Last Car to Elysian Fields

by James Lee Burke

  But I didn’t have to spring Father Jimmie. The bishop and Father Jimmie’s conservative colleagues at his church came through for him, evidently making trouble from the mayor’s office on down through the chain of command at N.O.P.D.

  Father Jimmie called me at home that evening. “You know the story of Typhoid Mary?” he said.

  “A nineteenth-century cook or kitchen helper who caused problems everywhere she went?” I replied.

  “The bishop is recommending I travel somewhere that’s quiet and rustic. Maybe do a little bass fishing. I think anywhere outside of New Orleans would be fine with him,” he said.

  I shut my eyes and tried not to think about what he was obviously suggesting. “Straight up, Jimmie. Do you know where Max Coll is hiding?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you file charges against him?”

  “The cops need a Catholic minister to tell them Coll’s a killer?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Want to entertain the bass?” I asked.

  Father Jimmie moved into a back room of my house and the weekend passed uneventfully. On Monday Clete called the department and asked me to meet him for lunch at Victor’s Cafeteria.

  It was crowded with noontime customers, the wood-bladed fans turning high above us on the stamped-tin ceiling, the steam tables arrayed with Friday specials featuring shrimp or catfish or étoufée. Clete’s plate was piled with dirty rice and brown gravy, kidney beans, and two deep-fried pork chops. He wore an electric blue shirt and white sports coat, his face red with sunburn from a tarpon-fishing trip out on the salt. “Dolan’s at your place, huh?” he said.

  I nodded, waiting for him to begin one of his lectures. But he surprised me.

  “There’s an N.O.P.D. snitch I pay a few bucks to. He called me this morning about a bail skip who’s hid out in Morgan City. Then he mentions this guy Max Coll. He says Coll capped two high-level Miami greaseballs and there’s a fifty thou open whack on him. Which means every street rat in New Orleans is crawling out of the sewer grates.”

  “Yeah, I heard about it.”

  “Right,” Clete said, feeding a half piece of bread into his mouth. “Well, tell me if you’ve heard this. At seven this morning either Frank Dellacroce or his clone was in the donut shop by the railway tracks.”

  “Here, in New Iberia? The guy you saw shooting pool in Fat Sammy’s house?”

  “He came out of the donut shop just when I was going in. At first he couldn’t believe his bad luck. Then he puts on a wise-ass grin and says, ‘You fish for green trout over here, Purcel?’ I go, ‘No, I’m looking for a needle dick who puts his own child in a refrigerator. Know anybody like that, Frank?’

  “He goes, ‘That story is a lie my wife’s lawyer spread about me during our divorce. So why don’t you either pull your head out of your ass or mind your own fucking business?’”

  People around us were quietly picking up their plates and trays and moving to tables farther away from us.

  “Just then two more greaseballs come out of the donut shop. One used to be a shooter for the Giacanos. The other one I don’t know.”

  “How do you read it?” I asked.

  “They think Dolan knows where Coll is hiding. Any way you cut it, big mon, you’ve let Dolan piss in your shoe.”

  “Can we take our food to the park?” I said.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I think we’re about to get thrown out of here.”

  “What for?” he said, still chewing, his face filled with puzzlement.

  After I returned from lunch I went into Helen’s office. She was talking on the phone, standing up, a pair of handcuffs pulled through the back of her belt. Before she hung up I heard her say, “You don’t have to tell me.” Then she looked at me blankly. “What is it?” she said.

  “Clete says three New Orleans wiseguys are in town. They’re after a rogue button man by the name of Max Coll,” I said.

  “They’re staying at the Holiday,” she said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “The manager called earlier. The greaseballs have hookers in their rooms and are scaring the shit out of the staff. I was about to tell you about it but I got a call from a guy at the chamber of commerce. He says you and Clete Purcel had a conversation in Victor’s Cafeteria that made a third of the room move their tables.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Dave, I’ve told you before, we have enough problems of our own. What does it take to make you understand that?”

