“Get out in front of this, partner,” I said. “The justice system is emblematic and selective. Don’t let some bureaucratic functionaries hang you out to dry.”
His eyes stayed locked on mine, his thoughts concealed. Then whatever speculation or conclusion they had contained went out of them and he looked toward the doorway.
“Hi, Melanie. This is Mr. Robicheaux, from New Iberia. He was in the neighborhood and just dropped by to see how we’re doing. I told him we’re doing just fine,” Otis Baylor said.
“Yes, I remember you. It’s very nice to see you again,” his wife said, extending one hand, an iced drink in the other. “We’re doing quite well, considering.” She looked at the Springfield rifle that was propped by my chair. “This isn’t about the Negroes who were shot, is it? We’ve already told the authorities everything we know. I can’t believe something like that occurred in front of our house.”
I WALKED NEXT DOOR and looked up the ladder at the bullet-headed man wrestling with a broken oak limb on his roof. Out in the alley, a forklift was unloading a massive generator from the bed of a truck.
“Could I speak with you, sir?” I called, lifting up my badge holder.
The bullet-headed man climbed down from the ladder, his face ruddy from his work. I told him who I was and why I was in the neighborhood. “Tom Claggart,” he said, his meaty hand gripping mine warmly.
“Has the FBI or the city police talked with you?”
“Hang on a minute.”
He walked out to the alley and told the forklift operator where to set the generator in his yard. Then he returned, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the generator ended up in the right place, on an old brick patio half sunk in mud.
“Got a friend who’s a shipbuilder. He gave me one of his generators,” he said. “I should have put one in before the storm, like Otis did. What was that you were saying?”
“Has the FBI or the city police been out?”
“No, I wish they had.”
“You heard the shot?”
“I didn’t hear anything. I was sound asleep. I’d been chasing those bastards all over the neighborhood.”
“I see. Why do you wish the FBI or NOPD had talked with you?”
“To tell them to clean up the goddamn city, that’s why.”
I nodded, my expression pleasant, my eyes focused on his flower bed. “You own firearms, sir?”
“You bet your ass I do.”
“Think any of your neighbors might have gotten sick and tired of being robbed and intimidated the other night?”
“Can you spell that out a little more clearly?”
“People get fed up. Or sometimes fed up and scared. A housewife picks up a thumb-buster and blows an intruder through a glass window. The guy turns out to be a serial rapist. At most police stations, there’s usually a round of applause at morning roll call.”
He looked at me blankly, his mouth a tight seam.
“The Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms to protect our homes and our loved ones,” I said. “During a time of social anarchy, the good guys sometimes feel a need to use extreme measures. I think their point of view is understandable. You hearing me on this, Mr. Claggart?”
“Otis has had a big cross to carry,” he replied.
“I’m aware of that.” I kept my eyes fastened on his.
He huffed air out of his nose and looked at Otis Baylor’s house. For just a moment I thought I saw a cloud slip across his face, the stain of resentment or envy take hold in his expression. “He said something about hanging black ivory on the wall.”
“Mr. Baylor said this?”
“Earlier in the evening, when some guys were breaking into houses on the other side of the street.”
“Did others hear him say this?”
“A couple of friends were in the yard with me. Otis had been outside with his rifle. Listen, I don’t blame him. We offered to help him, in fact.”
“Would you write down the names of your friends and their addresses, please?”
“I hope I’m not getting anybody in trouble. I just want to do the right thing,” he said, taking my pen and notepad from my hand.
With neighbors like Tom Claggart, Otis Baylor didn’t need enemies.
BUT THERE WAS an ancillary player not far away I could not resist interviewing. Sidney Kovick was an enigmatic man whose personality was that of either a sociopath or a master thespian. He was tall, well built, with dark hair, close-set eyes, and a knurled forehead, and he wore fine clothes and shined oxblood loafers with tassels on them. When he walked he seemed to jingle with the invisible sound of money and power. When he entered a room, most people, even those who did not know who he was, automatically dialed down their voices.
He had grown up on North Villere Street and worked as a UPS driver before he joined the Airborne and went to Vietnam. He came home with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart but seemed to have no interest in his own heroism. Sidney had liked the army because he understood it and appreciated its consistency and predictability. He also appreciated the number of rackets it afforded him. He lent money at twenty percent interest to fellow enlisted men, had ties with pimps in Saigon ’s Bring-Cash Alley, and sold truckloads of PX goods on the Vietnamese black market. Sidney didn’t believe in setting geographical limits on his talents.
Whenever someone asked Sidney ’s advice about a problem of any kind, his admonition was always the same: “Don’t never let people know what you’re thinking.”
He owned a flower shop, loved movies, and always wore a carnation in his lapel. His favorite quote was a paraphrase of a line spoken by Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind: “Great fortunes are made during the rise and fall of nations.” Sidney was invited to the governor’s inauguration ball, rode on the floats during Mardi Gras, and performed once on the wing of a biplane at an aerial show over Lake Pontchartrain. Longtime cops looked upon him as a refreshing change from the street detritus they normally dealt with. The only problem with romanticizing Sidney Kovick was the fact he could snuff your wick and sip a glass of burgundy while he did it.
Workmen were going in and out of his front door. I stepped inside without knocking. The interior looked like an army of Norsemen had marched through it. Sidney stood in his dining room, looking up at a chandelier that someone had shredded into tangled strips with an iron garden rake.
“They hit you pretty hard, huh?” I said.
He stared at me as though he were sorting through faces on a rolodex wheel. “Yeah, the puke population is definitely out of control. I think we need a massive airdrop of birth-control devices on two thirds of the city. What are you doing here, Dave?”
“Investigating the shooting of the guys who creeped your house.”
“House creeps don’t piss in your oven and refrigerator.”
“You’re right,” I said, plaster crunching under my shoes. “Looks like they tore out all your walls and part of your ceilings. Think they were after anything in particular?”
“Yeah, the secrets to the Da Vinci Code. You still off the sauce?”
“I’m still in AA, if that’s what you mean.”
“Get your nose out of the stratosphere. I was going to offer you a couple of fingers of Beam, because that’s all I’ve got. But I didn’t want to offend you. I hear one of those black guys was turned into an earth slug.”
“That’s the word. I haven’t interviewed him yet.”
“Yeah?”
I wasn’t sure if he was listening or if he was asking me to repeat what I had just said. He told a workman to get a ladder and pull down the wrecked chandelier. Then he touched the ruined surface of his dining table and brushed off his fingers. “Which hospital is the human slug in?” he said.
“Why do you ask?”
“I feel sorry for him. Anybody who could do this to people’s homes must have a mother who was inseminated by leakage from a colostomy bag.”
“You always knew how to say it, Sidney.”
