In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead Part 2

"It's back in yonder," he said, and pointed. "You can see my footprints where I went in to take a whiz."

The St. Mary Parish deputy fitted a cloth cap on his head and sprayed his face, neck, and arms with mosquito dope, then handed the can to me.

"If I was you, I'd put my s.h.i.+rt on, Mr. Sykes," he said. "We used to have a lot of bats down here. Till the mosquitoes ate them all."

Sykes smiled good-naturedly and waited for his turn to use the can of repellent.

"I bet you won't believe this," the deputy said, "but it's been so dry here on occasion that I seen a catfish walking down the levee carrying his own canteen."

Sykes's eyes crinkled at the corners, then he walked ahead of us into the gloom, his loafers sinking deep into the wet sand.

"That boy's a long way from his Hollywood poontang, ain't he?" the deputy said behind me.

"How about putting the cork in the humor for a while?" I said.

"What?"

'The man grew up down South. You're patronizing him."

"I'm wha-"

I walked ahead of him and caught up with Sykes just as he stepped out of the willows into a shallow, water-filled depression between the woods and a sandbar. The water was stagnant and hot and smelled of dead garfish.

"There," he said. "Right under the roots of that dead tree. I told y'all."

A barkless, sun-bleached cypress tree lay crossways in a sandbar, the water-smooth trunk eaten by worms, and gathered inside the root system, as though held by a gnarled hand, was a skeleton crimped in an embryonic position, wrapped in a web of dried algae and river trash.

The exposed bone was polished and weathered almost black, but sections of the skin had dried to the color and texture of desiccated leather. Just as Sykes had said, a thick chain encased with rust was wrapped around the arms and rib cage. The end links were fastened with a padlock as wide as my hand.

I tore a willow branch off a tree, shucked off the leaves with my Puma knife, and knelt down in front of the skeleton.

"How do you reckon it got up under those roots?" Sykes said.

"A bad hurricane came through here in '57," I said. "Trees like this were torn out of the ground like carrots. My bet is this man's body got caught under some floating trees and was covered up later in this sandbar."

Sykes knelt beside me.

"I don't understand," he said. "How do you know it happened in '57? Hurricanes tear up this part of the country all the time, don't they?"

"Good question, podna," I said, and I used the willow branch to peel away the dried web of algae from around one s.h.i.+nbone, then the other.

"That left one's clipped in half," Sykes said.

"Yep. That's where he was shot when he tried to run away from two white men."

"You clairvoyant or something?" Sykes said.

"No, I saw it happen. About a mile from here."

"You saw it happen?" Sykes said.

"Yep."

"What's going on here?" the deputy said behind us. "You saying some white people lynched somebody or something?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. When we get back we'll need to talk to your sheriff and get your medical examiner out here."

"I don't know about y'all over in Iberia Parish, but n.o.body around here's going to be real interested in n.i.g.g.e.r trouble that's thirty-five years old," the deputy said.

I worked the willow branch around the base of the bones and peeled back a skein of algae over the legs, the pelvic bones, and the crown of the skull, which still had a section of grizzled black hair attached to the pate. I poked at the corrugated, blackened work boots and the strips of rag that hung off the pelvis.

I put down the branch and chewed on the corner of my thumbnail.

"What are you looking for, Mr. Rob.i.+.c.heaux?" Sykes said.

"It's not what's there, it's what isn't," I said. "He wasn't wearing a belt on his trousers, and his boots have no laces."

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h probably did his shopping at the Goodwill. Big f.u.c.king deal," the deputy said, slapped a mosquito on his neck, and looked at the red and black paste on his palm.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON I WENT BACK TO WORK ON THE CASE of the murdered girl, whose full name was Cherry LeBlanc. No one knew the whereabouts of her father, who had disappeared from Mamou after he was accused of molesting a black child in his neighborhood, but I interviewed her grandparents again, the owner of the bar in St. Martinville where she had last worked, the girls she had been with in the clapboard jukejoint the night she died, and a police captain in Lafayette who had recommended probation for her after she had been busted on the prost.i.tution charge. I learned little about her except that she seemed to have been an uneducated, unskilled, hapless, and fatally beautiful girl who thought she could be a viable player in a c.r.a.p game where the dice for her kind were always shaved.

I learned that about her and the fact that she had loved zydeco music and had gone to the jukejoint to hear Sam "Hogman" Patin play his harmonica and bottleneck blues twelve-string guitar.

