The Tin Roof Blowdown (20 page)

But some members of the old order clung to the old ways and refused to accept the fact they were dinosaurs. One of these was a 585-pound pile of whale sperm by the name of Fat Tommy Whalen, also know as Tommy Orca and Tommy Fins. He wore ice-cream linen suits and had slits for eyes. His neighborhood country club revoked his membership after he cannonballed off the diving board and sent a tidal wave into a wedding party and knocked the bride into a flower bed. His family vehicle was an SUV whose undercarriage was supported by tank springs. The youngest of his five children, his daughter, weighed over three hundred pounds. Years ago, every Wednesday and Saturday night, Tommy took the entire Whalen family to an all-you-can-eat, six-dollar buffet in Metairie and drove the owner out of business. He was a Damon Runyon character I had shared a box with at the racetrack, a gelatinous cartoon of a human being who smelled of baby power and lilac water and mouth spray. But the dope culture had been the bane of respectable illegal enterprise in New Orleans, and Tommy’s personal code had gone down the toilet with the city’s.

The shorter version? Clete Purcel had managed to walk into an airplane propeller.

The general story made the Times-Picayune; the particulars came to me from a New Iberia paramedic who had gone to work in New Orleans right after the storm.

Tommy Fins arrived at Sidney Kovick’s flower store in Algiers in fine style, resplendent in white slacks that would fit a rhino and sky-blue silk shirt and flowing polka-dot necktie. One of Sidney’s hired help, Marco Scarlotti, opened the door of the SUV for him, as though royalty were arriving, and walked with him to the entrance of the store. The morning was still cool, the green-and-white-striped canopy above the display window filling with the breeze off the river. Marco opened the door wide for Fat Tommy to enter. “Sidney is running a few minutes late. Have some coffee and chocolate doughnuts. We got a shitpile of them,” he said.

“Yeah, I could use a snack. Thanks, Marco.”

“You got it, Tommy. You’re looking good. Looks like you lost a few pounds.”

But while Tommy Orca had been talking to Marco, he had not kept his attention focused on the width of the doorway. Before he realized it, he had wedged himself inside the door frame, his buttocks splayed on one jamb, his stomach and scrotum crushed into the other. “You got to give me a push, Marco,” he wheezed.

Marco began shoving from behind, squatting down, pushing with his shoulder as though loading a horse onto a trailer. Then his fellow bodyguard Charlie Weiss came from the back of the shop and began pulling on Tommy’s arm, twisting it in the socket.

“Your face don’t look too good. You okay?” Marco said. “Get him a glass of water, Charlie.”

“He weighs enough as it is. Christ, his legs are giving out. Stand up, Tommy. This is not the place to sit down. Oh shit,” Charlie said.

By the time the paramedics arrived at the store, Tommy’s enormous girth had settled into the door frame like a partially deflated blimp. His lips were filmed with spittle, his breath an agonized gasp.

“Hang on, buddy. We’re going to knock out the wall,” a paramedic said.

But Tommy wasn’t listening. His face was pouring sweat, his eyes focused on Marco’s. “I’m fucked,” he said.

“No, we’re getting you out, Tommy. Just hang on, man,” Marco said.

Tommy breathed in and out, as though deliberately oxygenating his blood. “Listen, tell Sidney that Clete Purcel has got his queer. Tell Sidney to take care of my family.”

Then Tommy the Whale closed his eyes and swam out to sea, leaving Clete with a millstone hung around his neck.

CHAPTER
15

OTIS BAYLOR CAME into my office early monday. He wore slacks and suspenders, a long-sleeved white shirt and a tie, and seemed to radiate the freshness of the morning. But obviously he did not want me to misinterpret the purpose of his visit. “I have a question that needs to be resolved,” he said.

“Sit down.”

“A man named Ronald Bledsoe came by my house Saturday, un-announced and uninvited. He said he’s a private investigator working for the state. He showed me a gold badge and an ID card with his photograph on it. Is this something the state is doing?”

“I’m not sure. What did this fellow want?”

“He said he’s investigating the shooting of those black kids. He asked me if one of them had gone up my driveway. I told him I didn’t know. He asked me if I’d found any items on my property that might have been stolen from other people’s homes.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That if I’d found stolen goods anywhere, I would have turned them over to the authorities. He said my neighbor had seen one of the looters in my driveway.”

