Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery (31 page)

I didn't want to tell him, but it was exactly what I was doing.

"I'm not interested in your bar fights, H.W. It's completely off the radar, so your secret's safe with me. If, and I sincerely mean it, you can help me out."

H.W. ran his fingers through a greasy patch of hair, staring right into me. "Why don't you go and talk to him about all of this?"

I said, "You know Ron isn't going to admit anything."

"And you think I will, you hittin' the bottle like a demon's on your back? Why would I help?"

I gave the question a minute to sink in. "Because it wasn't your brother out there in the Boogie House, was it? It was you, and you saw the same thing I did. That's why."

H.W. wasn't as hard as his older brother. He was a big guy, sure, but not nearly the poker player he pretended to be. He stiffened, and he stood across from me, his eyes searching me. He didn't answer.

"I don't know what I saw out there, either, H.W.," I said. "I really don't. And nobody knows that was me out there. Just you and me."

A flash in his eyes. H.W. sniffed and ran one forearm under his nose. He thrust his tongue between his gums and his lower lip. He laughed and said, "I'm the one with the problem? Are you even listening to yourself?"

"Do the right thing," I said. "Give up what you know. Your brother will be in hell before the devil knows he's dead; there is no doubt about that. If there is a line between order and chaos, he can't find it. He’s real messed up."

He produced a look of mock confusion. I didn't care. I stared him right in his cavernous eyes. "But you still have an opportunity. You just have to make that decision."

"I think you ought to leave, partner. Yeah, I don't like any of the things you're saying. My brother deserves better than what you're giving him." Even though the words were harsh, there was no conviction in them.

"No he doesn't, and you know that. You both have reason to punish Brickmeyer. Had he taken my family's land from me, the only thing of worth ever attached to the Bullen name, I'd want to mess him and his family up, maybe create a scandal."

"You best get on out of here."

"Did it take murdering a young man and dumping him on that land to teach him that lesson?" I asked, watching H.W.'s expression tighten. It might as well have been a stone carving.

"You don't have the authority to come here and fuck with me like this. I ought to whoop your ass just because."

"All right," I said. "All right. You win. I shouldn't have come out here and harassed you. I'm out of line. You can go on back in there with her, if you like. I just hope you have a prescription for penicillin."

"Come on, man. You're coming up here, accusing me of all kinds of heinous shit. I'm a victim."

"No offense, H.W., but Emmitt Laveau is the victim. I hope you don't have trouble seeing that."

H.W. hit the side of a junker Thunderbird with a wad of phlegm. He used bodily fluids like projectiles. Each conveyed a different emotion. Without a doubt, this one was hatred. "Jesus, McKane. How in the hell do you think I'm gonna answer these questions?"

"Truthfully."

"You got me on the defensive. I can already feel my hackles rising, man. I ain't even on the stand yet, I can hear the rope swinging in the wind."

"Okay, H.W. One more question and I'm out of here."

"This better be good, McKane. I'm gettin' real tired of the road we're treading on."

I leaned against the Thunderbird, freshly minted with H.W.'s spit, and crossed my arms, one hand holding each elbow. "Does he visit you in your dreams, too, or was it just the one time at the Boogie House?"

I made sure not to blink. It wasn't his answer that mattered, but his response. Guys like him have pat answers for everything. The lie wasn't what mattered. What mattered was how he reacted. If I was going to get anything on the big heifer, I'd have to outsmart him.

But he must have seen it coming, because he gave me nothing. His eyes shifted ever-so-slightly, almost imperceptibly, and they didn't blink. He stuck his tongue between his teeth and smiled. "Goddamn, man, it's a wonder you ain't a lawyer, asking all these crazy-ass questions. It must be true what they say, that the bottle's starting to pull you under the water with it. No wonder Vanessa split on you, son."

I smiled because I didn't want to let him think he'd won. But he sort of had. While I stood here, something
real
could be happening to my ex-wife, and H.W. had an alibi if he needed one, but not me.

He seemed to notice that, too, because he winked. "Yeah, that girl's a little too trusting for her own good. Why she's so fucked-up in the first place, don't you think? She just, you know, lets anybody walk into her life with something to offer her, no matter what it is. She keeps on like that, somebody's gonna take
real
advantage of her."

I flinched, swallowing the urge to punch him. "Don't think your brother's going to be loyal once things go downhill. He'll burn down your world around you, leaving you no choice but to dive in the fire. I promise you that. If I figure it out before you get the sense to speak up, you might not even have the luxury to save your own ass."

And with that, I walked away, hands shoved into my pockets. It took every shred of composure to keep from looking behind me. I listened for the sound of approaching footsteps, but all I ended up hearing was Molly Hatchet threatening to break an adjacent trailer's windows.

*  *  *

On my way out, I saw the rear bumper of a truck poking out from the side of the half-assed garage. When H.W. disappeared inside, I doubled around behind the trailer park, winding through a small field dotted with trees and covered in brier bushes.

Once Laina's place became visible from the field, I ducked behind a tree on the other side of a rusted barbed wire fence, and that's when I saw it. There it was. The truck. The goddamned truck I had been looking for. White. Diesel. Gently-used. Same stolen license number as the one in my memory.

A thought struck me then, one related to the night the cop chased me. He had tried to pull
me
over, not the truck. It didn't prove that the force was in Brickmeyer's pocket - or the opposite, that it was in Bullen's debt - but it showed me definitively that trusting the LJPD was out of the question.

It had to be a solo effort from here on in, even if it meant dismantling the entire police department, cop by cop, to do it.