My desk was covered with scribbled notes from my note pad, morgue and crime-scene photos, interview ca.s.settes, and Xeroxes from the LeBlanc family's welfare case history when the sheriff walked into my office. The sky outside was lavender and pink now, and the fronds on the palm trees out by the sidewalk were limp in the heat and silhouetted darkly against the late sun.

"The sheriff over in St. Mary Parish just called," he said.

"Yes?"

"He said thanks a lot. They really appreciate the extra work." He sat on the corner of my desk.

"Tell him to find another line of work."

"He said you're welcome to come over on your days off and run the investigation."

"What's he doing with it?"

"Their coroner's got the bones now. But I'll tell you the truth, Dave, I don't think it's going anywhere."

I leaned back in my swivel chair and drummed my fingers on my desk. My eyes burned and my back hurt.

"It seems to me you've been vindicated," the sheriff said. "Let it go for now."

"We'll see."

"Look, I know you've got a big workload piled on you right now, but I've got a problem I need you to look into when you have a chance. Like maybe first thing tomorrow morning."

I looked back at him without speaking.

"Baby Feet Balboni," he said.

"What about him?"

"He's in New Iberia. At the Holiday Inn, with about six of his fellow greaseb.a.l.l.s and their wh.o.r.es. The manager called me from a phone booth down the street he was so afraid one of them would hear him."

"I don't know what I can do about it," I said.

"We need to know what he's doing in town."

"He grew up here."

"Look, Dave, they can't even handle this guy in New Orleans. He cannibalized half the Giacano and Cardo families to get where he is. He's not coming back here. That's not going to happen."

I rubbed my face. My whiskers felt stiff against my palm.

"You want me to send somebody else?" the sheriff asked.

"No, that's all right."

"Y'all were friends in high school for a while, weren't you?"

"We played ball together, that's all."

I gazed out the window at the lengthening shadows. He studied my face.

"What's the matter, Dave?"

"It's nothing."

"You bothered because we want to bounce a baseball buddy out of town?"

"No, not really."

"Did you ever hear that story about what he did to Didi Giacano's cousin? Supposedly he hung him from his colon by a meat hook."

"I've heard that same story about a half-dozen wiseguys in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. It's an old N.O.P.D. heirloom."

"Probably just bad press, huh?"

"I always tried to think of Julie as nine-tenths thespian," I said.

"Yeah, and gorilla s.h.i.+t tastes like chocolate ice cream. Dave, you're a laugh a minute."

CHAPTER 3.

Julie Balboni looked just like his father, who had owned most of the slot and racehorse machines in Iberia Parish during the 1940s and, with an a.s.syrian family, had run the gambling and prost.i.tution in the Underpa.s.s area of Lafayette. Julie was already huge, six and a half feet tall, when he was in the eleventh grade, thick across the hips and tapered at both ends like a fat banana, with tiny ankles and size-seven feet and a head as big as a buffalo's. A year later he filled out in serious proportions. That was also the year he was arrested for burglarizing a liquor store. His father walked him out into the woods at gunpoint and whipped the skin off his back with the nozzle end of a garden hose.

His hair grew on his head like black snakes, and because a physician had injured a nerve in his face when he was delivered, the corner of his mouth would sometimes droop involuntarily and give him a lewd or leering expression that repelled most girls. He farted in cla.s.s, belched during the pledge of allegiance, combed his dandruff out on top of the desk, and addressed anyone he didn't like by gathering up his s.c.r.o.t.u.m and telling them to bite. We walked around him in the halls and the locker room. His teachers were secretly relieved when his mother and father did not show up on parents' night.

His other nickname was Julie the Bone, although it wasn't used to his face, because he went regularly to Mabel White'sNegro brothel in Crowley and the Negro cribs on Hopkins Avenue in New Iberia.

But Julie had two uncontested talents. He was both a great kick boxer and a great baseball catcher. His ankles twisted too easily for him to play football; he was too fat to run track; but with one flick of a thick thigh he could leave a kick-box opponent heaving blood, and behind the plate he could steal the ball out of the batter's swing or vacuum a wild pitch out of the dust and zip the ball to third base like a BB.

