“I stopped by Sidney Kovick’s house yesterday and had an informal chat with him. The looters ripped the Sheetrock and lathwork and plaster from most of his walls and ceilings.”
“Score one for the pukes.”
“I think they took Sidney down in a major way. Sidney has never had an IRS beef. It wouldn’t surprise me if his walls had been loaded with cash.”
“So what?”
“He was trying to find out which hospital the quadriplegic looter is in.”
“And?”
“The quadriplegic is at Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge. I tried to warn him, but he’s not a listener.”
Helen pulled at an earlobe. “Bwana?”
“What is it?”
“Whatever happens to that bunch is on them. Got it?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
CLETE PURCEL did not lose custody of Bertrand Melancon during the handover at the chain-link jail at the airport. Bertrand got loose farther up the road, by Gonzales, when the prison bus he was riding in pulled into a soaked field that had been created as a holding area during the height of the storm. Hundreds of inmates from jails in two parishes had huddled in the field, along with their guards, while lightning exploded over their heads and the rain almost tore the clothes from their bodies. Many of them, I suspect, went through the most religious moments of their lives. But when Bertrand Melancon arrived and was told to line up at a Porta Potti, the drama that his peers had experienced had already slipped into history and the field was simply a churned and trash- strewn piece of farm acreage where egrets and displaced seagulls competed for litter.
“How long we got to be here, man?” Bertrand asked a guard.
“The Four Seasons is kind of backed up right now. But we told the maids y’all were coming and to prepare your rooms as quick as possible,” the guard replied.
Most of the inmates on the buses had no desire to run. Most were tired, mosquito-bitten, sunburned, and sick from bad food. Most of them wanted to be watching television in an air-conditioned mainline prison that provided clean beds and served hot meals. If most of them had their choice, they would be housed in a building with six- foot-thick walls and a foundation that Noah’s deluge couldn’t disturb.
Bertrand had other plans. At twilight, when the bus pulled out on the highway, he pried the grillwork off a back window and dropped into a rain ditch. His absence was not noticed until the bus was halfway to Shreveport.
Nig Rosewater personally came to Clete’s upstairs apartment on St. Ann to give him the news. Nig could not be described as having a neck like a fireplug. He had no neck. His jowls and chin seem to grow straight down into his shoulders. His starched shirt and gold collar pin did not help his appearance, either. In fact, with his gold necktie, he looked like a hog eating an upright ear of buttered corn.
“Nig, I deliver the freight. I got a signed receipt for transfer of custody. At that point Bertrand Melancon became the property of Orleans Parish,” Clete said. “The other half of your thirty-grand skip is in Our Lady of the Lake. You owe me three grand.”
“You didn’t have nothing to do with catching the vegetable in the hospital. So that makes your fee fifteen hundred at best,” Nig replied. “And that’s not why I’m here, either. I had two of Sidney Kovick’s people banging on my door at seven this morning. I told them I don’t know where Bertrand Melancon and Andre Rochon are, because if I knew that kind of information, I wouldn’t be out over fifteen large right now. So they want to know which hospital the vegetable is in. I tell them I don’t know that, either, since the government don’t consult with me when it’s shipping people all over the country.
“One of these guys says, ‘Your fifteen large is toilet paper. You deliver up the boons who broke into Mr. Kovick’s house or Mr. Kovick is gonna figure whatever they done or they took is on you.’”
Clete’s apartment was located above his office. The day was bright and sunny outside, and the bodies of birds that had been driven by storm wind against the side of his building were piled on his balcony, their feathers fluttering in the wind.
“I don’t see how any of this falls on me, particularly when you’re already trying to stiff me on my recovery fee,” Clete said.
“Buy yourself a better brand of wax removal, Purcel. These guys took Sidney down for something he can’t claim as an insurance or business loss. His guys said my fifteen large is toilet paper. What’s that tell you? These morons blundered into a big score, maybe something they can’t unload. What if it’s bearer bonds or high-tech military stuff? Whose interest would it be in to let a couple of street pukes skate on the bail? Who would have the connections to fence or launder whatever the pukes took from Sidney?”
Clete honked his nose into a handkerchief, concealing his expression. “I say brass it out and tell them to screw themselves. Don’t let Sidney push you around.”
“You’re pissing me off.”
“Gee, I’m sorry about that.”
The power was off in the apartment and Nig was sweating inside his sports coat. “Why don’t you clean the dead birds off your balcony? It stinks in here,” Nig said, the sheen of fear in his eyes unmistakable.
BEFORE THE HURRICANE, Clete had filled his bathtub, lavatory, and sink with tap water. Now he was using it on a daily basis to sponge-bathe, shave, brush his teeth, and to refill his toilet tank. After Nig was gone, Clete put on fresh clothes, combed his hair, and slipped on his nylon shoulder holster and blue-black Smith amp; Wesson revolver. He went downstairs to the courtyard and fired up his latest Cadillac acquisition, a powder-blue vintage convertible that was pocked with paint blisters, the top spotted with mold. As soon as the engine caught, a huge cloud of oil smoke exploded from the tailpipe. His porkpie hat canted on his head, Clete swung out onto the street, chewing on the corner of his lip, wondering how far to push a man whose potential no one in either the New Orleans underworld or New Orleans law enforcement ever accurately assessed.
Across the river in Algiers, whole neighborhoods had survived the storm with no flooding and only a temporary loss of power. From the bridge, with his convertible top down, Clete could look back and see the glassy shine of brown water that still covered most of New Orleans and the miles of roofless houses and the rivers of mud that had filled automobiles like concrete. The image was so stark and irrevocably sad he involuntarily mashed on the accelerator and almost rear-ended a gasoline truck.
In Algiers, he parked in front of a flower shop that was tucked neatly inside a purple-brick building on a residential street. Two of Sidney Kovick’s employees were playing gin rummy at a table in the shade of a green- and-white-striped canopy that extended from the top of the display window. The two men were leftovers from the old Giacano crime family and for a brief time had thought their day in the sun had come and gone, until 9/11 landed on them like a gift from heaven and the governmental bete noire shifted from pukes dealing crack in the projects to Mideastern young males loading up with cell phones at the local Wal-Mart.
Clete got out on the sidewalk, opened his coat, and lifted his.38 from his shoulder holster with the ends of his fingers. He held it up in the air so the two men could see it, then dropped it on the passenger seat of the Caddy. “Keep an eye on that for me, will you, Marco?” he said.
“No problem,” Marco said.
“Hey, Purcel, your convertible looks like it’s got herpes,” the other man said.
“Yeah, I know. I told your sister not to sit on it. But what are you gonna do?” Clete replied as he entered the shop, a bell ringing over his head.
The temperature inside was frigid, the glass lockers smoky with cold. The tall man behind the counter was dressed in seersucker slacks and a long-sleeved blue shirt open at the collar, exposing the thick curls of black hair on his chest.
“What’s the haps, Sidney?” Clete said.
Sidney began placing roses a stem at a time into a green vase. “Nig Rosewater sent you here?”
“Nig says you want the pukes who took you down. That’s understandable. But that makes four of us-you, me, Nig, and Wee Willie Bimstine. What I need to explain to you is we got no idea where these guys are.”
“Don’t lie to me. You already found one guy at the hospital. But he’s not there anymore.”
“That’s right, I did find him and he got moved to ‘whereabouts unknown.’ So don’t be telling me I’m lying.”
