Roots of Misfortune

by Seth Pevey

  Felix nearly tripped over a bit of root-broken sidewalk, but Melancon and the dog didn’t slow their pace. He found himself falling behind a bit as he got earnest with Tomás, holding the mouthpiece out in front of him.

  “No! What I was thinking…well…I know it is a longshot, but I figured. You know…the butler grape vine.”

  Tomás laughed. “You know I’m no longer a butler Felix. Since you forced me to retire six months ago! Now I spend all day in the sun playing croquet and lawn bowling with your mother. It’s muy terrible.”

  “Come on. I know you still have your sources. I bet if anyone can get the scoop on Voodoo in this city, it is none other than Tomás De Valencia. Don’t you know…like…a couple of Haitian maids or something?”

  The phone was silent for a moment. “Odd that you should say that. I do in fact, now that you mention it. But I don’t think everyone from Haiti believes in Voodoo young man. That would be a foolish thought.”

  Felix paused, running out of ideas. “Just give it a try will you? And send my best to my mother. You guys don’t have too much fun together. How is the new guy by the way?”

  “Ah, he is thoroughly adequate Felix. But I can’t say I enjoy being waited on. I can’t imagine how you fine people did it all those years.”

  “It’s better if you just let it happen, old friend. Let your hair down and enjoy yourself. I hope to talk to you soon. This case is big. Just between me and you, we think it could have something to do with the girl out on I-10.”

  “Dios mio…”

  “Don’t worry Tomás. Both the city’s oldest and youngest private eyes are all over it. Bye now.”

  “Be careful, Felix.”

  “Always,” Felix said, and hung up.

  He looked ahead. No Melancon. He figured the old man had turned the corner just ahead of him.

  Felix stepped around the side of the building, still fiddling with the old flip phone, and not paying nearly enough attention.

  The next moment he was aware of the buttons on his shirt rattling against the pavement. A hand had taken a fistful of his clothing, used it to yank him forward. The strong grip threw him up against the wall. The phone shattered on the ground and he stood, shoulder to shoulder with Melancon, backs against the brick. Facing them was a large man with a mask on his face. The man reeked of piss and desperation, and Felix felt the point of a pistol barrel pressing into his sternum. The dog, who Felix could feel just under the tips of his fingers, began a low rumble.

  “Alright fellas, let’s have those wallets. Smart phones. Jewelry.” The thug glanced down at the substantial item hanging off Felix’s wrist. “And that watch, most definitely.”

  The dog’s growl grew louder, but the man seemed oblivious to the animal. He pushed the pistol tighter into Felix’s chest and watched as Melancon emptied his meagre pockets. The thief yelled for completeness, for expediency. He yelled just to yell: insults, threats, promises.

  The dog grew louder, and Felix could feel him stiffening. He could feel the tension of the animal as it crept forward, stood between the jabbering thief and the two detectives.

  “Cough it up, now!” the masked man screamed. He was angry that Melancon’s wallet contained only a single five-dollar bill. The man pulled back on the slide of what looked like a 9mm, and Felix could see the copper glint of a round being chambered.

  Felix had a gun. Melancon had a gun. This thug had a gun. They all had guns. Felix felt the terrible sensation of a wave cresting, of the ground shattering under him. He stood in that horror, thinking that Melancon might make a move. Or that he might. Or that neither of them might do anything and this man would execute them both on a sunny afternoon, their blood being hosed off the sidewalk by an evening cleanup crew.

  “Dynamic Duo Slain in Broad Daylight.” The headlines reeled.

  But in that moment the dog barked once, twice, and then lunged towards the man. Before the thief could react, the dog had a chuck of flesh in its mouth. He had taken a solid hold near the man’s groin, set that bit of muscle between his teeth, and was twisting and shaking his head like a frenzied shark— like a bull that had finally caught the errant matador.

  The man screamed in shock, twisted his torso, pointed the gun at the dog’s head, hesitated a moment as he tried to steady the barrel, least he shoot himself. That hesitation turned out to be a second too long.

