Creole Belle dr-19

by James Lee Burke

  Lamont Woolsey walked down the steps and stared at his SUV. One corner of the frame was almost flush with the concrete. “You left it on the rim?”

  “What if a neighborhood kid came by and pushed your SUV on top of himself? Besides, I needed the jack to change my own tire. Want to give me a hand? I’m late for my bridge club.”

  “I told you what would happen,” a woman said from the passenger seat of the car. “Leave him his tire and forget it.”

  “Who’s that?” Lamont asked.

  “That’s Connie Rizzo, my cousin. She lives in your neighborhood. I was trying to do the right thing. Instead, how about you jam your bad manners up your nose?”

  Lamont pushed Eddy in the chest with one finger. Eddy was surprised by the force and power in the man’s thrust. “You want trouble?” Lamont said, and speared him in the sternum again.

  The woman got out of the van. She was dark-haired and lovely and had youthful skin and a bright red mouth. She wore a beige T-shirt and baggy strap overalls spotted with paint. “Keep your hands to yourself, you freak,” she said.

  “Did you people get loose from an asylum?” Lamont said.

  “No, but I think you escaped from the circus,” she said. “You lay off Eddy. You want to push people around, try me.”

  “You’re cute,” Lamont said.

  “Think so? Try this,” she said. She pulled a can of oven cleaner from her overalls and squirted it in his eyes and nose and mouth, stepping back as he flailed his arms, a steady stream flowing into his face.

  In under thirty seconds, Lamont Woolsey was in the trunk of Eddy’s car, his wrists tied behind him with plastic ligatures, a black bag pulled down over his head, snugged tight with a drawstring under the chin.

  The stars were out when Clete parked his Caddy behind Ozone Eddy’s tanning parlor on Airline. He went through the back door into the cluttered room that Eddy called his office. Eddy and a woman Clete didn’t know were drinking coffee at a desk while the albino sat shirtless in a heavy chair, his arms secured behind him, his forehead knurled, his skin like white rubber. “What kept you?” Eddy said.

  “What kept me? What happened to him?” Clete said.

  “You wanted him brought here. So we brought him here,” Eddy said.

  “I didn’t tell you to boil his face off. Who’s she?”

  “Connie. I pieced off the job. You got any weed on you?”

  “Where’s his shirt?” Clete said.

  “He puked on it,” Eddy replied. “Actually, he puked inside the bag we put over his head, and it drained on his shirt. What’s with the attitude?”

  “I said get him in here. That I’d talk to him when you got him here. That doesn’t mean you turn him into a boiled shrimp,” Clete said.

  “You were gonna put an albino in a tanning bed, but you’re lecturing us on abusing people?” the woman said.

  “Get her out of here, Eddy,” Clete said.

  “You weren’t so choosy that New Year’s Eve when you tried to grab my ass in the elevator at the Monteleone,” the woman said.

  Clete tried to think straight, but he couldn’t. Lamont Woolsey was looking at him from under his brow, his face sweaty, his body starting to stink, his slacks streaked with grease and dirt from the car trunk.

  “What’s your fucking problem?” Eddy said.

  “You don’t hurt people when you don’t have to,” Clete said.

  “The guy’s a geek,” Eddy said.

  “Beat feet, Eddy, and take her with you,” Clete said. “I’ll lock up.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, this is my salon, my office, my girlfriend.”

  “You forget what happened here tonight, and with luck, you won’t get melted into soap,” Clete said.

  “You don’t throw me out of my own place.”

  “What did you say? Melted into soap?” the woman said.

  “Did you frisk this guy?” Clete asked.

  “What do you think?” the woman said. “I told Eddy to leave this shit alone. I also told him you were a masher. What was that about the soap?”

  “I’m going to bet Woolsey here had a fob on a key ring that looked like a dolphin,” Clete said.

  The woman and Ozone Eddy glanced at each other. “What about it?” she said.

  “That fob means Woolsey has ties to a Nazi war criminal,” Clete said. “I’ve been in a dungeon operated either by him or by his friends. There were chains and steel hooks in that room that had pieces of hair and human tissue on them.”

  “Are you drunk?” the woman said.

  “Tell her,” Clete said to Woolsey.

