The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  “Yes?”

  “We mustn’t ever tell anyone about this. That is not what happened in your family.”

  In the glow of moonlight through the window, her face looked as though it had been sculpted in alabaster.

  “Say that again?” Otis asked.

  “You’re a respected insurance executive in New Orleans. That’s what you will remain. That story you just told me has no application in our lives today.”

  “Mel?” he began.

  “Please. I’ve told you not to call me that, Otis. It’s not a lot to ask.”

  Otis went downstairs to the den and lay down on a black leather couch, a cushion over his head, his ears ringing with a sound like wind in seashells.

  BERTRAND COULDN’T give up his resentment toward Eddy all the way back to the house where he’d found the cash and dope and the.38 snub. Eddy loved playing the big shot, handing out favors to people, screwing a cigarette in his mouth, firing it up with a Zippo, snapping the lid back tight, like he was the dude in control. Except Eddy was being generous with what wasn’t his to be generous with, in this case the biggest score of their lives. Andre was sitting backward on the bow of the boat, like he was lookout man, scanning the horizon, some kind of commando about to take down osama bin Laden.

  What a pair of jokers. Maybe it was time to cut both of them loose.

  But the real reason for Bertrand’s resentment of Eddy and Andre had little to do with the score at the house and he knew it. Every time he looked into their faces he saw his own face, and what he saw there set his stomach on fire again.

  Maybe he could get away from Andre and Eddy and start over somewhere else. Forget about what they had done when they were stoned. Yeah, maybe he could even make up for it, write those girls a note and mail it to the newspaper from another city. It hadn’t been his idea anyway. It was Eddy who always had a thing about young white girls, always saying sick stuff when they pulled up to them next to a red light. Andre had been a sex freak ever since he got turned out in the Lafourche Parish Prison. Bertrand never got off hurting people.

  But no matter how many times Bertrand went over the assault on the two victims, he could not escape one conclusion about his participation: He had entered into it willingly, and when he saw revulsion in the face of the girl they had taken out of the car with the dead battery, he had done it to her with greater violence than either his brother or Andre.

  In these moments he hated himself and sometimes even wished someone would drive a bullet through his brain and stop the thoughts that kept his stomach on fire.

  The street was completely dark, except for one house where the owner obviously had his own generators working. Eddy cut the engine at the end of the block and let the boat drift through mounds of partially submerged oak limbs into the side yard of the house they had creeped three hours earlier.

  In minutes the four of them were ripping the Sheetrock and lathwork and plaster off the studs in every room in the house. In fact, it was fun tearing the place apart. The air and carpets were white with dust, the flower vases smashed and the flowers scattered, the kitchen a shambles, electric wiring hanging like spaghetti out of the walls.

  “This motherfucker gonna brown his drawers when he come home,” Eddy said. “Hey, man, dig Andre in the kitchen.”

  Bertrand couldn’t believe it. Andre had unbuttoned his trousers and was looping a high arc of urine into the sink.

  “That’s sick, man,” Bertrand said.

  “You’re right,” Andre answered. He spun around and hosed down the stove and an opened drawer that was full of seasoning, saving out enough for the icebox.

  That was it, Bertrand said to himself. He was splitting.

  Then Eddy splintered a chunk of plywood out of the pantry ceiling with his crowbar, and a cascade of bundled fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills poured down on his head. “Oh man, you was right from the jump, Bertrand, this is a motherfucking bank.”

  The four of them began scooping up the money, throwing it into a vinyl garbage bag, Bertrand estimating the count as each pack of bills thudded into the bottom of the bag. He ran out of math in the sixty-thousand range.

  “We rich,” Andre said. “We rich, man. We rich. Ain’t nobody gonna believe this.”

  “That’s right, ’Cause you ain’t gonna tell them,” Bertrand said.

  “Hey, man, Andre’s cool. Don’t be talking to a brother like that,” Eddy said.

  “Eddy, I want you to clean the wax out of your ears and hear this real good. That’s the last time you’re gonna act like you big shit at my expense,” Bertrand said.

  “Hey, like Andre say, we all rich. We ain’t got time to be fighting among ourselves,” Kevin said. “We gonna burn the house? I mean, to get rid of the fingerprints and all?”

