The Tin Roof Blowdown (39 page)

MELANIE HEARD THE rain slacken, then become nothing more than a whisper of tree branches across the tin surface of her roof. The side yard was strung with fog, the sky still flickering with electricity that made no sound. She had poured her glass half full of bourbon and had added more ice but no water. When she drank from the glass, the bourbon was cold enough and strong enough to anesthetize everything it touched. It was particularly effective in preempting or editing images from the night Katrina had made landfall and changed her life forever.

She thought she felt a vibration caused by footsteps on the gallery. But the footsteps couldn’t belong to Thelma or Otis, could they? Melanie would have seen the headlights in the driveway. Besides, Thelma and Otis always unloaded the groceries under the porte cochere and entered the house through the side door, just as they had in New Orleans.

She set down her book and listened. Then any doubts she had about the presence of someone on the gallery were removed by a sharp knock. She got up and approached the door at an angle, so she could see through one of the warped panes at the top without being seen by the person outside.

Suddenly she was looking at the profile of a black man. He was of medium height, unshaved, his hair uncut, his face beaded with moisture. He kept looking back at the road, where a vehicle’s headlights were burning on the road’s shoulder. Then the headlights went out and the young black man turned back toward the door.

Melanie stepped back quickly. The whiskey that had nestled in every corner of her system, warming and comforting her, seemed to evaporate like water on an overheated woodstove. Her hands trembled and her breath caught in her throat. She went to the kitchen and punched in 911, then realized there would not be time for the police to get there. She would have to deal with the black man herself, either by confronting or ignoring him.

But if she ignored him, he would assume no one was home and perhaps break in. She closed her eyes and thought she heard a gunshot, then realized the sound was not real, that the whiskey had betrayed her and was now re-creating and amplifying memories it was supposed to protect her from.

She heard the voice of a black woman speaking from the phone receiver: “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“What did you say?” Melanie asked.

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

“A man is at my door. Send someone out.”

“Is he breaking in?”

“He’s a black man. I don’t know who he is. He has no business here.”

“We’ll send someone out, ma’am. Is there someone else at your house?”

“No, you won’t send somebody out. You’ll give priority to auto accidents. I know you people.”

“What do you mean by ‘you people,’ ma’am? Do you need medical assistance? You sound like you’ve been drinking.”

“No, I don’t need medical assistance, you ignorant thing,” Melanie said. She dropped the receiver on the table, rejecting the dispatcher but not breaking the connection.

She pulled a butcher knife from one of the slits in the wood block where she kept all her sharpest knives. Then she went back to the front door and flung it open, the butcher knife concealed behind her.

The black man stood in front of her, clutching a flattened brown paper towel in both hands, like someone who had come Christmas caroling.

“Are you miz Baylor?” he asked.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Is Miss Thelma or Mr. Baylor here?”

“I asked you what you want.”

“So I guess they ain’t here. Let me read this to you, ma’am, then I’m gone.”

He positioned himself so the overhead light fell on the paper towel.

“Are you crazy?” she said.

“‘To Miss Thelma and the family of Miss Thelma,’” he read. “‘I am sorry for what I have did to her. I wasn’t always that kind of person. Or maybe I was. I am not sure. But I want to make it right even though I know it is not going to ever be right with her or anybody who was hurt like she been hurt.

“‘Andre and my brother Eddy and me was the ones who attacked her by the Desire. We done the same thing to a young girl in the Lower Nine. I want to tell her I’m sorry, too, but I cain’t find her. So if you know who she is, please tell her what I said.

“‘The night of the storm I went in your garage and stole gas. We also stole what is called “blood stones” from a man who stole them from somebody else. I hid them where the map on the bottom shows. They are yours. They won’t make up for what we done. But Eddy is ruined and Andre is dead and I think I have already lost my soul. So that’s all I got to say, except I apologize for what we done.

“‘Thank you, Bertrand Melancon.’”

She stared at him, stupefied. “You raped Thelma?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You piece of shit, you come to our house offering us blood diamonds? You goddamn piece of shit.”

