Sunset Limited

by James Lee Burke

  The Negro burial insurance business had passed into history and the plantation quarters were deserted, but the same people came with regularity to the finance company owned by the wife's family and signed papers they could not read and made incremental loan payments for years without ever reducing the principal. A pawnshop stood next door, also owned by the wife's family. Unlike most businesspeople, Guidry and his inlaws prospered most during economic recession.

  We parked behind his car and watched him pause on the sidewalk and stare at us, then go inside.

  A moment later a brown Honda, driven by a tall man in a gray suit, pulled to the curb, on the wrong side of the street, and parked bumper to bumper in front of Guidry's car. The driver, who was a DEA agent named Minos Dautrieve, got out and met us on the sidewalk in front of the finance company's glass doors. His crew-cut blond hair was flecked with white threads now, but he still had the same tall, angular good looks that sports photographers had loved when he played forward for LSU and was nicknamed "Dr. Dunkenstein" after he sailed through the air and slammed the ball so hard through the rim he shattered the backboard like hard candy.

  "How's the fishing?" he said.

  "They've got your name on every fin," I said.

  "I'll probably come out this evening. How you doin', Helen?"

  "Just fine. Lovely day, isn't it?" she replied.

  "Do we have our friend's attention?" he asked, his back to the glass doors.

  "Yep," I said.

  He took a notebook out of his pocket and studied the first page of it.

  "Well, I have to pick up a couple of things for my wife, then meet her and her mother in Lafayette. We'll see you-all," he said. He put the notebook back in his pocket, then walked to the front doors of the finance company, cupped his hands around his eyes to shield them from the sun, and peered through the tinted glass.

  After he had driven away, Alex Guidry came out on the sidewalk.

  "What are you people doing?" he said.

  "You're an ex-cop. Guess," Helen said.

  "That man's a federal agent of some kind," Guidry said.

  "The guy who just left? He's an ex-jock. He was ail-American honorable mention at LSU. That's a fact," I said.

  "What is this?" he said.

  "You're in the shithouse, Mr. Guidry. That's what it is," Helen said.

  "This is harassment and I won't put up with it," he said.

  "You're naive, sir. You're the subject of a murder investigation. You're also tied in with Harpo Scruggs. Scruggs has asked for immunity. You know where that leaves his friends? I'd get a parachute," I said.

  "Fuck you," he said, and went back inside.

  But his shirtsleeve caught on the door handle. When he pulled at it he ripped the cloth and hit a matronly white woman between the shoulder blades with his elbow.

  TWO HOURS LATER GUIDRY called the office.

  "Scruggs is getting immunity for what?" he asked.

  "I didn't say he was 'getting' anything."

  I could hear him breathing against the receiver.

  "First guy in line doesn't do the Big Sleep," I said.

  "Same answer. Do your worst. At least I didn't flush my career down the bowl because I couldn't keep a bottle out of my mouth," he said.

  "Ida Broussard was carrying your baby when you killed her, Mr. Guidry."

  He slammed down the phone.

  THREE DAYS LATER, IN the cool of the evening, Lila Terrebonne and Geraldine Holtzner came down the dirt road in Clete Purcel's chartreuse Cadillac, the top down, and pulled into the drive. Alafair and I were raking leaves and burning them on the edge of the road. The leaves were damp and black, and the smoke from the fire twisted upward into the trees in thick yellow curds and smelled like marijuana burning in a wet field. Both Lila and Geraldine seemed delighted with the pink-gray loveliness of the evening, with our activity in the yard, with themselves, with the universe.

  "What are you guys up to?" I said.

  "We're going to a meeting. You want to tag along?" Geraldine said from behind the wheel.

  "It's a thought. What are you doing with Clete's car?" I said.

  "Mine broke down. He lent me his," Geraldine said. "I went back to Narcotics Anonymous, in case you're wondering. But I go to AA sometimes, too."

  Lila was smiling, a wistful, unfocused beam in her eye. "Hop in, good-looking," she said.

