DR07 - Dixie City Jam (38 page)

The judge suppressed a sigh, took off his glasses, and
beckoned with both hands. When no one moved, he said, 'Approach,
approach, approach. It's late, gentlemen. The Three Penny Opera here
needs to conclude. That means you too, Detective Robicheaux.'

The two attorneys and I stood close to the bench. Judge
Dautrieve leaned forward on his forearms and let his eyes rove over our
faces.

'Would any of y'all care to explain what we're doing?' he
said. 'Is this part of a Hollywood movie? Do I need a membership in the
Screen Actors Guild?
What
homicide are you
talking about, sir?'

'The ex-convict who was murdered at Iberia General, Your
Honor,' the prosecutor said. 'He was part of a neo-Nazi group of some
kind. The woman was seen at the hospital in a nun's veil, close by the
man's room.'

'Seen by whom? When?' the judge said.

'Detective Robicheaux and others.'

'I don't see the
others
. You didn't
answer all my questions, either. Seen when? At the time of death?'

'We're not sure.'

'Not sure? Wonderful,' the judge said.

'That has nothing to do with the charge against her now,
anyway,' the defense attorney said.

'It means she has every reason not to come back here,' the
prosecutor said.

Then the judge looked me evenly in the eyes.

'What motive would this lady have in coming to your house and
telling you she's a nun, when, in fact, she's not?' he said.

'I believe she wanted to do my wife injury, Your Honor,' I
said.

'In what fashion?'

I cleared my throat, then pulled at my collar.

'Sir?' he said.

'She's tried to encourage my wife to drink excessively, Your
Honor.'

'That's a rather unique statement,' he said. 'To be honest, I
don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it. You're telling me
the presence of a nun somehow has led your wife into problems with
alcohol?'

'I think humor at the expense of others is beneath the court's
dignity, Your Honor,' I said.

I saw the prosecutor's eyes light with anger.

'You're badly mistaken if you think I see humor in any of
this, Detective. Step back, all of you,' the judge said. When he folded
his hands, his knuckles looked like white dimes. 'I don't like my
courtroom used as a theater. I don't like sloppy presentations, I don't
like sloppy investigative work, I don't like police officers and
prosecutors trying to obtain a special consideration or privilege from
the court at the defendant's expense. I hope my meaning is clear. Bail
is set at three hundred dollars.'

He flicked his gavel down on a small oak block.

On the way out of the courtroom the prosecutor caught my arm.

'Don't give it a second thought, Dave. I always enjoy calling
a witness who makes me look like I've got my ass on upside down. Why
didn't you flip Dautrieve's tie in his face while you were at it?' he
said.

I followed the woman and her attorney out to the attorney's
maroon Lincoln. The day was bright and clear, and leaves were bouncing
across the freshly mowed lawn.

'Don't talk to him,' the attorney said, opening his door.

'It's all right. We're old pals, really. He and I share a lot
of family secrets. About the wifey and that sort of thing,' she said.
She put on a pair of black sunglasses and began tying a flowered
bandanna around her hair.

'You share a big common denominator with most scam artists,
Marie. You're cunning but you're not smart,' I said.

'Oh, hurt me deep inside, Dave,' she said, and pursed her lips
at me.

'You didn't understand what I told you in there. Buchalter is
going to be charged with murdering two of his own people. Bad PR when
you're leading a cause. Even his lamebrain followers read newspapers.'

She hooked her purse on her wrist, then placed her hand on her
hip.

'I've got a problem. My tractor don't get no traction. Can you
give me a few minutes, baby-pie?' she said.

'Marie, don't spend any more time on this man,' her attorney
said.

'How about it, Dave?' she said. 'It won't hurt your
relationship with the sow. I think I remember somebody cranking a whole
bunch of electricity into your batteries. Wouldn't you like a little
sport fuck on the side?'

I opened her car door and fitted my hand tightly around her
upper arm. Her skin whitened around the edges of my fingers. Pieces of
torn color floated behind my eyes, like the tongues of orange flame you
see inside the smoke of an oil fire, and I heard whirring sounds in my
ears, like wind blowing hard inside a conch shell. I saw the top of the
attorney's body across the car's rooftop, saw his Humpty-Dumpty head
and wide tie and high collar, saw his mouth opening and a fearful light
breaking in his eyes.