“Which neighbor?”

“At first he didn’t want to tell me. Then he said it was Tom Claggart. I didn’t like this man’s manner, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“It’s Dave.”

He ignored my correction. “I think this man is a fraud. He’s a strange-looking fellow. He has strange eyes.”

I took a yellow legal pad out of my desk. “Did he leave a business card?”

“No. I didn’t ask for one, either.”

“Would you describe him, please?”

“He’s a tall white man, bald, with a long face that’s sunken in the middle. His mouth is a funny color, like it has rouge on it, or it doesn’t go with his skin. He’s got a soft voice and accent, the kind people from the Carolinas have. His eyes are green. My daughter was working in the yard. He kept looking at her. I don’t want this guy around my house again.”

“If he comes back, tell him to leave. If he doesn’t, call us.”

“You’ll come out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all I needed to know.” He started to rise from his chair.

“I wanted to ask you a question on another subject,” I said, pushing aside my legal pad as though our official business were over. “In the army the first military weapon I fired was the ’03 Springfield.”

He was standing up now, waiting for me to pull the string.

“It’s a fine rifle. Did you leave yours behind in New Orleans?” I said.

“No, it’s in my house in New Iberia. You want to see it?”

“I thought maybe I could shoot it sometime.”

“Be my guest. You must have a lot of time on your hands,” he said.

After he was gone, I stirred my pen in a circle on my ink blotter. Otis Baylor was either an innocent man or a very smart one. If he or a member of his family had shot the two looters, the temptation would have been to lose the probable murder weapon in the event the round was found embedded in a house or tree trunk across the street. But I suspected Otis did not get where he was by doing the predictable.

I pulled the file on the shooting from my metal cabinet and looked back at the notes on my interview with the next-door neighbor, Tom Claggart. Claggart had said he had been sound asleep and had not heard the shot that crippled Eddy Melancon and killed Kevin Rochon. But the man calling himself a private investigator claimed Claggart had told him he saw one of the looters emerge from Otis Baylor’s driveway. If the PI was telling the truth, Claggart had lied to either me or the PI.

Why?

I didn’t know.

EARLY TUESDAY MORNING Clete Purcel woke to the sound of birdsong in his cottage at the motor court. In its shabby way, his home away from home was a grand place, straight out of another era, with no telephones in the rooms, shaded by live oaks, the slope down to the bayou spangled with autumnal sunshine. He fixed coffee and dropped a ham steak and three eggs in a frying plan and brushed his teeth and shaved while his food cooked. Then he opened the blinds and looked out upon his Caddy, its top spotted with bird droppings. It sat where he had parked it the previous night, under a spreading live oak. A tall man whose waxed bald head seemed unnaturally elongated was studying it, a knuckle poised on his chin. He leaned down and looked at the wire wheels and the rusted chrome on the back bumper and the Louisiana tag filmed with dried mud. He wiped the film from one number on the tag with his thumb, then dusted off his fingers.

“Can I help you with something?” Clete said from his doorway.

“I was admiring your vehicle. I restore vintage cars as a hobby,” the man replied. He had heavy eyebrows, like half-moon strips of animal fur that had been glued onto an expressionless face. “I own a Rolls-Royce. But I love Cadillacs, too. Where’d you get yours?”

“A movie company was making a film in New Iberia. They sold off all their vehicles when they left town.”

“I wish I could have gotten in on that,” the man said. “My name is Ronald Bledsoe. What’s yours?”

“You’ll have to excuse me. I’m eating breakfast right now,” Clete said. He started to close the door.

“I just moved in across the way and wanted to introduce myself.”

“That’s funny. A family that got blown out of cameron Parish was staying there.”

“My agency helped them relocate. I’m a private investigator.”

“Is that why you were checking out my tag?”

“No, it’s just a habit I have. I see dirt and I wipe it off. Early up-bringing, I guess.”

“Maybe you can recommend a place that restores old caddies.”

The man who called himself Ronald Bledsoe stared thoughtfully at the bayou. “As a matter of fact, I do know a local gentleman. Let me write his name down for you on my business card.” he wrote on the back of a card and handed it to Clete. “Tell him I sent you.”