  "Did y'all make a stop before you got here?" I asked.

  "Dave, I bet you urinated on radiators in elementary school," Lila said.

  "I might see y'all up there later. Y'all be careful about Clete's tires. The air is starting to show through," I said.

  "This is a lovely car. You drive it and suddenly it's 1965. What a wonderful time that was, just before everything started to change," she said.

  "Who could argue, Lila?" I said.

  Unless you were black or spent ' 65 in Vietnam, I thought as they drove away.

  THE AA MEETING THAT evening was held in the upstairs rooms of an old brick church out on West Main. The Confederates had used the church for a hospital while they tried to hold back the Federals on the Teche south of town; then, after the town had been occupied and looted and the courthouse torched, the Federals inverted half the pews and filled them with hay for their horses. But most of the people in the upper rooms this evening cared little about the history of the building. The subject of the meeting was the Fifth Step of AA recovery, which amounts to owning up, or confessing, to one's past.

  There are moments in Fifth Step meetings that cause the listeners to drop their eyes to the floor, to lose all expression in their faces, to clench their hands in their laps and wince inwardly at the knowledge that the barroom they had entered long ago had only one exit, and it opened on moral insanity.

  Lila Terrebonne normally listened and did not speak at meetings. Tonight was different. She sat stiffly on a chair by the window, a tree silhouetted by a fiery sunset behind her head. The skin of her face had the polished, ceramic quality of someone who has just come out of a windstorm. Her hands were hooked together like those of an opera singer.

  "I think I've had a breakthrough with my therapist," she said. "I've always had this peculiar sensation, this sense of guilt, I mean, a fixation I guess with crucifixes." She laughed self-deprecatingly, her eyes lowered, her eyelashes as stiff as wire. "It's because of something I saw as a child. But it didn't have anything to do with me, right? I mean, it's not part of the program to take somebody else's inventory. All I have to do is worry about what I've done. As people say, clean up my side of the street. Who am I to judge, particularly if I'm not in the historical context of others?"

  No one had any idea of what she was talking about. She rambled on, alluding to her therapist, using terms most blue-collar people in the room had no understanding of.

  "It's called psychoneurotic anxiety. It made me drink. Now I think most of that is behind me," she said. "Anyway, I didn't leave my panties anywhere today. That's all I have."

  After the meeting I caught her by Clete's car. The oak tree overhead was filled with fireflies, and there was a heavy, wet smell in the air like sewer gas.

  "Lila, I've never spoken like this to another AA member before, but what you said in there was total bullshit," I said.

  She fixed her eyes on mine and blinked her eyelashes coyly and said nothing.

  "I think you're stoned, too," I said.

  "I have a prescription. It makes me a little funny sometimes. Now stop beating up on me," she said, and fixed my collar with one hand.

  "You know who murdered Jack Flynn. You know who executed the two brothers in the swamp. You can't conceal knowledge like that from the law and expect to have any serenity."

  "Marry me in our next incarnation," she said, and pinched my stomach. Then she made a sensual sound and said, "Not bad, big stuff."

  She got in the passenger seat and looked at herself in her compact mirror and waited for Geraldine Holtzner to get behind the wheel. Then the two of them cruised down a brick
-paved side street, laughing, the wind blowing their hair, like teenage girls who had escaped into a more innocent, uncomplicated time.

  TWO DAYS PASSED, THEN I received another phone call from Alex Guidry, this time at the dock. His voice was dry, the receiver held close to his mouth.

  "What kind of deal can I get?" he said.

  "That depends on how far you can roll over."

  "I'm not doing time."

  "Don't bet on it."

  "You're not worried about a dead black woman or a couple of shit bags who got themselves killed out in the Basin. You want the people who nailed up Jack Flynn."

  "Give me a number. I'll call you back," I said.

  "Call me back?"

  "Yeah, I'm busy right now. I've already reached my quotient for jerk-off behavior today."

  "I can give you Harpo Scruggs tied hand and foot on a barbecue spit," he said.

