Sunset Limited

by James Lee Burke

  "Dave?" she said.

  "Yes?"

  "Trust me on this. Megan needs you for some reason she's not telling you about. If she can't get to you directly, she'll go through Clete."

  "That's hard to believe."

  "He called tonight and asked if I knew where she was. She'd left a message on his answering machine."

  "Megan Flynn and Clete Purcel?"

  I WOKE AT SUNRISE the next morning and drove through the leafy shadows on East Main and then five miles up the old highway to Spanish Lake. I was troubled not only by Bootsie's words but also by my own misgivings about the Flynns. Why was Megan so interested in the plight of Cool Breeze Broussard? There was enough injustice in the world without coming back to New Iberia to find it. And why would her brother Cisco front points for an obvious psychopath like Swede Boxleiter?

  I parked my truck on a side road and poured a cup of coffee from my thermos. Through the pines I could see the sun glimmering on the water and the tips of the flooded grass waving in the shallows. The area around the lake had been the site of a failed Spanish colony in the 1790s. In 1836 two Irish immigrants who had survived the Goliad Massacre during the Texas Revolution, Devon Flynn and William Burke, cleared and drained the acreage along the lake and built farmhouses out of cypress trees that were rooted in the water like boulders. Later the train stop there became known as Burke's Station.

  Megan and Cisco's ancestor had been one of those Texas soldiers who had surrendered to the Mexican army with the expectation of boarding a prison ship bound for New Orleans, and instead had been marched down a road on Palm Sunday and told by their Mexican captors to kneel in front of the firing squads that were forming into position from two directions. Over 350 men and boys were shot, bayoneted, and clubbed to death. Many of the survivors owed their lives to a prostitute who ran from one Mexican officer to the next, begging for the lives of the Texans. Her name and fate were lost to history, but those who escaped into the woods that day called her the Angel of Goliad.

  I wondered if Cisco ever thought about his ancestor's story as material for a film.

  The old Flynn house still stood by the lake, but it was covered by a white-brick veneer now and the old gallery had been replaced by a circular stone porch with white pillars. But probably most important to Megan and Cisco was the simple fact that it and its terraced gardens and gnarled live oaks and lakeside gazebo and boathouse all belonged to someone else.

  Their father was bombed by the Luftwaffe and shot at by the Japanese on Guadalcanal and murdered in Louisiana. Were they bitter, did they bear us a level of resentment we could only guess at? Did they bring their success back here like a beast on a chain? I didn't want to answer my own question.

  The wind ruffled the lake and the longleaf pine boughs above my truck. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the sheriffs cruiser pull in behind me. He opened my passenger door and got inside.

  "How'd you know I was out here?" I asked.

  "A state trooper saw you and wondered what you were doing."

  "I got up a little early today."

  "That's the old Flynn place, isn't it?"

  "We used to dig for Confederate artifacts here. Camp Pratt was right back in those trees."

  "The Flynns bother me, too, Dave. I don't like Cisco bringing this Boxleiter character into our midst. Why don't both of them stay in Colorado?"

  "That's what we did to Megan and Cisco the first time. Let a friend of their dad dump them in Colorado."

  "You'd better define your feelings about that pair. I got Boxleiter's sheet. What kind of person would bring a man like that into his community?"

  "We did some serious damage to those kids, Sheriff."

  "We? You know what your problem is, Dave? You're just like Jack Flynn."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You don't like rich people. You think we're in a class war. Not everybody with money is a sonofabitch."

  He blew out his breath, then the heat went out of his face. He took his pipe from his shirt pocket and clicked it on the window jamb.

  "Helen said you think Boxleiter might be a pedophile," he said.

  "Yeah, if I had to bet, I'd say he's a real candidate."

  "Pick him up."

  "What for?"

  "Think of something. Take Helen with you. She can be very creative."

  Idle words that I would try to erase from my memory later.

  SEVEN

  I DROVE BACK TOWARD THE office. As I approached the old Catholic cemetery, I saw a black man with sloping shoulders cross the street in front of me and walk toward Main. I stared at him, dumbfounded. One cheek was bandaged, and his right arm was stiff at his side, as though it pained him.

