The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  “Start over again. Go after Otis Baylor,” she said.

  “Waste of time.”

  “Really? I wonder why he’s downstairs,” she replied.

  I BUZZED WALLY and asked him to send Otis Baylor up. I expected Wally to make a wisecrack. But he surprised me. “Glad you and your family are okay, Dave. I’m glad you capped that dude, too. That was a righteous shoot. Everybody here knows that. You hearing me?”

  “Yeah, I do, Wally. Thanks,” I said.

  Two minutes later Otis knocked on my glass pane and I waved him inside. He was wearing a navy blue suit and white shirt and tie, and his shoes were brushed to a soft luster. He put a piece of lined notebook paper on my desk. “That’s Bertrand Melancon’s address in the Ninth Ward. If you want him, he’s yours.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Baylor.”

  He didn’t argue. He took a chair in front of my desk and gazed around my office.

  “I’ll pass this information on to NOPD. I’ll also pass it on to the FBI in Baton Rouge. Maybe they’ll get around to picking him up one day, but I don’t believe that’s going to happen soon. I think others will get their hands on Bertrand first, and when they do, they’ll boil the meat off his bones.”

  “Then it’s on y’all. My family and I are finished with him.”

  “I have a feeling something happened since I last saw you. Want to tell me about it?”

  He did just that, in detail, leaving nothing out, describing his temptation to tear Bertrand Melancon into pieces in front of his auntie and the act of intervention and mercy on his daughter’s part.

  “I admire what you’ve done, sir, but yesterday I shot and killed a man by the name of Bobby Mack Rydel. I killed him because he tried to kill my daughter, my wife, and me. He did this because Ronald Bledsoe put him up to it. Are you aware of all this? Because you don’t seem to be.”

  “No, I wasn’t aware. We got back from New Orleans late last night. I didn’t watch the news or read the paper this morning. I came straight to your office. I’m sorry to hear about your trouble.”

  I thought it was time to use the information Deputy Catin Segura had given me regarding Otis Baylor’s wife.

  “You didn’t shoot those looters, Mr. Baylor. I think your wife did. I think before you two met, she was sexually abused, probably by someone with sadistic tendencies, maybe someone addicted to sado-porn. I think she saw the looters approaching your house and got frightened and opened up on them.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Who told you this stuff about Mrs. Baylor?”

  “Who cares? Your wife picked up the Springfield and probably fired it out the front door. She was probably scared. Who wouldn’t be? A jury should be able to understand that. I think it’s pretty dumb to protect someone who perhaps doesn’t need protecting.”

  His eyes stayed on mine and I knew he was thinking about the statement I had just made. I had said a jury “should understand.” Like most intelligent people, Otis knew equivocation and nuance in language when he heard it. He also knew that a prosecutor would emphasize to the jury that the shooter had been deadly accurate and had managed to take down not just one but two looters with a single shot. It was obvious the shooter had not fired simply to frighten them away.

  But right now I was no longer interested in whether or not Otis worked out his family problems.

  “Bertrand told me he tried to make amends to you. I think he tried to give you part or all of the blood diamonds stolen from Sidney Kovick’s house. I need to know where they are.”

  “We have nothing to do with that.”

  “Does you wife know where they are?”

  “No.”

  I remained silent, turning a pencil in a circle on my blotter with my finger, leaving the burden of evidence on him.

  “Look, Melancon brought a letter to the house,” he said. “He had handwritten an apology to our family and tried to read it to her. He told my wife the location of the diamonds was on the bottom of the letter. But she threw it in his face. I found the letter in the yard. It was written on a paper hand towel. The ink had dissolved in the water. It’s unreadable.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Probably still in the can I use for yard cleanup.”

  “With your permission, I’m going to send someone out there to pick it up,” I said.

  “Do whatever you want,” he replied.

  I got the exact location of the trash can from him and called the Acadiana Crime Lab. After I got off the phone, I looked at Otis for a long time. “I wish you had told me this before,” I said. “Your lack of cooperation hasn’t been good for any of us, Mr. Baylor, least of all for yourself. If I can share a little bit of police wisdom with you, it’s a fool’s errand to take other people’s weight.”

