"That"s what?"
"You didn"t kill Bello Lujan."
"That"s a big breakt"rew for you? I ain"t never killed n.o.body."
"Why"d you put all that skag in your arm, Monarch?"
"Felt like it."
"You almost caught the bus, partner."
"Maybe I"d be better off."
"What about all those soldiers in Iraq? What kind of day do you think they"re having?"
"I tried to join the army. They didn"t want me."
My question to him had been a cheap shot and I deserved his reply. I sat in a chair next to his bed for a long time and didn"t say anything. He tried to concentrate on the televised baseball game, but it was obvious he was becoming more and more uncomfortable with both my presence and silence.
"You got some wiring loose in you, Mr. Dee," he said.
"I want you to call me as soon as you get out of here," I said.
"What for?"
"My wife wants you to come over for dinner."
There was a broken smile at the corner of his mouth. "Who you kidd-" he began.
"Don"t mock her invitation. She used to be a Catholic nun. She"ll rip your arms off and beat you to death with them," I said.
He made a show of crushing the pillow down on his own face, but I could hear him laughing under it.
THAT NIGHT the weatherman on the late news talked about another storm building in the Caribbean, one that was expected to reach hurricane velocity as it approached Cuba. I fell asleep on the couch while dry lightning flickered in the trees and leaves gusted in the street. I dreamed about baseball and summer evenings in City Park back in the 1950s, when we played pepper games in front of the old wood and chicken-wire backstop that was overhung by oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. In the dream the air smelled of boiled crabs and barbecue grease flaring on hot charcoal, and I could hear a Cajun band playing "Jolie Blon" down by the old brick firehouse. The dream seemed to reflect an innocent time in our history, an idyllic vision I have never been able to disengage from. But in reality there were many elements of the 1950s that were not so innocent, and Monarch Little was there, in the dream, to tell me that. Or at least that was what I thought.
He was standing at home plate with a bat propped on his shoulder, in an era when people of color were not allowed in the park, whacking grounders to the three black children I had seen flying a kite by Bello Lujan"s back fence. Except in the dream the children were uninterested in Monarch and his baseball bat, and were sitting on the close-cropped gra.s.s just beyond the infield, eating a picnic lunch. One of the children was opening a can of tuna.
I woke from the dream like a man breaking through a pane of gla.s.s.
THE NEXT MORNING was Sat.u.r.day. I got up at seven and dressed in the kitchen so I wouldn"t wake Molly. I fed Snuggs and Tripod on the back steps, left Molly a note on the chalkboard we used for messages, took a half-carton of orange juice out of the icebox for myself, and drove down St. Peter Street to Iberia General. Monarch was just checking out of the hospital as I came through the reception area.
"I need to talk with you," I said.
"I got a cab coming," he said.
"After we talk, I"ll take you wherever you want to go. My truck"s outside."
"I ain"t eat yet," he said.
"That makes two of us," I said.
We headed toward the McDonald"s on East Main. The clothes Monarch had been wearing when the paramedics pulled him out of the ice water at the crack house had been washed and dried at the hospital and, riding in the truck, with the windows down and the trees and shadows sliding by us, he looked cool and comfortable, strangely at peace with himself. I pulled into the line of vehicles at the take-out window.
"You lay down your sword and shield?" I said.
"What you mean, "sword and shield"?"
"You"re not "gonna study the war no more." Those are lyrics from a hymn. The singer is telling the listener he"s resigned from the fray, that he"s made his separate peace."
"What the FBI do to me, what y"all do to me, it don"t matter one way or the other. I just ain"t gonna fight wit" it no more. I"m t"rew wit" dope, t"rew wit" gangs, t"rew wit" the life. If I stack time, that"s the way it be."
"That"s what I was talking about."
"Then why you got to say everyt"ing in code?" he said.
The electronic order box came on and I ordered eggs, sausage, biscuits, and coffee and milk for both of us. "T"row a couple of fried pies in there," Monarch said.
"Two fried pies," I said to the box.
I got our order at the second window in the line, then parked under the big oak tree by the front. I couldn"t believe how much food Monarch could stuff into his mouth at one time.
"What you want to know?" he asked, pieces of scrambled egg falling off his chin.
"When I questioned you about Tony Lujan"s death, you said you were supposed to meet him out by the Boom Boom Room, but you changed your mind."
"Right."
"Why?"
"I was gonna jack him for money. It was a bad idea. So I didn"t go. He ended up shotgunned to deat", but I didn"t have nothing to do wit" it."
"Yeah, I know all that. But why was it a bad idea?"
"I just tole you. I was gonna jack him-"
"No, that"s not the explanation you gave me originally. You were afraid something was going to happen."
"Yeah, I said what if Tony called up Slim Bruxal and Slim and them other colletch boys showed up wit" ball bats."
"Why baseball bats?"
""Cause they done it before. I checked them out. They had a beef behind a nightclub in Lake Charles wit" a couple of soldiers from Fort Polk. They got ball bats out of their car and busted up a soldier and smashed all the windows out of his car."
"Slim and Tony did this?"
"And about ten more like them."
"Why didn"t you tell me all this earlier?" I said.
""Cause you ain"t axed me," he replied, biting into a fried pie.
