The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  “‘Andre and my brother Eddy and me was the ones who attacked her by the Desire. We done the same thing to a young girl in the Lower Nine. I want to tell her I’m sorry, too, but I cain’t find her. So if you know who she is, please tell her what I said.

  “‘The night of the storm I went in your garage and stole gas. We also stole what is called “blood stones” from a man who stole them from somebody else. I hid them where the map on the bottom shows. They are yours. They won’t make up for what we done. But Eddy is ruined and Andre is dead and I think I have already lost my soul. So that’s all I got to say, except I apologize for what we done.

  “‘Thank you, Bertrand Melancon.’”

  She stared at him, stupefied. “You raped Thelma?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You piece of shit, you come to our house offering us blood diamonds? You goddamn piece of shit.”

  “I ain’t meant to upset you.”

  The cream he used in his hair had started to run and she could smell it on his skin. It smelled like aloe and body grease and candle wax. In her mind, she saw a bullet punch through a black man’s throat and, behind him, the skullcap of a teenage boy explode in a bloody spray. She thought she was going to be sick to her stomach but she wasn’t sure why. One thing was clear, however. She viscerally hated the black man standing on her gallery.

  “You’ve ruined our lives. You destroyed my husband’s career. We’re losing everything we own because of you. You ask for forgiveness? You have the arrogance to ask that from us?”

  He saw the knife in her hand. The blade was short, deep at the hilt, tapering triangularly to a honed point. “I’m sorry I bothered y’all, ma’am. I t’ought it was the right thing to do. I ain’t gonna do it again.”

  He tried to offer her the letter he had written on the paper towel. She tore it from his hand and threw it in his face. He backed away from her, through the screen, then fell down the steps into the yard.

  “Take this with you,” she said. She picked up the paper towel from the gallery, crumpling it into a ball, and threw it at him. “Did you hear me? I hope you do go to Hell.”

  But Bertrand was already running for his grandmother’s car, looking back over his shoulder, wondering if redemption would ever be his or if insanity was the rule in human beings and not the exception.

  Then he saw the lavender automobile again, the one with the chrome radiator cap on the outside of the engine. The driver was standing by the front headlight, watching Bertrand, his polished, elongated head unmistakable against the glow of the drawbridge.

  Just won’t give it up, will you, motherfucker? Okay, let’s see if you got a pair of peaches or a pair of acorns on you, Bertrand said to himself.

  He fired up his grandmother’s car, dropped the transmission clanking into reverse, and floored the accelerator. The tires spun a shower of mud and water into the air, and oil smoke bloomed in black clouds from under the hood as the car sped toward the front of the strange-looking vehicle with the radiator cap outside the engine.

  Here I come, Toot’brush Face.

  Bertrand was twisted all the way around in the seat as he steered, aiming through the back window at the man who called himself Ronald, the bald tires slick with mud, spinning serpentine lines on the asphalt and the shoulder. Ronald tried to hold his ground, but at the last moment he leaped aside and took cover behind the trunk of a live oak.

  Figured you for gutless, Bertrand said to himself.

  He took his foot off the accelerator and jammed on the brakes, expecting to slide within an inch of the lavender automobile with the outside radiator cap.

  Instead, the brake pedal went all the way to the floor, as though it were totally disconnected from the rest of his grandmother’s car. The rear bumper crashed into Ronald’s restored Rolls-Royce, exploding the front end, scattering the asphalt with bits of headlight glass and wiring and pieces of chrome.

  oh shit.

  Bertrand dropped the transmission into drive, floored the accelerator again, and spun back out on the road, taking pieces of Ronald’s collectible with him. When he looked in the mirror, he saw Ronald staring in horror at the destruction that had just been done to his vehicle.

  Tough luck, chuck. Sorry to skin your hide, Clyde. But you been sacked, Jack. So adios, Toast.

  Bertrand’s mouth was wide with laughter as he roared down the road. There was only one problem. He had left behind his grandmother’s bumper as well as her license tag.

