the cap back on the bottle. “As if you didn’t know.”
“He knows, all right,” Pringle said. “He’s too lah-de-lah. He’s too Simon-pure to take an honest buck. Then he pulls something like this and queers it for all of us.”
Latour looked at the faces of the men standing around his chair. Jim Claiborne, Jean de la Ronde, Bill Ducros, Sam Peddie, Matt Rousseau, Jack Rafignac, and Tony Louaillier, every deputy on the force except those on sick call, looking as if they had dressed hastily, stared back at him coldly.
“What’s the idea?” he repeated.
Mullen said, “That’s for you to tell us. If you needed it so bad, why didn’t you jump one of the girls watching the poker game? Any of them would have been glad to oblige you. That’s what they were there for. But no. You had to be different.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll bet. You do admit you went out to Lacosta’s?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Latour’s head was beginning to clear. The pain was less intense. “I wanted to look at that patch of cane where those three shots were fired at me. I wanted to talk to Lacosta.”
“At two o’clock in the morning?”
“It doesn’t matter what time you die. You’re just as dead at two o’clock as you are if you’re shot at noon.”
Sheriff Belluche’s voice was dry and brittle. It had the same dead tonal quality as a piece of last year’s cane when it was stepped on. “Come off it, Andy. You’re not fooling anyone. Those alleged attempts that Tom tells me you claim were made on your life are as phony as the holier-than-thou attitude you pinned on with your shield.”
Latour protested, “That isn’t so. I was shot at this morning and again this evening. And I found four cigarette butts and a thirty-thirty shell casing in the patch of cane where the man waited in ambush.”
“Where are they?”
“In my left-hand shirt pocket.”
“Well, they aren’t there now,” Belluche said. “Any of you boys find any cigarette butts or a shell casing on the floor of Lacosta’s trailer?”
“No,” Pringle said.
Mullen pointed to a small pile o
f personal possessions on the blotter of Belluche’s desk. “That’s everything he had on him.” He enumerated the items. “One revolver, a wallet, a handful of change. His identification papers, a flashlight, and a half bottle of white lightning.”
On the floor of the trailer? Latour thought.
He hadn’t been inside the trailer. All he’d done was knock on the door. Returning memory pierced the fog clouding his mind. Lacosta had awakened. He’d asked who was there and what he wanted. Then someone had slugged him with a blackjack.
He said, “I was slugged.” He lifted his manacled hands and tried to feel his head. “That’s how I got these lumps.”
Mullen was impatient with him. “Oh, for chrissake, Andy. You know as well as I do how you got those. You couldn’t very well help banging your head against the legs of the sofa or the table, wallowing around as you did.”
Latour looked at him blankly.
“I suppose you don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“No.”
The front door of the jail opened and closed. Feet hurried down the hall and Jean Avart forced his way through the circle of deputies. It was the first time that Latour had ever seen the attorney when he wasn’t immaculately dressed. This morning he hadn’t bothered. Avart’s shirt was open at the neck. He had no tie. One leg of a pair of purple silk pajamas was hanging below the edge of his sharply creased white linen trousers.
“What’s going on here, Andy?”
“I wish someone would tell me,” Latour said. “It seems to be a secret.”
Mullen got up from the chair he was straddling. He was not pleased to see the attorney. “Obviously, you’ve heard.”
Avart hitched up the exposed leg of his pajamas. “Obviously,” he said dryly. “I imagine that by now everyone in town has heard. One of the young men in my office saw the ambulance go by and checked. Then, knowing I am a friend of Andy’s, he phoned and woke me up.”
Sheriff Belluche lighted one of the dollar cigars he affected. “You’re here as counsel for Andy?”
“If he wants me,” Avart said. “But let’s get one thing straight right now. Are you going to play this across the board or is the hush on?”
Belluche gave the matter some thought. “No, by God,” he said finally. “If I wind up in Angola, this is straight across the board. I know what you think of me, Jean. But there are some things I can’t stomach. And this is one of them.”
“Just so I know,” the attorney said. He sat in the chair Mullen had vacated. “How do you feel, Andy?”
“Lousy,” Latour admitted.
Avart patted his shoulder. “Hang on. In a minute you and I will have a little talk. But right now I want to know where we stand.” He looked at Mullen. “How much do you have on him, Tom?”
“Plenty,” Mullen said. “There are two empty shells in his gun and Mrs. Lacosta has identified him as the man who rapped on the door of the trailer and demanded admittance. She thinks it was a few minutes just before or just after two o’clock.” He added wryly, “When things began to happen, she was too busy to look at the clock.”
“Her identification is positive?”
“She says he flashed his light on his face.”
Avart lighted a cigarette. “Is that correct, Andy?”
Latour said, “I was there. I knocked on the door of the trailer. I flashed my light on my face.”
Sheriff Belluche rolled his cigar between his lips. “It’s true enough about his knocking. According to the story the girl told Doc Walker when he could get her to stop screaming, he knocked so hard he woke Lacosta, who was sleeping in the bedroom. Then when Jacques staggered out into the living area of the trailer, all hell broke loose.”
“I see,” the lawyer said.
Latour wished he did.
Sheriff Belluche continued, “I guess those trailer doors aren’t very strong. Anyway, the screen doors.”
