The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (24 page)

“Well,” Blanchette said, “I think it might turn out that Officer Bell was a scandal waitin’ to happen. That’s what it looks like to me. Hey, Grif! Grif, we’re hungry down here!”

“It wasn’t Willie Dastillon,” Shade said as Rosten slowly came toward them. “Willie might steal a hen but he wouldn’t break an egg.”

Rosten had slightly more than a basic issue of nose and long thin white hair that curled up at the back of his neck. He stood behind the counter, wiping his hands on a big red bib he always wore that had Texas Chili Burn-Off stitched in a circle on the front.

“Oh,” he said, “the fat guy and the pug’re hungry. So they yell at me. That was a yell, wasn’t it? It sounded like a shout to me. A yell, a shout.”

Shade was merely a customer to Rosten, but he knew that Blanchette and Grif were, behind a façade of insults, friends. It was one of those odd couplings of disparate personalities, and he understood that they frequently went duck hunting together, split a bottle of Glenlivet, or drove to Beale Street and acted shameless.

“Rosten, we’re in a hurry,” Blanchette said. “I’ll have the usual. Rene?”

“Tomato juice,” Shade said. His tongue was furry, his mouth tasted like barroom floor grunge, and his eyes felt dry. “And some of those buttermilk biscuits with gravy.”

Rosten wrote the order on a small pad.

“Hung over are you, Shade?”

“I guess.”

“Uh-huh,” Rosten said and raised his brows. “You ever think maybe you’re brain-damaged a little bit, there, Shade? Ever wonder if maybe old Foster Broome didn’t jab-and-hook some useful knowledge right out of your brain?”

“I know he did,” Shade said, looking up with a red baleful gaze. “But what it was that he beat out of me was all those general rules about how young guys ain’t s’posed to pound on old white-haired wiseasses just to hear ’em go ‘squish.’ I have to work real hard to remember that one, Grif. I’m real hazy on it. Squish is a beautiful sound. Bring me some eats, huh?”

“Hey,” Rosten said as he moved toward the kitchen, “just fillin’ you in on the AMA report, champ.”

When Rosten was gone and the knife-and-fork hubbub of the room had made silence tiresome, Blanchette said, “Lighten up, Rene. After we eat, go home, clean up, and so forth. This thing is goin’ to be a full-tilt fuckin’ boogie ’til we find the perp, dig?”

“Yeah,” Shade answered. “He’s all right. I know he’s your buddy.”

“Forget that,” Blanchette said. He was sucking away at a soggy cigar, his coat and hat still on. “After you get cleaned up you go see Willie. I’ll head back to Second Street. Bell’s partner, a guy named Thomas Mouton, is supposed to be there. You see your old pal Willie, then meet me and Mouton at the station.”

“Right,” Shade answered. “If I can stay awake.”

“You want a black beauty, there, sleepyhead?”

“Naw,” Shade said. “I don’t like the way I talk behind that shit.”

“Good,” Blanchette said. “I don’t know if I have any anyhow. Knock back some of Rosten’s joe.”

Shade walked over to the coffeepots and helped himself to a cup. He then returned to his stool and blew on the joe.

When Rosten brought on the chow Shade was, as always, taken slightly aback at Blanchette’s “usual” breakfast. He had two pork chops
seasoned with fennel and skillet-fried, thick white gravy over biscuits, three eggs beat to a sludge and cooked soft, and a butterscotch shake. It was the idea of shakes before noon that put Shade over the edge.

“You are a marvel,” he said to Blanchette whose mouth was otherwise employed, prompting a grunt in response. “Most guys who eat like you would get fat or something.”

“Uhnn,” Blanchette responded, nodding as he wrapped up a chew. He picked up a pork chop and tore the perimeter of fat away, stacking the greasy, undesirable slivers on the side of his plate. “That’s my secret,” he said; then, with one big sucking chomp, he turned the chop into a bone.

“You mean not chewing?” Shade asked. “That’s your secret?”

“And trimmin’ the fat,” Blanchette answered. “Plus, let’s face it—I am a little bit stout.”

“Really? I guess I never noticed.” Shade was shoving the biscuits around on his own plate, familiarizing himself with his breakfast before eating it. “I mean, those fuckin’ plaids you’re always wearing, How, they make bein’ super-chunky seem sort of secondary.”

“Uh-oh! You’re on to
all
my secrets now.”

Over the next few minutes Shade managed to eat a biscuit or two and Blanchette cleaned his own plate. They sipped coffee and Blanchette probed his teeth with a mint toothpick.