  I pulled abreast of him and said, "I can't believe it."

  "Believe what?" Cool Breeze said. He walked bent forward, like he was just about to arrive somewhere. The whitewashed crypts behind him were beaded with moisture the size of quarters.

  "You're supposed to be in federal custody."

  "They cut me loose."

  "Cut you loose? Just like that?"

  "I'm going up to Victor's to eat breakfast."

  "Get in."

  "I don't mean you no disrespect, but I ain't gonna have no more to do with po-licemens for a while."

  "You staying with Mout'?"

  But he crossed the street and didn't answer.

  AT THE OFFICE I called Adrien Glazier in New Orleans.

  "What's your game with Cool Breeze Broussard?" I asked.

  "Game?"

  "He's back in New Iberia. I just saw him."

  "We took his deposition. We don't see any point in keeping him in custody," she replied.

  I could feel my words binding in my throat.

  "What's in y'all's minds? You've burned this guy."

  "Burned him?"

  "You made him rat out the Giacanos. Do you know what they do to people who snitch them off?"

  "Then why don't you put him in custody yourself, Mr. Robicheaux?"

  "Because the prosecutor's office dropped charges against him."

  "Really? So the same people who complain when we investigate their jail want us to clean up a local mess for them?"

  "Don't do this."

  "Should we tell Mr. Broussard his friend Mr. Robicheaux would like to see him locked up again? Or will you do that for us?" she said, and hung up.

  Helen opened my door and came inside. She studied my face curiously.

  "You ready to boogie?" she asked.

  SWEDE BOXLEITER HAD TOLD me he had a job in the movies, and that's where we started. Over in St. Mary Parish, on the front lawn of Lila Terrebonne. But we didn't get far. After we had parked the cruiser, we were stopped halfway to the set by a couple of off-duty St. Mary Parish sheriffs deputies with American flags sewn to their sleeves.

  "Y'all putting us in an embarrassing situation," the older man said.

  "You see that dude there, the one with the tool belt on? His name's Boxleiter. He just finished a five bit in Colorado," I said.

  "You got a warrant?"

  "Nope."

  "Mr. Holtzner don't want nobody on the set ain't got bidness here. That's the way it is."

  "Oh yeah? Try this. Either you take the marshmallows out of your mouth or I'll go down to your boss's office and have your ass stuffed in a tree shredder," Helen said.

  "Say what you want. You ain't getting on this set," he said.

  Just then, Cisco Flynn opened the door of a trailer and stepped out on the short wood porch.

  "What's the problem, Dave?" he asked.

  "Boxleiter."

  "Come in," he said, making cupping motions with his upturned hands, as though he were directing an aircraft on a landing strip.

  Helen and I walked toward the open door. Behind him I could see Billy Holtzner combing his hair. His eyes were pale and watery, his lips thick, his face hard-planed like gray rubber molded against bone.

  "Dave, we want a good relationship with everybody in the area. If Swede'
s done something wrong, I want to know about it. Come inside, meet Billy. Let's talk a minute," Cisco said.

  But Billy Holtzner's attention had shifted to a woman who was brushing her teeth in a lavatory with the door open.

  "Margot, you look just like you do when I come in your mouth," he said.

  "Adios," I said, walking away from the trailer with Helen.

  Cisco caught up with us and waved away the two security guards.

  "What'd Swede do?" he asked.

  "Better question: What's he got on you?" I said.

  "What have I done that you insult me like this?"

  "Mr. Flynn, Boxleiter was hanging around small children at the city pool. Save the bullshit for your local groupies," Helen said.

  "All right, I'll talk to him. Let's don't have a scene," Cisco said.

  "Just stay out of the way," she said.

  Boxleiter was on one knee, stripped to the waist, tightening a socket wrench on a power terminal. His Levi's were powdered with dust, and black power lines spidered out from him in all directions. His torso glistened whitely with sweat, his skin rippling with sinew each time he pumped the wrench. He used his hand to mop the sweat out of one shaved armpit, then wiped his hand on his jeans.