“I ain’t meant to upset you.”

The cream he used in his hair had started to run and she could smell it on his skin. It smelled like aloe and body grease and candle wax. In her mind, she saw a bullet punch through a black man’s throat and, behind him, the skullcap of a teenage boy explode in a bloody spray. She thought she was going to be sick to her stomach but she wasn’t sure why. One thing was clear, however. She viscerally hated the black man standing on her gallery.

“You’ve ruined our lives. You destroyed my husband’s career. We’re losing everything we own because of you. You ask for forgiveness? You have the arrogance to ask that from us?”

He saw the knife in her hand. The blade was short, deep at the hilt, tapering triangularly to a honed point. “I’m sorry I bothered y’all, ma’am. I t’ought it was the right thing to do. I ain’t gonna do it again.”

He tried to offer her the letter he had written on the paper towel. She tore it from his hand and threw it in his face. He backed away from her, through the screen, then fell down the steps into the yard.

“Take this with you,” she said. She picked up the paper towel from the gallery, crumpling it into a ball, and threw it at him. “Did you hear me? I hope you do go to Hell.”

But Bertrand was already running for his grandmother’s car, looking back over his shoulder, wondering if redemption would ever be his or if insanity was the rule in human beings and not the exception.

Then he saw the lavender automobile again, the one with the chrome radiator cap on the outside of the engine. The driver was standing by the front headlight, watching Bertrand, his polished, elongated head unmistakable against the glow of the drawbridge.

Just won’t give it up, will you, motherfucker? Okay, let’s see if you got a pair of peaches or a pair of acorns on you, Bertrand said to himself.

He fired up his grandmother’s car, dropped the transmission clanking into reverse, and floored the accelerator. The tires spun a shower of mud and water into the air, and oil smoke bloomed in black clouds from under the hood as the car sped toward the front of the strange-looking vehicle with the radiator cap outside the engine.

Here I come, Toot’brush Face.

Bertrand was twisted all the way around in the seat as he steered, aiming through the back window at the man who called himself Ronald, the bald tires slick with mud, spinning serpentine lines on the asphalt and the shoulder. Ronald tried to hold his ground, but at the last moment he leaped aside and took cover behind the trunk of a live oak.

Figured you for gutless, Bertrand said to himself.

He took his foot off the accelerator and jammed on the brakes, expecting to slide within an inch of the lavender automobile with the outside radiator cap.

Instead, the brake pedal went all the way to the floor, as though it were totally disconnected from the rest of his grandmother’s car. The rear bumper crashed into Ronald’s restored Rolls-Royce, exploding the front end, scattering the asphalt with bits of headlight glass and wiring and pieces of chrome.

oh shit.

Bertrand dropped the transmission into drive, floored the accelerator again, and spun back out on the road, taking pieces of Ronald’s collectible with him. When he looked in the mirror, he saw Ronald staring in horror at the destruction that had just been done to his vehicle.

Tough luck, chuck. Sorry to skin your hide, Clyde. But you been sacked, Jack. So adios, Toast.

Bertrand’s mouth was wide with laughter as he roared down the road. There was only one problem. He had left behind his grandmother’s bumper as well as her license tag.

CHAPTER
26

FRIDAY MORNING I called Bo Diddley’s office in Lafayette. The receptionist answered, the same one who was a master at saying as little as possible.

“This is Detective Dave Robicheaux, with the Iberia Sheriff’s Department. Has Mr. Wiggins returned from his business trip to Miami?”

“He’s in a meeting right now,” she replied.

“Is his secretary there, the lady with the white-gold hair?”

“She’s on vacation.”

“Put Mr. Wiggins on.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. Go do it,” I said.

I marked the time on my watch. Almost two minutes went by before Bo picked up. “What’s the problem, Dave?”

“I have the feeling you don’t want to see me.”

“Where would you get an idea like that?”

“Did your receptionist tell you I was in your office Wednesday?”

“I probably didn’t see the message slip. Don’t take it out on her.”