  Melancon had pulled out his revolver and given the thief a solid crack on the cranium with the side of it. A palm-open slap of metal that sent a cringe up Felix’s spine. The man collapsed and the dog let go, whimpering up at the two detectives.

  “Good boy,” Felix said, feeling the words bunch up in his throat.

  Five

  A gun in your face is about the best cure for a hangover that they make. It wasn’t the first time David Melancon had had such a realization. He had it now, once again.

  He’d often wake in bed next to Dorothy, in those gone days, body bathed in a cold sweat, sure that something—some tweaked out fiend with a gun and nothing to lose—would cut his life short, would take him from his wife and his little girl. He used to lie awake in terror at the world’s random cruelty.

  But those fears were old and dusty now. Looming mortality and all, so much less to lose.

  These days, a small brush with death like that—a desperate bum waving a nine millimeter at your vitals, for instance—was more of a needed jolt of electricity than some life-altering awakening.

  Best cup of coffee you could brew.

  It wasn’t the only thing that had changed. He used to have a heart, as well. Having a little girl will do that to a man. He used to feel sorry for the perps that he helped put away. But that feeling had long since faded away, gone with his own existential angst, receded with his hairline. Now he was only tired of them. All the hands reaching out for something free, not caring who they hurt to get it. Weeds that needed pulling.

  Losing people would do that to a man. This finite world, its actors all scrambling.

  A call to Janine had made sure that the booking had gone in properly for the would-be thief. He would be off the street for a long while, and David Melancon was satisfied with that. The brush had left him with a clear, ambitious head, and now he and Felix were cruising out to Metairie in the El Camino, no worse for wear.

  The young man sat beside him, fiddling with his cassette tapes, even more jittery and stumbling than normal. He was no coward, Melancon knew. Just too young to look Mr. Death in the face and smile back. He took things to heart, in that way of the young.

  “That was a close one, partner,” the young man said, clutching at his shoulder where Lena Troxclair’s bullet had winged him a while back, in that other close call out in the swamp, before they’d put her away for conspiracy to murder Felix’s big brother.

  “If this was a video game, I’ve long since been on my last life,” Melancon said, steering through the darkened suburb.

  “Well this is definitely not a video game, but I’m pleased to hear you have some concept of how they actually work.” Felix said. “Did they even have ‘lives’ in pong?”

  “I know you like to blow off steam with a joke or two, but seriously kid, you did great. One more bad guy off the street. All in a day’s work. And look,” he said, patting Felix on the chest. “Bodily integrity remains intact.”

  Felix nodded, abandoned his cassette tape excavation, and looked at the old detective soberly. “So, how are you going to play this old man…I mean…with the parents and all? We have to really mind ourselves, not to let too many details strip…I mean, slip.”

  Melancon shared a laugh over that, but cut himself short. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much, Felix. I imagine the parents are going to be happy just to know something is being done. Let’s do the question asking ourselves and just let them do the answering. If they start to get too inquisitive we’ll just find a reason to slip off.”

  “Tipitina…I mean Tina said that Min Ji didn’t really fit in with the other girls. That s
he was kind of stand-offish.”

  “You’ve really taken a shine to that one, have you?” Melancon could almost feel the heat radiating off Felix’s cheeks. He adopted a fatherly tone. “She is quite cute. But I wouldn’t go letting yourself fall for a woman like that.”

  Felix cleared his throat. “And why not? You don’t even know her.”

  “Women like that deal in young men’s hearts like a butcher deals in pig flesh, Felix.”

  Felix set the shoebox of tapes back on the middle compartment and looked over at his aging partner.

  “Well, as long as we are getting personal…David…I got to tell you. I’ve been sort of wondering about something, you know. And feel free to stop me if you feel like…like I’m being too nosey or you just don’t want to talk about it. But I’ve kind of gotten the feeling that you might have some kind of personal stake in all this business. This business with young women.”

