The Neon Rain Part 20

I tapped my fingers on my water gla.s.s and looked away from his face.

"No games, partner," I said.

"You think I play games? A guy that run Orleans and half of St. Bernard Parish when you were a schoolboy? You think I brought you out here for games?"

"How is it you have a string on this guy?"

"He's an addict. An addict's one day away anytime you want him. This guy used to be a joy-popper. Now he's a two-balloon-a-day regular. You want him, try this restaurant." He dropped a matchbook on the tablecloth. On the cover was a palm tree and the words gulf sh.o.r.es, fine food, biloxi, Mississippi. "His connection's the guy that runs the valet parking."

"What do you care about Philip Murphy, Didi?"

"I got my reasons, a bunch of them maybe."

"He plays in a different ballpark. He's not a compet.i.tor."

"He's s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up some things over in Fort Lauderdale. There's some people there want him out of the way."

"I know this guy. He's not your crowd."

"That's right, he ain't. But he messes with it. What you don't understand is south Florida's not New Orleans. Miami and Fort Lauderdale are open cities. n.o.body's got a lock on the action, n.o.body gets cowboyed down there. Everybody always respected that. Now there's coloreds, Cubans, and Colombians in everything. They're f.u.c.king animals. They'll cowboy you for fifty bucks, they kill each other's children. Then guys like Murphy come around and make political deals with them-plots against Castro or some bulls.h.i.+t down in Central America. People that's cannibals, that was born in a chicken yard, end up working for the government. In the meantime, guys like me are in front of a grand jury."

I picked up the matchbook and put it in my s.h.i.+rt pocket.

"Thanks for the information, Didi. I hope things turn out better for you over at Baylor," I said.

"You ain't eat your lunch. You don't like Italian food?"

"You know how us old-time boozers are, scarred stomach and all that."

"Maybe you don't like eating as my guest, huh?"

"I've appreciated your hospitality. You're always a generous man. We'll see you, Didi."

"Yeah, sure. You're welcome. Keep one thing in mind, though. I never did time. Not in thirty years. You can tell that to any of those farts you know in the prosecutor's office."

It was boiling when I got back to the houseboat. Heat waves bounced off the roof, and every inch of metal and wood on the deck was hot to the touch. I put on my trunks and snorkel mask and swam out into the lake. The surface was warm, but I could feel the layers of coldness below me grow more intense the farther I swam from the sh.o.r.eline. I watched three pelicans floating in the groundswell in front of me, their pouched beaks swollen with fish, and tried to figure out what Didi Gee was up to. I hadn't accepted his explanation about Murphy creating complications for the mob in southern Florida, and his anger at the government's support of Cuban political gangsters seemed manufactured for the moment. But who was to say? In terms of law enforcement, south Florida was the La Brea Tar Pits East.

The real problem was that n.o.body knew what went on in the mind of Didi Gee except Didi Gee. Most cops categorize criminals as dimwits and degenerates, or we a.s.sume that the intelligent ones think more or less in the same logical patterns as we do. The truth is that absolutely no one knows what goes on in the mind of a psychopath. Didi Gee was a vicious, sentimental fat man who could just as easily tip a waitress fifty dollars as put an icepick in her husband's stomach. When he was a collector for the shy locks across the river in Algiers, his logo had been a bloodstained baseball bat that he kept propped up in the back seat of his convertible.

But somehow he and his kind always had their apologists. Journalists would treat them as honorable men who lived by an arcane private code; television doc.u.mentaries dwelt on their families, their attendance at Ma.s.s, their patriotism-and made only fleeting reference to their connection with semiacceptable forms of organized crime, such as numbers and union takeovers. They were simply businessmen who were no more unethical than large corporations.

Maybe so. But I'd seen their victims: small grocers and dry cleaners who borrowed money from them and who became employees in their own stores; nightclub entertainers, beer and meat distributors, horse jockeys who couldn't move out of town without permission; addicts who were always looking for more mules to pull their wagons; and those who became object lessons, their faces blown all over a car winds.h.i.+eld with double-ought buckshot.