Rosten came down the counter and stood near them.

“What’s new, How?”

“Well, actually,” Blanchette said, “I’m glad you asked that. I want the two of you both to hear this at once. I don’t play favorites.” Blanchette rested the toothpick in the corner of his mouth, pulled his hat off and fanned his face with it. “Look, fellas, last night, it was a good night. The weather was decent, the Cardinals won, and I was hungry.”

“Imagine that,” Rosten said.

“Hush up,” Blanchette said. “This is hard enough, man.” He put his hat back on. “I was
hungry
so I went to Paquet’s and had me some shrimp boiled in beer, and some of that yellow rice and a gallon or two of some kind of wine they had that I found out I could stand to drink,
and right after stiffin’ the waiter for bein’ such a snot, I leaned over and asked Molly Paddock to marry me.”

Rosten responded by shaking his head as if there were a terrible buzzing in his ears.

Shade said, “Man, what brought this on?”

“Well,” Blanchette said, “I’ll tell you what it was. What it was, is I been seein’ Molly for three years and, let’s face it, the young succulents were pretty good at brushin’ me off and she doesn’t. That attracts you to a person, when they don’t brush you off and you’re a guy like me. So, young succulents ain’t gonna wet down my future, and I know it, and the other day I patted my middle. I patted my middle and my hand clinched around the fringe of a great gob of flab. It was then I said to myself—‘How, you’re so fat, you might as well go ahead and get married.’ ”

“That’s a dandy reason to throw in the towel,” Shade said. He thought of Molly Paddock, a decent, bland-faced shapeless cop-widow with a pleasant personality and no ambition at all. “I guess congrats are in order.”

“Most people would think so,” Blanchette said. “And what do you think about me gettin’ married, Grif?”

Rosten put two long fingers to his chin and cocked his head sideways.

“I think it’s a crime against women,” he said.

“You shit head.”

“I don’t think you’ll be indicted on it.”

“You know-it-all shit head,” Blanchette said as he stood. He tossed a bill onto the counter. He looked at Rosten. “You just couldn’t say something nice, could you?”

“I want to,” Rosten said, “but I’m cursed with honesty.”

Shade tossed down a buck and a half and he and Blanchette shuffled out of The Grubbery and up the worn steps to the street. The whole workaday world was out and about, honking horns, grinding gears on produce trucks, walking along with eyes down.

When they reached the parking lot Shade said, “You got any ups, How?”

“I thought you didn’t want any.”

“I don’t but I might need it. I’m pooped, man. I was drinkin’ ’til four or five in the morning.”

Blanchette pulled out his wallet and slid an Alka-Seltzer foil from a credit-card slot. He handed it to Shade.

“I only got this one,” he said. “It’ll put some zest in your fuckin’ day, too.”

As he walked to his own car Shade said, “I just want it in case I need it.”

“Naturally, comrade,” Blanchette said. “But I’ll bet you do.”

5

A
FTER BREAKFAST
Shade decided to cut the sensitive noses of the world some slack, and went home to take a shower. His apartment was a small historical curio, with furniture from the fifties, plumbing from the forties, on the second floor of a brick row house that had been built by French craftsmen who’d all been dead for a minimum of one hundred and twenty years.

Shade’s mother lived downstairs and ran a poolroom from what had once been the dining and living rooms. Though still married to the ever-drifting John X. Shade, she had reverted to her maiden name for business, and called the modest establishment Ma Blanqui’s Pool House.

When Shade stepped out of the shower feeling Irish Springy, he dried and dressed in light cotton. The heat would rise through the day so he selected white pants, loose and pleated, a yellow pullover that billowed out enough to hide the pistol clipped at his belt, and went sockless in his stinky white slip-ons that he felt he could run faster in.

Shade had lived in this same building for most of his life, here at the corner of Lafitte and Perry, and learned the hard lessons of the world on these hard bricked streets, within spitting distance of home. This was Frogtown, where the sideburns were longer, the fuses shorter, the skirts higher, and the expectations lower, and he loved it.

As he came down the back stairs he could see the river across the tracks, and a shimmery haze rose from it, making the farther shore a mere mirage. He slid into his car, fired the husky-sounding three twenty-seven, and headed toward the nearby abode of Willie Dastillon.

*     *     *

Willie Dastillon, like most good Americans, wanted to “have it all,” and to him that meant having a door jimmy, a friendly fence, and a ten-minute headstart. He lived in a small frame house with green tar-paper siding on Voltaire Street.