  "I want you to put your shirt on and take a ride with us," I said.

  He looked up at us, smiling, squinting into the sun. "You don't have a warrant. If you did, you'd have already told me," he said.

  "It's a social invitation. One you really don't want to turn down," Helen said.

  He studied her, amused. Dust swirled out of the dirt street that had been spread on the set. The sky was cloudless, the air moist and as tangible as flame against the skin. Boxleiter rose to his feet. People on the set had stopped work and were watching now.

  "I got a union book. I'm like anybody else here. I don't have to go anywhere," he said.

  "Suit yourself. We'll catch you later," I said.

  "I get it. You'll roust me when I get home tonight. It don't bother me. Long as it's legal," he said.

  Helen's cheeks were flushed, the back of her neck damp in the heat. I touched her wrist and nodded toward the cruiser. Just as she turned to go with me, I saw Boxleiter draw one stiff finger up his rib cage, collecting a thick dollop of sweat. He flicked it at her back.

  Her hand went to her cheek, her face darkening with surprise and insult, like a person in a crowd who cannot believe the nature of an injury she has just received.

  "You're under arrest for assaulting a police officer. Put your hands behind you," she said.

  He grinned and scratched at an insect bite high up on his shoulder.

  "Is there something wrong with the words I use? Turn around," she said.

  He shook his head sadly. "I got witnesses. I ain't done anything."

  "You want to add 'resisting' to it?" she said.

  "Whoa, mama. Take your hands off me… Hey, enough's enough… Buddy, yeah, you, guy with the mustache, you get this dyke off me."

  She grabbed him by the shoulders and put her shoe behind his knee. Then he brought his elbow into her breast, hard, raking it across her as he turned.

  She slipped a blackjack from her pants pocket and raised it over her shoulder and swung it down on his collarbone. It was weighted with lead, elongated like a darning sock, the spring handle wrapped with leather. The blow made his shoulder drop as though the tendons had been severed at the neck.

  But he flailed at her just the same, trying to grab her around the waist. She whipped the blackjack across his head, again and again, splitting his scalp, wetting the leather cover on the blackjack each time she swung.

  I tried to push him to the ground, out of harm's way, but another problem was in the making. The two off-duty sheriffs deputies were pulling their weapons.

  I tore my.45 from my belt holster and aimed into their faces.

  "Freeze! It's over!… Take your hand off that piece! Do it! Do it! Do it!"

  I saw the confusion and the alarm fix in their eyes, their bodies stiffening. Then the moment died in their faces. "That's it… Now, move the crowd back. That's all you've got to do… That's right," I said, my words like wet glass in my throat.

  Swede Boxleiter moaned and rolled in the dirt among the power cables, his fingers laced in his hair. Both my hands were still squeezed tight on the.45's grips, my forearms shining with sweat.

  The faces of the onlookers were stunned, stupefied. Billy Holtzner pushed his way through the crowd, turned in a circle, his eyebrows climbing on his forehead, and said, "I got to tell you to get back to work?" Then he walked back toward his trailer, blowing his nose on a Kleenex, flicking his eyes sideways briefly as though looking at a minor irritant.

  I was left staring into the self-amused gaze of Archer Terrebonne. Lila stood behind him, her mouth open, her face as white as cake flour. The backs of my legs were still trembling.

  "Do y'all specialize in being public fools, Mr. Robicheaux?" he asked. He touched at the corner of his mouth, his three-fingered hand like that of an impaired amphibian.

  THE SHERIFF PACED IN his office. He pulled up the blinds, then lowered them again. He kept clearing his throat, as though there were an infection in it.

  "This isn't a sheriff's department. I'm the supervisor of a mental institution," he said.

  He took the top off his teakettle, looked inside it, and set the top down again.

  "You know how many faxes I've gotten already on this? The St. Mary sheriff told me not to put my foot in his parish again. That sonofabitch actually threatened me," he said.