  I could hear him breathing through his nose, like a cat's whisker scraping across the perforations. Then I realized the source of his fear.

  "You've talked to Scruggs, haven't you?" I said. "You called him about his receiving immunity. Which means he knows you're in communication with us. You dropped the dime on yourself… Hello?"

  "He's back. I saw him this morning," he said.

  "You're imagining things."

  "He's got an inoperable brain tumor. The guy's walking death. That's his edge."

  "Better come in, Mr. Guidry."

  "I don't give a deposition until he's in custody. I want the sheriffs guarantee on that."

  "You won't get it."

  "One day I'm going to make you suffer. I promise it." He eased the phone down into the cradle.

  ON MONDAY, ADRIEN GLAZIER knocked on my office door. She was dressed in blue jeans and hiking shoes and a denim shirt, and she carried a brown cloth shoulder bag scrolled with Mexican embroidery. The ends of her ash-blond hair looked like they had been brushed until they crawled with static electricity, then had been sprayed into place.

  "We can't find Willie Broussard," she said.

  "Did you try his father's fish camp?"

  "Why do you think I'm dressed like this?"

  "Cool Breeze doesn't report in to me, Ms. Glazier."

  "Can I sit down?"

  Her eyes met mine and lingered for a moment, and I realized her tone and manner had changed, like heat surrendering at the end of a burning day.

  "An informant tells us some people in Hong Kong have sent two guys to Louisiana to clip off a troublesome hangnail or two," she said. "I don't know if the target is Willie Broussard or Ricky Scarlotti or a couple of movie producers. Maybe it's all of the above."

  "My first choice would be Scarlotti. He's the only person who has reason to give up some of their heroin connections."

  "If they kill Willie Broussard, they take the squeeze off Scarlotti. Anyway, I'm telling you what we know."

  I started to bring up the subject of Harpo Scruggs again and the possibility of his having worked for the government, but I let it go.

  She dropped a folder on my desk. Clipped to two xeroxed Mexico City police memorandums was a grainy eight-by-ten photograph that had been taken in an open-air fruit market. The man in the photo stood at a stall, sucking a raw oyster out of its shell.

  "His name is Ruben Esteban. He's one of the men we think Hong Kong has sent here."

  "He looks like a dwarf."

  "He is. He worked for the Argentine Junta. Supposedly he interrogated prisoners by chewing off their genitals."

  "What?"

  "The Triads always ruled through terror. The people they hire create living studies in torture and mutilation. Call Amnesty International in Chicago and see what they have to say about Esteban."

  I picked up the photo and looked at it again. "Where's the material on the other guy?" I asked.

  "We don't know who he is. Mr. Robicheaux, I'm sorry for having given you a bad time in some of our earlier conversations."

  "I'll survive," I said, and tried to smile.

  "My father was killed in Korea while people like Jack Flynn were working for the Communist Party."

  "Flynn wasn't a Red. He was a Wobbly."

  "You could fool me. He was lucky a House committee didn't have him shipped to Russia."

  Then she realized she had said too much, that she had admitted looking at his file, that she was probably committed forever to being the advocate for people whose deeds were indefensible.

  "You ever sit down and talk with Megan? Maybe y'all are on the same side," I said.

  "You're too personal, sir."

  I raised my hands by way of apology.

  She smiled slightly, then hung her bag from her shoulder and walked out of the office, her eyes already assuming new purpose, as though she were burning away all the antithetical thoughts that were like a thumbtack in her brow.

  AT EIGHT-THIRTY THAT NIGHT Bootsie and I were washing the dishes in the kitchen when the phone rang on the counter.

  "This is what you've done, asshole. My reputation's ruined. My job is gone. My wife has left me. You want to hear more?" the voice said.

  "Guidry?" I said.

  "There's a rumor going around I'm the father of a halfwit mulatto I sold to a cathouse in Morgan City. The guy who told me that said he heard it from your buddy Clete Purcel."

