The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  “Darlin’, I’ve cut it all over the country-black and white girls, Indians, Hispanics, an Eskimo girl once. I think of them all with respect. But it’s not the saddle that counts. It’s the man who climbs in it.” He stepped between her and the sun, his face dropping into shadow. She could smell his deodorant and the peppermint mouth-wash on his breath. His hand was moist when he fitted it on her bicep. His fingers began to massage her muscle. “Want to take a ride? In my car, I mean. Down to the bay?”

  “Let go of me.”

  He leaned forward and began to whisper. She felt his spittle touch her skin and his breath probe her ear. The next moment was one she remembered only in terms of images and sensations rather than in a linear fashion. She stepped backward, spinning and pulling loose from his grasp simultaneously. Her left leg came up so quickly from the ground, he never saw it coming. His feet must have been set solidly because he took the blow full on the mouth, his nose and lips bursting under the sole of her shoe.

  The beer bottle rolled down the embankment into the water. Bledsoe cupped both his hands to his face and walked half crouched to the picnic shelter, sitting down like a man who was holding his brains inside his head. I braked my truck by the shelter and got out, unsure of what I was seeing. Bledsoe picked a broken tooth off the heel of his right hand and stared at it. Then he grinned at me, his lips bright red. “Bet I know who you are. You’re her daddy, Mr. Purcel’s friend. My name is ronald. What’s yours?”

  THAT AFTERNOON, the sky was glistening with humidity when I parked my pickup truck in front of Sidney Kovick’s flower shop in Algiers. Across the river, New Orleans was sweltering in mold and receding pools of sewage, and from a distance looked deserted of automobiles and people. Clete stared at the City of his birth for a long time, then he and I went inside the shop. Sidney came out of the back, a full-length clean apron hung from his neck and tied around his waist. As always, his face showed no expression. Behind him, his wife Eunice said hello by jiggling the fingers of one hand at us.

  “I’ll make it quick, Sidney,” Clete said. “I found some money that was probably washed out of a garage up the street from your house. I took it to Tommy the Whale for his opinion on it. He told me it was queer, so I put it in an envelope, marked it ‘FBI,’ and dumped it in a mailbox. I don’t know if it was your queer or not, but I would have dumped it in a mailbox just the same. That doesn’t give you the right to sic this Bledsoe fuck on me.”

  “Watch your language,” Sidney said.

  “What Clete is saying to you, Sidney, is you’ve probably placed a dangerous man in our midst,” I said. “This morning he made some nasty remarks to my daughter. She kicked his teeth in, but I suspect he’ll be back around. If that happens, I’m going to punch his ticket. But I’m going to punch yours first.”

  Sidney drew in his cheeks, as though he were gathering the spittle in his mouth, his nostrils swelling slightly as he breathed in and out. He closed the door to the back of the shop and faced us again. “The pukes started this, not me. Two of them got what they deserved. The other two give me back what’s mine, all these other problems go away. You guys are screwing with something that’s way over your heads.”

  “Oh yeah? Check this out, Sidney. I was in Saigon when pogey bait such as yourself were funneling PX goods to the VC, so clean the mashed potatoes out of your mouth.”

  Below the level of the counter, I touched Clete’s upper thigh to shut him up.

  “You’ve always had two problems, Purcel. You’re ninety-proof most of the time and you never learned how to keep that fat dick in your pants. It cost you your career and your marriage, and everybody in New Orleans knows it except you, so they tolerate you the same way they do a child. But don’t never come around here acting disrespectfully in front of my wife again.”

  “We’re losing the thread here, Sidney,” I said.

  “No, let him talk,” Clete said.

  I kept my eyes focused on Sidney ’s, trying to keep an invisible wall between me and Clete and the obvious injury Sidney had done to him. “My daughter is not a player in this. This man Bledsoe insulted her without provocation. You want respect for your own family, but you’re not giving it to mine. What do you think we should do about that?”

  “Who says this guy Bledsoe works for me?”