  “Yeah…” Melancon said, his eyes getting fuzzy.

  “Well…if something is eating you man, you ought to try talking about it. I’ve never known you to keep much bottled up.”

  Melancon sighed, grabbed up a tape at random and popped it in. Son House came on, wailing about a letter he got that morning. Bad news.

  “Her name was…is…Julie.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Daughter. She was my daughter. Or is…we aren’t really sure.”

  The car got very quiet. It was dark in the cab but David Melancon could just about hear the cogs turning in his young protégé’s mind. The suburbs were hushed and green in the spring night. A black bayou ran down the neutral ground and reflected the headlights of the oncoming cars. He felt the need for something brown and burning, down in the pit of his stomach.

  Felix nodded, solemn in the dimness of the passenger seat. Melancon could hear the old leather protesting under his shifting weight. “Listen, David…I had thought that maybe it was something like that. You’ve kind of talked like that was the case more than a few times. So, I guess you know what I’m going to ask next. You don’t have to tell me. But it might help. It might help to tell me before we get in too deep on this thing. That might help me to understand.”

  Melancon sighed. It was only fair.

  “She was around your age, nearly twenty, when the storm hit the city.”

  “Katrina?”

  “Yep. She was studying agriculture …wanted to be an organic farmer. Sharp as a tack.”

  “You mean like, orchards? Fruit growing?”

  “Something like that.”

  Melancon looked over at his young friend. He could see the boy trying to picture her in his mind.

  “You’ve seen her picture on my desk a few times, I think. Anyway, she had just moved out of the house. Going to UNO. Had her an apartment in Lakeshore. One of the neighborhoods that got about ten feet of water. Just as the storm was about to hit, as everyone was panicking and Nagin was calling for the city to evacuate, we started trying to get in touch with her. It had been a few days since we’d spoken, and school had just resumed for a new semester after summer vacation.”

  Melancon blew out a long sigh. It had been a long time since he had told the story, and he didn’t relish the telling of it now. But it was the right thing to do. To tell Felix. Probably it was the right thing, but anyway there was no way in hell he could stop telling it now. It surged out of him like water over a levee.

  “So, we can’t get her on the phone. Dorothy and I. That’s my ex-wife. We weren’t together at the time, but at that point we were still pretty friendly. We are talking back and forth, coordinating getting a hold of Julie. We knew the storm was coming, that she was living in the low part of the city. It was almost like we both knew what was going to happen. Thing was, Dorothy is a nurse and I was on the force. So, we both had jobs that the city needed bad. They needed us working twenty-hour shifts just to keep things afloat. State of emergency jobs.”

  Melancon pulled the El Camino up to the curb of a small brick house on Neyrey Drive. He cut the engine and kept on spilling it.

  “So, it is the night before the storm makes landfall and we still haven’t heard from her. Of course, we are losing our minds, and we drive over there to Lakeshore looking for her. The streets are gridlocked with station wagons. Roads are blocked off. City is in some state, let me tell you. Utter chaos. But we make it there with about six hours to spare. And she was just…gone. No note, no clues, just all her clothes still in the closet and her cat with a bowl of food. The soil in her plant pots was even wet. But no Julie.”

  Felix was shaking his head, biting his lip.

  “And then…all hell broke loose. The city flooded. I was trying to file a missing person’s report during the chaos of that storm. Can you imagine? The main station lost power, and other stations took on water. Some jails were getting water. Prisoners were drowning in cells. Looting across the city. The hordes of people living like animals in the Super Dome. People stuck in chain link cells at the bus station. And here I am with a missing girl, and the powers that be are giving absolute zero fucks. By the time all the smoke had cleared, and we went to file a report, it was as if the trail had gone cold. We did everything we could. Kept up the investigation for about two years. But eventually, it just got too tiring. I never gave up but…we just couldn’t ever seem to find a single lead. And me this big shot police detective. Couldn’t even find my little girl…”

  Felix stared at the dashboard in front of him. His head took on an angle of distress.

