Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux #21)

by James Lee Burke

“I have some important information. I was going to tell her and let her tell you.” Emmeline seemed to lie the way all narcissists do. Whatever they say, regardless of its absurdity, becomes the truth.

“I have another question for you, Miss Emmeline. What did Jimmy do in Latin America that haunts him? Why are you two always at the center of other people’s misfortune when you never seem to pay dues yourself?” “I think that is the most arrogant and ugly thing anyone has ever said to me.” She was probably right. I didn’t like to speak that way to a woman or, for that matter, to anyone. Age does that to you. Sometimes charity toward others is the only respite you get from thoughts about death. And in that spirit, I said, “Let me get you a diet Dr Pepper.” I don’t think she had a brain seizure, but close.

“They say you gonna get off,” she said. “Who did, Ms. Dartez?” “I know you done it. You gonna lie to God? You gonna tell Him you ain’t done it?” “I’m sorry about your husband’s death. But your husband was not sorry about the death of my wife.” “You going to hell, you.”

I had been in the midst of Katrina and its aftermath. Oddly, I wanted to return to those days. There is a purity in catastrophe. We see firsthand the nature of both human courage and human frailty, the destructive and arbitrary power of the elements, the breakdown of social restraint and our mechanical inventions and the release of the savage that hides in the collective unconscious. An emergency room lit only by flashlights and filled with the moans of the dying and feet sloshing in water becomes a medieval scene no different than one penned by Victor Hugo. It is under these circumstances that we discover who we are, for good or bad. And when all this passes, we never talk about it, lest we lose the insight it gave us. Wars have the same attraction. Rhetoric fades away; truth remains. In my hometown, I was trapped by shadows that had neither substance nor face.

I’ve seen cops write off this kind of situation as he said/she said. That’s the cliché they use. When we see it in print or in an interdepartmental e-mail, it means the woman is about to get it in the neck. Why? The situation is not equal. The woman has to prove the existence of an act nobody other than the perpetrator was witness to. Perhaps a year will pass before the case goes to trial. In the meantime, she has to give depositions in front of strangers, accept lewd stares in a courthouse hallway, the hidden smirk in the face of a redneck cop, the muffled laughter among a group of males as she walks by. I once heard a Lafayette cop in the bullpen, right by the dispatcher’s cage, tell his colleagues about a man who held a woman down and rubbed his penis all over her body. He thought the story was hilarious. In my summation, I said I believed the scratches on Rowena’s hip, the bruise inside her thigh, the bite mark on her shoulder, and the obvious emotional and psychological trauma visited upon her were consistent with her claim—namely, that while she was impaired, she was raped and probably orally sodomized by James Beaufort Nightingale. I also believed she’d showered and hadn’t told her husband about the assault immediately because she was ashamed and felt her drunken state had invited the attack.

She wasn’t aggressive, but she wasn’t passive, either. She seemed to live inside a place beyond the fray.

“Buckle up,” McVane said. He drove down the road until he reached an oak grove. He turned inside it and cut the engine. “I have a feeling you got loose from an institution, Chester.” “I did no such thing.” “Let’s see your identification.” “No.” “I’m sorry?” “You’re being impolite and talking to me in a hurtful way.” “I think you’re from Crazy Town, Chester. Crazy Town people have to be housed and fed and medicated. They also create shit piles of paperwork. Now get rid of the baby talk and show me your fucking ID.” “I knew people like you in the orphanage. They were bullies and loudmouths and had no manners.”

Earl’s face was full of hurt, like a child’s. This was the same man who had inflamed the passions of the great unwashed, then disavowed their actions when they burned and bombed and lynched. But I realized that, instead of the devil, I was looking at a moth batting its wings around a light that had grown cold.

Wow

He had a pot stomach, like a balloon filled with water; his face was lined, his eyes tired. There was a pout on his mouth. “You remember that time you hit me?” “I do,” I replied. “It was a sucker punch. I had no chance to defend myself.” “You asked for it, and you were looking me straight in the face.” His eyes were wet. “The Nightingales wouldn’t let you clean their bathroom, Dave.” “You’re probably right,” I said. “And don’t call me Dave.”

But if these were Mob-connected hits, the usual pattern wasn’t there. Button men (so known because they pushed the “off” button on their victims) didn’t use the same weapon repeatedly.