I waited a beat before I spoke again. “I’ll be at your office in about forty minutes. If I were you, I’d be there. If you’re not, we’ll have you picked up by Lafayette PD.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

I thought it was time for Bo to experience a little anxiety. “You’re about to find out,” I said, and hung up.

The traffic was thin and I made it to the Lafayette Oil center in a half hour. Bo’s office was spacious and full of windows that gave a sense of airiness to an environment that was purely utilitarian. He was standing at his desk behind his glass partition, talking on the phone. He peered at me over his reading glasses and gestured for me to come in, as though he were anxious to see me.

“You tie one on last night?” he said.

“Where’s your secretary, the woman who was at the casino with Bobby Mack Rydel?”

“She’s out sick.”

“That’s funny. Your receptionist said she’s on vacation.”

Bo made an exasperated expression, as though his newly acquired Christian charity were indeed being tested. “Why do you want to treat me like this, Dave? Something I did back in college? Maybe I punched you when I was drunk? I always got the sense you thought I was hard on black people, hard on folks that maybe had more than I did. Well, if that’s how you felt, you were right. But I’m not like that today.”

He grinned, his eyes on mine, waiting for me to respond. His modesty, his candor, his vulnerability were a study in manipulation. But to portray him as a hypocrite would not be fair. James Boyd Wiggins had learned his value system from the oligarchy that had created him. In Louisiana, as in the rest of the South, the issue was always power. Wealth did not buy it. Wealth came with it. Televangelist preachers and fundamentalist churches sold magic as a way of acquiring it. The measure of one’s success was the degree to which he could exploit his fellow man or reward his friends or punish his enemies. In our state’s history, a demagogue with holes in his shoes forced Standard Oil to kiss his ring. Bo Diddley might have valued money, but I suspected he would fling it into an incinerator a shovelful at a time rather than take down the name of James Boyd Wiggins from the entrance of his office building.

“Why you looking at me like that?” he said, a grin still on his mouth.

I shook my head. “How long has Bobby Mack Rydel been working for you?”

“A security guy?”

“Among other things.”

“I retain a security service out of Baton Rouge for all my shipyards. They subcontract some of the work. I think Rydel might be a subcontractor for them, but I’m not sure. He’s out of Morgan City, isn’t he? Is this about the fight between him and your friend at the casino?”

As with all fearful people, Bo’s agenda always remained the same: Every action he took, every word he spoke, was an attempt to control the environment and the people around him. He filled the air with sound and answered questions with questions. Most disarming of all was his ability to include an element of truth in his ongoing deceptions.

“Rydel is a merc. He specializes in interrogation. That’s a bureaucratic term for ‘torture,’” I said. “Ever seen a woman who’s been suffocated with a plastic bag over her head?”

“No, get out of my face with this stuff.”

Bo was wound up like a clock spring. It was time for the changeup.

“You said you wanted to help me find a priest who went missing in the Lower Nine,” I said. “I think your interest lay elsewhere. I think you’re interested in blood diamonds that were looted from Sidney Kovick’s house.”

His eyes stayed locked on mine and never blinked.

“You know Sidney, don’t you?” I said.

“This is Louisiana,” he replied. “You don’t do business in New Orleans without crossing trails with people like Sidney Kovick. Say that stuff about diamonds again?”

Don’t let go of the thread, I told myself. “But you know Kovick personally.” I didn’t say it as a question.

“No, I don’t associate with gangsters. Neither does my wife. You should come to our charity golf tournament sometime and find out who our friends are. You know me, Dave. I burn stringer-bead rods. Everything I got I earned with my own sweat.”

His eyes had still not blinked. His facial skin was tight against the bone, his forearms thick and vascular, his nostrils swelling with air. I knew he was lying.

“Bobby Mack Rydel hangs with a misogynist and degenerate by the name of Ronald Bledsoe. I think they both serve the same employer. This man Bledsoe has done injury to my daughter. Before this is over, I’m going to square it.”

“You want to hear what I found out about the priest?”

He caught me off guard. Bo knew my weakness. But I didn’t care. I knew I wouldn’t get anything else out of him. “Go ahead,” I said.