  The room was silent. I heard a warning bell clanging at the railroad crossing and a freight train clattering down the tracks. “You want the wiseguys out of town?” I said.

  “I hate to tell you what I want,” she said.

  “Just say it, Helen.”

  She spit a hangnail off her tongue. “Meet you outside,” she said.

  We arrived in four cruisers at the Holiday Inn out by the four-lane. My experience with the Mob or its members had never been one that possessed any degree of romance. In fact, my encounters with them always made me feel as though I had walked inside the drabness and urban desperation of an Edward Hopper painting. Although it was Monday and the motel was almost empty, Frank Dellacroce and his two friends had taken a row of rooms in back, facing the highway, where road noise echoed off the windows and doors of their building. Their cars were brand new, waxed and shining, but were parked by an overflowing Dumpster, out of which trash feathered in the wind and scudded across the asphalt. The sun was barely distinguishable in the sky, the air close with an odor like fish roe that has dried on a beach; the only sign of life in the scene was a palm tree whose yellowed fronds rattled dryly in the wind.

  Helen got out of her cruiser, her arms pumped, her shield hanging from a black cord around her neck. A cleaning woman was passing on the walkway, a plastic bucket filled with detergent bottles on her arm. “You smell marijuana coming from that room?” Helen asked.

  “Ma’am?” the cleaning woman said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Helen said. She banged her left fist on the door of the room registered to Frank Dellacroce, her right hand resting on the butt of her holstered nine-millimeter. “Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department! Open the door!” she shouted.

  With few exceptions, television and motion pictures portray members of the Mafia or the Mob or the Outfit as dapperly dressed, Plotinian emanations from an ancient ethnic mythos. They are not only charismatic—they take on the proportions of protagonists in Elizabethan tragedy, with accents from Hell’s Kitchen.

  The truth is most of them are stupid and at best capable of holding only menial jobs. They use dog-pack intimidation to get what they want, whether it involves preferential seating in a restaurant or taking over a labor union. On a personal level their sexual habits are adolescent or misogynistic, their social behavior inept and laughable.

  In terms of health, they’re walking nightmares. Listen to any surveillance tape: After age fifty, they complain constantly about clap, AIDS, obesity, impotence, emphysema, clogged arteries, ulcers, psoriasis, swollen prostates, the big C, and incontinence.

  The room door opened and a man with black, freshly barbered hair and pale features and dark eyes stepped outside. He was barefoot and wore slacks without a shirt. His chest was triangular in shape and covered with a fine patina of hair, his upper arms well developed. He started to pull the door shut behind him.

  Helen pushed the door back on the hinges. “Your name Dellacroce?” she said.

  “Frank Dellacroce, yeah. Why the roust?” he said.

  “We have a complaint you’re soliciting prostitution and using narcotics in the motel. Place both your hands against the building and spread your legs, please,” she said. She crooked a finger at a figure inside the room. “You need to come out here, Miss. Bring your purse with you.”

  The girl who emerged from the room was probably not over nineteen, dressed in sandals; skintight, cut-off jeans; and a Donald Duck T-shirt that
hung on the points of her breasts. She wore no makeup and her hair was bunched on the back of her head with a rubber band. “I didn’t do anything,” she said.

  “Get out your ID,” Helen said.

  The girl’s hands were shaking as she removed her driver’s license from her billfold and handed it to Helen.

  Helen looked at the photo and the birth date on the card, then gave it back to her. “Beat it.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Your trick is a guy who put his infant child inside a refrigerator. You want a fuckhead like that in your life?” Helen said.

  The girl walked hurriedly across the parking lot toward the street. The uniformed deputies had pulled Dellacroce’s two friends out of the adjoining rooms and were shaking them down against a cruiser. But they found no weapons or dope on them and none in their rooms.

  Dellacroce was still leaning against the wall, his feet spread. “We done with this?” he said.

  Helen didn’t answer. I could see the frustration building in her face.

  “Hey, we’re here for the tarpon rodeo. We ain’t broke any laws. You get off squeezing my sack, fine. But I want a lawyer,” Dellacroce said.

