DR07 - Dixie City Jam (37 page)

'No.'

'I think I'm getting another one. I eat grits and baby food
and get up in the morning with barbed wire in my stomach. Why's that?'

'You got me.'

'What are we supposed to do with that gal you locked up last
night?'

'We try to keep her there till we find out who she is.'

'She's got no arrest record. Also the charge you've got
against her is a joke.'

'Not to me it isn't.'

'At arraignment, what do we tell the judge?'

'The truth.'

'How's this sound? "Your Honor, this lady represented herself
as a Catholic nun in order to get the wife of Detective Robicheaux
drunk. Because everybody knows that's what nuns do in their spare
time."'

I opened and closed my right hand on my thigh. I fixed my gaze
on a place about three inches to the side of his face.

'I apologize, I shouldn't have said that,' he said. 'But at
best all we've got is a misdemeanor.'

'I think she murdered Charles Sitwell in the hospital.'

'Put her there, in the hospital, in the room, in her nun's
veil, around the time of death and we have something. Look, the
driver's license and Social Security card are real. She says she never
told you or your wife or anybody else she was a nun.'

'You talked to her?'

'I went to the jail early this morning. The jailer's got her
in isolation. A couple of the dykes were getting stoked up.'

'They like her?'

'Are you kidding? They were scared shitless. One of them
claims your gal threatened to put out a cigarette in her eye.'

'Look, Sheriff, there's no easier ID to get than a driver's
license and Social Security. But she had no credit cards. That's
because credit bureaus run a check on the applicants. She's dirty, I
think she's mixed up with Buchalter, and if we let her walk, we lose
the only thread we have.'

'I admit, she puts on quite a performance. If I didn't know
better, I'd probably let her baby-sit my grandchildren.'

'What explanation did she give you for being in my house?'

'She says she used to be a part-time librarian and now she's
trying to become a freelance magazine writer. According to her, she met
Bootsie in a lounge and befriended her because she thought she was a
sad lady. She's pretty eloquent, Dave.'

He looked at my face and glanced away.

'Librarian where?' I said.

'She got a little vague.'

'I bet.'

He propped his elbow on the desk blotter and scratched at the
hollow of his cheek with a pink fingernail.

'She's got a lawyer from Lafayette. He's already raising hell
down at the prosecutor's office,' he said.

'You want to talk to Clete Purcel? He saw her outside
Sitwell's hospital room.'

'Great witness, Dave. Purcel's got a rap sheet that few
mainline cons have. It looks like something a computer virus printed by
mistake.'

'I think he was right.'

'About what?'

'He told me to salt the shaft. He knew how it was going to go
down.'

The sheriff stuck his pipe in his leather tobacco pouch and
began filling the bowl. He didn't look up.

'I didn't hear you say that,' he said.

'It's one man's point of view.'

He didn't answer. I got up to leave the room.

'The Americans won the Revolution because they learned to
fight from the Indians,' he said. 'They shot from behind the trees. I
guess it sure beat marching across a field in white bandoliers and
silver breastplates.'

'I was never fond of allegory.'

'All I said was I didn't hear Purcel's remark. The woman's
purse is in Possessions. Who knows what the lab might find?' He raised
his eyebrows.

'We've got to hold her as a murder suspect, Sheriff.'

'It's not going to happen, Dave. You going to the arraignment?'

'You'd better believe it.'

He nodded silently, lit his pipe, and looked out the window.

Back inside my office, I looked again at all the paperwork
concerning Will Buchalter. What were the common denominators? What had
I missed?

Buchalter was perverse and sadistic and possibly an addict.

He was obviously a psychopath.

His followers were recidivists.

He appeared to be con-wise, talked about 'riding the beef,'
but had no criminal record that we could find.

Was he a sodomist, was he depraved, were his followers all
addicts? Were they men whom he had turned out (raped) and reduced to a
form of psychological slavery? Why not? It went on in every prison in
the country.

Except Buchalter had never been up the road.

