House of Blues (9 page)

How can I say I'm a cop? This is the last thing they
need now. When she spoke, she heard the stress in her voice, the
slight loss of focus, the disorientation anxiety bred. "I wonder
if I can speak to Justin," she heard herself saying, and was
ashamed at the arrogance of it. Why should she, a stranger, claim
some of his last minutes?

"He's very, very ill," said his mother. "In
fact, he isn't expected—" The sentence stopped and a sob came
out.

"
I wouldn't ask if it weren't extremely
important. It's about Dennis Foucher."

"Dennis?" She looked puzzled. She glanced
around the room. "Dennis isn't here."

She probably hadn't read a paper that day, or even
turned on the television.

"He's disappeared. Along with his wife and
daughter."

"Dennis? But Justin hasn't seen him in years."
She looked as confused and forlorn as if Skip had accused her son of
a crime on his deathbed. Treason, perhaps, or multiple murder.

"
I'm very sorry to disturb you like this."
She had already said this, but she figured Mrs. Arceneaux was hearing
selectively. "I wonder if you could just ask Justin if he'll see
me."

Skip hoped he wasn't asleep. She didn't want his
mother waking him.

Mrs. Arceneaux came back looking as if the folds of
her face were being dragged down by invisible weights. "He says
he'd like to see you. But he's very, very ill—in fact, it's the
second time we've thought he'd be dead before morning. They go real,
real slow with AIDS—you just can't tell—but he's still got his
mind." She nodded. "He's got his mind. He can talk if he
can just—you know, he's hardly got any energy at all."

Skip rose and let herself be led to the bedroom,
feeling as if she were marching to her own death. As they walked down
the hall, Mrs. Arceneaux said, "Now, don't be shocked. He weighs
about eighty-four pounds."

The curtain of bereavement, the fog, had settled on
Skip like a thick mesh she could not squirm out of.

The first thing she saw was the metal tree for
Justin's IV, and then she saw the people in the room. First a young
woman sitting by the bed, ramrod straight, alert as a sentry. Her
hair was white-blond, short and wavy, her face thin and gaunt, but
Skip could tell that was from strain. She was extraordinary-looking,
this young woman, someone who'd turn heads in this city of beautiful
women. But she was stiff and tired, nearly frantic under her calm,
with the effort of holding herself together.

Next a little girl, also blond, lying on the floor,
her dress flipped up so that her panties showed, feet in the air, one
hand out to her side, touching a toy dinosaur, stroking it but not
looking at it. Instead looking at Skip without interest. Obviously
beside herself with boredom, having been here for hours, or days
perhaps.

And then there was Justin himself. Later Skip could
remember almost no details except that his hair was a sandy color,
that he had freckles and that his eyes were like holes in a sunken
face. Despite his mother's warning, the shock of seeing someone so
wasted nearly rendered her speechless. He had on no pajama top, so
that she could see paper-thin skin, skin like plastic wrap, stretched
over a frame that looked too small to belong to a man.

"
Hello," he whispered. "This is my
wife, Janine. And my daughter."

Skip thought he had meant to say his daughters name,
but decided to save his breath. He grimaced as if it hurt to talk,
but Janine said, "It's the sheet. It hurts his feet, and his
shoulders sometimes. It's caused by a deadening of the nerves that
makes him supersensitive. "

"
I know what that is," said the little
girl. "It's called neuropathy." Skip thought that was a
fact the child was much too young to know.

Janine stood up and swabbed Justin's mouth with what
looked like a giant Q-tip. She slipped something between his lips
that must have been an ice chip.

Skip walked a step closer, not wanting to invade his
space, but not sure she could hear from a distance. She said again
that she was sorry to disturb him, and she told him Dennis was
missing. This time she said nothing about Reed and Sally; it was
somehow too grim.

"
Dennis," said Justin. "He was always
a needle freak. We shared. But he got through okay." The words
came slowly, one by one, painfully. His lips looked as if he'd spent
weeks in the Sahara—this was not normal chapping, something much
more extreme. When he spoke, Skip could see that the inside of his
mouth was dead white, tongue and all, as if he had no blood left.

Skip waited a moment. "If he were really in
trouble, does he have a friend he'd go to?"

"
Me. Me, man."

"Has he been here? Has he phoned?" It
sounded ridiculous, but she had to ask.

"
I don't know," he whispered.

Janine turned pouched and swollen eyes on her and
shook her head.

"
If he's in trouble, he'd go to Delavon."

"
Delavon?"

"His dealer."

"
You mean Delavon's a friend—or he'd go to
make a buy?"

"To get fucked up."

"He's been clean for a long time."

Justin shook his head, or rather turned it on the
pillow once or twice. "Don't know that Dennis. Only know the
other. He needs the warm hug; gotta have the cocoon."

"
I beg your pardon?"

"Dope."

"What kind?"

"Only one kind. He hated coke; couldn't stand
that wiry feeling."

"
Heroin?"

Justin was quiet, as if the question didn't deserve
an answer. "Where do I find Delavon?"

"
Treme. No last name. I know Dennis. He'd go to
Kurt's too."

The words came slowly, each one an effort.

"Who's Kurt?"

"
Not a person. A bar."

"Can you tell me where?" She felt like an
officer of the Inquisition.

"Dumaine. Near Rampart."

"
Thanks. Anything else?"

Justin closed his eyes and again rotated his head.

"Thank you," Skip said, and she said it
again, this time whispering. Janine looked at her, not changing
expression. The little girl had turned over on her stomach.