  “Better shut up,” I said.

  “I’d show you where to bite me, but I’m holding up the building here,” he said.

  “Helen, could I have a word with Mr. Dellacroce?” I said.

  “Please do,” she replied.

  Dellacroce took his hands off the wall and watched her and the deputies get back in their cruisers. I told Dellacroce’s two friends to go inside their rooms and to keep their doors shut. Dellacroce stared at me, a cautious light in his eyes.

  “My house is off-limits to you, Frank. So is Father Jimmie Dolan,” I said.

  His slacks hung just below his navel. He traced the tips of his fingers up and down the smooth taper of his stomach, almost as though he were caressing a woman’s skin. “You were Purcel’s partner in the First District?” he said.

  “At one time.”

  “Mind if I get my shirt?” he said.

  “No, I don’t mind,” I said.

  He reached inside the door and picked up a long-sleeve pink shirt and began drawing a sleeve up his arm. His hair was tapered, lightly oiled, iridescent on the tips. “Purcel was on a pad for us,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “That’s all. He made himself a little change.”

  “What are you saying, Frank?”

  “Nothing. Just talking about the history of your friend.”

  “Tell me, is that story about your infant child true?”

  “No,” he said. His eyes held on mine, devoid of any sentiment or moral consideration I could see, indifferent to the lie they either contained or did not contain. His mouth was slightly parted and his teeth were wet with his saliva. I could feel his breath puff against my skin like a presence released from a poisonous flower. Involuntarily I stepped back from him.

  “Word of caution, Frank. Max Coll was a shooter for the IRA,” I said.

  “The what?”

  “I hope you find Coll. I really do. Have a nice day,” I said, and grinned at him.

  The sun came out late in the afternoon, the wind died, and the sky was marbled with crimson clouds. When I got home from work Father Jimmie was raking leaves in the backyard.

  “Clete and I are going to throw a line in. How about joining us?” I said.

  “Not today,” he said. He picked up a huge sheaf of blackened pecan and oak leaves and dropped them on a fire burning inside a rusted oil barrel. The smoke rose in thick curds and twisted through the canopy like a yellow handkerchief.

  “Never knew you to pass up a fishing trip,” I said.

  “I saw Max Coll,” he said.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I was coming out of Winn-Dixie. He was standing across the street.”

  “Maybe you’re imagining things.”

  “No, I saw him, Dave.”

  “Then he’d better not come around here.”

  “He’s a sick man. He needs help.”

  “I’m not buying into this discussion,” I said, and walked away.

  When I looked back out the kitchen window Father Jimmie was heaving more leaves onto the fire, his clothes and skin auraed with smoke and dust in the shafts of sunlight breaking through the trees.

  God protect me from martyrs and saints, I thought.

  Clete and I hitched up my boat trailer to the back of my pickup and a half hour later slid the boat into the water at Bayou Benoit in St. Martin Parish. The surrounding water shed looked both enormous and desolate in a strange, autumnal way. There wasn’t a sound from the bays or the inlets, not even the flopping of a bass or a gator back in a cove. A painter would have called it a beautiful evening. The western sky was still pale blue, the clouds like strips of fire, the leaves of the cypress and willow trees golden and motionless in the dead air. But the closed shutters on the houseboats and the lines of ducks and geese transecting the sun made something sink in my heart, as though I were the last man standing on earth.

  As we headed across a long bay into a flooded woods, Clete sat in the bow, humped over, his back to me, the collar of his denim coat pulled up, his Marine Corps utility cap snugged down on his head. He ripped the tab off a can of beer and drank it, then began eating a Vienna sausage sandwich. I cut the engine and let the boat drift on its wake into the trees. Clete reached into the ice chest and tried to hand me a diet Dr Pepper.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  He clipped a Mepps spinner on his monofilament and cast it deep into the cove. “Something happen today?” he asked.