I drove Monarch to his house up on Loreauville Road, then went to the department and in the Sat.u.r.day-morning quietness of my office pulled out all my files and notes and photographs dealing with the unsolved vehicular homicide of Crustacean Man.
Just before noon I called Koko Hebert at his home. Strangely enough, he acted halfway normal, making me wonder if much of his public persona wasn"t manufactured.
"Do I think the fatal wound is consistent with a blow from a baseball bat?" he said.
"Yeah," I said.
"It could be."
"Come on, Koko. I need a warrant. Give me something I can use."
"The bone was crushed, the damage ma.s.sive. All kinds of s.h.i.t can happen in a high-speed hit-and-run we can"t reconstruct. It"s like somebody getting caught inside a concrete mixer."
"I"ll bring you the photos. The wound is concave and lateral in nature, the indentation uniform along the edges."
"Stop telling me what I already know. Yeah, a baseball bat could have done it. I"ll come down and make an addendum to the file if you need it."
"Thanks, partner."
"Who"s the warrant on?"
"Some kids who would like to pour the rest of us into soap molds," I said.
I DOUBTED IF I"d be able to get the warrant until Monday morning, but there were other things to be done that weekend, other elements in the dream that had caused me to sit up as though a piece of crystal had shattered in my sleep.
I drove to Loreauville and crossed a drawbridge and pa.s.sed a shipyard where steel boats that service offsh.o.r.e oil rigs are manufactured. I drove down an undulating two-lane road through water oaks and palmettos and asked an older black man clipping a tangle of bougainvillea from the trellised entrance to his yard if he knew a little girl by the name of Chereen. The house behind him was made of brick and well maintained. A speedboat mounted on a trailer was parked in his porte cochere.
"That"s my granddaughter"s name. Why you want to know?" he said.
I opened my badge holder and hung it out the window. "My name is Dave Robicheaux. I"m with the Iberia Sheriff"s Department. I thought she might have some information that could be helpful to us," I said.
The black man wore old slacks and tennis shoes, but his shirt was pressed, his back erect. The distrust in his eyes was unmistakable. "She"s nine years old. What information she gonna have?"
"It concerns evidence she and two other children may have found at a crime scene," I said.
"You talking about the Lujan farm?"
"I need to talk to your granddaughter, sir."
"Maybe I need to call my lawyer, too."
I pulled my truck in his driveway and cut the engine. I opened the door and stepped out on the gra.s.s. "She and her friends were playing in a plywood fort by Bello Lujan"s back fence. Mr. Lujan was murdered. Where"s your granddaughter?"
"She don"t know nothing about no murder."
I could feel my patience draining and my old nemesis, anger, blooming like an infection in my chest. Like most southern white people, I did not like paying the price for what my antecedents may have done.
"The man who killed Bello Lujan is still out there. You want him prowling around your neighborhood? You want him looking for your granddaughter, sir?" I said.
He spiked his clippers into the lawn and blotted his neck with a folded handkerchief. "Come wit" me. They in the backyard," he said.
I followed him around the side of the house. The three children I had seen flying a kite behind Bello"s property were playing croquet in the shade of oak trees. "You guys remember me?" I said.
They looked at one another, then at Chereen"s grandfather. "Tell him what he want to know," he said.
I squatted down so I was eye level with the children. "When y"all were having your picnic at your fort, you opened a can of tuna fish, didn"t you?" I said.
All three of them nodded, but their eyes didn"t meet mine. I pointed to the little boy who had opened the can. "What"s your name?" I asked.
"Freddy."
"What did you use to open the can, Freddy?"
"Can opener," he replied.
"Was it an unusual can opener?" I said, smiling at him now.
"A little bit, maybe," he said.
"Where"d you get it?" I said.
"I found it," Chereen said, before her friend could answer. "In the field behind the horse barn."
"Do you still have it?"
"It"s at the fort. Wit" the crucifix and the broke chain it was on," she said.
"A crucifix and a chain? Those things and the can opener were all together?" I said.
"Yes, suh, lying in the weeds. Not far from the fence," Freddy said.
"I"m glad you guys found and saved those things for me. But you should have told me this yesterday. A man was killed and his killer is still out there, maybe preparing to hurt someone else. When I asked y"all if you had been inside the tape, you told me you hadn"t. So I had to figure all this out on my own. By keeping silent about the things you had found, you were telling me a lie. Indirectly, you were helping a very bad man get away with a terrible crime."
"They got the point," the grandfather said.
When I stood up, I could hear my knees pop. "How old are you, sir?" I asked.
"Sixty-one," he replied.
I wanted to ask him how much value he set on pride. Was it worth the innocent lives of others in danger? I wanted to ask him if he thought he could negotiate with the kind of evil that dwells in a man who could tear a fellow human being apart with a steel pick. I wanted to tell him I was not the source of his discontent and enmity and that as a child of poor and illiterate Cajuns I shared his background and had done nothing to warrant his irritability.
I had all these vituperative thoughts, but I expressed none of them. Instead, I shook his hand without his having offered it. He stared at me blankly.
"Will you accompany me and the children to their fort, sir?" I said.
He brushed some garden cuttings off his shirt with the backs of his fingers. "Yeah, I could use a break. I"ll get some Popsicles out of the icebox to take along. Appreciate the job you doing even though I don"t probably show it," he said.