  "Maybe we should have played it differently, but Boxleiter didn't give us a lot of selection," I said.

  "Outside our jurisdiction."

  "We told him he wasn't under arrest. There was no misunderstanding about that," I said.

  "I should have used their people to take him down," Helen said.

  "Ah, a breakthrough in thought. But I'm suspending you just the same, at least until I get an IA finding," the sheriff said.

  "He threw sweat on her. He hit her in the chest with his elbow. He got off light," I said.

  "A guy with twenty-eight stitches in his head?"

  "You told us to pick him up, skipper. That guy would be a loaded gun anyplace we tried to take him down. You know it, too," I said.

  He crimped his lips together and breathed through his nose.

  "I'm madder than hell about this," he said.

  The room was silent, the air-conditioning almost frigid. The sunlight through the slatted blinds was eye-watering.

  "All right, forget the suspension and IA stuff. See me before you go into St. Mary Parish again. In the meantime, you find out why Cisco Flynn thinks he can bring his pet sewer rats into Iberia Parish… Helen, you depersonalize your attitude toward the perps, if that's possible."

  "The sewer rats?" I said.

  He filled his pipe bowl from a leather pouch and didn't bother to look up until we were out of the room.

  THAT EVENING CLETE PURCEL parked his Cadillac convertible under the shade trees in front of my house and walked down to the bait shop. He wore a summer suit and a lavender shirt with a white tie. He went to the cooler and opened a bottle of strawberry soda.

  "What, I look funny or something?" he said.

  "You look sharp."

  He drank out of the pop bottle and watched a boat out on the bayou.

  "I'll treat y'all to dinner at the Patio in Loreauville," he said.

  "I'd better work."

  He nodded, then looked at the newscast on the television set that sat above the counter.

  "Thought I'd ask," he said.

  "Who you going to dinner with?"

  "Megan Flynn."

  "Another time."

  He sat down at the counter and drank from his soda. He drew a finger through a wet ring on the wood.

  "I'm only supposed to go out with strippers and junkies?" he said.

  "Did I say anything?"

  "You hide your feelings like a cat in a spin drye
r."

  "So she's stand-up. But why's she back in New Iberia? We're Paris on the Teche?"

  "She was born here. Her brother has a house here."

  "Yeah, he's carrying weight for a psychopath, too. Why you think that is, Clete? Because Cisco likes to rehabilitate shank artists?"

  "I hear Helen beat the shit out of Boxleiter with a slapjack. Maybe he's got the message and he'll get out of town."

  I mopped down the counter and tossed the rag on top of a case of empty beer bottles.

  "You won't change your mind?" he said.

  "Come back tomorrow. We'll entertain the bass."

  He made a clicking sound with his mouth and walked out the door and into the twilight.

  AFTER SUPPER I DROVE over to Mout' Broussard's house on the west side of town. Cool Breeze came out on the gallery and sat down on the swing. He had removed the bandage from his cheek, and the wound he had gotten at the jail looked like a long piece of pink string inset in his skin.

  "Doctor said I ain't gonna have no scar."

  "You going to hang around town?" I asked.

  "Ain't got no pressing bidness nowheres else."

  "They used you, Breeze."

  "I got Alex Guidry fired, ain't I?"

  "Does it make you feel better?"

  He looked at bis hands. They were wide, big-boned, lustrous with callus.

  "What you want here?" he asked.

  "The old man who made your wife cook for him, Harpo Delahoussey? Did he have a son?"

  "What people done tole you over in St. Mary Parish?"

  "They say he didn't."

  He shook his head noncommittally.

  "You don't remember?" I said.

  "I don't care. It ain't my bidness."

  "A guy named Harpo may have executed a couple of kids out in the Basin," I said.

  "Those dagos in New Orleans? You know what they do to a black man snitch them off? I'm suppose to worry about some guy blowing away some po'-white trash raped a black girl?"

  "When those men took away your wife twenty years ago, you couldn't do anything about it. Same kind of guys are still out there, Breeze. They function only because we allow them to."