She looked about four or five, and no doubt her
mother thought she didn't understand what was happening, or that her
father needed her now—or more likely, since she'd known about his
nerve problem, that it was better for her to face it. Skip wondered
how many years on a shrink's couch she would spend as a result of
this experience, or if she would simply forget it, bury it, and
suffer depression the rest of her life.

She wondered too if the girl and the woman carried
the virus. Even outside, in her own car, she could not escape the fog
of misery.

She went back to headquarters to talk over the case
with her sergeant, Sylvia Cappello, who threw a file down hard as
Skip walked in. "Shit!"

She looked in the direction of an officer who was
just leaving. Maurice Gresham.

"
What's wrong?"

"
Goddammit, another piece of evidence is
missing. I'm so damned tired of the little things that happen when—"
She stopped, but stared in Gresham's direction, pointing him out.

"What, Sylvia?"

"Too much shit happens here, that's all. We're
about to serve a warrant, nobody's home. We lose a little piece of
evidence and it turns out somebody"—again she stared at the
space where Gresham had been—"checked it out and, what do you
know, they lost it."

Cappello was far more upset than Skip had ever seen
her. What she was saying bordered on unprofessional, and Cappello was
never unprofessional. She was a by-the-book cop who thought before
she spoke, and right now she was  bad-mouthing one of her
officers to another.

Skip tipped her chin at the now-invisible Gresham.
"You think he's dirty?"

"
Who's not in this goddamn town? You read the
paper? You notice how just about every day some relative of some
politician turns up on the payroll of some casino? Everybody's taking
kickbacks, everybody's got a scam, everybody's looking out for their
friends—it's got to the point where no one cares. One day you can
be a front-page scandal, the next day you get elected to high
office—or more likely appointed because you've got a buddy."

"
Why don't you just get him transferred out?"
She avoided saying Gresham's name.

"You think he's the first one I ever had? Or the
only one now? What if I did get rid of him? There'd just be another.
Or a swarm of them, like cockroaches. Skip, I can't take this
anymore. I swear to God I'm getting out."

Skip sat down, feeling as if the breath had been
knocked out of her. "Getting out? You mean quitting?"

"I mean quitting and moving out of town and
probably out of the state." She paused. "Maybe I'll go to
law school."

Skip was speechless.

"
You know what this casino means? It means
several billion dollars are up for grabs. That's billions. In permits
and hotels and restaurants and jobs and parking lots and every piece
of the pie you can think of. You think this city and this state were
crooked before, it was just a warm-up for the kind of scrambling
that's starting now. I don't want to raise my kids in a place like
this."

Skip was vaguely aware that Cappello had kids, but it
was nothing they ever talked about. She never thought of Cappello as
someone with a personal life, just as a police sergeant—and about
the best cop Skip had ever worked with. If she quit, it would leave a
gaping hole in Homicide.

But she could see what the sergeant meant. Skip knew
Gresham was dirty. She knew there was nothing Cappello could prove,
nothing she could do about it except try to keep him out of certain
cases.

But since she didn't know who was paying him, and
what cases involved his employers, it was hard to do that.

Then there was the problem of overhearing—Gresham
could know things and dole out tips with almost no effort.

There was nothing the sergeant could do, and Gresham
was only a symptom. The dirt, the buying and selling, the scamming,
could wear on you; it wore on anyone who worked for the city and
tried to do a good job. It wore particularly on police officers.

"
Oh, hell, you're right," Cappello said.
"I'll get him transferred out."

Skip decided to wait till later to talk to her about
the case. She was feeling a lot like one of Justin Arceneaux's
relatives—so stressed out she'd come unfocused. She didn't trust
herself to give a good accounting right now.

But Cappello said, "How's the heater case? Every
lieutenant in the building's called." A heater case was one the
brass cared about—any case, said the more cynical, involving a
white person. Skip ran this one down for her.

Then she ran unsuccessful records checks for
"Delavon," both as a first and a last name. Since it was
near lunchtime, she called Narcotics without much hope, but her pal
Lefty O'Meara answered with his mouth full. "Lefty. If I'd
thought you'd be there, I'd have come up to see you."

"
If you thought I wasn't here, why'd you call?"

"Hope springs eternal. Who do you know named
Delavon?"

"Nobody. Who's he supposed to be?"

"Big-time dealer. Heroin, maybe."

"
Not much of that around."

"I hear Delavon's got some."

"
Trust me. There ain't no Delavon."

She trusted him, but she thought there was. It was
just that O'Meara probably knew him as something like George
Boudreaux, or "Tiny," maybe—no last name.

She sat at her desk and stared at the phone. She
needed human contact, but not with Cappello right now—with someone
who wouldn't depress her.

She called her friend Cindy Lou, hoping to snag her
for lunch. But there was no answer.

She called Steve for impromptu cheering up—but her
own machine answered. She called her landlord and best friend, Jimmy
Dee Scoggin, but got his secretary; he was in court.

Feeling disoriented, almost dizzy, she went out to
get a sandwich, which she consumed without tasting, thinking of the
way Justin Arceneaux's bones pushed at his skin.
 
 

6

Treme was a black neighborhood, poor but at least not
one of the ancient, pathetic, falling-down housing projects that
breed crime like roaches in New Orleans. Most murders these days were
in the projects. Many cases—Skip thought most, but maybe it just
seemed that way—involved juveniles who didn't care whether they
lived or died. She had known thirteen-year-old crack dealers who had
to hide their stashes from their mothers—and not because they
feared punishment.

Treme was itself falling down in places, but it still
had dignity; its residents didn't have the beaten-down feel of people
from the projects, still seemed to take joy in life. The Municipal
Auditorium was here, historically the site of the two biggest Mardi
Gras balls and now the site of the city's temporary casino.