Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 08 - Death in the French Quarter (5 page)

“No. Hold on” I pulled over to the side of the highway and fished a pen from my pocket. I don’t consider
myself over the hill, but my reflexes weren’t those of a
seventeen-year-old either. I’m too old to handle a
pickup hurtling down the interstate at seventy miles an
hour, write telephone numbers with one hand, and talk
on the phone at the same time the way I see many drivers doing.

I jotted the numbers down as he called them off, but
I couldn’t help remembering that earlier hesitation on his part that tickled the hair on the back of my neck.
“Leroi’s all right, isn’t he? Nothing’s happened to him
or Sally”

The unnaturally long pause answered my question.
“Look, I’m Leroi’s cousin from Austin, Texas. The
white cousin. I’m sure he’s told you about me. If something’s wrong, or Leroi has problems, I want to help.
He’d do the same for me”

Several seconds passed.

“Hello. You still there?”

In a softer voice, he replied, “Yes, sir. I still be here”
His voice faded to a whisper. “Leroi, him and Miss
Sally, they done split de sheets. They been having bad
trouble since de boy of theirs got hisself kilt. Leroi, he
be drinking bad.”

“What about Sally?”

“Miss Sally, she back living with her mama”

I leaned back against the headrest and closed my
eyes. “When was the last time he came by the shop?”

“Oh, let’s see. Sometime last week. Leroi, he just sits
in dat old house and sees how much whiskey he can put
down before he passes out” He clicked his tongue.
“Sure hate to see him do dat to hisself, but dat one, he
don’t listen to nothing no one tries to tell him.”

After hanging up, I sat at the side of the road for several minutes, trying to decide if I should simply cut
north and go to Melungo alone, or see if I could salvage
Leroi from his bottle. He could be of some help in
Melungo. Not only was his mother from the area, although that had been over forty years earlier, but a white boy coming to town with a black brother might
not be quite as noticeable.

Muttering a curse, I pulled back onto the interstate
and headed for Opelousas. I had no choice. Leroi was
family, close family, and maybe, just maybe with his
help, I’d get lucky and find the truth about Savoie and at
the same time learn who had executed Stewart.

I pulled up to the curb in front of Leroi’s house, a
story and a half white clapboard with two dormers
above a porch that spanned the front of the old house.

His yellow pickup with the logo of a jumping catfish
on the doors was parked half on the grass and half on
the driveway.

I climbed the stairs to the porch and knocked on the
door.

No answer. I tried again. Still no answer.

Tentatively, I turned the doorknob and the door
swung open. “Leroi” The curtains were drawn, casting
the room in deep shadows. I squinted into the darkness.
The living room was in a shambles, newspapers scattered about, empty bottles lying on the floor, halfempty glasses on the coffee table and end tables.

“Leroi,” I called again, stepping inside.

No answer.

I eased down the hall, opening doors on either side
until I found Leroi sprawled on his back on an unmade
bed. His arms were spread and his mouth gaped open.
The only reason I didn’t hurry to see if he was still
breathing was that he was snoring like a chainsaw. I wrinkled my nose. The bedroom reeked with the sweetsour stench of whiskey.

Looking about the room, I shook my head. If Sally
could see her bedroom now, she’d blister the skin off
Leroi’s hide. I muttered to the sleeping man. “Jeez, cuz,
you look like you been stomped on and spit out”

I didn’t think anything could be in worse condition
than the living room and bedroom, but when I walked
into the kitchen, I saw I was wrong. There was not a
clean dish in the cabinet, roaches ran rampant over the
half-eaten boxes of pizza, some of which stopped to
glare at me defiantly, daring me to touch their food
source.

I opened the curtains, threw open the doors and windows to let in some fresh air and started cleaning. By
the time I finished three hours later, I’d washed all the
dishes, hauled nine trash bags to the street, filled three
gunny sacks with various alien life forms growing in
the refrigerator, and loaded five boxes with empty
whiskey and beer bottles. His last half-empty bottle of
Jim Beam bourbon I stuck under the cushion on the
couch for me if I needed it.