Maybe the deeper problem was that the Didi Gees of the world understood us, but we did not understand them. Were they genetically defective, or evil by choice? I took a breath through the snorkel and dove down to the bottom of the lake and glided above the gray, rippling sand while small fish scurried away in the green-yellow light. The salt water I swam in contained the remains of people who symbolized to me the greatest possible extremes in human behavior. They were created by the same Maker. The similarity ended there.

Three years ago a small plane with a family on board from Tampa hit a bad headwind over the Gulf, used up all its gas, and pancaked into the lake ten miles out. They got out with only one life preserver. Both the father and mother were strong swimmers and could have struck out for the sh.o.r.e or the causeway, but they stayed with their three children and kept them afloat for two days. One by one the parents and the two oldest children slipped under the waves. The smallest child survived because his father had strapped him in the life preserver and tied his s.h.i.+rt around the child's head to protect it from the sun.

Some miles to the west and just south of Morgan City was the crushed and barnacle-encrusted hull of a German U-boat that an American destroyer had nailed in 1942, when n.a.z.i submarines used to lie in wait for the oil tankers that sailed from the refineries in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Shrimpers in New Iberia told stories of the orange fires that burned on the southern horizon late at night, and of the charred bodies they pulled up in their nets. I didn't understand then who the n.a.z.is were, but I imagined them as dark-uniformed, slit-eyed creatures who lived beneath the water and who could burn and murder people of goodwill whenever they wished.

Years later, when I was in college, I dove down to that wreck with an air tank and a weight belt. It was in sixty feet of water, lying on its side, the deck railing and forward gun s.h.a.ggy with moss, the painted identification numbers still visible on the conning tower. The stern was tilted downward into deeper water, and I thought I could see the frenetic, turning movements of sand sharks near the screws. My heart was clicking in my chest, I was breathing oxygen rapidly from my tank, and actually sweating inside my mask. I determined that I wasn't going to be overcome by my childhood fears, and I swam down to the dark, ma.s.sive outline of the conning tower and knocked against the steel plate with the b.u.t.t of my bowie knife.

Then the strangest occurrence of my life took place as I hovered above the wreck. I felt a cold current blow across me, a surge from the darkness beyond the submarine's screws, and air bubbles rose from under the hull. I heard the metal plates start to grate against the bottom, then there was a crunching, sliding sound, a dirty cloud of moss and floating sand, and suddenly the sub trembled almost erect and began sliding backwards off the continental shelf. I watched it, horrified, until it disappeared in the blackness. The sand sharks turned like brown minnows in its invisible wake.

I learned that this particular wreck moved several miles up and down the Louisiana coastline, and it was only coincidence that its weight had s.h.i.+fted in a strong current while I was on top of it. But I could not get out of my mind the image of those drowned n.a.z.is still sailing the earth after all these years, their eye sockets and skeletal mouths streaming seaweed, their diabolical plan still at work under the Gulf's tranquil, emerald surface.

A navy destroyer broke the spine of their s.h.i.+p with depth charges in 1942. But I believed that the evil they represented was held in check by the family who sacrificed their lives so their youngest member could live.

The phone was ringing when I climbed the ladder onto my deck. I sat in the hot shade of the umbrella and wiped my face with a towel while I held the receiver to my ear. It was Captain Guidry.

"Dave, is that you?" he said.

"Yes."

"Where've you been? I've been calling you for two hours."

"What is it?"

"I hate to call you with bad news. It's your brother, Jimmie. Somebody shot him twice in the public rest room by the French Market."

I squeezed my hand on my forehead and looked out at the heat waves hammering on the lake's surface.

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"I won't kid you. It's touch-and-go. It looks like the guy put two .22 rounds in the side of his head. Look, Jimmie's a tough guy. If anybody can make it, he will. You want me to send a car for you?"

"No, I have a rental. Where is he?"

"I'm here with him at Hotel Dieu Sisters. You drive careful, hear?"

The traffic was bad all the way across town. It was a half hour before I got to the hospital and found a place to park. I walked hurriedly up the tree-shaded walkway into the building, my sandals clacking on the tiles, my sweaty, unb.u.t.toned print s.h.i.+rt hanging outside my slacks. I had to swallow and breathe quietly for a moment before I could ask the receptionist where Jimmie's room was. Then I turned and saw Captain Guidry standing behind me.