  “I’m not up on police terminology. You want to rephrase that?”

  “When we allow others to victimize us in order to prove our own worth, we invite a cancer into our lives.”

  “We through here, Mr. Robicheaux?”

  I felt my old enemy, anger, flare in my chest. My daughter and wife had almost lost their lives the previous day and I had been forced to shoot and kill their assailant. Regardless of what he had suffered himself, I was tired of Otis Baylor’s recalcitrant attitudes.

  He was studying my face, perhaps finally aware that other people have their limits.

  “No, we’re not through. And it’s Detective Robicheaux. Why do you think we came down on you with both feet?” I said.

  “Bad luck?”

  “Because your neighbor gave you up.”

  “Tom Claggart?”

  “He said the night the looters were shot, you made a statement about ‘hanging black ivory on the wall.’ You remember saying that?”

  “Yeah, I do. But I don’t blame Tom for telling you that. He’s a simpleminded man who wants to please authority. He went to the Virginia Military Institute or the Citadel or one of those military colleges. I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

  It has to do with the fact you’re unteachable, sir, I thought. But I kept my feelings to myself.

  MY GUESS WAS that Ronald Bledsoe had already left town. Wrong again. Two other detectives went to his motor court early Monday morning and were told by the manager that Mr. Bledsoe could be found at an assisted-care facility next door to Iberia General.

  One of the detectives, Lukas Cormier, called me on his cell phone from the parking lot outside the facility. He had a bachelor’s degree in business administration, with a minor in psychology, and was a good investigator. “You want to come over here?” he said.

  “I’m supposed to be on the desk till IA cuts me loose,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “When we went inside, this guy who looks like he was squirted out of a toothpaste tube was reading a Harry Potter book aloud to a roomful of Alzheimer patients. He goes, ‘Hi, my name is Ronald. What’s yours?’”

  “What’s his alibi for yesterday?”

  “He says he was in Barnes and Noble in Lafayette, buying books for his Alzheimer friends.”

  “Does he have any purchase receipts?”

  “No, I asked him.”

  “How about the Humvee? You got anything on it?”

  “Zip. We tried all the rentals and talked to a couple of dealerships. But without a tag number I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere on the vehicle. You want us to bring him in?”

  “No, let him think he’s slid one past us.”

  “He’s got no sheet at all? Mental institutions, stuff like that?”

  “None. Bledsoe is a blank. Not so much as a traffic violation.”

  There was a beat and I knew what was coming.

  “Dave, I don’t want to seem casual about your experience with this character, but are you sure we’ve got the right guy? I don’t see this guy as New Iberia ’s answer to BTK. Guys who try to whack a cop and his family don’t hang around. They also have histories. By your own admission, Bledsoe doesn’t fit the job description.”
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br />   “BTK had a university degree in criminal justice and worked as an animal control officer in Wichita, Kansas. He also installed security systems in people’s homes. He was also an officer at his church. He also tortured people to death, including children, for twenty years. Happy motoring, Lukas.”

  I hung up, more angry than I should have been, I suppose. But when you are on the receiving end of a fist, you are less inclined to be sympathetic toward those who are disingenuous at your expense.

  I called Sidney Kovick’s flower shop. Eunice answered the phone.

  “Is Sidney back from New Iberia?” I asked.

  “I never said he was in New Iberia,” she replied.

  “Right, I forgot that. Since I talked to Sidney on Saturday, a friend of Ronald Bledsoe tried to kill my family and me. I tried to stoke up Sidney so he’d take down Bledsoe for me. But I want Bledsoe alive and I want the people he works for. Please ask your husband to call me.”

  It took a moment for my statement to sink in. “You tried to get Sidney to do your dirty work?”

  “Not exactly. But I wouldn’t have objected.”

  “Then shame on you.”

  I felt my face burning. “Will you pass on my message?”

