Bring Him Back Dead (13 page)

“But the man wasn’t me.”

“I’m just detailing it the way the prosecution will outline the case.” Avart stopped pacing and stood with his back against the wall. “Sometime during the trial, the state will put her on the stand, showing plenty of cheesecake and wearing a tight dress that will emphasize those big pear-shaped breasts of hers. She’ll tell the same story she told in her deposition, with details. Not a very pretty prospect, is it?”

Latour forced the words past the constriction in his throat. “No, not pretty.”

Avart resumed his pacing. “Then, too, we’ll be confronted with this story your brother-in-law is telling all over town.”

“What story?”

“He says you and his sister aren’t sexually compatible and that relations between you have been very strained. Is that so?”

Latour studied Avart’s face. “No. Sex isn’t our problem.”

“What, then?”

“Money. I’ve felt she resented the fact that I wasn’t able to keep all the big promises I made her. But now I’m beginning to wonder if I wasn’t mistaken. I’m beginning to wonder about a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

“I’d rather not go into that right now.” Avart shrugged the subject aside as immaterial. “Look at me, Andy.”

Latour looked at him.

“You swear you didn’t kill Lacosta?”

“I do.”

“And you didn’t assault his wife?”

“I did not.”

“I believe you.” He sat back on the bunk beside Latour. He threw away the cigarette he was smoking and lighted a fresh one. “Now, as I see the case, the only thing we can do is to go back to the very beginning, attempt to locate and identify this man who you say tried to kill you.”

“How do we do that?”

The attorney picked up his brief case and opened it. “I’ve given the matter considerable thought. My services will cost you nothing. Forget it. I know that since those test wells on your place turned out to be dry holes, all you’ve had is your deputy’s pay. But there will be certain expenses.”

“Such as?”

“For one thing, I think we should engage the best firm of private investigators in New Orleans.”

“To do what?”

“Have some of their men circulate through the town
and see if they can get a line on this man who tried to kill you. Both Mullen and Belluche mean well, but neither of them is overbright. And if we can establish that someone did try to kill you, that there is someone in the parish who thinks he has reason to see you dead, it may be we can prove that he deliberately framed you into this mess.”

“That sounds good to me.”

Avart sucked his cigarette into a red glow. “Unfortunately, the services of good firms come high. And as good a friend of yours as I am, I don’t feel morally obligated to assume the expenses. So I suggest you raise the cash the best way you can.”

“How?”

The attorney took some papers from his case and laid them on the steel webbing of the cot. “I’ve thought of a way. You still have the house and some six hundred and forty acres of land.”

“Of dry mud.”

“I’ve considered that. But the old Latour homestead is a choice residential location, or could be. Once French Bayou recovers from its growing pains, it’s bound to spread out even more than it has, possibly in that direction. And so, after due deliberation, because we’re friends, I’ve decided to take a chance. What was the last offer you received for your land? I mean, after it was proved there was no oil on it.”

“Eight thousand dollars.”

The lawyer threw away the cigarette he was smoking and uncapped his fountain pen. “I’ll take a big gamble and give you twenty thousand dollars. In cash. That will be sufficient to pay the firm of investigators and, if we win the case and pry you out of this mess, leave you with a substantial backlog. Sufficient for you to stop playing policeman and support Olga in a reasonable facsimile of the manner in which she expected to live, while you go back to school and get your law degree. Once you’re admitted to the bar, I’ll take you into my office until you feel you’re in a position to establish your own private practice.”

It was a generous offer. Latour was tempted.

On the other hand, what was left of the old plantation had been in the family for a long time. He’d hoped that if he and Olga had children, one of them would be a boy. A boy who would carry on the family name. A boy who would inherit a rebuilt manor house and plantation that would approximate what the Latour house and land had been. Even in the spot he now found himself in, he still clung to what was left of his dream.

Avart misunderstood his hesitation. “I’m afraid I can’t go any higher, Andy.”

“I’m not thinking of the money. You’re very generous. But let me stew over it, will you, Jean?”

