The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (13 page)

Crane reared up his head at this.

“Yeah,” Ledoux said, “asshole. I said it. You’re an asshole. The man robbed you to keep you a peon and you’d still rather die than get even with him. I mean, you know you’re goin’ to die, don’t you? If you don’t get Rankin for us.”

“I’ve had that suspicion.”

“It’s a fact.”

Crane stood erect and walked to the door. “I’ll talk to Steve,” he said. “I know I’m in a spot.”

“Your whole fuckin’ family is.”

But Crane was out of the spot now, Ledoux thought grimly as he dumped the coins into the telephone slot and dialed the number, feeling worse than he had all day.

On the third ring the phone was answered.

“Phillips Construction. Powers Jones talkin’.”

“I want to talk to Phillips.”

“Ain’t here. Who is this?”

“Nobody.”

“This Pete Ledoux, ain’t it?”

“So?”

“You got somethin’ to say, say it.”

There was a long pause, a pause long enough for several decades to be overruled.

“Yeah. I got somethin’ to say. You be sure and tell it to Phillips. What it is, is this…”

12

T
HE CROWD
was pressing forward, butting against the police cordon of three black-and-whites, their expressions a fusion of the horrified and the entertained. They gawked loose-jawed at the body of Teejay Crane, unified in their fondness for the misery of strangers.

At 5:46 Detectives Shade and Blanchette arrived on the scene. They approached a knot of officers in uniform and shirt-sleeved detectives who stood around the body. A departing patrolman grabbed Shade by the arm.

“Jesus, it’s a mess,” the young patrolman said.

“Never seen brains before?” Blanchette asked.

“Not in so many different places.”

Detective Tom Gutermuth, a liver-spotted, mellow, robbery detail man, who’d happened on the scene first, told Shade that there was not, in fact, much to tell. Blond kid with Elvis ambitions, waving a sawed-off, point-blank, two shots. The weapon has been found and black-and-whites are cruising for the shooter. The victim was the owner-operator of the Olde Sussex Theater, and there were witnesses.

“A porno prince,” Blanchette said.

“Right,” Shade said. “We should pull in everybody we see in stained raincoats, I reckon.”

“And shitpaper stuck to their shoes.”

There seemed to be no benefit in standing around scrutinizing the corpse, so Shade decided to do what he thought he was best at: trail a
danger through the hard streets and volatile alleys of Saint Bruno. Something, at least, might be turned up through action that contemplation would let slip away.

Blanchette stayed at the scene, and Shade set off alone, on foot.

The blond shooter had definitely made an impression. His passing had been memorable and Shade had no difficulty following his route from the Olde Sussex to Second Street. Shade would tap on windows and ask loiterers if they’d seen a panicked whitebread with lunacy in his eyes. Although the area was a mix in terms of race, the ambiance was black. The thumping bass backbeats that echoed from nearby sound systems were of sepia artistry, and the voices, even those of the honkoid denizens, rapped black. They always remembered the blond but rarely spoke, only pointed “that way,” toward the river.

Shade began to trot down the streets, knowing that he was most of an hour behind. The retail businesses had closed as a rule, and only taverns, the Woolworths, and video arcades were open. He paused to ask questions in the arcades, thus giving every would-be wiseass and nascent tough guy the chance to define himself by his response. Adolescent drollery and derivative insolence. Shade didn’t have the time for it, so he turned toward the river and began to lope.

He was winding back toward the edge of Frogtown. The blond seemed to have been set on a course to the river and once there he could only go south, or north to Frogtown. Instinct and long experience prompted Shade to follow the northern chance.

Rousseau Street flanked the river. It was a street of warehouses, flophouses, and Jesus missions, peopled by winos, the perpetually hard of luck, and one or two who were roughly saints. Coal bins lined the tracks, providing a haven for those rambling men who couldn’t spare the buck for a flop and refused to perjure themselves on the God issue for the payoff bowl of soup and green-blanketed bunk. Urban Darwinism was at work in the grim light of this place, and the mean got over with their no-limit rage, while the weak went under, silently.

Shade approached a quartet of men who were joined in a medley of
petty frustrations and narcissistic defeats. Two of the men were gray, with features matted by time, and the others were working toward the same transformation.

“A blond came by here,” Shade said. “He was running, probably. See him?”