When Shade came up the steps to the porch a small, bruised boy was wheeling a tricycle recklessly from rail to rail.

“Who you?” he asked as Shade approached.

“I’m looking for your dad. Is Willie home?”

“Mm-hmm.” The boy jumped off the tricycle and reached above his head to the front doorknob. He opened the door with surprising ease. “Papa! Papa, a mister is here.”

Shade stepped inside without being invited. Willie sat in the front room. His left leg was in a cast and propped up on a stool. He wore sunglasses and earphones, and held a long white back scratcher that he plucked at air-guitar style.

When he saw Shade he pulled the earphones down to his neck and Jason and the Scorchers rattled against his throat. He then shook his head and killed the music.

“Shut the door, Mick. Go back out and play.”

“Okay, Papa.”

Shade helped himself to a seat.

“Right, make yourself at home,” Willie said. “Today must be the day of the party. I guess I forgot.”

Willie Dastillon was rock-and-roll lean with a long shag of dark hair and from his left ear dangled a glittering shank of earring that might have pulled in a keeper bass if it were trolled near rocks. His nose was narrow with a sharp, balloon-busting tip, and his cheeks were blue with stubble. He wore a black .38 Special T-shirt and a pair of blue work pants with the left leg hacked off above the cast.

“Did you just drop by to watch me jam on my back scratcher, Shade?”

Shade leaned back in the soft chair and put his feet on the coffee table. His expression was flat and he stared unblinkingly at Willie.

“Is your whole band going to wear casts, Willie? I mean, I’m not up
to the minute on rock theatrics, but a whole band in casts, why, that’d be a gimmick, but maybe not a good one.”

“Hey,” Willie said, “there’s a thought. I’ll bring it up with the guys. I wouldn’t mind puttin’ the drummer in a full body cast, man. He shows up on time but he just can’t
keep
time.”

Willie Dastillon was a thief and a gambler but he called himself a musician. He’d had several local bands over the years but B&E busts and the pursuit of bliss in powder form had kept any from lasting more than a summer. The bruised child and wife who worked while he didn’t were both testaments to his callous vanity, for the man blew enough on craps alone for them to live much better. He’d bet Betty’s next paycheck on a fighter he’d never seen before, or those splayfooted ponies, or them rolling bones. He was a man with a tin-ear present who dreamed of a rock-opera future.

“What happened to your leg?” Shade asked.

“The usual: I was backstage at a Stones concert out there in L.A. and, you see, my buddy, ol’ Jack Nicholson who is just a card and a half, says to me, ‘Willie, go on out there and turn your pipes loose on “Beast of Burden,” and shame Jagger off the fuckin’ stage.’ So, because me and Jack are like this, I go out there and Keith Richards nods and smiles and Jagger bows at me and hands me the mike, and all these flowers are tossed onstage and flashbulbs are poppin’ and all I can see is a wave of young titties bouncin’ in front of me, and I get confused and fall off the fuckin’ runway, break the leg. You can hear the pop on their live album, man.”

“Yeah, right,” Shade said. “I think I was there, too, singing harmony, wasn’t I? Next time you tell it, could you mention I was there, too, Willie?”

“Depends on who I’m tellin’ it to, Shade. In some circles your name ain’t a charm.”

Shade took note of the way the earring Willie wore flipped up and down with his every head movement, and asked, “What is it with earrings, anyway?”

“Hunh?” Willie’s fingers were touched to the shimmery ornament. “It’s fashion.”

“That’s all—just fashion?”

“Uh-huh. All my crowd has ’em.”

“It doesn’t mean anything? It doesn’t mean, ‘Hey, I’m for social justice,’ or ‘Party ’til you puke,’ or ‘Meet me in the men’s room,’ or nothing?”

“No, man. No. It’s all about fashion.” Willie turned his head to the side so Shade had a close-up view of the earring. “I just got this one, man, whatta you think?”

Shade pursed his lips and nodded slowly.

“It’s very fashionable, Willie.” Shade leaned over and tapped the cast on Willie’s leg. “I got some questions for you.”

“I knew you would.” Willie pushed on the bridge of his sunglasses as if he were adding camouflage to a hiding spot. “I ain’t the answer man, though.”

“There is a rumor making the rounds that a cop did some leg busting around here, either as a public service or a second job, I don’t know which. But the rumor is he did some unlicensed chiropracty hereabouts with a fungo.”