  “We’re talking as family men, Sidney. If you want to blow smoke at us, we’re through here. I thought more of you.”

  His face was opaque, impossible to read. “I got no say in what happens over in New Iberia.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you take that attitude,” I said.

  “The pair of you walk in here like your shit don’t stink and threaten me in my own store, and it’s me who’s got the problem? I know what loss is, Dave. You say you’re gonna punch my ticket? I got news for you. I paid my dues a long time ago.”

  Our visit was pointless. Sidney was now using the accidental death of his son as a shield against his own criminality. I cannot say if this was because of his narcissism or a genuine belief that the gods had wronged him and had thereby made him unaccountable for the damage he did to others. But either way, Sidney knew how to wrap himself inside the role of victim.

  I hit Clete on the shoulder. “Let’s go, podna,” I said.

  “This isn’t over, Sidney. I kicked your ass all over Magazine when we were kids. I can do it again,” Clete said.

  I opened the door for Clete, the bell ringing over my head. But he remained stationary in front of the counter, the blood in the back of his neck climbing into his hairline, his fists balled, the accusation of drunk and womanizer and disgraced cop embedded in him like a rusty fishhook. Sidney began pulling dead flowers from a vase, shaking the water off the stems before he dropped them in a wastebasket. He glanced up at Clete. “You still here?” he said.

  I waited for Clete in the truck. When he came out of the flower shop, his expression was somber, his tropical shirt damp on his skin, his porkpie hat tilted at an angle on his forehead. He made me think of a haystack. Even in the Marine Corps his fellow jarheads had called him “the Heap,” out of sync, consumed by his own appetites, instantly recognized as a troublemaker by authority figures. But his greatest vulnerability always lay in the power he gave away to others, in this case to Sidney Kovick.

  He got into the truck and eased the door shut, restraining his energies so as not to show his anger and sense of defeat.

  “Blow it off, Clete. You’ve cut Kovick slack when he deserved a bullet in the mouth,” I said.

  “I let him wipe his feet on me.”

  “No, you didn’t. Sidney Kovick is a pimp. Anyone who has a conversation with him wants to take a shower afterward.”

  But Clete wasn’t buying it. I started up the truck and drove to the end of the block, then turned up the street that led past the alley behind Sidney ’s shop. I glanced down the alley as we passed. Amid the trash cans and the clusters of banana trees between the garages, I could see a floral delivery van parked at the back door of Sidney ’s shop. Sidney ’s wife was helping a Hispanic man load flowers in the side of the van. I stepped on the brake and shoved the transmission into reverse.

  “What’s going on?” Clete said.

  “The guy in the alley with the Gothic-letter tats. He looks just like Chula Ramos,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The MS-13 dude, Natalia Ramos’s brother. He was released from the Iberia stockade by mistake.”

  “The brother of the hooker who was shacked up with the priest?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “You really want to mess with this, Dave?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I bounced into the alley and headed toward the van. An elderly woman backed a gas-guzzler out of a garage, wedging her vehicle at an angle between the garage and a cast-iron Dumpster. When I blew my horn at her, she responded by staring at me aghast, then taking off her glasses and wiping them with a Kleenex so she could see me more clearly. I hung my badge out the window and waved for her to p
ull her car out of the way. She stepped on the accelerator and smashed her taillight into the Dumpster.

  I got out of my truck and started walking toward the delivery van. “Hold on there, bubba,” I called, not sure if I was actually looking at Ramos.

  The Hispanic man slammed the driver’s door behind him and drove away.

  “What’s the trouble, Dave?” Eunice said.

  “Who’s your delivery man?”

  “It’s Chula something-or-other. Did he do something?”

  I heard Clete walk up behind me. “How’d you come to know this guy, Eunice?” I asked.

  “ Sidney gave him a job. Chula’s sister used to clean Sidney ’s office in the Quarter.”

  “Natalia was Sidney ’s maid?” I said.

  “Yes, they’re Central American refugees, I think. Sidney wanted to help them. Why?”

