Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (21 page)

“South Louisiana is a giant sponge. That’s why we keep in constant motion. If you stand still, you’ll either sink or be eaten alive by giant insects,” I said.

Betsy Mossbacher laughed, but Helen remained stone-faced and silent, obviously because of her resentment over Betsy Mossbacher’s early reference to her as a member of what she called “the tongue-and-groove club.”

“How are you, Sheriff Soileau?” Betsy said.

“Fine. How’s life at the Bureau?” Helen replied.

“Oh, we chase the ragheads around. You know how it is.”

“
What?
” Helen said.

“I just wanted to see if you were listening,” Betsy said.

Great start for the afternoon, I thought.

But personality conflicts were not really on my mind. The fact that Lonnie Marceaux had called a meeting with Helen prematurely in the investigation of the Lujan homicide, even inviting an FBI agent to attend, meant the purpose was entirely political. More specifically, it meant the purpose was entirely about the career of Lonnie Marceaux.

After we were seated in his office on the second floor of the courthouse, he closed the door and sat down in his swivel chair, leaning backward, stretching out his long legs, as though he were entering a moment of profound thought, his scalp glistening through his crew cut. Behind him was a fine overview of the old part of town and the enormous live oaks that arched over small frame houses.

“Thanks for coming today. I’ve already gotten some feedback from our forensic chemist, Mack Bertrand, and our coroner, Koko Hebert,” he said, his gaze lingering a moment on Betsy Mossbacher’s casual dress. “I’m afraid this case is going to have some racial overtones we don’t need. That means we need to move forward with as much dispatch as possible and keep things in perspective, which translates into keeping them simple.” He glanced again at Betsy Mossbacher, probably to see if she was aware of the deference he had shown her by using people’s titles so she could follow the discussion. “Has Koko talked to you yet, Dave?”

“No, he hasn’t,” I replied.

“Well, there’s not a lot in the post we don’t already know. Tony Lujan was murdered with buckshot fired at him from almost point-blank range. Koko thinks he was hit four times, which means that whoever did it probably bore Tony a special hatred. Mack’s report on the twelve-gauge found in Monarch Little’s car is absolute in its conclusions. The cut-down twelve is the murder weapon.”

“How about the lack of latents?” I said.

“What about it?”

“Monarch wiped off his gun, then left it lying on the floor of his car, just before somebody tossed a truck flare on the seat?”

Lonnie scratched the back of his head with one finger. “I don’t believe the absence of latents is particularly unusual, especially with a career street mutt like Monarch. With these guys, wiping down a gun is probably an automatic reflex. Plus, I don’t think Monarch is that bright. Also, he had no way of knowing the gun has a defective firing pin that leaves a singular mark on a shell casing. After he did the Lujan kid, he probably thought he was home free. What do you think, Helen?”

“I haven’t talked with Mack or read his report. I don’t have an opinion,” she said.

“Can you get on that ASAP?” Lonnie said.

“Soon as I get out of this meeting,” she replied.

Lonnie looked at her, searching for second meaning in her statement.

“I get the sense we’re already narrowing down the investigation to one suspect,” I said.

“Wrong. Right now we’re talking about a ‘person of interest,’ and his name happens to be Monarch Little. He’s in jail, too, and that’s where he needs to stay,” Lonnie said.

“I’ve just started to track the victim’s movements and whereabouts preceding his death,” I said. “I’ve talked on the phone to two of his fraternity brothers and I’m going to interview them in person at three o’clock. Evidently Tony Lujan went over to St. John’s Cathedral in Lafayette yesterday and talked to a priest, or at least was playing pitch-and-catch with him. The fraternity brothers said Tony was agitated and depressed and maybe wanted to unload his conscience about something.”

“Of course he was depressed. He was supposed to be in my office today and either take the fall for Crustacean Man or let his father go down for it.”

“Let me finish here, if I can,” I said, blinking to show I didn’t intend offense, that the problem was my own inability to speak succinctly and not Lonnie’s imperious attitude. “I also have the impression he was doing some weed and drinking. In other words, he was in an impaired state when he talked to the caller who identified himself as Monarch Little. The only semireliable witness we have in the moments leading up to Tony’s death is a part-time girlfriend by the name of Lydia Thibodaux. She says she talked to Monarch when he called Tony’s house to set up the meeting, but she gets pretty vague when it comes to actual voice identification. I have a sense—”

“Have you gotten the Lujans’ telephone records?” Lonnie interrupted.

