DR10 - Sunset Limited (31 page)

There are moments in Fifth Step meetings that cause the
listeners to drop their eyes to the floor, to lose all expression in
their faces, to clench their hands in their laps and wince inwardly at
the knowledge that the barroom they had entered long ago had only one
exit, and it opened on moral insanity.

Lila Terrebonne normally listened and did not speak at
meetings. Tonight was different. She sat stiffly on a chair by the
window, a tree silhouetted by a fiery sunset behind her head. The skin
of her face had the polished, ceramic quality of someone who has just
come out of a windstorm. Her hands were hooked together like those of
an opera singer.

"I think I've had a breakthrough with my therapist," she said.
"I've always had this peculiar sensation, this sense of guilt, I mean,
a fixation I guess with crucifixes." She laughed self-deprecatingly,
her eyes lowered, her eyelashes as stiff as wire. "It's because of
something I saw as a child. But it didn't have anything to do with me,
right? I mean, it's not part of the program to take somebody else's
inventory. All I have to do is worry about what I've done. As people
say, clean up my side of the street. Who am I to judge, particularly if
I'm not in the historical context of others?"

No one had any idea of what she was talking about. She rambled
on, alluding to her therapist, using terms most blue-collar people in
the room had no understanding of.

"It's called psychoneurotic anxiety. It made me drink. Now I
think most of that is behind me," she said. "Anyway, I didn't leave my
panties anywhere today. That's all I have."

After the meeting I caught her by Clete's car. The oak tree
overhead was filled with fireflies, and there was a heavy, wet smell in
the air like sewer gas.

"Lila, I've never spoken like this to another AA member
before, but what you said in there was total bullshit," I said.

She fixed her eyes on mine and blinked her eyelashes coyly and
said nothing.

"I think you're stoned, too," I said.

"I have a prescription. It makes me a little funny sometimes.
Now stop beating up on me," she said, and fixed my collar with one hand.

"You know who murdered Jack Flynn. You know who executed the
two brothers in the swamp. You can't conceal knowledge like that from
the law and expect to have any serenity."

"Marry me in our next incarnation," she said, and pinched my
stomach. Then she made a sensual sound and said, "Not bad, big stuff."

She got in the passenger seat and looked at herself in her
compact mirror and waited for Geraldine Holtzner to get behind the
wheel. Then the two of them cruised down a brick-paved side street,
laughing, the wind blowing their hair, like teenage girls who had
escaped into a more innocent, uncomplicated time.

TWO DAYS PASSED, THEN I received
another phone call from Alex
Guidry, this time at the dock. His voice was dry, the receiver held
close to his mouth.

"What kind of deal can I get?" he said.

"That depends on how far you can roll over."

"I'm not doing time."

"Don't bet on it."

"You're not worried about a dead black woman or a couple of
shit bags who got themselves killed out in the Basin. You want the
people who nailed up Jack Flynn."

"Give me a number. I'll call you back," I said.

"Call me back?"

"Yeah, I'm busy right now. I've already reached my quotient
for jerk-off behavior today."

"I can give you Harpo Scruggs tied hand and foot on a barbecue
spit," he said.

I could hear him breathing through his nose, like a cat's
whisker scraping across the perforations. Then I realized the source of
his fear.

"You've talked to Scruggs, haven't you?" I said. "You called
him about his receiving immunity. Which means he knows you're in
communication with us. You dropped the dime on yourself…
Hello?"

"He's back. I saw him this morning," he said.

"You're imagining things."

"He's got an inoperable brain tumor. The guy's walking death.
That's his edge."

"Better come in, Mr. Guidry."

"I don't give a deposition until he's in custody. I want the
sheriffs guarantee on that."

"You won't get it."

"One day I'm going to make you suffer. I promise it." He eased
the phone down into the cradle.

ON MONDAY, ADRIEN GLAZIER knocked on
my office door. She was
dressed in blue jeans and hiking shoes and a denim shirt, and she
carried a brown cloth shoulder bag scrolled with Mexican embroidery.
The ends of her ash-blond hair looked like they had been brushed until
they crawled with static electricity, then had been sprayed into place.