The attorney recapped his pen and returned the papers to his brief case. “It’s your decision, Andy. But don’t stew too long. Despite all the prattle to the contrary, a lot of innocent men have gone to the electric chair. And I’d hate to see your life snuffed out like — ” Avart tried to think of a simile and finally came up with one. “Like a dropped cigar, dying in the mud.”

The throb of the big vein in Latour’s forehead became more pronounced. “Yeah. So would I,” he said quietly.

Avart rapped on the door of the cell as a signal for Ducros to let him out. “Think it over tonight and give me your decision in the morning.”

“I’ll do that, Jean.”

Latour watched the lawyer walk down the corridor. Then he picked one of the half-smoked cigarettes from the floor and looked at it thoughtfully.

To think what he was thinking he had to be out of his mind. It wasn’t possible. It was too fantastic.

In the human jungle in which all men lived, the animals that inhabited it were constantly at war, the strong preying on the weak and the weak preying on those less capable of survival than they were.

Prattle was the word.

For all its prattle of civilization, the world hadn’t changed basically since man had first learned to walk on two feet. Men, all men, were still fundamentally beasts. They fought each other for food, for shelter. And once their basic needs, hunger and shelter, had been satisfied, they were faced with other appetites, chief of which was desire
for a mate. This hunger was primitive, elemental. The younger and more desirable females of the species were at the same time the source of all life and the chief bones of contention.

In the jungle, anything went. And Olga was a very young, a very lovely, a very desirable bone.

Latour started to bang on the bars and asked to see Sheriff Belluche, then thought better of the idea. The old man would think he was crazy, either crazy or grabbing at straws.

It could be he was. What did he have to go on? Nothing. The description of a woman’s breasts. A dropped cigar dying in the mud. An overgenerous offer from a friend.

Even if what he was thinking was true, it didn’t explain the need for haste. Whoever had tried to kill him, whoever had framed him on the twin charges of murder and rape, was in a hurry, a big hurry.

He didn’t want him to die tomorrow or next week. He wanted him dead as soon as the matter could be arranged. Now. Possibly tonight.

Two years after his return to French Bayou.

Why?

It was a subject worth considerable thought.

T
HE FERAL SMELL
of the cell block became more pronounced as the cells and the drunk tanks began to fill with men brought in by the various deputies.

Latour had never known the lockup to be so crowded. He judged that the number of arrests stemmed from one of two reasons. Either Sheriff Belluche was putting on a good show for the visiting reporters, or he was attempting to get all potential troublemakers off the streets.

A few minutes after nine o’clock, Belluche visited him in his cell. The old man was sober and worried.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“You don’t like what?”

“The feel of the town. We’ve been picking up every drunk who shoots off his mouth too loud about how a fix is in and what ought to happen to you. But I can’t arrest the whole town for talking. And someone is
egging
the boys on. I know of at least two men who are buying plenty of drinks for the crowd.”

“Who are they?”

“George Villere, for one. Your brother-in-law, for another.”

“You’re kidding. Georgi doesn’t have two dimes to rub together.”

“Then he got the money from someone. He’s sporting a roll that would choke a coon, and he’s telling everyone who’ll listen to him how you and his sister haven’t been getting along. He claims you haven’t lived as man and wife for a year.”

“But that isn’t true.”

Belluche fanned himself with his Stetson. “So you told me this morning. When you went out to the trailer you couldn’t have taken the red-haired babe if she begged you.”

“That’s how things were.”

“Not according to Georgi.”

“He wants me to get hanged.”

“Why?”

“Let’s say he was more disappointed than I was when the Delta Oil Company decided they were wasting their time drilling on my land.”

Belluche nodded in understanding. “I think I get what you mean. But the boys are sure lapping it up. Damn. I wish now I hadn’t sent Tom and Jack to Ponchatoula.”

“You’re afraid there’s going to be trouble?”