As an afterthought, I called Jimmy Joe Lincoln at
Catfish Lube and asked him to pick up a bag of hamburgers for Leroi and me.

Finally, at six o’clock, I plopped down at the kitchen
table and popped open Leroi’s last beer. “Serves you
right,” I muttered, chugging half of it down in one gulp.
Then, remembering my AA vows, I poured the remainder down the sink and put on a pot of coffee.

Ten minutes later, Jimmy Joe showed up with a bag
of hamburgers. I pulled out one, stuck the rest in the
oven, poured me a cup of syrupy coffee, plopped down
in the living room, and flipped on the television.

Five minutes later, Leroi staggered in, holding his
head and peering about the room in disbelief. I grimaced. He was twenty pounds thinner than when I
saw him last. Threads of gray tinged his curly hair,
which, when I last saw him, was black as a Louisiana
swamp in the dark of the moon. His eyes were sunk
back in his head and his cheeks were hollow. He was
no more than bones with a leathery black skin drawn
tightly over them. He frowned when he saw me.
“Tony? That you?”

I tore off a chunk of hamburger. “At least, you’re not
blind. I’m surprised, the amount of booze you’ve been
putting away would’ve blinded anyone else” I washed
the hamburger down with a sip of hot Cajun coffee.

He winced and clutched his head. His hands shook.
“What what are you doing here?” he asked, wobbling
as he headed for the kitchen.

I heard him rummaging through the refrigerator. He
cursed and shouted. “Where’s the beer?”

“Gone!”

He cursed again and started opening and slamming
cabinet doors. In frustration, he screamed, “Now, what
did you do with my whiskey?”

I wandered into the kitchen and laid my hamburger
and coffee on the table. “Why don’t you sit down and
eat. Here, I’ll pour you a cup of coffee,” I said, pulling the bag of burgers from the oven and handing him one.
“Sit and eat. You’ll feel better.”

He made a face and waved the hamburger away. “I
ain’t hungry,” he growled.

“Then drink this,” I said, pouring him a cup of coffee. “You need coffee more than beer.”

“I don’t care. I want some beer.”

“You’re out of luck. I told you, we don’t have any”

He snarled. “Then I’ll just go get some more”

“You do, I won’t be here when you get back”

He shrugged and headed for the door. “Your choice,
cousin. I didn’t ask for you to come here.”

“And if I’m gone, you won’t ever know what I found
out about Stewart” It was a low blow, but the booze had
such a lock on Leroi that he needed a kick in the rear to
wake him up.

He froze in the kitchen door. He put his hands on the
jambs to steady himself and then he looked around at
me. “What’s that you say? What about Stewart?”

I gestured to the hamburgers and coffee. “Come over
here and sit down. I’ll tell you”

Leroi eyed me suspiciously. “You lying to me?”

“This is no time for lies, Leroi. And it’s no time to
throw everything you’ve worked for down the toilet either, especially over something you can’t do anything
about. Now, come on. Do what I said. Sit and eat.”

He studied me a moment, then pulled a glass from
the cabinet and drew it full of tap water. He gulped it
greedily, then slid in at the table and reached for the
coffee. I was glad I hadn’t filled the cup to the top or his shaking hands would have spilled it down his shirt. He
sipped some and made a face. “All right. Now, what
about Stewart?”

“What about your hamburger?”

Leroi cursed. “I ain’t hungry. You hear? Now, what
about my boy?”

I took a bite of my own hamburger and washed it
down with a sip of coffee and proceeded to bring Leroi
up to date on the case of Louis Guidry and the murder
of Paul-Leon Savoie. “Supposedly, it was a front for a
smuggling operation, and that might be what happened
to Stewart. Guidry claimed that whoever killed Savoie
worked at Austin Expediters. Now, here’s what’s interesting. Two of the guys who worked there, Kahlil Guilbeaux and Sebastian Mancini, testified against Guidry.”

Leroi ran his fingers through his graying hair. “I
know some Guilbeauxs, but none by that name.”