  A blue vein pulsed in Woolsey’s scalp. His lifted his eyes to the woman’s. They were electric, the pupils as tiny as pinheads. A solitary drop of sweat rolled off the tip of his nose and formed a dark star on his slacks. “I was a dance instructor at an Arthur Murray dance studio. I’d like to take you dining and dancing some night,” he said. “You have a nice mouth. Your lipstick is too bright, but your mouth is nice just the same.”

  The certainty had gone out of the woman’s face.

  “Where’s the bag for his head?” Clete said.

  “I threw it in the trash. I told you. It had puke on it,” Eddy said.

  “It’s not important,” Clete said. “Come on, Lamont. We’re going to take a ride.”

  “That stuff about the steel hooks, that was a put-on, right?” the woman said.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Clete said.

  He pulled Woolsey from the chair and walked him through the back door to the Caddy. Woolsey’s arms felt as hard as fence posts. “You lift?” Clete said.

  “Occasionally.”

  “Impressive. The credit card you used in Lafayette was only three weeks old. Otherwise, you’re off the computer.”

  “That’s not hard to do. But you’re definitely in the computer, Mr. Purcel. We know everything about you and everything about your family and everything about your friends. Think about that.”

  Clete shoved him into the backseat and handcuffed him to the D-ring inset in the floor. “Open your mouth again, and you’ll have that bag full of puke pulled over your head.”

  “You’re a stupid man,” Woolsey said.

  “You’re right about that,” Clete said. “But check out our situation. I’m driving the car and you’re hooked up like a street pimp. I know where we’re going and you don’t. Your face is fried and you don’t have a shirt to wear and your slacks look like you took a dump in them. You’re not in Shitsville because of bad luck, Mr. Woolsey. You’re in Shitsville because you got taken down by a guy who has hair like Bozo the Clown and a brain the size of a walnut. How’s it feel?”

  Clete drove up the I-10 corridor toward Baton Rouge, then took an exit that accessed a dirt road and a levee bordering a long canal and a flooded woods thick with cypress and gum and persimmon trees. In the moonlight he could see three fishing camps farther up the canal, all of them dark. Clete pulled into a flat spot below the levee and cut the engine. In the quiet he could hear the hood ticking with heat, the frogs croaking in the flooded trees. He went to the back of the Caddy and popped the trunk and pulled a long-sleeve dress shirt from an overnight bag.

  “I’m going to unhook you, Mr. Woolsey,” he said. “I want you to put on this shirt. If you get cute with me, I’ll pull your plug.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Who said we’re going anywhere? See that cypress swamp? That’s where the Giacano family used to plant the bodies of people they considered a nuisance.”

  “I’m not awed by any of this, Mr. Purcel.”

  “You should be. When the Giacanos clipped somebody, they did it themselves, up-front and personal. Or they did it up front and impersonal. But they did it themselves. You use the telephone. Like the hit you put on me and Dave Robicheaux.”

  Woolsey was slipping on the shirt in the backseat, working it over his shoulders, one cuff hanging from his wrist. “Somebody has been telling you fairy tales.”

&
nbsp; Clete cleared his throat. “This gun I’m holding is called a ‘drop’ or a ‘throw-down.’ When cops accidentally cap an unarmed man, the throw-down gets put on his body. Because the throw-down has its numbers burned off and no ballistics history associated with the cop, it’s a convenient weapon to carry when dealing with troublesome people who need a bullet in the mouth. Are you getting the picture?”

  “I think so. But speak more slowly, please. You’re probably too intelligent for a man like me.”

  “Here’s the rest of it. I wasn’t going to put you in a tanning bed. Why? Because, number one, it doesn’t work. People who are scared shitless tell any lie they think their tormentor wants to hear. Number two, I don’t take advantage of somebody’s handicap. So what does that mean for you? It means you take the contract off me and Dave, and you stay the fuck away from us. If you don’t, I’ll visit you at your pad and break your teeth out with a ball-peen hammer. Then I’ll stuff my drop down your throat and blow one into your bowels. That’s not a threat; it’s a fact.” Clete took a breath. “One other thing, Mr. Woolsey. No payback on Bozo the Clown and his girlfriend. They’re gumballs and are not accountable.”