  Chapter 26

  FRIDAY MORNING I called Bo Diddley’s office in Lafayette. The receptionist answered, the same one who was a master at saying as little as possible.

  “This is Detective Dave Robicheaux, with the Iberia Sheriff’s Department. Has Mr. Wiggins returned from his business trip to Miami?”

  “He’s in a meeting right now,” she replied.

  “Is his secretary there, the lady with the white-gold hair?”

  “She’s on vacation.”

  “Put Mr. Wiggins on.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. Go do it,” I said.

  I marked the time on my watch. Almost two minutes went by before Bo picked up. “What’s the problem, Dave?”

  “I have the feeling you don’t want to see me.”

  “Where would you get an idea like that?”

  “Did your receptionist tell you I was in your office Wednesday?”

  “I probably didn’t see the message slip. Don’t take it out on her.”

  I waited a beat before I spoke again. “I’ll be at your office in about forty minutes. If I were you, I’d be there. If you’re not, we’ll have you picked up by Lafayette PD.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  I thought it was time for Bo to experience a little anxiety. “You’re about to find out,” I said, and hung up.

  The traffic was thin and I made it to the Lafayette Oil center in a half hour. Bo’s office was spacious and full of windows that gave a sense of airiness to an environment that was purely utilitarian. He was standing at his desk behind his glass partition, talking on the phone. He peered at me over his reading glasses and gestured for me to come in, as though he were anxious to see me.

  “You tie one on last night?” he said.

  “Where’s your secretary, the woman who was at the casino with Bobby Mack Rydel?”

  “She’s out sick.”

  “That’s funny. Your receptionist said she’s on vacation.”

  Bo made an exasperated expression, as though his newly acquired Christian charity were indeed being tested. “Why do you want to treat me like this, Dave? Something I did back in college? Maybe I punched you when I was drunk? I always got the sense you thought I was hard on black people, hard on folks that maybe had more than I did. Well, if that’s how you felt, you were right. But I’m not like that today.”

  He grinned, his eyes on mine, waiting for me to respond. His modesty, his candor, his vulnerability were a study in manipulation. But to portray him as a hypocrite would not be fair. James Boyd Wiggins had learned his value system from the oligarchy that had created him. In Louisiana, as in the rest of the South, the issue was always power. Wealth did not buy it. Wealth came with it. Televangelist preachers and fundamentalist churches sold magic as a way of acquiring it. The measure of one’s success was the degree to which he could exploit his fellow man or reward his friends or punish his enemies. In our state’s history, a demagogue with holes in his shoes forced Standard Oil to kiss his ring. Bo Diddley might have valued money, but I suspected he would fling it into an incinerator a shovelful at a time rather than take down the name of James Boyd Wiggins from the entrance of his office building.

  “Why you looking at me like that?” he said, a grin still on his mouth.

  I shook my head. “How long has Bobby Mack Rydel been working for you?”

  “A security guy?”

  “Among other things.”

  “I retain a security service o
ut of Baton Rouge for all my shipyards. They subcontract some of the work. I think Rydel might be a subcontractor for them, but I’m not sure. He’s out of Morgan City, isn’t he? Is this about the fight between him and your friend at the casino?”

  As with all fearful people, Bo’s agenda always remained the same: Every action he took, every word he spoke, was an attempt to control the environment and the people around him. He filled the air with sound and answered questions with questions. Most disarming of all was his ability to include an element of truth in his ongoing deceptions.

  “Rydel is a merc. He specializes in interrogation. That’s a bureaucratic term for ‘torture,’” I said. “Ever seen a woman who’s been suffocated with a plastic bag over her head?”

  “No, get out of my face with this stuff.”

  Bo was wound up like a clock spring. It was time for the changeup.

  “You said you wanted to help me find a priest who went missing in the Lower Nine,” I said. “I think your interest lay elsewhere. I think you’re interested in blood diamonds that were looted from Sidney Kovick’s house.”