In my last time out as a high school pitcher, I was going into the bottom of the ninth against Abbeville with a shutout almost in my pocket. It was a soft, pink evening, with the smell of flowers and freshly cut gra.s.s in the air. Graduation was only three weeks away, and we all felt that we were painted with magic and that the spring season had been created as a song especially for us. Innocence, a lock on the future, the surge of victory in the loins, the confirmation of a girl's kiss among the dusky oak trees, like a strawberry bursting against the roof of the mouth, were all most a.s.suredly our due.

We even felt an acceptance and camaraderie toward Baby Feet. Imminent graduation and the laurels of a winning season seemed to have melted away the differences in our backgrounds and experience.

Then their pitcher, a beanballer who used his elbows, knees, and spikes in a slide, hit a double and stole third base. Baby Feet called time and jogged out to the mound, sweat leaking out of his inverted cap. He rubbed up a new ball for me.

"Put it in the dirt. I'm gonna let that c.o.c.ksucker have his chance," he said.

"I don't know if that's smart, Feet," I said.

"I've called a shutout for you so far, haven't I? Do what I tell you."

On the next pitch I glanced at the runner, then fired lowand outside, into the dirt. Baby Feet vacuumed it up, then spun around, throwing dust in the air like an elephant, and raced toward the backstop as though the ball had gotten past him.

The runner charged from third. Suddenly Baby Feet reappeared at the plate, the ball never having left his hand, his mask still on his face. The runner realized that he had stepped into it and he tried to bust up Baby Feet in the slide by throwing one spiked shoe up in Feet's face. Baby Feet caught the runner's spikes in his mask, tagged him across the head with the ball, then, when it was completely unnecessary at that point, razored his own spikes into the boy's ankle and twisted.

The players on the field, the coaches, the people in the stands, stared numbly at home plate. Baby Feet calmly sc.r.a.ped his spikes clean in the sand, then knelt and tightened the strap on a s.h.i.+n guard, his face cool and detached as he squinted up at the flag snapping on a metal pole behind the backstop.

IT WASN'T HARD TO FIND HIM AT THE HOLIDAY INN. HE AND HIS entourage were the only people in and around the swimming pool. Their tanned bodies glistened as though they had rubbed them with melted b.u.t.ter. They wore wraparound sungla.s.ses that were as black as a blind man's, reclined luxuriously on deck chairs, their genitalia sculpted against their bikinis, or floated on rubber mattresses, tropical drinks in holders at their sides, a glaze of suntan oil emanating from the points of their fingers and toes.

A woman came out the sliding door of a room with her two children, walked them to the wading pool, then obviously realized the nature of the company she was keeping; she looked around distractedly, as though she heard invisible birds cawing at her, and returned quickly to her room with her children's hands firmly in hers.

Julie the Bone hadn't changed a great deal since I had lastseen him seven years ago in New Orleans. His eyes, which were like black marbles, were set a little more deeply in his face; his wild tangle of hair was flecked in places with gray; but his barrel chest and his washtub of a stomach still seemed to have the tone and texture of whale hide. When you looked at the ridges of scar tissue under the hair on his shoulders and back where his father had beaten him, at the nests of tendons and veins in his neck, and the white protrusion of knuckles in his huge hands, you had the feeling that nothing short of a wrecking ball, swung by a cable from a great height, could adequately deal with this man if he should choose to destroy everything in his immediate environment.

He raised himself on one elbow from his reclining chair, pushed his sungla.s.ses up on his hair, and squinted through the haze at me as I approached him. Two of his men sat next to him at a gla.s.s table under an umbrella, playing cards with a woman with bleached hair and skin that was so tan it looked like folds of soft leather. Both men put down their cards and got to their feet, and one of them, who looked as though he were hammered together from boilerplate, stepped directly into my path. His hair was orange and gray, flattened in damp curls on his head, and there were pachuco crosses tattooed on the backs of his hands. I opened my seersucker coat so he could see the badge clipped to my belt. But recognition was already working in his face.

"What's happening, Cholo?" I said.

"Hey, lieutenant, how you doin'?" he said, then turned to Baby Feet. "Hey, Julie, it's Lieutenant Rob.i.+.c.heaux. From the First District in New Orleans. You remember him when-"

"Yeah, I know who it is, Cholo," Baby Feet said, smiling and nodding at me. "What you up to, Dave? Somebody knock a pop fly over the swimming-pool wall?"

"I was just in the neighborhood. I heard you were back in town for a short visit."

"No kidding?"

"That's a fact."