  The three older men stared at him with their mouths open.

  UP THE STREET, on the other side of the neutral ground, Tom Claggart and two friends had nodded off on pallets they had laid out on Claggart’s living room floor, hoping to catch the faint breeze that puffed through the doorway and to avoid as much as possible the layers of heat that had mushroomed against the ceilings. Their pistols and shotguns and hunting rifles were oiled and loaded and propped against the divan or hung on the backs of chairs. Their boxes of brass cartridges and shotgun shells were placed neatly on the mantel above the fireplace. All their empty beer cans and bread wrappers and empty containers of corn beef and boneless turkey and mustard and horseradish and dirty paper plates and plastic forks and spoons were wrapped and sealed in odor-proof bags. When one of them had to relieve himself, he did so in the backyard and took an entrenching tool with him.

  No hunting camp could have been neater or better regulated. There was only one problem. Tom Claggart and his friends had not been presented with an opportunity to discharge a round all night, even though they and several others had made probes by boat and on foot into two adjoining neighborhoods where sparks from burning houses drifted through the live oaks like fireflies.

  It seemed hardly fair.

  “DON’T GO BACK by that lighted house, man. Go back the way we come,” Bertrand said from the bow of the boat.

  “No, man, we’re hauling ass. We ain’t bothered them people. They ain’t gonna bother us,” Eddy said, sitting sideways in the stern, opening up the throttle.

  “You just don’t listen, man,” Bertrand said, his words lost in the roar of the engine.

  The boat swerved through clumps of broken tree limbs in the street and raked on the curbing along the neutral ground. Andre was laughing, sticking his hand down in the vinyl bag to feel the tightly packed bundles of cash there, his nephew eating one of the candy bars he’d found in the Rite Aid. The wind had cleared the smoke off the street, and the water was black, stained with a rainbow slick, a busted main pumping a geyser in the air like a fountain in the park. If Bertrand got out of this with his share of the score intact, he was leaving New Orleans forever, starting over in a new place, maybe out on the West Coast, where people lived in regular neighborhoods, with parks and beaches and nice supermarkets close by. Yeah, a place where it was always seventy-five degrees and he could open a restaurant or a car wash with the money from the score and tool down palm-lined avenues in a brand-new convertible, Three 6 Mafia blaring from the speakers.

  Yeah, that was the way it was going to be.

  The motor coughed once, sputtered, and died. The boat rose on its wake and glided into a fallen oak limb, the branches scratching loudly against the aluminum sides. Bertrand could feel his skin shrink on his face, his ears popping in the silence. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  “It’s out of gas. It ain’t my fault,” Eddy said.

  “You never looked at the gauge?” Bertrand said.

  “You didn’t look at it, either, man. Get off my case,” Eddy said.

  “Maybe the line just got something in it,” Andre said.

  “It’s empty, man,” Eddy said.

  Andre stood up clumsily, rocking the boat. He
tugged at the gas can and slammed it back down. “What we gonna do?”

  “You gonna shut up. You gonna stop making all that noise,” Bertrand said.

  “I’m just trying to help, man. We can tow it,” Andre said.

  “There’s water out there that’s six feet deep,” Bertrand said.

  Andre started to speak again.

  “Just let me think,” Bertrand said.

  The four of them sat silently in the darkness, the branches of the downed oak limb sticking them in the eyes and the backs of their necks each time the wind blew against the boat.

  Bertrand stepped over the side into the water. “Y’all wait here. Don’t do nothing. Don’t talk. Don’t make no noise. Don’t be playing wit’ the money in the bag. Keep your ass in the boat and your mout’ shut. Y’all got that?”

  “What you gonna do?” Eddy said.

  “Hear that sound? The man over there got generators in his garage. That means he got gas cans in his garage.”

  “Why you walking bent over, wit’ your hand on your stomach?” Andre asked.

  “’Cause y’all give me ulcers,” Bertrand replied.

  “I ain’t meant nothing by it. You a smart man,” Andre said.

  No, just not as dumb as y’all, Bertrand thought to himself.