  “I look like a vengeful man?”

  “Hook yourself up.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “You don’t have to. Just don’t fuck with me or Dave Robicheaux again,” Clete said.

  Lamont Woolsey seemed to think about it in a self-amused fashion, then slipped the tongue of the loose manacle through the D-ring and squeezed it into the locking mechanism.

  Clete stuck a green-and-white peppermint stick in his mouth, glanced once at Woolsey in the rearview mirror, and floored the Caddy back onto the levee, his tires sprinkling dirt and gravel into the canal.

  The traffic was thin as Clete drove down I-10 along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and passed the airport and the cutoff that led to New Iberia. Woolsey was staring out the window like a hairless white ape being transported back to the zoo. Thinking derogatory thoughts about Woolsey brought Clete no consolation. His mockery of Woolsey was, in reality, a bitter admission of his own failure. Woolsey had been taken down by a moral imbecile, but Clete had willingly formed a partnership with one. And Eddy being Eddy, he had immediately factored in his girlfriend, who had almost blinded Woolsey with oven cleaner. On top of that, the two of them had probably told Woolsey he was going to be baked alive in a tanning bed, which Clete had never planned to do.

  The shorter version was Clete had empowered Ozone Eddy and his girlfriend to torture a man in Clete’s name. Now he was operating a jitney service for the man who had put a hit on him and his best friend. How bad could one guy screw up?

  He looked at his passenger in the rearview mirror. “What do you get out of all this, Mr. Woolsey?”

  “Enormous sums of money. Want some?”

  “You connected to the oil spill?”

  “Not me. I’m an export-import man. One of our biggest clients is Vietnam. Some people say it’s the next China. Want to get in on it?”

  “I already did. Two tours.”

  “Shooting gook and dreaming of nook? Boys will be boys and all that? I bet y’all had some fun.”

  “Take a nap. I’ll tell you when you’re home,” Clete said.

  “Touch a nerve?”

  “Not a chance,” Clete said.

  He turned off I-10 and drove up St. Charles Avenue into the Garden District and pulled into Lamont Woolsey’s driveway. Woolsey’s SUV still rested lopsidedly on one of the back rims. The light was burning on the elevated gallery. An Asian girl in a print sundress was standing under it.

  “There’s our loyal Maelee,” Woolsey said.

  “What’d you say?” Clete asked.

  “My sweet young Vietnamese girl. They’re a loyal bunch. And Maelee is as lovely and fragrant as they come.”

  “Her name is Maelee?”

  “That’s what I said. Do you know her?”

  Clete didn’t answer. For a moment he saw a young woman swimming next to a sampan on the edge of the China Sea, her face dipping into a wave.

  But the person on the gallery was not a woman. She was a girl, her bare shoulders brown and warm-looking in the light, the flowers on her dress as vibrant as flowers in a tropical garden.

  “Is that you, Mr. Lamont?” the girl said. “I was worried. You were gone so long without telling me.”

  “See, they’re loyal,” Woolsey said. “The French taught them manners.”

  “Why don’t you show some appreciation and answer her?”

  “Unlock my handcuffs.”

  “I’ve seen her before,” Clete said. “She was the one who waited on Amidee Broussard after his speech at the Cajundome in Lafayette. He sent his steak back.”

  “Correct-o. You must have had your eye on her.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “Amidee knew I needed a maid and drove her over. I’ve given her the cottage in back. She seems quite happy with her new situation. Something wrong?”

  Clete pulled back the seat in the Caddy and fitted the handcuff key into the lock on Woolsey’s wrist. He could smell onions on Woolsey’s breath and the dried talcum around his armpits. He stepped back while Woolsey got out of the car. Woolsey’s lips looked purple in the gloom, his eyes dancing with light.

  “Yeah, there is something wrong,” Clete said. “Neither of you guys has any business around a young girl like that.”

  “What’s really bothering you, Mr. Purcel? You still dream about the little flower girls? It’s no fun keeping one’s wick dry, is it? You said you knew a woman named Maelee. She was Vietnamese?”

  “She was Eurasian.”

  “A taste of two worlds in one package? Yum-yum.”