"We can't find Willie Broussard," she said.

"Did you try his father's fish camp?"

"Why do you think I'm dressed like this?"

"Cool Breeze doesn't report in to me, Ms. Glazier."

"Can I sit down?"

Her eyes met mine and lingered for a moment, and I realized
her tone and manner had changed, like heat surrendering at the end of a
burning day.

"An informant tells us some people in Hong Kong have sent two
guys to Louisiana to clip off a troublesome hangnail or two," she said.
"I don't know if the target is Willie Broussard or Ricky Scarlotti or a
couple of movie producers. Maybe it's all of the above."

"My first choice would be Scarlotti. He's the only person who
has reason to give up some of their heroin connections."

"If they kill Willie Broussard, they take the squeeze off
Scarlotti. Anyway, I'm telling you what we know."

I started to bring up the subject of Harpo Scruggs again and
the possibility of his having worked for the government, but I let it
go.

She dropped a folder on my desk. Clipped to two xeroxed Mexico
City police memorandums was a grainy eight-by-ten photograph that had
been taken in an open-air fruit market. The man in the photo stood at a
stall, sucking a raw oyster out of its shell.

"His name is Ruben Esteban. He's one of the men we think Hong
Kong has sent here."

"He looks like a dwarf."

"He is. He worked for the Argentine Junta. Supposedly he
interrogated prisoners by chewing off their genitals."

"What?"

"The Triads always ruled through terror. The people they hire
create living studies in torture and mutilation. Call Amnesty
International in Chicago and see what they have to say about Esteban."

I picked up the photo and looked at it again. "Where's the
material on the other guy?" I asked.

"We don't know who he is. Mr. Robicheaux, I'm sorry for having
given you a bad time in some of our earlier conversations."

"I'll survive," I said, and tried to smile.

"My father was killed in Korea while people like Jack Flynn
were working for the Communist Party."

"Flynn wasn't a Red. He was a Wobbly."

"You could fool me. He was lucky a House committee didn't have
him shipped to Russia."

Then she realized she had said too much, that she had admitted
looking at his file, that she was probably committed forever to being
the advocate for people whose deeds were indefensible.

"You ever sit down and talk with Megan? Maybe y'all are on the
same side," I said.

"You're too personal, sir."

I raised my hands by way of apology.

She smiled slightly, then hung her bag from her shoulder and
walked out of the office, her eyes already assuming new purpose, as
though she were burning away all the antithetical thoughts that were
like a thumbtack in her brow.

AT EIGHT-THIRTY THAT NIGHT Bootsie and
I were washing the
dishes in the kitchen when the phone rang on the counter.

"This is what you've done, asshole. My reputation's ruined. My
job is gone. My wife has left me. You want to hear more?" the voice
said.

"Guidry?" I said.

"There's a rumor going around I'm the father of a halfwit
mulatto I sold to a cathouse in Morgan City. The guy who told me that
said he heard it from your buddy Clete Purcel."

"Either you're in a bar or you've become irrational. Either
way, don't call my home again."

"Here it is. I'll give you the evidence on Flynn's murder. I
said
evidence
, not just information. I'll give
you the shooters who did the two brothers, I'll give you the guys who
almost drowned Megan Flynn, I'll give you the guy who's been writing
the checks. What's on your end of the table?"

"The Iberia prosecutor will go along with aiding and abetting.
We'll work with St. Mary Parish. It's a good deal. You'd better grab
it."

He was quiet a long time. Outside, the heat lightning looked
like silver plate through the trees.

"Are you there?" I said.

"Scruggs threatened to kill me. You got to bring this guy in."

"Give us the handle to do it."

"It was under your feet the whole time and you never saw it,
you arrogant shithead."

I waited silently. The receiver felt warm and moist in my hand.

"Go to the barn where Flynn died. I'll be there in forty-five
minutes. Leave the muff diver at home," he said.

"You don't make the rules, Guidry. Another thing, call her
that again and I'm going to break your wagon."

I hung up, then dialed Helen's home number.

"You don't want to check in with the St. Mary sheriff's office
first?" she said.