How do you handle it when your anger brims over the edge of the pot? You use the shortened version of the Serenity Prayer, which is “Fuck it.” Like Voltaire’s Candide tending his own garden or the British infantry going up the Khyber Pass one bloody foot at a time, you do your job, and you grin and walk through the cannon smoke, and you just keep saying fuck it. You also have faith in your own convictions and never let the naysayers and those who are masters at inculcating self-doubt hold sway in your life. “Fuck it” is not profanity. “Fuck it” is a sonnet.

Fuck it is a sonnet

Levon was the kind of idealist you admired but also feared. He seemed to have the inclinations of a pacifist but owned a large number of firearms. He despised dictators and demagogues but revered his ancestors in gray who were authoritarian in their own fashion. He had been a leftist in Latin America, then traveled to Cuba and been picked up by the secret police and confined for a month in a hellish place filled with cockroaches and lice and feces. In my opinion, Levon and Jimmy Nightingale were opposite sides of the same coin. Neither understood himself. And without knowing it, both of them probably served an agenda created for them by someone else, perhaps long dead.

He didn’t stand up to shake hands when I opened the screen door. For a man of his background, that message was as blunt as it got.

Levon’s eyes lifted to mine. “Say what’s on your mind.” “Long ago I learned that hostility and fear are first cousins,” I said. “Big breakthrough?” he said. “It beats cancer and heart disease.”

I didn’t mention that hostility was also a first cousin of guilt.

The South has changed in many ways, but beyond the sophistry and hush-puppy platitudes is a core group that is as malignant and hot and sweaty as a torchlit mob flinging a rope over a tree limb. The judge before whom Levon appeared was the Honorable Bienville Tomey. His face had the choleric intensity of a dried squash and the same level of humanity. He wore his irritability like a flag.

“He was a small man inside and out.” “Who’s the guy in the Jolly Jack suit?” “I think the same guy who shot McVane.” “How do you arrive at that?” “He commits crimes no one would suspect him of. He does it for reasons that make sense to him but no one else. He builds the gallows and drops the trapdoor before anyone realizes he’s not a carpenter.”

Nice

“I don’t doubt Nemo got me sprung. If Alafair will do the first draft, I’m going to make a movie with him. I’ll tell you the reason why. My best novel is the least popular of my books. Maybe this is vanity on my part, but I believe we owe the dead a debt. We have to give them breath and voice, even though their mouths are stopped with dirt. If we don’t, they allow us no rest. I think they’re out there in the mist. Sometimes I see them.” I felt a wind blow through my chest, as though he had pirated my thoughts.

I tried to keep my face pleasant, but I didn’t speak. “It’s my fault,” she said. “Pardon?” “All of it. I got drunk with another man when I should have been home with my husband. I gave you people the wrong information. I caused Levon to go to Kevin Penny’s trailer. These things are all my doing.” “Forget it,” I said. “You’re a nice lady, Miss Rowena.” There was a smile in her eyes. It’s strange how much a kind word can do.

“Don’t take Homer away.” “It’s not in my hands. The system is the system.” “I say fuck the system, Miss Sherry.” “Where has that gotten you, sir?” He felt his eyes go out of focus and wondered if it had to do with the brightness of the sun shining through the window. “I’m a PI. When I had a real badge, I never jammed anybody. I didn’t do it then, I don’t do it now.” Her eyes left his. “They give you a bad time here?” he asked. “I get time off from purgatory,” she said. “Watch your ass, bub.” When he went outside, his Caddy was being hauled away by a wrecker. The desk sergeant was watching from the curb. “You were in a no-parking zone.”

“Two things,” she said. “Don’t be giving my father nicknames. I’m surprised he hasn’t broken your jaw by this time. Second, stay away from me. It’s not your fault that you’re ignorant and stupid. In fact, you give the lie to the notion of white racial superiority, and for that reason, society owes you a debt. But please stop bothering me.” He stepped into the shade. He widened his eyes, his profile as jagged as broken glass, his teeth showing. “Maybe you’ll need a friend down the track. That friend could be me. But I won’t be there. Think about that.” “You’d better rephrase your words, trash.”

“Where you going?” Clete said. “To tell Spade whom he reminds me of.” “Whom?”

M107 sniper

The band played “La Jolie Blon” a second time. For me, there is no more haunting ballad in the world. Its origins go back to the eighteenth century, but the rendition by Harry Choates is the one that never leaves you.