  I looked at her face. It was clear of guile or deception. Even though Eunice was a big-boned countrywoman and the butt of jokes among NOPD cops, she seemed possessed of an inner beauty. I tried to keep my eyes and face empty. I did not want Eunice to learn of her husband’s lies from me.

  “Do you have an address or phone number for Chula? I think he might have some information that could be helpful to a federal agent I know.”

  “I doubt it. Chula comes and goes in his spare time. I think he’s working on a FEMA job and living in a bunkhouse. He’ll bring the van back about eight. You want to come back or leave him a message?”

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll catch him another time. In fact, forget I was here, will you?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s nice seeing you again, Eunice.”

  “Same here, Dave.” When she smiled, I was convinced, as always, that she had become the most beautiful woman in New Orleans.

  I walked back to the truck with Clete. As I started the engine he took off his hat and combed his hair. He slipped his comb in his shirt pocket and put his hat back on. “ Sidney was porking the girl from El Sal?” he said.

  “That’s what it sounds like.”

  “Why would Eunice want to marry a bucket of shit like that?”

  I shrugged and looked at him. I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. “Pull around in front of the shop,” he said.

  “You’re going to bring him down in front of his wife?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just stay in the truck.”

  “That’s no good, Clete.”

  He opened the passenger door while the truck was moving and got out. He slammed the door and looked back through the window. “You quit judging me, Streak.”

  Kovick was still behind the counter when Clete reentered the store. “Hey, Sidney, I got something to tell you,” he said.

  “What’s that, Purcel?”

  “It’s going to surprise you. But try to live with it and adjust and come out on the sunny side of things. Diggez-vous?”

  “No, I don’t diggez-vous. And I’m not really interested, either.”

  “I bounced your head off a sidewalk when we were kids. I’m sorry I did that. Just keep Bledsoe away from Dave’s daughter. I got no personal beef with you.”

  “That’s the big news flash?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Lock your flopper in a vault while you’re at it.”

  Sidney stuck a matchstick in his mouth and rolled it across his teeth, searching for the design in Clete’s words.

  When Clete got back in the truck, his expression was serene. He clicked the door shut and smiled at me with his eyes.

  “What happened in there?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

  “Nothing. That’s the point,” he said. “Come on, let’s motor, big mon.”

  Chapter 17

  ON MONDAY MORNING I called Betsy Mossbacher at the FBI and told her that Chula Ramos was probably working part-time as a delivery man for Sidney Kovick.

  “Delivering what?” she said.

  “Maybe just flowers. Look, Clete Purcel and I told Sidney we knew he had been stashing counterfeit in his house. He said something to the effect Clete and I were in over our heads.”

  “What does Purcel have to do with this?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Some counterfeit money showed up in a Morgan City mailbox. The engraving and paper are impressive. Is this the money we’re talking about?”

  “It could be.”

  “You tell Purcel to stay out of federal business.”

  The purpose of my call was slipping away, and I think that’s the way Betsy wanted it. I didn’t take the bait. “Why would Kovick tell us we’re in over our heads?” I asked.

  “I think he’s convinced himself he’s a patriot defending his homeland. Personally I think he’s psychotic. An agent in Mississippi believes Kovick’s goons poured the body of Kovick’s neighbor into the foundation of a casino in Biloxi.”

  “You’re losing me, Betsy.”

  “The Taliban funds al Qaeda with the sale of heroin. You don’t think they’re capable of other criminal enterprises?”

  I still didn’t know what she was talking about and I wasn’t going to guess. “I need a favor from you,” I said. “A guy named Ronald Bledsoe may try to harm my daughter. He claims to be a PI out of Key West, but Tallahassee has almost nothing on him, except the fact he got a license through a bail-bonds office about ten years back. Neither does the NCIC. I’m convinced he’s a dangerous and depraved man, the kind who leaves shit-prints somewhere. But so far I haven’t found them.”

  “Have you run him through AFIS?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Give it a try. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can. What did your daughter do to this guy?”

  “Busted his nose and lips and knocked out one of his teeth.”