“There were three calls to the house yesterday afternoon. One from a solicitor, one to confirm a pizza order, and one from a pay phone. The pay phone was—”

“I don’t think you’re reading me correctly, Dave. We’re going to examine every possible lead in this case, but it’s going to be done in an expeditious way, without any foot-dragging. I’m not going to let this turn into a racial issue, and everybody in this room knows that’s what’s going to happen if Monarch Little has his way. I’m not letting the do-gooders and the ACLU use us for their agenda, either.”

“Hear me out, Lonnie. Tony’s roommate was Slim Bruxal. So far I haven’t been able to find him. He was gone from the fraternity house yesterday and his father claims he hasn’t seen him since last week. Slim and some other fraternity kids followed Tony to St. John’s and found him playing pitch-and-catch with the priest. Before we start dropping the jailhouse on Monarch’s head, we need to get Slim Bruxal in here and find out what he was doing when Tony was killed.”

I could tell Lonnie didn’t like my bringing up Slim Bruxal’s name in front of Betsy Mossbacher, in all probability because he planned to launch his own investigation into Whitey Bruxal’s ties with racketeering and exclude the FBI.

“So haul his ass in here. But what you’re going to get from Slim Bruxal is shit and you know it,” Lonnie said.

“You’ll have to excuse me for being a bit dense, but can you explain to me why I’ve been invited here?” Betsy said.

“Professional courtesy, Agent Mossbacher,” Lonnie replied. “You were in the process of moving Monarch into Witness Protection. In my opinion, that process has become a moot issue. We’ll cooperate in every way we can with your investigation into racketeering inside the gaming industry, but right now we have a homicide to deal with. In case you’re interested, at age eighteen Monarch was probably involved in the shooting death of a man who was watering his lawn on Easter morning. He also set fire to the house of a city policeman.”

“That’s interesting. I wonder why he’s been on the street all this time,” she replied.

Lonnie grinned and glanced out the window, as though he were checking the weather. “You forced Monarch to file charges against the Bruxal boy in order to get at his father. That makes perfect sense. But now it looks like your confidential informant or whatever you want to call him has committed a homicide in an extortion attempt gone bad. So you’re going to have to go after Whitey Bruxal on your own, or at least without strings on Monarch Little. He’s our problem now and we’re going to handle him and
it
from now on out.”

He turned away from her and looked back at me and Helen. “I’d like to talk with both of you again by close of business today. Media are already all over this, and there’s at least one alternative newspaper in Lafayette that loves to throw matches at gasoline. We’re not going to let this turn into a gangbanger and race issue. This is not Los Angeles or New Orleans. Our tourism is booming and I plan to see that it stays that way. This is a good city. Our streets aren’t going to be turned into free-fire zones because of one black asshole and a spoiled white kid who probably ran over a homeless man and left him to die on the road.”

It was obvious he was proselytizing about local concerns in order to exclude Betsy Mossbacher from the conversation and encourage her to leave the meeting. But it didn’t work.

“No disrespect meant, Mr. Marceaux, but do you believe either the Bureau or the DOJ is going to change its policies because of anything said at this meeting?”

“I’m trying to be candid about our priorities, Agent Mossbacher. You and your people can do whatever you want. That’s how you usually operate anyway, isn’t it?”

Betsy Mossbacher got up from her chair, then reached down for her purse. Her bright, straw-colored hair was still damp on the tips and stuck to the back of her neck. “You don’t have your brand on that black kid’s backside. He’s still a confidential informant cooperating with a federal investigation, and he’d better be regarded as such by your office. In my opinion, you’re pushing your own investigators to come to conclusions they’re not ready to make. I’m going to take official note of all this, so don’t be surprised if you invite a civil rights beef you didn’t have before you called this meeting.”

Lonnie pinched his eyes and pretended to suppress a yawn. “I hear you. Glad you dropped by. Let me get the door for you,” he said, rising from his chair.