  "Either you're in a bar or you've become irrational. Either way, don't call my home again."

  "Here it is. I'll give you the evidence on Flynn's murder. I said evidence, not just information. I'll give you the shooters who did the two brothers, I'll give you the guys who almost drowned Megan Flynn, I'll give you the guy who's been writing the checks. What's on your end of the table?"

  "The Iberia prosecutor will go along with aiding and abetting. We'll work with St. Mary Parish. It's a good deal. You'd better grab it."

  He was quiet a long time. Outside, the heat lightning looked like silver plate through the trees.

  "Are you there?" I said.

  "Scruggs threatened to kill me. You got to bring this guy in."

  "Give us the handle to do it."

  "It was under your feet the whole time and you never saw it, you arrogant shithead."

  I waited silently. The receiver felt warm and moist in my hand.

  "Go to the barn where Flynn died. I'll be there in forty-five minutes. Leave the muff diver at home," he said.

  "You don't make the rules, Guidry. Another thing, call her that again and I'm going to break your wagon."

  I hung up, then dialed Helen's home number.

  "You don't want to check in with the St. Mary sheriff's office first?" she said.

  "They'll get in the way. Are you cool on this?" I said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "We take Guidry down clean. No scratches on the freight."

  "The guy who said he'd dig up my grave and piss in my mouth? To tell you the truth, I wouldn't touch him with a baton. But maybe you'd better get somebody else for backup, bwana."

  "I'll meet you at the end of East Main in twenty minutes," I said.

  I went into the bedroom and took my holstered 1911 model U.S. Army.45 from the dresser drawer and clipped it onto my belt. I wiped my palms on my khakis unconsciously. Through the screen window the oak and pecan trees seemed to tremble in the heat lightning that leaped between the clouds.

  "Streak?" Bootsie said.

  "Yes?"

  "I overheard your conversation. Don't worry about Helen. It's you that man despises," she said.

  HELEN AND I DROVE down the two-lane through Jeanerette, then turned off on an oak-lined service road that led past the barn with the cratered roof and sagging walls where Jack Flynn died. The moon had gone behind a bank of storm clouds, and the landscape was dark, the blackberry bushes in the pasture humped against the lights of a house across the bayou. The leaves of the oaks along the road nickered with lightning, and I could smell rain and dust in the air.

  "Guidry's going to do time, isn't he?" Helen said.

  "Some anyw
ay."

  "I partnered with a New Orleans uniform who got sent up to Angola. First week down a Big Stripe cut his face. He had himself put in lockdown and every morning the black boys would spit on him when they went to breakfast."

  "Yeah?"

  "I was just wondering how many graduates of the parish prison will be in Guidry's cell house."

  Helen turned the cruiser off the road and drove past the water oaks through the weeds and around the side of the barn. The wind was up now and the banana trees rattled and swayed against the barn. In the headlights we could see clusters of red flowers in the rain trees and dust swirling off the ground.

  "Where is he?" Helen said. But before I could speak she pointed at two pale lines of crushed grass where a car had been driven out in the pasture. Then she said, "I got a bad feeling, Streak."

  "Take it easy," I said.

  "What if Scruggs is behind this? He's been killing people for forty years. I don't plan to walk blindfolded into the Big Exit." She cut the lights and unsnapped the strap on her nine-millimeter Beretta.

  "Let's walk the field. You go to the left, I go to the right… Helen?"

  "What?"

  "Forget it. Scruggs and Guidry are both pieces of shit. If you feel in jeopardy, take them off at the neck."

  We got out of the cruiser and walked thirty yards apart through the field, our weapons drawn. Then the moon broke behind the edge of a cloud and we could see the bumper and front fender of an automobile that was parked close behind a blackberry thicket. I circled to the right of the thicket, toward the rear of the automobile, then I saw the tinted windows and buffed, soft-yellow exterior of Alex Guidry's Cadillac. The driver's door was partly open and a leg in gray pants and a laced black shoe was extended into the grass. I clicked on the flashlight in my left hand.