The oddity of Harry’s song is that you don’t have to speak French to understand it. You know immediately it’s about mortality and a lost way of life. Cajun culture is parodied and ridiculed; it is also treated as quaint and commercially exploited and vulgarized. But the travail of the Acadians was real, and so was the love affair of Evangeline on the banks of Bayou Teche, written about by Longfellow. Whenever someone asks me what southern Louisiana used to look like, and what has been despoiled by industrial polluters and Louisiana’s corrupt politicians, I suggest they listen to Harry’s lament. In my opinion, anyone who can be indifferent to this song has a spiritual affliction.

“Nightingale is behind this, Dave,” Levon said. “Yeah, I heard he invented original sin, too,” I replied. “Good line,” he said. “Check with you later.”

“Alafair made a choice against my wishes,” I said. “Treat her right.” Levon tried to smile and let the remark pass, but there was no hiding the injury in his eyes. One hour later, he was back in our yard on foot, drunk, his coat gone, his sleeves rolled. “You don’t think I’d treat Alafair right?” he said. “Where do you get off with that?” I turned on the gallery light and went down the steps. Alafair stood in the doorway. “Lose the attitude,” I said. “You’re accusing me of dishonorable conduct.” “This isn’t about you. It’s about my daughter.” “She’s a grown woman.” “Not for me. Not for any father. This isn’t 1865. Pull your head out of your ass.” “You’re wrong,” he said. “Wrong about what?” “It is 1865. You never quit the field. The battle is never over.” “You’re going to defeat the forces of evil by joining up with Tony Nemo? Stop being a fool.” “A pox on you, Dave Robicheaux. You’re the one person who should know better.” And that’s the way he left it, stumbling down the street, tripping where the sidewalk had been wedged up by giant live oaks, talking to himself. Then he did something I will never understand, nor do I wish to understand, because it truly scared me. He stopped in front of the Shadows and stared through its piked fence as though having a conversation with people, perhaps comrades in arms, whom no one else could see. I do not believe it was an illusion on my part. Nor do I believe he was deranged. I believed Levon was who he was, and that was what scared m...

Most people believe that law enforcement and the solving of crimes and the apprehension and prosecution of criminals proceed in a systematic, linear fashion. The opposite is true. A successful outcome is usually produced by informants and dumb luck. The waiting, the missed opportunities, the bureaucracy, the tainted or lost evidence, the witnesses who change their accounts are endless. Lassitude, frustration, and anger become a way of life.

“I don’t like to talk much about myself,” he said. “Not because I’m humble. On my best day, I never got more than a C-minus. That includes time in the Crotch.” “I checked you out. You have the Navy Cross.” “I got it while I was running in the wrong direction. How about we ditch yesterday’s box score?”

“I don’t want to walk out of here feeling bad,” he said. Had he just said that? Why did he never have the words that accurately described his feelings? “I didn’t mean—”

“He’s a closet elitist. Rather than work with conventional film people, he signed on with a bunch of simian throwbacks who hide behind sunglasses and are afraid to talk at the table because they sound like they have throat cancer and a vocabulary of fewer than a dozen words. In the meantime, he pretends.” “Pretends what?” “That he’s on a mission. He insists on hiring only union people. The food has to be of a certain organic quality. The actors should be included in our script meetings. The black actors have to be given more lines. I think this is all a cover-up for what’s really in his head.” “What’s in his head?” “Guilt. Hatred of the truth about his ancestors.” “You knew this, Alf,” I said.

“Far enough that the boys never saw him. By the way, ‘boys’ isn’t a good term for these guys. They’re walking promotions for Planned Parenthood.”

SOMETIMES IT IS hard to explain to outsiders the culture of southern Louisiana and the quandary of many of its people. The world in which they grew up is now a decaying memory, but many of them have no place in the present. I know Cajuns who have never been farther than two parishes from their birthplace. There are people here who cannot add and subtract, cannot read a newspaper, and do not know what the term “9/11” means. Over forty percent of children are born to an unwed mother. In terms of heart and kidney disease, infant mortality, fatal highway accidents, and contaminated drinking water, we are ranked among the worst in the nation. Our politicians are an embarrassment and give avarice and mendacity a bad name.

So how do you get angry at someone who was born poor, speaks English so badly that she’s unintelligible to outsiders, has the worldview and religious beliefs of a medieval peasant, cleans houses for a living if she’s lucky, and is obese because of the fat-laced bulk food she feels thankful for?