I sipped my coffee. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just
strictly coincidence that these guys worked at the same
place that Stewart did, but now we finally have some
names. And that’s what we didn’t have before”

While I spoke, Leroi absently unwrapped a hamburger and took a bite. “You think the dude that killed
this Savoie is the one who murdered Stewart?”

All I could do was shrug. “I don’t know. That’s why I
came here. I need your help.”

Leroi frowned. “My help?”

“One of those who testified against Guidry, a guy
named Mouton, lives over near the Sabine River in the
town of Melungo. You heard of it?”

He nodded. “West of de ridder. It’s most Melungeons and Redbones. That whole area is.”

“Don’t you have family over there on your mother’s
side somewhere?”

“Used to, up in Evans, north of Melungo. Why?”

“You just said it. Melungeons and Redbones. What
kind of luck do you think a white dude like me will
have over there? That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I
want you to go with me. Maybe your kin can give us
some background on Mouton or those other two guys.”

Puzzled, Leroi asked, “How do you know those two
are in Melungo?”

I grinned uneasily. “I don’t. Truth is, Mouton and
Melungo are the only leads I have”

He nodded slowly. “Sort of like that old snipe hunt
my old man sent us on that time, huh?”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “So, do you think you got any kin
left over there?”

He grunted. “Don’t know. I ain’t seen them in years.”
He sipped his coffee and took a bite of his hamburger.
“But, I’ll ask my old man.”

I grinned. “How is Uncle Patric?”

A wry grin played over Leroi’s face. He shook his
head. “Same as ever. Up to a fifth of bourbon a day.
Keeps saying he’s going to take off and find your pa.
Any idea where he is?”

“No.” I grinned sheepishly. “Knowing my old man,
he could turn up at the most unlikely places.”

Later, I would remember that remark.

Down to his last few brain cells, Uncle Patric could
remember only Leroi’s Aunt Belle Latiolas, and when
we reached Evans, Louisiana the next morning, we discovered she had passed away two years earlier, the last
of her clan.

Back in my pickup, Leroi asked, “So, now what?”

I pulled out on the highway. “Blunder ahead. I don’t
know what else to do”

“Well, I do, cuz” Leroi grinned. “Let’s pick up a sixpack before we get out of town. I’m thirsty.”

“Not yet. Later, after we talk to Mouton” I glanced
at Leroi and grinned. “Kinda jumpy?”

He clasped his hands in his lap. “Yeah. I am”

I changed the subject. “What’s going on with you
and Sally? I heard you two had separated?”

His eyes blazed. “That’s nobody’s business. Who
told you that?”

“Calm down, cousin. This is me, Tony. We used to
tell each other everything.”

The fire faded from his eyes. “Yeah, well, we got
problems.” And for the next twenty minutes until we
reached the Melungo village outskirts, Leroi poured
out the story which, distilled to its essence, was one
word-alcohol.

Melungo was a typical Louisiana village, population
3,817. To my left as we passed the town limits was a
new apartment complex, the Piney Woods. Beyond, the
highway took a sharp left. Two blocks down, I pulled in
at the first convenience store. “I’ll get directions to
Mouton’s place and be right back.”

Leroi nodded.

Inside I asked directions to Mouton’s street, and on
impulse, bought Leroi a cold beer.

His eyes lit when I handed it to him. He popped the
top, but before he took a gulp he frowned at me.
“Didn’t you get one?”

My tires spun on the gravel as I pulled back onto the
highway. “AA. I’m not too faithful at times, but I try.”

He remained silent. Moments later, he rolled down
the window and dumped the contents of the can on the
highway. “Well, if you can do it, so can I”

At that moment, I was really proud of my cousin.

Albert Mouton lived on Vernon Street in a small, neat brick house surrounded by a chain link fence in a
well-maintained neighborhood. A tan Plymouth sat in
the carport.

I pulled up at the front gate. “Come on in with me.
Some folks don’t care for the color of my skin.”

Leroi gave me a crooked grin. “So, I’m your token
black?”