Maybe Clete had come up with the answer. Maybe we had been
looking for Buchalter on the wrong side of the equation. Maybe he was a
fireman who set fires. Maybe he was one of us.

I talked with Ben Motley at NOPD. The prints lifted from the
armored vest that he and Clete had found in the marsh matched those
that Buchalter had left all over my house. But there was no serial
number on the fabric.

'I wouldn't spend too much time on it,' he said. 'These
paramilitary groups come up with shitloads of this stuff. You know
what's still the best way to nail this guy? Find one of his lowlifes,
then plug his pud into a light socket.'

Thanks, Mots
, I thought.

Then I put in a call to the robbery division of the Toronto
Police Department and talked with a lieutenant named Rankin. No, he
knew nothing about a stolen armored vest. No, he had no knowledge
whether or not the department might have sold off some of its vests;
no, he had never heard of a Will Buchalter and, after leaving me on
hold for five minutes, he said their computer had no record of a Will
Buchalter.

'This man's a Nazi?' he said.

'Among other things.'

'What do you mean?'

'He likes to torture people.'

He cleared his throat.

'About eight or nine years ago I remember a case…
no, it wasn't a case, really, it was a bad series of events that
happened with a detective named Mervain. We had a recruit who bothered
Mervain for some reason. He couldn't get this fellow out of his mind.
It seems like the fellow was suspected of stealing some guns from us,
who knows, maybe it was some vests, too.'

'What was the recruit's name?'

'I'm sorry, I don't remember everything that happened and I
don't want to say the wrong thing and mislead you. Let me check with a
couple of other people here and call you back.'

'I'd appreciate it very much, sir.'

Arraignment for the nun impersonator
was at 11:00 A.M., and my
best throw of the dice kept coming back boxcars, deuces, and treys.
Clete called collect from a pay phone in Metairie.

'Dead end,' he said. 'Her address is in an apartment building
that a wrecking ball went through six months ago.'

'Did you ask around the neighborhood about her?'

'I'm in a phone booth in front of a liquor store that has
bullet holes in the windows. There's garbage all over the sidewalk. As
I speak I'm looking at a collection of pukes who are looking back at me
like I'm an albino ape. Guess what color these pukes are? Guess what
color the whole neighborhood is.'

Judge Robert Dautrieve presided over morning court, that
strange, ritualistic theater that features morose and repentant drunks
who reek of jailhouse funk, welfare cheats, deranged drifters, game
poachers, and wife abusers whose frightened wives, with blackened eyes,
dragging strings of children, plead for their husbands' release. Almost
all of them are on a first-name basis with the bailiffs, jail escorts,
bondsmen, prosecutors, and court-assigned attorneys and social workers,
who will remain the most important people they'll ever meet. And no
matter what occurs on a particular day in morning court, almost all of
them will be back.

Judge Dautrieve had silver hair and the profile of a Roman
legionnaire. During World War II he had been a recipient of the
Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor at Sword Beach, and he had
also been a Democratic candidate for governor who had lost miserably,
largely due to the fact that he was an honorable man.

The woman who called herself Marie Guilbeaux filed into court
on the long wrist chain with the other defendants from the parish jail.
Her clothes were rumpled and her face white and puffy from lack of
sleep. On the back of her beige pullover was a damp, brown stain, as
though she had leaned against a wall where someone had spit tobacco
juice. When the jail escort unlocked her wrist from the chain, she
straightened her shoulders, tilted her chin up, and brushed her reddish
gold hair back over her forehead with her fingers. Her face became a
study in composure and serenity, as if it had been transformed inside a
movie camera's lens.

I sat three feet behind her, staring at the back of her neck.
She turned slowly, as though she could feel my eyes on her skin.

'Tell Buchalter we've got his vest,' I said.

But she looked past me toward the rear of the courtroom, as
though she had never visited one before, her gaze innocuous, bemused,
perhaps a bit fearful of her plight. To any outside observer, it was
obvious that this lady did not belong on a wrist chain, or in a jail,
or in a morning court that processed miscreants whose ongoing
culpability and failure were as visible on their persons as sackcloth
and ashes.