“I know there’s going to be trouble. I’ve seen these things build up before. The boys will talk and drink and bull around for maybe another hour or so. Then some of them, maybe only one hothead, will blow his stack and demand they do something more than talk, and I’m going to have my hands full trying to keep them from making damn fools of theirselves.”

“How about our boys?”

“There are only two I can really depend on, Ducros and Todd Kelly. The others are almost as bad as your big-mouthed brother-in-law. Those who didn’t report in sick are out in the office now, beating their gums together about why should they take a chance on getting killed or maybe killing one of their best friends trying to protect a practically convicted murderer and rapist. What’s really the matter with them is that they’re scared to death. They liked the ride on the gravy train. They liked it fine. But now it’s come time to pick up the tab, they’re all out-fumbling each other.”

“How about the outside newspapermen?”

“They’re hoping we do have trouble. It will give them that much more to write about.” Sheriff Belluche was indignant. “Why, there’s even a mobile TV unit out on the lawn, with its camera set up to cover the jail from every angle.”

“A lot of good that will do me if the boys drag me out of here.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Belluche walked out into the corridor, leaving the cell door open behind him. “I just thought you ought to know.”

“Thanks for telling me.” Latour added, “And, by the way, I wonder if you could tell me something, Sheriff.”

“What?”

“Did Jean Avart interview Mrs. Lacosta?”

Belluche shook his head. “No, no one has seen her since she identified you. That is, no one but the parish prosecutor when he got that deposition. Dr. Walker’s orders. Why?”

“I’ve a reason for asking. Now can you tell me this: What’s the name of the field engineer for Delta Oil?”

“Feldman or Feltman or something like that.”

“Has he an office in town?”

“On the second floor of the Breton Block. But he spends most of his time on one of the barges of those rigs they’re sinking offshore. Why? What’s on your mind, Andy?”

“Right now, getting out of this mess with a whole skin.”

Belluche shrugged and walked down the corridor, leaving the steel door between the cell block and the office open.

The little things, Latour thought. A picture was beginning to form in his mind, a picture so fantastic that he continued to have difficulty in fitting the pieces together.
Still
, where the female of the species was concerned, anything was possible. Kings had given up their thrones. Bankers had robbed their own banks. Brother had killed brother.

He could hear voices in the office but the men in the cells around him had become strangely silent, as if they were afraid to attract attention to themselves.

Lynch mobs were an unknown quantity. A man never could tell just what they would do.

The rank stench of fear replaced the feral smell of the cell block. A boy in the colored section began a long-winded prayer.

Todd Kelly came out of the office, a riot gun cradled in his arms, and clomped down the corridor on his way to cover the rear door of the jail. As he passed the open cell in which Latour was standing, he said laconically, “You and your goddamn zipper.”

“I didn’t do it. Believe me, Todd,” Latour said.

“I’m beginning to believe you. Mobs like the one that’s forming out in front aren’t spontaneous. Someone sure wants you out of the way.”

“Who?”

“If I knew I’d go to New York and get on ‘The Sixty-four-Thousand-Dollar Question.’ The worst I could wind up with is a Cadillac. And that would be a lot better than a hole in my head. My wife told me I should go back to commercial fishing.”

The girl in the cell across from Latour tried to spit at him. “I hope the boys do it to you but good. Just like you done it to her. This is still a free country, ain’t it? A girl still has the right to say no, even if the guy is a deputy sheriff.”

Latour ignored her. He could hear the men in front of the jail now. The constriction in his throat became more pronounced. His lips and the roof of his mouth felt dry. His groin and the small of his back hurt. It was difficult for him to breathe normally.

A section of the now shouting mob raced around to the
rear of the jail and an overripe tomato sailed through the high window and splattered against the wall. Booted feet and heavy fists thudded on the rear door.

“Let us in or we’ll break the door down,” a man shouted.

Kelly spat a stream of tobacco juice on the floor. “If I were you, I wouldn’t,” he cautioned the owner of the voice. “I’m holding a riot gun, and you’d be surprised how big a hole its slugs make.”

The smaller section of the mob retreated from the door and turned its attention to a less dangerous pastime.