  He waded across the neutral ground and approached the driveway of the lighted house. A bulb burned on the front gallery and another inside the porte cochere. A light in the kitchen fell through the windows on part of the driveway and the backyard. His heart was hammering against his rib cage, his pulse jumping in his neck. He tripped on a curbstone and almost fell headlong into the water. In the darkness he thought he saw eyes looking at him from the tangles of brush and tree limbs in the yard. He wondered if he was losing his mind. He stopped and stared into the yard, then realized wood rabbits had sought refuge from the floodwater and had climbed into the downed limbs and were perched there like birds, their fur sparkling with moisture.

  Bertrand worked his way around the far side of the porte cochere, avoiding the light. He crossed between two huge camellia bushes, the leaves brushing back wetly against his arms, and entered the parking area by what uptown white people called “the carriage house.” Why did they call it a carriage house when they didn’t own no carriages? He asked himself. ’Cause that’s a way of telling everybody Robert E. Lee took a dump in their commode in 1865?

  He could hear at least two generators puttering beyond the half-opened door of the “carriage house.” Then he detoured through the backyard and crossed into the neighbor’s property, looked around, and removed an object from under his shirt. He bent over briefly, then retraced his steps back into Otis Baylor’s yard, his ulcers digging their roots deeper into his stomach lining. He stepped inside the carriage house and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Five jerry cans of gasoline were lined against the wall. He hefted up one in each hand and headed for the street, the St. Augustine grass by the porte cochere squishing under his shoes, the weight of the gas swinging in the cans. He had pulled it off. Right on, Bertrand. Stomp ass and take names, my brother, a voice said inside him.

  Then he was past the apron of electrical light that shone into the yard, back into the safety of the street and the warmth of the floodwater that covered his ankles and rose up the calves of his legs like an old friend. Soon he would split from Eddy and the Rochons and be home free and free at last, loaded with money for good doctors and the good life. It would be Adios, all you stupid motherfuckers, Bertrand Melancon is California-bound.

  Then he saw Eddy towing the boat from behind the pile of downed limbs, giving up their natural cover, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. Andre and Kevin were outside the boat, too, steering it around obstacles in the water, all them now in full view of the house from which Bertrand had just stolen the jerry cans of gasoline.

  “What the fuck you doing, man? Why didn’t y’all stay put?” Bertrand said.

  “What took you so long? You stop to flog your rod back there? Fill her up and let’s go,” Eddy said.

  He sparked his Zippo, the tiny emery wheel rolling on the flint-once, twice, three times.

  “Eddy-” Bertrand heard himself say.

  The Zippo’s flame flared in the darkness, crisping the end of Eddy’s cigarette, lighting an inquisitive smile on his face, as though he had not understood what his brother had said.

  Bertrand heard a single report behind him, but he could not coordinate the sound with the event taking place in front of him. A red flower burst from Eddy’s throat and a split second later, right behind Eddy, the cap of Kevin Rochon’s skull exploded from his head, scattering his brains on the water like freshly cooked oatmeal.

  Chapter 10

  IN ANY AMERICAN slum, two enterprises are never torched by urban rioters: the funeral home and the bondsman’s office. From Clete Purcel’s perspective, the greatest advantage in chasing down bail skips for bondsmen like Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine was the fact their huge clientele of miscreants was sycophantic by nature and always trying to curry favor from those who had control over their lives. Big-stripe Angola graduates who would take a back-alley beating with blackjacks rather than dime a friend would ratfuck their mothers in order to stay in Nig and Willie’s good graces.

  From the moment Clete Purcel had been run down in the Quarter, his porkpie hat stenciled with tire tread, the word was out: Bertrand and Eddy Melancon and their asswipe friend Andre Rochon were shark meat.

  While the Melancons and Rochon and his nephew Kevin were powerboating all over uptown New Orleans, eating white speed boosted from a pharmacy, drinking warm beer and eating rotisserie chickens courtesy of Winn-Dixie, laughing at the unbelievable amount of loot they were amassing, they were dimed on at least two occasions by fellow lowlifes who had ended up in the chain-link jail at the airport, where Nig and Willie’s representatives were doing fire-sale amounts of business.