'There's no problem, Counselor. I just want to make sure y'all
don't accuse us of a lack of courtesy in Iberia Parish,' I said, and
sat the woman down hard in the passenger seat. Her sunglasses fell off
her nose into her lap. 'Happy motoring, Marie. It's a grand day. Stay
the fuck away from my house. Next time down, it's under a black flag.'

Late that afternoon Lieutenant Rankin
of the Toronto Police
Department called back and told me everything he had learned from
others and the case record about the death of a robbery detective named
James Mervain.

'This is what it comes down to,' he said. 'Mervain was one of
those fellows whose life seemed to be going out of
control—booze, a
brutality charge, a wife in the sack with another cop, some suspicions
that maybe he was gay—so when he got a little shrill, people
dismissed what he had to say. You with me?'

'Yes.'

'He'd been working with a recruit named Kuhn or Koontz. Maybe
he knew the guy off the job, too, through some kind of gay
connection…'

'I don't understand, you're not sure of the name?'

'That's what's strange. A couple of cops around here still
remember this recruit, and they're sure the name was Kuhn or Koontz,
but the name's not in the computer. Maybe it got wiped out, I don't
know. Anyway, Mervain started telling people that Kuhn, or whatever his
name was, had some problems; in particular, he liked to hurt people.
But if that was true, he never did it on the job. Which made everybody
think Mervain had a secret life, out there in the gay bars somewhere,
and he had some kind of personal or sexual grievance with this fellow.

'Then some rather serious weapons were stolen from a
departmental arms locker—ten-gauge pumps, stun guns,
three-fifty-sevens, nine-millimeter automatics, armor-piercing
ammunition, stuff like that. Mervain maintained Kuhn was behind it.
Actually, a custodian was arrested for it, but he died before he went
to trial. This is about the time Kuhn disappeared, at least as far as
anyone remembers.

'Then Mervain seemed to go crazy. He got arrested for drunk
driving, he got beat up in a bar, he'd come to work so hungover nobody
could talk to him till noon without getting their heads snapped off. He
put his name on mailing lists of a half dozen hate groups, then he'd
bring all this Nazi literature to the office and try to convince people
Kuhn was part of an international conspiracy to bring back the Third
Reich. The department sent him to a psychologist, but he just became
more obsessed.

'Then one Monday he didn't come in to work. His ex-wife had no
idea where he was, his apartment was empty, and some kids had stripped
his car. Two weeks later the owner of a skid-row hotel called us.
Maggots were crawling out from under the door crack in one of the
rooms. Our people had to break open the door with a sledge. Mervain had
nailed boards across the jamb. How much do you want in the way of
detail?'

'Go ahead,' I said.

'The detective who did the investigation is still with the
department. He says he never had a case like it before or since.
Mervain hung himself, naked, upside down by the ankles with piano wire,
then put a German Luger into his eye socket and let it off.'

'You're telling me y'all put this down as a suicide?'

'Forensics showed there's no question he fired the gun. The
door was nailed shut. The window was locked from the inside. Both his
personal and professional life were a disaster. How would you put it
down?'

I tapped a paper clip on my desk blotter.

'Look, it bothered other people at the time, but there was no
indication that anyone else could have been in that room,' he said.

'What do you mean
bothered
?'

'The room was full of Nazi and hate literature. The walls and
floors were papered with it. But all his clothes, except what he'd been
wearing, were gone. So were his billfold and the notebook that he
always carried.'

'Does anyone remember what this man Kuhn looked like?'

'Two cops used the same words—"a big blond guy."'

'I'm going to fax y'all a composite. Would you send me
everything you have on the Mervain case?'

'Sure. Look, there's one other thing. A couple of days after
the death was ruled a suicide, the desk clerk called and said Mervain's
coat was on the back of a chair in the lobby. He wanted to know what he
should do with it.'

'Yes?'