“I ain’t seen nobody I
wanted
to see since Glenn Miller died,” one of the grayed men said.

“Blond, huh?” said one of the less grayed men. “Blond. My friend Terry is blond. Sort of dishwater blond. I like him, he likes me. But he lives in Memphis, you know. That’s not here.”

“Right,” Shade said. He turned to the youngest-looking member of the group. “You see the kid I’m talkin’ about?”

The man shook his head.

“I never do,” he said. “That’s a credo, you.”

“I knew it was,” Shade said, and loped on.

Further along the worn-down street, Shade, remembering the mornings of his youth when a sport involving rocks and taunts had been made of the passed-out losers who slept in the woods near the river, thought about searching those woods. He stopped in front of the Holy Order of Man, a Catholic snooze joint, and decided that it would take too many searchers to do it right.

He heard something knocking and turned to see a man with purple thumbprints beneath his eyes motioning to him from the doorway of the Holy Order.

“You’re the law,” the man said, raspily. His skin had the pallor of sickness, or asceticism, and his head had been recently shaved. “You’re standin’ around with your thumb up your ass, and I’m sayin’ to myself, ‘That man is with the law.’ ” The man scraped a kitchen match along the windowsill and lit a smoke. “Am I right?”

“How’d you know?” Shade asked, although an ability to spot cops was not, in his experience, a particularly rare skill.

“I’m a lay brother,” the man said, displaying his yellow teeth. “But there was a time I’d get in your upstairs window and get out again with your RCA TV and your stash of Trojans while you’re takin’ a two-beer
leak. Then one time some citizen didn’t nail his gutter in exactly solid and I fell.” He blew smoke and nodded. “I was caught, but I woke up knowin’ Our Lord real well.”

“Mysterious ways.”

“Cheap nails.”

“I’m lookin’ for somebody.”

“No joke?”

“Blond kid, on the run.”

“Did he do bad things?”

“Yes,” Shade said. “He did bad.”

“Well, I’m sure Our Lord still loves him.”

“Our Lord should’ve stopped him.”

The man inhaled like a whistle, then shrugged and exhaled a serpent of smoke.

“The Lord’s not that possessive,” he said. “That’s a good thing about the love of Our Lord, you know. He’s not at all what you’d call
clingy
, but keeps pretty cool about the whole affair.”

“Uh-huh,” Shade grunted. “I’ve noticed that.”

“But I’m a new man these days. I’ll even tell
you
something. I saw the sinner ye seek.”

“Which way did he go?”

The man pointed north along the tracks.

“Yonder. He’d seen the Devil. It was in his eyes and he was stumblin’.” The man looked Shade in the eye and nodded. “I never much helped the law before, and you know what? It don’t make me feel any better, copper.”

“Keep doin’ it till you get off parole, though, won’t you?”

Shade set off at a fast pace. It was only a few more blocks to Frogtown and he covered that ground quickly. A few times he passed people who sensed his quarry, stopped, and pointed north, north to the neighborhood he’d spent his whole life in. A splotch of houses and memories, failures and rancid conquests, a small scoop of earth that he knew more deeply than he knew his own father.

It had certainly given him more guidance.

13

P
OWERS
J
ONES
, the butterscotch shooter whose clothes had a floral, South Seas theme, moved down Voltaire Street like a stealthy hurricane. He paused at the Chalk & Stroke. The door was propped open in the hopes of attracting a breeze, but drew only flies. Powers stood in the doorway and scanned the crowd. It was the sort of poolroom that required air you could shake hands with before you breathed it, and husky smoke made it so. There was nothing there to interest him, so Powers Jones walked on.

A Ford station wagon was keeping pace with the tropical stranger, but stayed several yards behind him. He motioned to it from time to time, and shook his head. Finally Powers halted across the street from a crotchety hair salon and looked above it to a ramshackle window where a lamp shone in the dusk. He signaled to the Ford to park down the block a few car lengths, then walked to it.

He opened the rear door and ducked into the seat. There were two young black men in the front. Powers rested his elbows on the seat back and scooted forward.

“This the place,” he said. “Farm boy’s crib. Time to earn your beans.”

The driver checked the street with a stiff-necked swivel, so cool he was almost paralyzed. The other accomplice, clearly a freshman on the mayhem squad, was openly nervous.