  “Damn…Damn, David,” he said.

  “So…as you can see, Felix, you were correct. You can see that this case has the potential to get very, very personal.”

  They sat silent for a moment, the weightiness of the story soaking into them both. Mr. House sang on about John the Revelator, who was the one doing the writing.

  “Now remember,” Melancon said, hoping to change the subject before any more feelings came gushing out of him. “These two old Koreans have no idea that their sweet little daughter was taking her clothes off for money. Just like father Kim said, we are going to want to keep that under lock and key.”

  But Felix was still staring at the empty, beige dash. “You can’t just tell a story like that and then….”

  “I have to, Felix.”

  Melancon smiled at his young friend. Maybe the boy’s heart was breaking just like that Goddamn levee had. The old detective felt a pang of jealousy for the way young hearts could bend and twist like that, over a twelve-year-old story of someone else’s loss.

  He wondered if he didn’t see the corners of Felix’s eyes moistening in the light of the streetlamps running up and down the suburban street.

  “Kid…it’s going to be alright. I like to think she just ran off with some boyfriend we didn’t know about. Right now I bet she is living it up on a fig orchard somewhere, doing just what she always dreamed of doing. She loved figs. She loved trees and all green and natural stuff. So maybe she is a farmer up north somewhere. That is how I like to think about it anyway. I wasn’t always the best father to her. I like to think she is just mad at me about something I forgot to do. And that one day, when she is ready, she will forgive and forget. Now let’s forget about it ourselves and try to go in there and do our job, shall we?”

  Felix finally nodded his head, but he still wasn’t back in the game. Not by a longshot. Between a gun in the chest and a story like that, perhaps the night was getting too big for him.

  But it was apt to get bigger.

  A yard filled with Easter decorations greeted them as they knocked on the red door of the Park residence, where Min Ji’s parents lived when they weren’t working the seventy hours a week each they put in at the beauty supply store. They just kept working, it seemed. Through each step of their daughter’s gradual disappearance, neither had been prepared to take a day off work. This stubbornness is what had led the detectives out to Metairie for a meeting at 11 o’clock at night.

  A bald, Asian man with a pained smile an
swered the door. It was a grimace really, and his eyes were scrunched up in little knots of ruin. He wore a turtleneck and slacks, and went straight in for a weak handshake with both palms grasping the detective’s at once. The house smelled like cabbage and tears.

  The wife had tight black curls and walked with a stooped limp, but she looked up at Melancon with such a concentrated beam of hope that the detective nearly felt sick to his stomach. The pressure settled in on him, deep in his gut, right in the space where the whisky was only now finally ready to vacate. He knew the stakes—he’d played this ridiculous game before, and knew there was nothing he could say to them that would ever be any help except, “I’ll find her tonight.” And he knew that wasn’t a thing he could say, even under far better circumstances than these.

  The wife spoke first. “Please. My husband does not speak much English. So, he will have to communicate through me. Let’s sit down. Would you like some tea or coffee?”

  “No, we’re alright.”

  “Late for me, thanks,” Felix said.

  “Tell me, please. What have you found out about our daughter?” she asked, hands gripping each other tightly in her lap. She wore makeup even at the late hour and spoke slowly, carefully. The husband sat quivering in the recliner, leaning forward. He was gaunt in the dim lamplight. Melancon could see the rosary beads moving through his wrinkled hands.

  “We are just getting started with our investigation,” Melancon said. “But we have a few promising leads. Really, we are just here to get a little background information on your daughter. What can you tell us about her? Personality? Hobby? What was she interested in and who did she hang out with?”

  The mother said something to the father then in their strange, undulating language. An assault of vowels passed between them, harsh and guttural, before the father nodded his head and the wife spoke.

  “Min Ji did not have any…permanent hobbies. That would have interfered with her study and with church. She did have many interests, though.”