"He's in recovery on the fifth floor, Dave. They got the bullets out," he said.

"What's it look like for him?"

"Better than it did when I talked with you. Let's walk down to the elevator."

"What happened?"

"I'm going to tell you everything we know. But slow down now. There're some real good docs taking care of him. We're going to ride this one out all right."

"Tell me what happened."

The elevator door opened, and a nurse pushed out a wheelchair in which sat a pretty woman in a pink nightgown. She was smiling and she held a spray of flowers in her lap. We stepped inside and the doors closed behind us.

"He walked down to the Cafe du Monde for beignets, then stopped at the public restroom next door. The one that's under the levee. A black kid that was taking a p.i.s.s in the wall urinal said Jimmie went into one of the stalls and closed the door. A minute later a guy came in, kicked open the door, and fired twice, point-blank. The kid says the gun had something on the barrel and it made a spitting sound. It sounds like a professional hit."

"What'd the guy look like?"

"The kid was scared s.h.i.+tless. He still is. We got him looking in mug books, but don't expect anything."

I clenched and unclenched my fists. The elevator was a slow one, and it kept stopping at floors where no one was waiting.

"Maybe this is the wrong time to tell you this, but some people are starting to think twice about your story," the captain said.

"How's that?"

"Maybe they were after you instead. Jimmie looks like your twin. There might be other explanations, but the local talent tends toward shotguns and car bombs."

"It's d.a.m.n poor consolation to be believed because your brother was shot."

"People are human. Give an inch."

"I don't have that kind of charity. That's my whole family up there."

"I can't blame you. But for what it's worth, we've got uniforms all over the floor. n.o.body'll get to him here."

"If he doesn't make it, you might be arresting me, Captain."

"I hate to hear you talk like that, Dave. It brings me great worry," he said.

Jimmie remained three more hours in the recovery room before they brought him into intensive care on a gurney. I wanted to go inside, but the surgeon wouldn't let me. He said both rounds had hit Jimmie at an angle, which was the only factor that saved his life. One had caromed off the skull and exited the scalp at the back of the head, but the second round had fractured the skull and put lead and bone splinters into the brain tissue. The surgeon's concern was about paralysis and loss of sight in one eye.

Captain Guidry had already gone back to the office, and I spent the rest of the afternoon alone in the waiting room. I read magazines, drank endless cups of bad coffee from a machine, and watched the light fade outside the window and the shadows of the oak trees fall on the brick-paved street down below. At eight o'clock I went downstairs and ate a sandwich in the cafeteria. I wanted to call Annie, but I thought I had already caused her enough traumatic moments and should spare her this one. Upstairs again, I talked with nurses, made friends with an elderly Cajun lady from Thibodaux who spoke English poorly and was afraid for her husband who was in surgery, and finally I watched the late news on television and went to sleep in a fetal position on a short couch.

In the morning a Catholic sister woke me up and gave me a gla.s.s of orange juice and told me it was all right to see my brother for a few minutes. Jimmie's jaws and head were wrapped thickly with bandages, almost like a plaster cast. His face was white and sunken, and both eyes were hollow and blackened as though he had been beaten with fists. An IV needle was taped down to the blue vein inside his right arm; an oxygen tube was attached to his nose; his bare chest was crisscrossed with curlicues of electronic monitoring wires. He looked as though all the life had been sucked out of him through a straw and the lighted machines around him had more future and viability than he.

I wondered what my father would think of this. My father brawled in bars, but he always fought for fun and he never bore a grudge. He wouldn't carry a gun for any reason, even when he played bouree with gamblers who were known as dangerous and violent men. But this was a different world from the New Iberia of the 1940s. Here people with the moral instincts of piranha would pump two bullets into the brain of a man they didn't know and spend the contract money on cocaine and wh.o.r.es.

There were small lights in Jimmie's dark eyes when he looked at me. His eyelids looked like they were made of paper, stained with purple dye.

"How you doing, boy?" I said. I rubbed the back of his arm and squeezed his palm. It was lifeless and felt like Johnny Ma.s.sina's had when I shook hands with him the night of his execution.