“I just watch the door,” he said. “I’ve did that before.”

Powers Jones lit a Salem and leaned back in the seat.

“I’ll be doin’ what has to be,” he said. “So hang loose, Thomas. We can’t move till we sure the cracker there, anyhow.”

“The light’s on,” Thomas said.

“Yeah, well, it could be to keep thieves back, you know. We wait till we certain he’s in there.”

“When will that be?”

“Huh, huh,” Powers chuckled. “It’ll be when that fool cracker start hangin’ his nose out the window. And he will, if he there, ’cause he real jittery, and he got to be devastatin’ dumb. Huh, huh.” Powers Jones propped his feet on the front seat so that they dangled between the two trainees. “He so silly
everybody
want him dead.”

Suze leaned against the bathroom door and knocked again. She was wearing her blue two-piece swimsuit with the white polka dots that were juggled when she walked. She bent down to the doorknob as if it were an intercom.

“Come on, baby,” she said. “Come out of there. It’s your special favorite—fish sticks and fried okra.” There was no response. “Are you sick? You looked sick. Don’t eat in these cafes around here. I see ’em feedin’ cats at night, but their faces don’t really look that kind. Eat what comes in a bag. That’s sanitary.”

He’d come in half an hour earlier with hair twisted into a nest, his face blood-red wherever it wasn’t deathly pale, and his clothes all wet. The first thing he’d done was get his pistol from the dresser. Suze asked him what was up. He’d smiled then in a way that made her chest feel bubbly. “Oh, just gonna see somethin’, is all.” He’d been in the bathroom and silent ever since.

“Look, Jewel—should I throw it out, or what? It won’t stay crisp, you know.”

The lock scraped and the door opened. Jewel’s hair was combed, and his face had been washed, but his eyes were twitching.

“Now there’s my baby,” Suze said, and threw her arms around his neck. She leaned into him lustily and rubbed her breasts to his chest.
Her right leg slid into the inviting gap left by the spread of his, and she forced a bumping of groins. “Mmmm.”

“I didn’t eat no cat,” he said stiffly. “That’s awful.”

“Good. That’s good. I cooked you your special favorite.” Suze began to slither encouragingly against his sensitive regions, then hung a finger in her mouth and tried to look smoldering. “Baby, you started me off this mornin’ with a certain sort of ideas. I’ve had ’em all day long. That made your sweet magnolia get, you know, a little damp.”

Jewel rested his hand on the pistol in his belt, then eased Suze away.

“I’m not sick.”

A sweet giggle came from Suze.

“To be honest, I patted it dry with my fingers ’cause I didn’t know
when
you’d get here.” She pushed herself up close to him and turned her face up to his. “Twice. And I was startin’ to look at the ketchup bottle funny, too.” She laughed.

“I don’t think I can eat,” Jewel said. He turned away.

“There’s things in this world that is really gonna shock you, girl.”

“Aw, Jewel,” Suze whined and walked to the couch. “What is it with you, anyhow?” She flopped onto the couch, knowing that her plans for the evening were off. “What’s the matter?”

“Men business.”

“You meet you some gal who’s got a car or somethin’?”

“I told you, girl, men business.”

“Well now, that don’t tell me just a whole hell of a lot, does it? I mean, you been playin’ baseball or shootin’ rabbits, or what?”

Jewel walked to the window and stuck his head between the curtains. There was still light to the day and there were plenty of people on the street, but none who meant anything to him. He went back to the couch and sat on the thick padded arm.

“Did you steal somethin’, baby?”

“Don’t ask.”

“You’ve done that before and not got caught. Don’t get worried up about it. There’s lots more thieves up here than back home. They won’t even think of you around here.”

Jewel pulled the pistol from his belt and set it on the couch beside him. He saw his guitar with the snapped E string still on the floor where it had dropped after he flung it away that morning. While staring at it he drifted into thought, one finger motionless at the side of his nose.

“Jew-el, tell me what’s goin’ on.”

He blinked several times.

“We’re not married,” he said finally. “They could make you tell on me.”

“But I wouldn’t. I never would do that.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jewel said, then stood. “Sure.” He began to pace, then suddenly stopped. “Do you know somethin’ you shouldn’t? What do you know?”