"They'll get in the way. Are you cool on this?" I said.

"What do you mean?"

"We take Guidry down clean. No scratches on the freight."

"The guy who said he'd dig up my grave and piss in my mouth?
To tell you the truth, I wouldn't touch him with a baton. But maybe
you'd better get somebody else for backup, bwana."

"I'll meet you at the end of East Main in twenty minutes," I
said.

I went into the bedroom and took my holstered 1911 model U.S.
Army .45 from the dresser drawer and clipped it onto my belt. I wiped
my palms on my khakis unconsciously. Through the screen window the oak
and pecan trees seemed to tremble in the heat lightning that leaped
between the clouds.

"Streak?" Bootsie said.

"Yes?"

"I overheard your conversation. Don't worry about Helen. It's
you that man despises," she said.

HELEN AND I DROVE down the two-lane
through Jeanerette, then
turned off on an oak-lined service road that led past the barn with the
cratered roof and sagging walls where Jack Flynn died. The moon had
gone behind a bank of storm clouds, and the landscape was dark, the
blackberry bushes in the pasture humped against the lights of a house
across the bayou. The leaves of the oaks along the road nickered with
lightning, and I could smell rain and dust in the air.

"Guidry's going to do time, isn't he?" Helen said.

"Some anyway."

"I partnered with a New Orleans uniform who got sent up to
Angola. First week down a Big Stripe cut his face. He had himself put
in lockdown and every morning the black boys would spit on him when
they went to breakfast."

"Yeah?"

"I was just wondering how many graduates of the parish prison
will be in Guidry's cell house."

Helen turned the cruiser off the road and drove past the water
oaks through the weeds and around the side of the barn. The wind was up
now and the banana trees rattled and swayed against the barn. In the
headlights we could see clusters of red flowers in the rain trees and
dust swirling off the ground.

"Where is he?" Helen said. But before I could speak she
pointed at two pale lines of crushed grass where a car had been driven
out in the pasture. Then she said, "I got a bad feeling, Streak."

"Take it easy," I said.

"What if Scruggs is behind this? He's been killing people for
forty years. I don't plan to walk blindfolded into the Big Exit." She
cut the lights and unsnapped the strap on her nine-millimeter Beretta.

"Let's walk the field. You go to the left, I go to the
right… Helen?"

"What?"

"Forget it. Scruggs and Guidry are both pieces of shit. If you
feel in jeopardy, take them off at the neck."

We got out of the cruiser and walked thirty yards apart
through the field, our weapons drawn. Then the moon broke behind the
edge of a cloud and we could see the bumper and front fender of an
automobile that was parked close behind a blackberry thicket. I circled
to the right of the thicket, toward the rear of the automobile, then I
saw the tinted windows and buffed, soft-yellow exterior of Alex
Guidry's Cadillac. The driver's door was partly open and a leg in gray
pants and a laced black shoe was extended into the grass. I clicked on
the flashlight in my left hand.

"Put both hands out the window and keep them there," I said.

But there was no response.

"Mr. Guidry, you will put your hands out the window, or you
will be in danger of being shot. Do you hear me?" I said.

Helen moved past a rain tree and was now at an angle to the
front of the Cadillac, her Beretta pointed with two hands straight in
front of her.

Guidry rose from the leather seat, pulling himself erect by
hooking his arm over the open window. But in his right hand I saw the
nickel-plated surfaces of a revolver.

"Throw it away!" I shouted. "Now! Don't think about it!
Guidry, throw the piece away!"

Then lightning cracked across the sky, and out of the corner
of his vision he saw Helen take up a shooter's position against the
trunk of the rain tree. Maybe he was trying to hold the revolver up in
the air and step free of the car, beyond the open door, so she could
see him fully, but he stumbled out into the field, his right arm
pressed against the wound in his side and the white shirt that was
sodden with blood.

But to Helen, looking into the glare of my flashlight, Guidry
had become an armed silhouette.

I yelled or think I yelled,
He's already hit
,
but it was too late. She fired twice,
pop, pop
,
the barrel streaking the darkness. The first round hit him high in the
chest, the second in the mouth.