“Thanks a lot. I appreciate this,” Clete said, holding up the card, sticking it into his shirt pocket.

CLETE FINISHED HIS BREAKFAST, then called me on his cell phone. “A guy with a hush-puppy accent and the name Ronald Bledsoe was messing around my Caddy. He’s hinky as a corkscrew. Can you run him through the NCIC?”

“I already did.”

“What’d you get back on him?”

“The same guy was out to Otis Baylor’s house. Baylor thought he was weird, too. The National Crime Information Center has nothing on him.”

“Why was this guy talking to Baylor?”

“He seemed to think Bertrand Melancon might have stashed stolen goods on Baylor’s property. He claims to be working for the state.”

“His business card says he’s out of Key West. I called the number, but the phone is disconnected. He also referred me to a car detailer in Lafayette. The guy didn’t recognize the name. You think he’s working for Sidney?”

“Maybe.”

“This guy is a real creep, Dave.”

“How many PIs are normal people?”

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m glad you explained that. Otherwise I would think you’re insulting as hell.”

CLETE HAD SAID that since Katrina he had heard the sounds of little piggy feet clattering to the trough. I think his image was kind. I think the reality was far worse. The players were much bigger than the homegrown parasites that have sucked the life out of Louisiana for generations. The new bunch was educated and groomed and had global experience in avarice and venality and made the hair-oil and polyester crowd in our state legislature look like the Ecclesiastical College of Cardinals. Think of an inverted pyramid. Staggering sums of money were given to insider corporations who subcontracted the jobs to small outfits that used only nonunion labor. A $500 million contract for debris removal was given to a company in Miami that did not own a single truck, then the work was subcontracted to people who actually load debris and haul it away. Emergency roof repairs, what are called “blue roof jobs,” involved little more than tacking down rolls of blue felt on plywood. FEMA provided the felt free. Insider contractors got the jobs for one hundred dollars a square foot and paid the subs two dollars a square foot. In the meantime, fifty thousand nonunion workers were brought into the city, most of them from the Caribbean, and were paid an average of eight to nine dollars an hour to do the work.

Why dwell on it? It’s unavoidable. It became obvious right after Katrina that the destruction of New Orleans was an ongoing national tragedy and probably an American watershed in the history of political cynicism. I knew early on that the events taking place in New Orleans now would lay large claim on the rest of my career if not my life. If I had been able to convince myself otherwise, the call I was about to receive from Special Agent Betsy Mossbacher would have quickly disillusioned me.

“Sorry to bother you again, but I’ve got some conflicting information here regarding a Felix Ramos, street name Chula Ramos. This guy and his buddy were supposed to be transferred from the Iberia Parish Prison into our custody,” she said.

“That’s right. He and his fall partner got nailed at a meth lab. I interviewed both of them. That was right before Katrina. You guys were supposed to pick them up.”

“Two informants, independently of each other, say Chula is working as an electrician and plumber in New Orleans. I’ve talked to five different people in Iberia Parish, including your jailer. No one seems to know where Ramos is or what happened to him or if he ever existed. Can you explain that?”

“How about his partner?”

“His partner is in the stockade. There’s no problem with his partner. Not unless you guys lose him before we can get down there.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I called the parish prison and the district attorney. Then I went into Helen’s office. “The FBI thinks we’ve lost Felix Ramos, one of those guys who—”

“Yeah, the one who called me a queer in Spanish.”

“Yeah, that one,” I said, my eyes slipping off hers. “The ADA who caught the case says he was marked for transfer to federal custody, so she put everything on hold. In fact, she thought the FBI had already picked him up.”

“Maybe they did. Maybe they lost him in their own system.”

“Betsy Mossbacher isn’t one to screw up like that. She says Ramos may be drawing paychecks in New Orleans. A lot of MS-13 guys are in the trades.”

“Give me a few minutes,” she said.

I went back to my office. It was almost quitting time. I felt like I was in a bad dream, unable to extract myself from New Orleans and the Melancon-Rochon shooting and the probable homicide of Jude LeBlanc. I wanted to go home and eat a hot supper with my family and perhaps walk down Main Street with them in the twilight and have a dessert on the terrace behind Clementine’s restaurant. I wanted to have a normal life again.