Avart buttoned his shirt and took a tie from the pocket of his coat. “Never having lived in a trailer, I wouldn’t know.” He knotted his tie. “Now tell me this. How was the alarm sounded so soon? After all, that’s a rather lonely section of the parish.”
Pringle said, “A field hand tipped us.”
“White or colored?”
“I’d say colored. You know how they talk when they’re excited. He said he’d just passed the clearing when one of his tires went flat. He was a little hard to understand. But as I got it, he had his truck jacked up and was changing the tire when he heard the shots. Then when the girl began to scream, he had a fair idea of what was happening. So as soon as he changed his tire, he headed for the nearest phone.”
“Did you get his name?”
“No. Like I say, he was pretty excited. And I imagine he didn’t want to get involved in anything concerning a white woman.”
“What did you do after the call?”
“I got in touch with Tom and Sheriff Belluche. Then I called Louaillier in to sit on the desk and the three of us drove out there.”
“I see,” Avart said. “And where did you find Andy?”
“About a hundred yards this side of the clearing. He was sitting behind the wheel of his car, pretending he was passed out.”
“That sounds rather stupid to me,” Avart said. “And I think we all agree that whatever else Andy may be, he isn’t stupid. If he’s guilty of the charges against him, I should think he’d have got out of there.”
“He couldn’t,” Mullen explained. “In his excitement he put his car into reverse instead of drive and backed into the slough. It’s still out there, hub-deep in mud. So he did the next best thing he could do. He pretended he was so drunk he didn’t know what had happened.”
“I see,” Avart said. “Now let’s hear your side of it, Andy.”
“I don’t know what they’re talking about. I didn’t hear any shots. I certainly didn’t fire any, and I didn’t hear Rita scream.” He corrected himself. “No, that’s not exactly right. I do, vaguely, remember hearing a girl scream. But there was nothing I could do about it.”
“Why not?”
“I was on the ground sapped unconscious, or the next thing to it.”
“What were you doing out there?”
“I got to wondering if Mrs. Lacosta was safe, after that scene that Jacques made on the street. So I drove out to see. I also wanted to talk to Jacques, if he’d sobered up enough to talk.”
“About what?”
“If he knew who was trying to kill me.”
“Did he?”
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I knocked on the door of the trailer and identified myself to Mrs. Lacosta. Then Jacques woke up and asked me what I wanted. And before I could tell him someone sapped me unconscious. Now you tell me something. What happened out there?”
“You don’t know?”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“Jacques Lacosta is dead, shot twice through the heart. And young Mrs. Lacosta was unmercifully beaten and raped, presumably by the same man who killed her husband.”
“Who? Who did it?”
“Mrs. Lacosta claims it was you.”
Chapter Ten
LATOUR FOUGHT a desire to be violently ill.
“Not feeling so good right now, eh, Andy?” Mullen asked.
“No,” Latour admitted, “I’m not.”
The telephone on Sheriff Belluche’s desk rang. He picked it up. “I see. I see,” he said into the mouthpiece. Then he cradled the phone and motioned Latour to his feet. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To the hospital. That was Dr. Walker. He says he’s given Mrs. Lacosta a sedative and she’s calmed down considerably. He thinks we can get a positive identification before she goes to sleep.”
“I didn’t do it. Believe me, Sheriff,” Latour said. “I didn’t kill Jacques and I didn’t rape his wife.”
“She says differently.”
Pringle and Kelly pulled Latour to his feet and propelled him down the hall to the front
steps of the jail.
A small group of men had formed on the walk.
“There he is now,” a man said.
Another one tried to strike Latour and Mullen pushed him off balance. “There will be none of that. Don’t go getting ideas. Come on, now. Open up a path.”
The men stepped aside, reluctantly, and Pringle and Kelly hurried Latour down the walk and into Sheriff Belluche’s car.
Belluche got into the front seat with Mullen. “Well, it was nice while it lasted. But I’m afraid I’m a little old-fashioned. Sure, I’ve taken a few dollars. I like to go to bed with a babe, and the younger, the better — as long as she’s willing. I’ve even killed a few men. But rape is one too many for me.”
“But I didn’t,” Latour protested. “You have to believe me.”
“Why?”
Mullen waited for a convoy of pipe-carrying oil-company trucks to pass, then kicked on the revolving red light and drove up Lafitte Street with the siren wailing.
Latour rode, watching the men on the sidewalks. All of them turned to watch the police car pass, but none of them called out. The girls in the crowd were as silent as the men. There was a subtle change in the tempo of the street. The blare of brass was muted. The roll and thump of the drums more of a pulse than a beat. It was as if French Bayou were holding its collective breath.
Kelly asked, “Think the boys may give us trouble?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Belluche said. “I do know it’s a good thing they didn’t see the poor kid sprawled bloody and naked on the floor of the trailer.”
“Just like the other three?”
“Just like the other three.”
Mullen braked the car in front of the hospital. Kelly and Pringle walked Latour inside. Dr. Walker was waiting for them.
“How is she?” Mullen asked him.
“She’s going to make it,” Dr. Walker said. He looked at Latour. “But how any man could treat a girl as she was treated is beyond me.”
Latour tried to say, “I didn’t,” and his mouth was too dry to form the words.
“How long can we talk to her?” the sheriff asked.
Dr. Walker glanced at his watch. “Two or three minutes. No longer. She’s still a very sick girl.”