"Did you see who it was?"

His throat swallowed and his tongue made small saliva bubbles on his lower lip.

"Was it this guy Philip Murphy?" I asked. "A late-middle-aged, frumpy-looking guy with gla.s.ses? Like somebody who'd be selling dirty postcards around a schoolyard?"

His eyes looked away from me, the lids fluttering.

"How about a dark little guy?"

Jimmie started to whisper, then choked on the fluids in his throat.

"All right, don't worry about it now," I said. "You're safe here. There's three uniformed cops with you, and I'll be in and out of here all the time. But while you get well, I'm going to find out who did this to us. You remember what the old man used to say-'You pull on dat 'gator's tail, he gonna clean your kneecaps, him.'"

I smiled at him, then I saw his eyes flicker with an urgent light. His mouth opened and clicked dryly.

"Not now, Jim. There'll be time later," I said.

He worked his hand off the bed onto my chest. Then his fingers began to trace lines against my skin, but he was so weak that the frail pattern he made was like a cobweb spread across my breastbone. I nodded as though I understood, and placed his hand back on the bed. The energy and effort in his eyes were now used up, and he looked at the ceiling with the expression of those who are suddenly forced to deal in a very different and dark dimension.

"I've bent your ear too long. You sack out now. I'll be back a little later," I said.

But he was already disconnected from our conversation. I left the room quietly, with the sense of both guilt and relief that we feel when we're allowed to walk away from the bedside of someone who reminds us of our mortality.

The two uniformed cops on the door nodded to me. At the end of the corridor I saw Captain Guidry walking toward me with a potted geranium wrapped in green and silver foil. The implants in his scalp had grown, and his head looked as though a badly made wig had been grafted to it.

"I'm going to leave this at the nurse's station. How's he doing?" he asked.

"He's a tough little brother."

"You look like h.e.l.l. Go home and get some sleep."

"I slept all right on the couch last night. I just need a shower and a change of clothes."

Captain Guidry's eyes stared into mine. "What did he tell you in there?"

"Nothing."

"Don't jerk me around, Dave."

"He didn't say anything."

"I've worked with you a long time. You don't hide things well."

"Ask the nurse. He can't talk. I'm not sure he even knows how he got here."

"Listen, I think you're about to get out of all this trouble you've been in. Don't blow it now with an obstruction charge."

"Do I get my badge back?"

His lips pinched together, and he looked down the corridor.

"You shouldn't have hit Baxter," he said.

"So nothing is changed."

"We do it one step at a time. Have some patience, will you? Trust people a little bit."

"I'm out on ten thousand dollars' bond. I'm going to have to go to trial unless I can negotiate a misdemeanor plea."

"You're a reader. You know about Saint John of the Cross and the long night of the soul. So this is your long night. Why make it longer?"

At the houseboat I took my Remington twelve-gauge pump out of its sheepskin-lined case. The blueing shone with the thin layer of oil that I kept on it. My father had given me the twelve-gauge when I went away to college in Lafayette, and I had knocked down mallards and geese with it from Cypremont Point to Whiskey Bay almost every year since. I rubbed my fingers along the polished, inlaid stock, then wrapped the barrel with a rag and locked it in the machinist's vise that I kept anch.o.r.ed to one end of the drainboard. I made a pencil mark three inches in front of the pump, then sawed through the barrel with a hacksaw. The end of the barrel clanged to the floor. I picked it up and started to drop it in the garbage but, instead, ran a piece of Christmas ribbon through it and hung it on the wall over what was left of my historical jazz collection.

I sat at the kitchen table and rubbed the sawed edges of the gun's muzzle smooth with emery paper and removed the sportsman's plug from the magazine so that it would now hold five sh.e.l.ls instead of three. I went to the closet and took out my duffel bag of decoys, my army field jacket, and the old army-surplus bandolier I used when the hunting weather was too warm for a coat. I emptied everything out on the table and stood all my sh.e.l.ls up in an erect row like toy soldiers. Then I selected out the street cop's buffet-deer slugs and double-ought buckshot-slipped them one at a time into the magazine with my thumb until the spring came tight, slid the breech shut, and clicked on the safety.