  His eyes stayed locked on mine and never blinked.

  “You know Sidney, don’t you?” I said.

  “This is Louisiana,” he replied. “You don’t do business in New Orleans without crossing trails with people like Sidney Kovick. Say that stuff about diamonds again?”

  Don’t let go of the thread, I told myself. “But you know Kovick personally.” I didn’t say it as a question.

  “No, I don’t associate with gangsters. Neither does my wife. You should come to our charity golf tournament sometime and find out who our friends are. You know me, Dave. I burn stringer-bead rods. Everything I got I earned with my own sweat.”

  His eyes had still not blinked. His facial skin was tight against the bone, his forearms thick and vascular, his nostrils swelling with air. I knew he was lying.

  “Bobby Mack Rydel hangs with a misogynist and degenerate by the name of Ronald Bledsoe. I think they both serve the same employer. This man Bledsoe has done injury to my daughter. Before this is over, I’m going to square it.”

  “You want to hear what I found out about the priest?”

  He caught me off guard. Bo knew my weakness. But I didn’t care. I knew I wouldn’t get anything else out of him. “Go ahead,” I said.

  “I sent people down into the Lower Nine. I sent people into the shelters. They interviewed evacuees who knew your friend. They knew where his church was. They were there when that wall of water came right across the top of the parish. They didn’t have any reason to lie.”

  “Get to it, Bo.”

  He looked genuinely inept, frustrated by his inability to speak with confidence outside the confines of a locker room or welding shop. “The guy didn’t make it. Almost everybody in that church attic drowned. I don’t know why they didn’t get out when they had a chance. Hundreds of school buses was left parked in a lot till the water was up to their windows. That’s what happens when people don’t take care of themselves.”

  But my attention had faded. I don’t know what I had hoped for. Supposedly ancient people placed heavy stones on the burial places of the dead so their spirits would not roam. I believe there is another explanation, too. When we can fasten the dead to the earth and keep them safely in our midst, they cannot obligate us to search for them in our sleep.

  “Thanks for the information,” I said.

  But he wasn’t finished. Why he made the addendum I will never know. I have always suspected that born-again people such as Bo Wiggins find themselves in a dilemma they do not wish to recognize: If they truly come to believe in the precepts they profess, they can no longer remain who and what they are.

  “A bunch of people say they saw lights under the water, like phosphorescent fish swimming around. That’s not what happened. Just after the priest fell off the roof of the church or maybe got pushed, a coast Guard chopper flew over. It was lit up like a Juárez whore-house. What those people saw was the reflection in the water and the downdraft of the chopper stirring up the reflection.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t the chopper pick up the people who were drowning?”

  “You’d have to ask them, son.”

  His face looked as vacuous as a scarecrow’s.

  THAT AFTERNOON, a black patrolwoman by the name of Catin Segura came into my office. She had started off at the department as a 911 dispatcher, then had gotten an associate degree in criminal justice at a community college in New Orleans. Like Helen Soileau, she had worked as a meter maid before becoming a patrolwoman in both Uptown and across the river in Gretna. When Helen decided to increase the number of black female deputies in the department, Catin was the first one she hired.

  Catin was a short, compact woman, unassuming, a bit withdrawn, a single mother who lived with her two children in Jeanerette. She was one of those decent, ordinary people you could always depend upon. You gave her the assignment and then forgot about it. I always admired the grace and dignity that seemed to govern her life.

  “What’s the haps, catin?” I said.

  “I was on my way home last night and saw the aftermath of an accident by the Jeanerette drawbridge. It looked like a hit-and-run.” She pulled a notebook from her shirt pocket and peeled back two pages. “A guy named Ronald Bledsoe claims he was parked on the shoulder using his cell phone when some maniac backed into him and took off. His radiator was split open and all the antifreeze was draining on the road surface. There was also debris from both vehicles all over the road. Bledsoe was driving a Rolls-Royce. You know this guy, Dave?”

  “He’s bad news. He may have broken into my house.”