Her lawyer had once been with the U.S. Justice Department. He
now represented drug dealers and a PCB incinerator group. His bald head
was razor-shaved and waxed, and he had humps of muscle in his shoulders
and upper arms like a professional wrestler. His collar and tie always
rode high up on his thick neck, which gave him a Humpty-Dumpty
appearance.

'Tell Buchalter his prints were all over the vest,' I said to
the nun impersonator's back. 'That means he's going down on
premeditated double homicide. Nasty stuff, Marie. Lethal injection, the
big sleep, that kind of thing.'

She looked straight ahead, her face cool, almost regal, but
her lawyer, who was talking to another man at the defense table,
glanced up, then walked over to where I sat, his eyes locked on mine.

'What is it that makes you think legal procedure has no
application to you?' he said. His body seemed to exude physical power
and the clean athletic-club smells of deodorant and aftershave lotion.

'I was just asking your client to pass on a message to one of
her associates,' I said. 'He cut open two guys with a chain saw. These
were his friends. He's quite a guy.'

'You're harassing this woman, Detective. You're not going to
get away with it, either.'

'It's always reassuring to know you're on the other side,
Counselor.'

'You, sir, belong in a cage,' he said.

For thirty minutes I watched the judge go through the process
of trying to heal cancer with Mercurochrome, his face sometimes paling,
his eyes glazing over when a stressed-out defendant would launch into
an incoherent soliloquy intended to turn his role into that of victim.

I went out for a drink of water, then took a seat not far from
the prosecutor's table. Five minutes before the nun impersonator had to
enter her plea, the prosecutor looked at me impatiently, then gathered
up a file folder and walked back to where I sat. He was a rail of a
man, with a tic in his gray face, who made his daily nest in the
high-tension wires. He kept tapping the file folder on my knee.

'This isn't shit. What the hell have y'all been doing?' he
said.

'Her address is phony. Does that help?'

'It's shit and you know it. You guys spend your time fucking
your fist, then blame us when they walk.'

'How about kicking it down a couple of notches, Newt?'

'You want my job? You tell us we've got the bride of Dracula
in the parish jail, but I'm supposed to walk in here with nothing but
my dork in my hand. Dautrieve's not in the mood for it, believe me.'

'She had an empty aspirin tin in her purse. I sent it to the
lab this morning. Maybe there's a residue that indicates she was in
possession.'

'An empty aspirin container? That's the kind of evidence I'm
supposed to work with here? Do you live in a plastic bubble?'

'She's hooked up with Nazis. I'd bet my butt on it, Newt.'

'I've got news for you. You are. She's talking about suit. She
said you tried to get in her bread when you busted her. That was a
smart touch, sticking her bra in her back pocket, Dave. She's also
talking about deprivation of civil rights, slander, and sexual assault
while in the bag. How's that sound? And in two minutes I get to stand
up in front of the court and get buggered by that greasy shit hog she
hired. Y'all really fill out my day.'

'Don't let her get out of here, partner.'

'Break my chops.'

Judge Dautrieve was fixing his glasses on his nose and trying
to keep the ennui out of his face by the time the woman who called
herself Marie Guilbeaux stood before him, her lawyer by her side. He
listened attentively to the prosecutor, one finger propped against a
silver eyebrow. Then his eyes went from the prosecutor to me and back
to the woman.

'This isn't April Fools' Day, is it, gentlemen?' he said.

'Your Honor, we believe this lady to be a serious flight
risk,' the prosecutor said. 'She has no ties to the community, we
believe she's using an alias, and the address on her driver's license
has proved to be a fraudulent one. She's also a potential suspect in a
homicide case. We request maximum bail.'

'Your Honor, my client claims she was sexually molested by
Detective Robicheaux,' the woman's lawyer said. 'She was humiliated,
put in a holding unit with lesbians who tried to assault her, then
verbally harassed by Detective Robicheaux in this very courtroom.
There's nothing to substantiate the charge against her, except the word
of Detective Robicheaux, who himself may face criminal charges.'