Then I witnessed one of those rare moments, in a male-dominated environment, when a woman can wrap herself in her own integrity and create an impregnable shield around herself. Lonnie had pulled open the door and was waiting for Betsy Mossbacher to leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she stood silently, five feet from the door’s threshold, waiting for his pantomime to end, her eyes focused into the hallway. He tried to wait her out, then realized he had been trapped into making a fool of himself.

He eased the door closed. “I beg your pardon, Agent Mossbacher,” he said, and returned to his desk.

“No problem,” she said. Then she opened the door for herself and closed it behind her.

I saw a tug at the corner of Helen Soileau’s mouth.

Lonnie cleared his throat and fiddled with a ballpoint pen on his desk. “I want to say something for the record. I believe Monarch did Bello Lujan’s boy. But I’m going to leave that determination up to y’all. That said, there’s obviously a much larger story at work here. Those federal agents wouldn’t take the time to spit on us if we were burning to death. They want Whitey Bruxal in a cage and maybe Bello Lujan, too. I suspect the Mossbacher woman is a closet liberal who wants to bring down this televangelical lobbyist Colin Alridge. It’s my position we don’t need the goddamn federal government to do any of the aforementioned. Bruxal has tried to bribe two or three people to get his video poker machines into Iberia Parish. That puts him in our jurisdiction. Y’all with me on this?”

“I haven’t thought it all through, Lonnie,” I said.

“Glad to see such a positive attitude. How about you, Helen?”

“To tell the truth, I think I should have been reading Mack’s report and the post on Tony Lujan rather than attending this meeting,” she said. “I’ll get back to you ASAP.”

It wasn’t the best of days for Lonnie Marceaux.

A few minutes later, as I was checking out a cruiser to go to Lafayette, I saw Helen make a point of speaking to Betsy Mossbacher at the entrance to the courthouse. Helen saw me watching her, just before she headed back to her office.

“Don’t say a word,” she said.

“My mind was totally blank,” I said.

Then a laugh coughed out of her throat. “That Calamity Jane is something else, isn’t she?”

L
ATER
, I
INTERVIEWED
the Catholic priest at St. John’s who threw baseballs through church windows. I also interviewed a collection of fraternity kids who until the previous day had believed inclusion in a whites-only non-Jewish social organization could protect them from death. I still couldn’t find Slim Bruxal. The only light moment in the afternoon came when I was leaving the interview with the priest. He asked me if I would like to catch a few grounders with him. And I said why not.

Chapter
12

I
WOKE AT FIVE-THIRTY
the next morning to the sound of mockingbirds in the trees and a boat with a deep draft working its way downstream from the drawbridge at Burke Street. Our home was a wonderful place to wake on an early summer morning. Sometimes ground fog hung on the bayou, and inside it I would hear a gator slap its tail in the lily pads or a nutria or a muskrat roll off a cypress knee into the water. Sometimes I imagined I saw Confederate longboats, sharpshooters humped low inside, the oars muffled, floating silently with the current toward the Yankees’ skirmish line at Nelson’s Canal.

It didn’t matter what the weather was like. Morning with Molly and Snuggs and Tripod was always a grand time, and the arrival of the day had little to do with clocks. Just before first light I would hear the milkman crossing the lawn, fat bottles of cream clinking in his wire basket, then a solid thump on the ceiling when Snuggs dropped from an oak limb onto the roof, right above our bedroom. Molly would stir in her sleep, her hip rounded by the sheet, her hot rump brushing against me. I would put my fingers in her hair, trace them down her shoulders and back, and along the deep curve in her waist. I’d kiss her baby fat and the two red sun moles below her navel. I’d kiss her breasts and stomach and mouth and eyes, then slip her close against me, burying my face in the thick smell of her hair.

When she made love, she did it without stint or reservation or buried resentment because of a cross word or imagined slight. Molly’s charity and smile followed her into bed, and in the morning her skin gave off a warm fragrance just like flowers in a garden. In the blueness of the dawn I would hear the steady rhythm of her breath in my ear while Miss Ellen Deschamps called to her cats from her back porch, and I would start the day with the absolute knowledge that no evil could hold sway in our lives.