  She gave me a look. “Anyway, he said he was waiting for a tow. But he never called nine-one-one. When I asked him why, he said he figured it was a waste of time. I told him his insurance company would want a police report. He said he hadn’t thought of that. The guy looks like he escaped from a freak show.”

  “That’s part of his charm.”

  “Here’s where it gets weird. Otis Baylor came out in his yard and was watching me and Bledsoe. I asked him if he had seen the hit-and-run and he said he had not. I asked him if anybody in his house had. He said no. I thought he would just go back inside but he didn’t.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got my push broom out of the trunk and starting sweeping all the glass and broken metal onto the shoulder. That’s when I saw the license tag in the grass. Baylor must have seen it, too. When the tow truck came and was hooking up the rolls, he walked out on the road and looked down at the tag. Then he walked back to his house. I could see him pretty clear in the porch lamp. I’d swear he took a pen out of his pocket and wrote something on his hand.”

  “The tag number?”

  “You tell me. I just ran it. It’s registered to an Elizabeth Crochet in Loreauville. Mean anything?”

  “No, but give me the address.”

  She wrote it in her notebook, then tore the page out and handed it to me. “I know Baylor is out on bail, so I thought I should tell you about all this.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “Baylor shot some black kids in Uptown?”

  “That’s what everybody says.”

  “It must be hard on his wife.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I knew her in New Orleans. She was in my Al-Anon group. Her first husband was a sado-porn addict. Call me if you need anything else,” she said.

  LATER, I CALLED Otis Baylor’s house, but there was no answer. I also called the phone number of Elizabeth Crochet. No help there, either. Just before quitting time, Clete Purcel came by.

  “I’m either experiencing delayed stress syndrome or having daytime nightmares,” he said.

  It was Friday afternoon and I didn’t want to hear it. “What’s going on?” I said.

  “I saw Marco Scarlotti in the Winn-Dixie.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I followed him outside. It was M
arco. Charlie Weiss was waiting for him in a car. They had two big sacks of groceries. I waved them down, but they kept going. What are Sidney Kovick’s greaseballs doing in New Iberia?”

  “You got me.”

  “I went to the Lafayette Oil Center this afternoon to check out this Bo Diddley Wiggins character. He told me to get lost. He also told me he gave you all the information he had on Bobby Mack Rydel.”

  “That’s right.”

  Clete began unwrapping the foil from a stick of gum. “So you’re factoring me out of the investigation?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  He fed the stick of gum into his mouth and chewed it. I heard a bird thump into my window glass. “Bobby Mack Rydel checked out of the hospital today. I made a couple of calls to Morgan City. He’s not at his home or office.”

  There was nothing for it. Clete was either going to work alongside me or work by himself. If the latter was the case, it would not be good for anyone, particularly Clete. “Want to have a bite to eat with us, then take a drive up to Loreauville?” I asked.

  “What’s cooking?”

  “My guess is Bertrand Melancon, in a big iron pot,” I replied.

  IT RAINED right at sunset, then the sky cleared and the air was fresh and smelled of fish spawning and water dripping out of the trees. Alafair was going on a date and Molly was going to a meeting of Pax christi at Grand Coteau. I opened all the windows to let in the wind and the cool autumnal fragrance of night-blooming flowers in our yard. Through the trees the clouds were purple- and rose-stippled in the west. Down at the foot of the slope, a blue heron stood among the lily pads, pecking at insects on its wing, its slender lines like a haiku inside feathers.

  I didn’t want to chase down Bertrand Melancon or leave this perfect moment inside our simple house on Bayou Teche. I didn’t want to return to the world of violence and avarice that seems to define the era in which we live. As a police officer I was not supposed to hate. But in reality I despised those who manipulate and exploit our society, and I’m not talking about the pathetic collection of miscreants we spend most of our time and money locking up. But maybe the world has always been the way it is today. I can’t say. Like Voltaire’s protagonist Candide, I just wanted to retreat to a private garden and not deal with it anymore.