  But ironically it was not betrayal by his colleagues that brought about Bertrand’s undoing. For probably the first time in his life he acted with total disregard for his own self-interest and loaded his brother into the boat while Andre bag-assed down the street and Eddy hemorrhaged cups of blood from his throat.

  Bertrand’s hands were trembling as he fueled the boat engine. He was sure the shooter was still out there, either in one of the yards or inside one of the houses that fronted the street. He was convinced the shooter was taking aim at him, moving the scope or the iron sights across Bertrand’s face and chest or perhaps his scrotum, taking his time, enjoying it, softly biting down on his bottom lip as he tightened his finger on the trigger. The image caused a sensation in Bertrand that was like someone stripping off his skin with pliers. His hands were not only slick with Eddy’s blood and saliva but shaking so badly his thumb slipped off the starter button when he tried to depress it.

  When the engine caught, he twisted the throttle wide open and roared across the floodwater, Kevin’s body bobbing in his wake. He thudded over a dead animal at the intersection and heard the propeller whine in the air before it plowed into the water again. He was almost sideswiped by an NOPD boat loaded with heavily armed cops. He slapped across their wake and veered up a cross street into an alley, pausing long enough to wedge the garbage and laundry bags inside a garage rafter. Up ahead, he could see the lights of a helicopter that was descending on a hospital rooftop. He reduced his speed and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He and Eddy had found safe harbor, a place where someone would care for his brother and save his life. It was the building in which they were both born. It was almost like coming home.

  Bertrand had never heard of Dante’s Ninth Circle. But he was about to get the guided tour.

  THE FIRST FLOOR of the hospital had three feet of water in it. The corridors were black, except for the beams of flashlights carried by the personnel. The heated smell of medical and human waste in the water made Clete pull his shirt up over his mouth so he could breathe without gagging. Twice he tried to get directions,
but the personnel brushed by him as though he were not there. He gave it up and went back outside, sucking in the night air, the sweat on his face suddenly as cool as ice water.

  A black NOPD patrolman who must have weighed at least 275 pounds shined a flashlight in Clete’s face. In his other hand he held a cut-down twelve-gauge Remington pump propped on his hip. His unshaved jaws looked filmed with black grit, and an odor like moldy clothes and locker-room sweat emanated from his body. His name was Tee Boy Pellerin, and as a state trooper he had once lifted a cruiser with his bare hands off his partner’s chest.

  “What you looking for, Purcel?” he said.

  “A gunshot victim by the name of Eddy Melancon,” Clete replied.

  “Is he alive or dead?”

  “I wouldn’t know. The hospital is storing dead people?” Clete said.

  “I wish. I got four of them in a boat. I been trying to dump them all over town. Nobody’s got any refrigeration. You talking about Eddy Melancon from the Ninth Ward?”

  “Yeah, Bertrand Melancon’s brother. Nig Rosewater heard Eddy got capped looting a house this side of Claiborne.”

  “Try the third floor. The trauma victims who made it through the ER are getting warehoused up there. You got a flashlight?”

  “I lost it.”

  “Take this one. I got an extra. You haven’t been upstairs?”

  “No.”

  Tee Boy gazed into space, as though a long day and a long night had just caught up with him.

  “So what’s upstairs?” Clete asked.

  “The geriatric ward is on the third floor. If it was me, I wouldn’t go in there,” Tee Boy said.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “There ain’t no good stories in that building, Purcel. After tonight, I’m gonna pray every day God don’t let me die in bed.”

  Clete took the stairs to the third floor. The temperature was stifling, like steam from cooked vegetables that had flattened against the ceilings, and broken glass crunched under his shoes. He entered a ward where the elderly had been rolled into the corridors to catch a meager breeze puffing from the windows that had been blown out on the south side of the building. The people on the gurneys wore gowns that were stiff with dried food and their own feces. Their skin seemed to glow with a putrescent shine that he associated with fish that had been stranded by waves on a hot beach. A woman’s fingers caught Clete’s shirt as he passed her. Her face was bloodless, her eyes the liquid milky-blue of a newly born infant looking upon the world for the first time.