  “Sometimes you strike me as absolutely clueless. It’s Sidney who needs your help. He just called. He’s worried about Marco and Charlie. They went into the Atchafalaya Swamp Saturday and didn’t come back to the motel. They don’t answer their cell phones, either.”

  “What were they doing in the Atchafalaya Swamp, Eunice?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Right, I thought. “Maybe they got lost. Marco Scarlotti and Charlie Weiss probably couldn’t find snow in Antarctica. You want to get straight with me or see Sidney in a box?” I said.

  “They were following Ronald Bledsoe.”

  “I’m at the Iberia Sheriff’s Department. Tell Sidney either to come in or call me. You’re a reasonable person. I want you to think hard about the following question. Don’t answer it, just think about it.”

  Eunice had grown up in the fiefdom of Plaquemines Parish and knew firsthand that justice is indeed blind, at least when it involves political corruption. I let the spring wind itself tight, then I used the interrogator’s classic trick of posing a question that appears based on a premise. “When Bo Wiggins goes down, do you think he’s going to take the bounce by himself? A guy with hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts? When it comes to money and status, Bo Wiggins has the humanity of a feral pit bull. What do you think he’s going to do to Sidney?”

  “I don’t know, Dave. I’ve never met the man. I’m not sure Sidney has, either. I’ll ask him to call you. You don’t need to call here again.”

  My time in the dead zone seemed open-ended.

  BUT SIDNEY did not call and I began to believe that both he and Eunice were much more vulnerable than I had thought. As I mentioned before, I never quite understood Sidney. Historically the men who ran the Mafia rose to power through treachery, betrayal of friends, and assassination of their superiors. Their skill lay in their ability to manipulate others, particularly those who were good “soldiers” and had ferocious levels of physical courage that their leaders lacked.

  This was not the case with Sidney. He wasn’t afraid and I never saw him betray one of his own. Actually I think Sidney had a peculiar kind of secular theology at work in his life that was similar in many ways to those who conflate nationalism and religion and business. For Sidney, “sin” and “failure” and “poverty” were the unholy trinity. If there was a perdition, it was the home on North Villere Street where he had grown up.

  Unfortunately for Sidney and the men who worked for him, evil sometimes comes in a package that has no label on it.

  SIDNEY’S OPPOSITE WAS Clete Purcel, a man who was born and raised in the same privation as Sidney and, worse, exposed at an early age to his father’s rejection and unnecessary cruelty. Why does one man turn out to be a gangster and the other a beer-soaked, blue-collar knight errant? I didn’t know the answer. I was just glad that Clete was my friend.

  As soon as Clete heard about the shoot-out, he had come to my house. He stayed until almost midnight, then, instead of leaving as he said he was, he pulled his Caddy into the driveway and went to sleep in the backseat, determined that Bledsoe wouldn’t have another run at us. We had to argue with him in order to make up a bed for him on the couch.

  He came to my office on Monday morning, shortly after I had talked to Eunice Kovick. “So Sidney hasn’t called you, huh?” he said.

  “He’s not going to admit he’s painted himself into a corner,” I replied.

  It was bright and cool outside, and I lowered the blinds to take the glare out of the office. When I closed my eyes, red rings seemed to recede into my brain and for just a second I thought I could see muzzle flashes from a semi-automatic rifle. I could feel Clete’s eyes following me around the room.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “ Sidney wants his goods. He probably thinks Bertrand Melancon is still in New Iberia or he thinks Bledsoe can lead him to Melancon.”

  “You don’t think Bledsoe is working for him?”

  “If he was, he isn’t now.”

  “What do you figure is the deal on Bo Diddley Wiggins?”

  “I think he’s mixed up in it. But here’s the rub. Bo Diddley is a businessman. Sidney fancies himself one. Ronald Bledsoe and Bobby Mack Rydel are cut out of different cloth. If I had to take a guess, I think Bo and Sidney probably stepped off a cliff and didn’t know how to get back on it.”

