Sunset Limited

A FEW MINUTES LATER I walked up to the house and ate supper in the kitchen with Alafair and Bootsie. The phone rang on the counter. I picked it up.

'Dave, this probably don't mean nothing, but a man was axing about Clete right after you went up to eat,' Batist said.

'Which man?'

'He was fishing on the bank, then he come in the shop and bought a candy bar and started talking French. Then he ax in English who own that convertible that was going down the road. I tole him the only convertible I seen out there was for Clete Purcel. Then he ax if the woman driving it wasn't in the movies.

'I tole him I couldn't see through walls, no, so I didn't have no idea who was driving it. He give me a dol'ar tip and gone back out and drove away in a blue car.'

'What kind of French did he speak?' I asked.

'I didn't t'ink about it. It didn't sound no different from us.'

'I'll mention it to Clete. But don't worry about it.'

'One other t'ing. He only had an undershirt on. He had a red-and-green tattoo on his shoulder. It look like a, what you call them t'ings, they got them down in Mexico, it ain't a crawfish, it's a-'

'Scorpion?' I said.

I CALLED CLETE AT his cottage outside Jeanerette.

'The Scarlotti shooter may be following you. Watch for a blond guy, maybe a French Canadian-' I began.

'Guy with a tattoo on his shoulder, driving a blue Ford?' Clete said.

'That's the guy.'

'Geri and I stopped at a convenience store and I saw him do a U-turn down the street and park in some trees. I strolled on down toward a pay phone, but he knew I'd made him.'

'You get his tag number?' I asked.

'No, there was mud on it.'

'Can you get hold of Holtzner?'

'If I have to. The guy's wiring is starting to spark. I smelled crack in his trailer today.'

'Where's Geraldine?'

'Where's any hype? In her own universe. That broad's crazy, Dave. After I told her we were being followed by the guy with the tattoo, she accused me of setting her up. Every woman I meet is either unattainable or nuts… Anyway, I'll try to find Holtzner for you.'

An hour later he called me back.

'Holtzner just fired me,' he said.

'Why?'

'I got him on his cell phone and told him the Canadian dude was in town. He went into a rage. He asked me why I didn't take down this guy when I had the chance. I go, 'Take down, like cap the guy?'

'He goes, 'What, an ex-cop kicked off the police force for killing a federal witness has got qualms?'

'I say, 'Yeah, as a matter of fact I do.'

'He goes, 'Then sign your own paychecks, Rhino Boy.'

'Rhino Boy? How'd I ever get mixed up with these guys, Dave?'

'Lots of people ask themselves that question,' I said.

THE EX-PROSTITUTE NAMED JESSIE Rideau, who claimed to have been present when Jack Flynn was kidnapped, called Helen Soileau's extension the next day. Helen had the call transferred to my office.

'Come talk to us, Ms. Rideau,' I said.

'You giving out free coffee in lockup?' she said.

'We want to put Harpo Scruggs away. You help us, we help you.'

'Gee, where I heard that before?' I could hear her breath flattening on the receiver, as though she were trying to blow the heat out of a burn. 'You ain't gonna say nothing?'

'I'll meet you somewhere else.'

'St. Peter's Cemetery in ten minutes.'

'How will I recognize you?' I asked.

'I'm the one that's not dead.'

I parked my truck behind the cathedral and walked over to the old cemetery, which was filled with brick-and- plaster crypts that had settled at broken angles into the earth. She sat on the seat of her paint-blistered gas- guzzler, the door open, her feet splayed on the curb, her head hanging out in the sunlight as I approached her. She had coppery hair that looked like it had been waved with an iron, and brown skin and freckles like a spray of dull pennies on her face and neck. Her shoulders were wide, her breasts like watermelons inside her blue cotton shirt, her turquoise eyes fastened on me, as though she had no means of defending herself against the world once it escaped her vision.

'Ms. Rideau?'

She didn't reply. A fire truck passed and she never took her eyes off my face.

'Give us a formal statement on Scruggs, enough to get a warrant for his arrest. That's when your problems start to end,' I said.

'I need money to go out West, somewhere he cain't find me,' she said.

'We don't run a flea market. If you conceal evidence in a criminal investigation, you become an accomplice after the fact. You ever do time?'

'You a real charmer.'

I looked at my watch.

'Maybe I'd better go,' I said.

'Harpo Scruggs gonna kill me. I had that box hid all them years for him. Now he gonna kill me over it. That's what y'all ain't hearing.'

'Why does he want the lockbox now?' I asked.

'Him and me run a house toget'er. Fo' years ago I found out he killed Lavern Viator in Texas. Lavern was the other girl that was in Morgan City when they beat that man wit' chains. So I moved the box to a different place, one he ain't t'ought about.'

'Let's try to be honest here, Jessie. Did you move it because you knew he was blackmailing someone with it and you thought it was valuable?'

Raindrops were falling out of the sunlight. There were blue tattoos of hearts and dice inside Jessie Rideau's forearms. She stared at the crypts in the cemetery, her eyes recessed, her face like that of a person who knows she will never have any value to anyone other than use.

'I gonna be wit' them dead people soon,' she said.

'Where'd you do time?'

'A year in St. John the Baptist. Two years in St. Gabriel.'

'Let us help you.'

'Too late.' She pulled the car door shut and started the engine. The exhaust pipe and muffler were rusted out, and smoke billowed from under the car frame.

'Why does he want the lockbox now?' I said.

She shot me the finger and gunned the car out into the street, the roar of her engine reverberating through the crypts.

THERE ARE DAYS THAT are different. They may look the same to everyone else, but on certain mornings you wake and know with absolute certainty you've been chosen as a participant in a historical script, for reasons unknown to you, and your best efforts will not change what has already been written.

On Wednesday the false dawn was bone-white, just like it had been the day Megan came back to New Iberia, the air brittle, the wood timbers in our house aching with cold. Then hailstones clattered on the tin roof and through the trees and rolled down the slope onto the dirt road. When the sun broke above the horizon the clouds in the eastern sky trembled with a glow like the reflection of a distant forest fire. When I walked down to the dock,