“You ain’t gonna boss me, no.” “I wouldn’t try to do that,” I said. “I think you’re a good lady, Ms. Dartez. I think someone used your husband to bring me harm.” “It was you,” she said. “It’s all been you.” “No, ma’am, it’s not me,” I said. A raindrop struck her forehead and ran through one eyebrow and across her nose like silver thread. But she never blinked, and she did not try to wipe the water from her face. “Why you done this to me? I ain’t got nothing except two hungry kids, me.” I put a hand on each of her shoulders, whether she liked it or not. “My wife Annie was murdered. So was my mother. My father was killed by an oil-well blowout that shouldn’t have happened. I know what it feels like to be treated badly by the world. That is why I would never deliberately hurt you or your husband. Look into my face and tell me I’m lying.” “I ain’t got to do nothing you say.” “No, you don’t. But what does your conscience tell you? Forget about the preacher at your church, good man that he might be; forget about me; forget about every other person in the world except you and your children and your own idea of God. What does your conscience tell you?” She faltered. “I ain’t sho’.” “No, tell me, Ms. Dartez. Tell me now.” I squeezed her shoulders tighter. Tears were welling in her eyes. She shook her head. “Say it.” “You’re telling the troot’.” “Thank you,” I said. She dropped the sign on the grass. “What am I gonna do, suh?” “Whatever it is, Alafair and I will help you with it.” S...

Peroxide hair, dented-in face, shades, flat stomach, concrete deltoids, scar tissue around the eyes, a half cup of brains. Where had he seen him before?

“Go to one of his rallies. All those people are wrong?”

“Time to use your words carefully, Swede.” “You got me wrong. You said something about me working in a porn studio. Maybe there was some porn made there, but I wasn’t part of it.” “I’ll contact the Vatican so they can get started with your early canonization.”

But as with all simple-minded and dismissive people, they were wrong. And not only were his detractors wrong, none of them could shine his shoes. Clete was one of the most intelligent people I ever knew, and one of the most humble, less out of virtue than his inability to understand his own goodness. He was so brave that he didn’t know how to be afraid. In the same fashion, he was generous because he cared little about money or social status or ownership, except for his Caddy convertibles. His physical appetites were enormous. So was his capacity for self-destruction. His father the milkman had taught Clete to hate himself, and Clete had spent a lifetime trying to unlearn the lesson.

He dropped a New Jersey hit man off a roof through the top of a greenhouse. He hooked his hand into a Teamster official’s mouth and slung him from a balcony into a dry swimming pool. He almost drowned a NOPD vice cop in a toilet bowl. He burned down a plantation home on Bayou Teche, fire-hosed a gangster across the restroom floor in a casino, pushed a sadist off the rim of a canyon in Montana, filled a mobbed-up politician’s antique convertible with concrete, went berserk in a St. Martinville pool hall and piled five unconscious outlaw bikers in a corner and would have doubled the number with a baseball bat if Helen Soileau hadn’t talked him into cuffing himself.

a Promethean figure

a protector whose genus went back to Thermopylae and Masada.

“Leave out the particulars. What in God’s name are you doing?” “There you go again.” “I just asked a question. You can’t take care of yourself.” “That’s it. No matter what I say, you’re on my case. I’m too old. I should put my stiff one-eye in a safe-deposit box. I drink too much. I eat the wrong food. How about respecting my space for a change?” “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re the best guy I’ve ever known. I worry about you.”

There was an accusatory neediness in his face, a baleful light in his eyes, as though others were responsible for his lack of success and the monetary gain and happiness that should have been his.

“I want to be a good cop. I’m seeing this Cajun girl, Babette. You know her. At the bar-and-grill. She’s a nice girl.” “You’d better treat her as one.”

I had never seen a man more tortured by his own thoughts.

He stood up. His skin was gray, the way people’s faces look when they see the grave. “I need help.” I hated what I had to do. I wrote my cell phone number on a memo slip and handed it to him. “There’s a meeting at seven o’clock. I can pick you up.” He crunched the memo slip and bounced it on my desk. “I’ll stick with drinking. I may get popped, but I’m not going to crawl. I’ll still be me, for good or bad. What will you be? A big fish in a dirty pond.” “You said Jimmy Nightingale knows too much. Too much about what?” “How Frankenstein works,” he replied. “What’d you think?”

Sleep is a mercurial mistress. She caresses and absolves and gives light and rest to the soul in our darkest hours. Or she fills us with fear and doubt and disjointed images that seem dredged out of the Abyss.

“He was drunk. I fussed at him.” “A man who strikes a woman is a moral and physical coward. A cop who hits a woman is the bottom of the barrel. Is Labiche at your house?”

have. Je vot’ voir plus tarde, petite chère.”