  I could see Clete’s irritation growing. “Guys like Bledsoe and Rydel don’t operate in a vacuum. They do the jobs that guys like Kovick and Wiggins don’t want to dirty their hands on. Like kidnapping and suffocating Courtney Degravelle to death. I got two regrets in all this, Streak. One, that I drug Courtney into it. Two, that it wasn’t me who parked a couple of big ones in Rydel’s brisket.”

  Fortunately my desk phone rang. It was Mack Bertrand, at the Acadiana Crime Lab. “We picked up the letter at Otis Baylor’s place. It was in the trash can, like he said. The biggest problem is the note was printed on low-grade paper that’s been sitting in water. It was almost mush when we lifted it out. Anyway, I’ve done a computer reconstruction of it. What are you looking for in particular?”

  “Directions to some stolen property. How legible is it?”

  “You ever eat alphabet soup when you were a kid?”

  After I hung up, I looked at Clete, my palm still resting on the receiver, unsure what I should do next. Clete was not a welcome presence at the sheriff’s department. At best he was tolerated because he and I were friends. At worst, he was still looked upon as a disgraced cop who hunted down street mutts for hire. “I need to go over to the Crime Lab,” I said.

  He waited.

  “Want to come?” I said.

  The Crime Lab was outside the city limits, in a quasi-rural area. On the way there, a small deer ran across the road. It sprang across a rain ditch and ran through a sodden field of sugarcane that had been ruined by flooding and high wind. We were in my truck, and Clete turned in the passenger seat and strained to see out the back window as the deer bounced over a fence into a grove of water oaks. Then he stared straight ahead at the road.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  “I was just thinking about something you said. The reason this case doesn’t hang together is because we’ve got a mixture of business types and greaseballs and sociopaths all in the same blender. It’s the amateurs who stay under the radar. They’re not predictable. They do business in Iran and get blow jobs in Nigeria, then take their families to First Baptist back in Big D. You think you’re hunting down Charlie Manson and instead you end up dealing with Beaver Cleaver.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We don’t have the juice to take these guys down. I’m glad you capped Rydel when you had the chance.”

/>   “He dealt it.”

  “That’s not my point. The guy was protected. He was a killing machine for years and always had somebody with juice covering his butt.”

  “You think that’s how Bledsoe has stayed off the computer?”

  “No, that’s where it doesn’t make sense. Bledsoe is no mercenary. He’s a serial predator, a guy who doesn’t like to take orders. Maybe somebody brought him in for a short gig. That’s all I can figure. This whole bunch should have been in soap dispensers a long time ago.” he was quiet the rest of the way to the Crime Lab.

  TECHNICALLY I WAS still on the desk, but technically again my desk extended to the Lab. The head forensic technician there was Mack Bertrand. He was a slender, nice-looking family man, always well groomed, who carried his pipe in a leather case on his belt. Wherever he went, he trailed a fragrance of apple-spiked pipe tobacco. I could tell he wasn’t entirely comfortable with Clete’s presence inside the Lab. Clete sensed it, too, and went outside.

  “Did I say something?” Mack asked.

  “It’s all right. What have you got?” I said.

  Mack had created virtual images on a computer screen from the dissolved texture of the paper towel on which Bertrand Melancon had written his letter of amends. In our earlier conversation on the telephone, Mack had made use of a metaphor involving alphabet soup. The metaphor could not have been more appropriate.

  I could make out several words in the body of the letter, but toward the bottom of the page, only a few letters, re-created from both the ink and the pressure of the ballpoint pen, were discernible:

  Th dym s un the ri s on e ot ide of h an.

  “Does that help you?” Mack asked.

  “Not right offhand. But maybe it’ll make sense down the line.”

  “Tell Purcel I’ve got nothing against him. But it’s supposed to be only authorized personnel. I always thought he was a pretty decent guy.”

  “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought him in,” I said.

  “You okay from yesterday?”

  “No problem.”

  “That’s the way. When they deal it, we slam the door on it, case closed. Right? Don’t think about it,” he said, knowing a lie when he heard one, both mine and his.