  The crow’s-feet at the corners of Clete’s eyes had gone flat, but his eyes remained placid and bright green and showed no emotion. “I know a couple of Quaker ladies who work with refugees. They’ll be here tomorrow to talk with the girl and take her somewhere else if she wants to go.”

  “What is it you’re really after, Mr. Purcel? Your history with women is well known. You can’t keep your eyes off Maelee, can you? Would you like to go in the cottage with her? She won’t mind. She was very accommodating with Amidee. Last night I tried her myself. I highly recommend her.”

  “I think we’re square on the damage Ozone Eddy and his girlfriend did to your face,” Clete said. “That means we’re starting with a clean slate. Is that okay with you?”

  “Whatever you say. I’m going to go inside now and have a shower and a hot dinner. Then I’m going to bed down Maelee. I’ve earned that, and she knows it. We’re a colonial empire, Mr. Purcel, although you don’t seem to know that. Everyone benefits. The dominant nation takes the things it needs. Our subjects are only too happy to receive what we give them. It’s win-win for everyone.”

  “A fresh slate also means all bets are off. For you, that’s not good, Mr. Woolsey,” Clete said.

  “Time for you to be gone. Unless I missed something. Are you thinking of sloppy seconds?”

  Clete huffed an obstruction out of his nostrils and brushed at his nose with the back of his wrist. “I didn’t want to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “I mean in front of the girl I didn’t want to do it. I feel bad about that. She probably feels sorry for you and doesn’t understand that you’re a piece of shit out of choice, not because your mother thought she’d given birth to a sack of Martha White’s self-rising flour. By the way, I want my shirt back.” He paused. “Look, my real problem is I can’t get anyone over here tonight to look in on the girl, so that means we have to work things out right now, here, in your driveway. Are you hearing me? I said take off my shirt. Don’t make me ask you again. I’m sorry I sicced Ozone Eddy and his broad on you. Nobody deserves that, not even you. We’re straight on that, right? I’m glad we have that out of the way. Now give me back my threads. That’s not up
for debate. You’re starting to upset me, Mr. Woolsey.”

  “You’re a ridiculous man.”

  “I know,” Clete said. “What’s a fellow going to do?”

  Clete put his entire shoulder into his punch and sent Woolsey crashing into the side of his SUV. He thought it was over and hesitated and eased up when he swung again. But his estimation of Woolsey was wrong. Woolsey righted himself and slipped the second blow and caught Clete squarely on the jaw, snapping his head sideways. Then he hooked his arm behind Clete’s neck and drove his fist into Clete’s rib cage and heart again and again, his phallus pressed against Clete’s thigh, his smell rising into Clete’s face. “How do you like it, laddie? How does it feel to have your ass kicked by a freak?” he said.

  Clete brought his knee up into Woolsey’s groin and saw the man’s mouth open like that of a fish slammed on a hard surface. Clete hit him in the side of the head and managed to hook him once in the eye, but Woolsey wouldn’t go down. He lowered his head, turning his left shoulder forward as a classic open-style fighter would. He slammed his fist into Clete’s heart, then hit him in the same spot a second time, and glazed Clete’s head with a blow that almost tore his ear loose.

  Clete stepped back and set himself, crouching slightly, raising his left hand to absorb Woolsey’s next punch, then drove his fist straight into Woolsey’s mouth. Woolsey’s head hit the SUV, and he went down as though his ankles had been kicked from under him.

  But the engines that drove the rage and violence living inside Clete Purcel were not easily turned off. Like all of his addictions-weed and pills and booze and gambling and Cadillac convertibles and fried food and rock and roll and Dixieland music and women who moaned under his weight as though it only added to their pleasure-bloodlust and the wild release of confronting the monsters that waited for him nightly in his dreams were a drug that he could never have too much of.

  He stomped Woolsey in the head, then grabbed the outside mirror and the roof of the SUV for support and brought the flat of his shoe down on Woolsey’s face, over and over, hammering Woolsey’s head into the door, reshaping his nose and mouth and eyes, whipping strings of blood across the side of the SUV. At that moment Clete genuinely believed that a helicopter was hovering immediately overhead, flattening all the flowers and banana fronds and elephant ears and caladiums and windmill palms that grew in Woolsey’s yard.