  “He’s pissed over that?”

  But jokes about Ronald Bledsoe weren’t funny.

  THREE DAYS EARLIER a Guatemalan illegal had been stripping cypress planks off a wall inside the entranceway of a historic New Orleans home. The workman made eight dollars an hour and feared civil authority in this country and his own. But he feared losing his job even more. The contractor who had hired him specialized in the restoration of historical properties. The contractor also made a sizable income by salvaging colonial-era brick, heart-pine floors, brass hinges and door knockers, square-head nails, milk-glass doorknobs, claw-foot bathtubs, iron wall hooks for cook pots, and grapeshot and.58-caliber minié balls embedded in housefronts during the White League takeover of New Orleans in 1874. Every item with possible resale value at a teardown or refurbish job went into a pile.

  The workman from Guatemala sank his crowbar into a strip of rotten cypress and peeled it and a shower of Formosa termites onto the floor. Amid the sawdust and insects and spongelike wood he saw a blunted and bent metal-jacketed bullet, no bigger than half the size of his little finger. He blew the dust off it and examined its torn surfaces. “Hey, boss, what you wanta do wit’ dis?” he asked.

  HELEN CALLED ME into her office just before quitting time. Raindrops had started to fall on her window and I could see trees bending in the wind by the cemetery. She was leaning forward on her desk, her chin propped on her fist. It was the kind of body English and opaque manner she used when she was preparing to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

  “I just got off the phone with Betsy Mossbacher. She’ll be here in an hour and a half,” she said. “She has a federal warrant on Otis Baylor’s house.”

  “I talked to her this morning. She didn’t say anything about coming to New Iberia.”

  “She just got the warrant. Last week some repairmen working across the street from Baylor’s house in New Orleans dug a rifle slug out of a wall. The contractor had heard about the Melancon-Rochon shooting and called NOPD. They passed it on to the FBI. The round is a thirty-aught-six. It came through a ventilated shutter and a glass pane behind it and embedded between two planks. She says it’s in real good shap
e, considering the fact it may have gone through two people. Anyway, the Feds are jumping on it before word gets back to Baylor.”

  “So?”

  “You need to be there when they serve the warrant.”

  “They don’t need me to serve a search warrant.”

  “This is our parish. We cooperate with outside agencies, but we don’t abandon our own jurisdiction to them. Get with the program, Streak.”

  I ATE A SANDWICH in my office and met Betsy and another agent in the parking lot at 7:00 p.m. The sky was bright with rain in the west, the live oaks along Main a dark green as we drove out of town toward Jeanerette. I was sitting in the back of their vehicle, feeling like a hangnail, a perfunctory witness to the scapegoating of a man who had been caught up in events that were either beyond his control or his ability to bear them.

  Betsy was quiet most of the way. I had the feeling she was not comfortable with her assignment that evening, either. Betsy was always the odd piece in the puzzle box, a straight arrow whose clumsiness and cowgirl manners gave her an unjustified reputation as an eccentric. As in the case of Helen Soileau, her male colleagues often made jokes about her behind her back. The truth was most of them weren’t worth the parings of her fingernails.

  “You say he’s still got the Springfield?” the man behind the wheel said.

  “That was the last indication he gave me,” I replied.

  The agent driving wore his hair boxed on his neck. He kept his hands in the ten-two position on the wheel, his eyes always on the road, never glancing in the rearview mirror when he spoke to me.

  “Why wouldn’t he dump the Springfield?” he said.

  “Because he knows that’s the first thing a guilty man would do.”

  “You’re saying he’s dirty for this?”

  “No, I’m saying Otis is smart. I’m also saying he’s probably taking somebody else’s weight,” I replied.

  “Oh yeah? How did you arrive at that?” he asked.

  “Hundreds if not thousands of New Orleans residents drowned who didn’t have to. I suspect that’s because some of the guys in Washington you work for couldn’t care less. So a guy who sells insurance gets a chain saw up his ass. That’s the way it shakes out sometimes.”