  I told him about my encounter with Frank Dellacroce at the motel, about his attempt to put me on a pad, about his mention that Clete had once taken juice from the Mob. Clete retrieved his lure, his face never changing expression.

  “So what’s the point?” he said.

  “I don’t like a degenerate bad-mouthing my friends. I don’t like being offered a bribe,” I replied.

  He waited a long time before he spoke again. “I don’t think that’s the problem, noble mon,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “You think all this belongs in a time capsule,” he said, making a circle in the air with his hand. “Outsiders aren’t supposed to come here, particularly greaseballs and Wal-Mart and these cocksuckers grinding up the trees with bulldozers. It’s always supposed to be1950.”

  “I see.”

  “The truth is you wish you had all these bastards locked in your sights inside a free-fire zone.”

  “Glad you’ve figured it all out.”

  “At least I don’t sleep with a nine-millimeter anymore.”

  “Don’t be offended when I say this, but, Clete, you can really piss me off sometimes.”

  “You worry me, mon. I think you’re going into a place inside yourself that people don’t come out of.”

  I saw a bass roll among the flooded trees, like a green-gold pillow of air violating the symmetry of the surface. I cast my Rapala above the place he had broken the water, hoping to retrieve it across his feeding area. Instead, the balsa wood lure clacked against the trunk of a willow and the treble hooks went deep into the bark.

  “I’ll row us over there,” Clete said.

  “Not on my account,” I said. I jerked the monofilament with my hand and snapped it off. The sun disappeared on the horizon like a flame dying on a wet match.

  Way leads on to way.

  I tried to go to bed early that night but I couldn’t sleep. Rain began to click on the trees, then on the tin roof of my house, and I dressed and drove up the bayou road in the rain to St. Martinville. On the edge of the black district I went into a brightly lit cafe and ordered a cup of coffee and a small bowl of gumbo at the counter. A door with a beaded curtain was cut in one wall, and in the adjoining room a man was playing an accordion, while another man, with thimbles on his fingers, accompanied him on an aluminum rub board that had been molded to fit the contours o
f his chest.

  The people in the other room were all light-skinned people of color, often called Creoles, although originally the term Creole had denoted a person of French or Spanish ancestry who had been born in the New World. The people in the next room were blue-collar mulattos whose race was hard to determine. They drifted back and forth across the color line, married into both white and black families, still spoke French among themselves, and tended to be conscious of manners and family traditions.

  Seated in one corner by himself was Frank Dellacroce, a shot and a glass of beer by his hand, his legs crossed, his silk shirt unbuttoned in order to expose his chest hair and the gold chain and medallion that rested on it. He tossed back the whiskey and flexed his mouth as though he had just performed a manly act. Then he tilted back his head, the small of his back against the seat of the chair, and seemed to resume his concentration on the music. The song the accordionist was playing was “Jolie Blon,” the most haunting and unforgettable lament I have ever heard. Then I realized that the object of Frank Dellacroce’s attention had nothing to do with music, or a song about unrequited love and the loss of the Cajun way of life: Frank Dellacroce’s attention was fixed on the shapely form of a young Creole woman dancing by herself.

  Her name was Sugar Bee Quibodeaux. Her eyes were turquoise, her hair the color of mahogany, fastened in back with a silver comb, her gold skin dusted with sun freckles. She also had the mind of a seven year old. She had conceived her first child when she was twelve and at age fifteen was taken to a state hospital by her grandparents and sterilized. Sometimes a local cop or a kind neighbor or business person tried to protect her from herself, but ultimately no one could restrain Sugar Bee’s love of boys and men and the excitement and joy her own body gave her.

  I finished eating and paid my check at the register. Through the beaded curtain I could see Sugar Bee sitting at Frank Dellacroce’s table, a bottle of beer and a glass in front of her. She was leaning forward, listening to something he was saying. He leaned forward, too, his hand deep under the table. Then the two of them stood up and she picked up her purse, one with white sequins and tassels on it, and hung it by a string from her shoulder. They walked through the beaded curtain toward the front door.