*  *  *

I called the pulpers to thank them, but no one answered. I let the phone ring enough times for my ear to sweat from pressing the receiver to it, but I got nothing.

Odd.

Next, I tried the bar, but the guy who answered told me he hadn't seen them. That
definitely
was out of character.

Maybe they’re hiding out, I thought.

When my mind shifted toward other, darker thoughts, I slipped my phone into my pocket and tried to think of it no more. They had done a serviceable job, and I'd hear from them soon enough.

At least I tried to convince myself of that.

*  *  *

I made an unannounced trip out to the Laveau residence directly after that, my head cloudy with the implications of what I’d found.

Janita appeared in the door in a sleeveless sundress. Her mouth opened, somewhere between a smile and a question, but she let me into the house without actually speaking a word.

The door slammed behind us, and I circled a small recliner before resting my hands on its back. I groaned quietly to myself. The anxiety of returning here was instantaneous. My stomach burned, my mouth filling almost instantly with the taste of the cure-all her uncle had given me.

If the exterior of the house conveyed darkness, the interior magnified it, a dank, bitter, sorrowful place. The air was heavy with death, smelled strongly of it, simultaneously sweet and tart and flowery.

"I 'pologize about the smell," she said, adding, as she walked toward the kitchen, "I don't know what's happened. Something must've crawled under the house and passed on."

"It's all right," I managed, despite the pain in my gut. "I can barely tell it's there."

"Rolson McKane, I know that's a lie.”

“Maybe it’s your uncle’s cooking.”

“Ha! Maybe. You get used to it, after a spell. You want something to drink? I just made a pitcher of sweet tea."

"I thought I'd make this a quick visit. I don't want to impose."

She went into the kitchen. "Nonsense. Have some tea. There's something I want to show you. And you don't have to hurry. It ain't going nowhere. 'Sides, I'm bored out my mind out here. Attention's been heaped on me to the point that I'm going through withdrawals."

The sound of cabinet doors opening and closing and glasses clinking on the counter echoed through the house.

She said, "As a matter of fact, I'm so lonely I damn near miss having that crazy uncle of mine around."

"Where's he gone?"

“What’s that?” she asked. She was busily stirring something.

“I asked where your uncle had run off to,” I replied.

“Oh, who knows. Sometimes he just up and splits for a few days. Full moon makes him jittery, I reckon.”

I stole a glance at her uncle's collection of assorted voodoo knickknacks, which did not look sinister and disgusting anymore. It now looked pedestrian, like the herbs and spices a hippie practicing alternative medicine might keep in the pantry.

Perhaps because I had paid so much attention to the abnormal trinkets and potions on my last visit, I had not noticed the abundance of photos of Emmitt smiling roguishly at the camera. Emmitt leaning against a wall, wearing shades entirely too big for his face. Emmitt sitting in the middle of this very living room, holding matchbox cars toward the camera like treasure. Emmitt staring straight ahead, unsmiling and seemingly looking at something in the distance beyond the camera.

In the kitchen I heard the tinkle of spoon tapping glass. "Don't worry. K’s not going to do anything drastic. Yet. I think I got him reeled in pretty good for now. That's not an easy thing, you know."

"I bet," I said absently, staring at the battered cup the old man had forced me to drink from. "He's got quite a collection of...antiques."

"None of that is worth bunk to anybody but him. Had it all his life. Made half of it."

Her footsteps were surprisingly light for a robust woman, and she appeared in the doorway with two pint glasses and handed me one. The limp seemed to be leaving her, and though I was pleased to see it, I said nothing.

I tilted it back and savored the rush of sweet and cold. The tea was delicious, maybe too sweet, but just right for the circumstances. It almost seemed to wash away the oppressive heat of the afternoon, and I was incapable of not drinking it. My stomach needed something on it, because the rumbling was making me sick.

"Delicious," I said, placing the glass on a table stacked with gossip magazines.

"K taught me to make tea that way, or rather he trained me. He cooks spicy food, and nothing calms the heat from his jerk chicken better than tea. But it has to be so sweet that the sugar dang near won't dissolve. First time I made it, he complained. 'It's too bitter,' he said. ‘Needs more sugar.’ I kept adding a little bit more every time, and of course he kept on complaining. Finally, I dumped a whole mess of sugar in there, thinking I'd show him, but he drank down a whole glass, gulped it like he'd spent a week in the desert, and he smiled at me and said, 'Now it's just right.' That man, I swear."

"It's sweet," I said. "But I've lived here my whole life so it's nothing I can't handle."

She looked down, as if a fly might have landed on an ice cube, and then said, "That drink my uncle gave you, it was a cure-all."

"Uh-huh. I think that's what he called it."

"It doesn’t have much power if you don't believe."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"That it was probably a test, seeing how his piddling affected you."

"Voodoo."

She made a sour face. "He don't use that word. Makes him seem so much like a joke. He’s already got it bad enough. People cross the street when they see him."

"Who?"

"Everybody," she said, smirking. "Somebody hears voodoo, they think about the devil. It's nothing like that. My uncle's a superstitious man, but he's no different than any other uneducated person his age. It's just that the superstitions have taken place of the other stuff, the stuff that has real power."

"Like the drink."

"Like the drink. The stuff people don't understand. There ain't no need to fear what isn't mysterious. Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Yes," I said.

"The fact is, that it is mysterious
is
powerful. People say they’re skeptical of anything that ain't got a direct explanation. But you look. Most folks still make a point to walk around ladders or build skyscrapers without floor thirteen. They still say 'God bless you' when you sneeze. Superstition is powerful, 'specially in a place full of spirits as the South."