'There was a napkin from a gay bar in one of the pockets.
Mervain had written a note on it. Somebody stuck it in the case folder.
I'll read it to you. "Schwert… Schwert…
Schwert… His name is Schwert. I have become his fool and
slave. I know he's out there now, flying in the howling storm. No one
believes, I see no hope." Sounds kind of sad, doesn't it? You have any
idea what it might mean?'

'What was Mervain's educational background?'

'Let's see… Bachelor's in liberal arts, a master's
degree in administration of justice. Why?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Maybe we blew this one.'

'It's a big club. Thanks for your time, sir.'

Early the next morning I drove to New
Orleans and, after going
to the bail bonds office that fronted points for the Caluccis, I found
Max at his mother's in an old residential neighborhood off Canal, not
far from Mandina's restaurant. The house was late Victorian, with a
wide gallery, a fresh coat of gray and white paint, and rose-bushes
blooming all over the lawn.

The family was celebrating the birthday of a little boy and
eating lunch on redwood picnic tables in the backyard. Balloons were
tied to the trees and lawn furniture, and the tables were covered with
platters of pasta and cream pastry, bowls of red sausage, beaded
pitchers of lemonade and iced tea. Max Calucci sat in the midst of it
all, in undershirt and slacks, the pads of hair on his brown shoulders
as fine as a monkey's.

I had to hand it to him. His expression never changed when he
saw me at the garden gate. He cut pieces of cake and handed them to the
children, continued to tell a story in Italian to a fat woman in black
and an elderly man on a thin walking cane, then excused himself, rubbed
a little boy on the head, and walked toward me with a glass of lemonade
in his hand.

'You got business with me?' he asked.

'If you've got business with Clete Purcel, I do.'

'He can't talk for himself?'

'You better hope he doesn't, Max.'

'Is this more hard guy stuff? You got your shovel with you?'

'Nope.'

His eyes were as black and liquid as wet paint.

'You got some kind of deal you want to cut? That why you're
here?' he said.

'Maybe.'

He drank from his lemonade, his eyes never leaving mine. Then
he pushed opened the short iron gate with his foot.

'It's a nice day, a special occasion. I got no bad feelings on
a nice day like this. Eat a piece of cake,' he said.

'We can talk out here.'

'What, you too good to sit down at my nephew's birthday
party?' he said.

I ate a custard-filled eclair in a sunny spot by the garden
wall. The air was dry and warm, and the breeze blew through the banana
trees along the wall and ruffled the water in an aboveground swimming
pool. The guests around the tables were his relatives and family
friends—working-class people who owned small grocery stores
and cafés,
carried hod, belonged to the plumbers' union, made the stations of the
cross each Friday in Lent, ate and drank at every meal as though it
were a pagan celebration, married once, and wore widow black with the
commitment of nuns.

Max combed his hair back over his bald pate at the table,
cleaned the comb with his fingers, then stuck the stub of a
filter-tipped cigar in his mouth and motioned me toward a gazebo on the
far side of the yard. The latticework was covered with purple trumpet
vine; inside, the glass-topped table and white-painted iron chairs were
deep in shadow, cold to the touch.

Max lit his cigar and let the smoke trail out of his mouth.
His shoulders were brown and oily-looking against the white straps of
his undershirt.

'Say it,' he said.

'I hear you and Bobo put out an open contract on Clete.'

'You get that from Lonighan?'

'Who cares where it came from?'

'Lonighan's a welsher and a bum.'

I leaned forward and rubbed my hands together.

'I'm worried about my friend, Max.'

'You should. He's got a radioactive brain or something.'

'I'm not here to defend what he does. I just want you guys to
take the hit off him.'

'He's the victim? Have you seen my fucking car? It ain't a car
no more. It's a block of concrete.'

'Come on, Max. You guys started it when you leaned on his
girlfriend.'

'That's all past history. She paid the loan, she paid the back
vig. All sins forgiven.'

'Here's the deal. You and Bobo tried to take out Nate Baxter.
I think you probably did this without consent of the Commission. What
if some reliable information ends up in their hands about a couple of
guys in New Orleans trying to cowboy a police administrator?'