The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (28 page)

“As long as it goes somewhere,” Shade said. He then patted his brother’s shoulder and asked him, “If I wasn’t with Zeck would you’ve told me about Bobby Gillette?”

“You know I wouldn’t, Rene,” Tip said. “It wouldn’t really be the right move for me if you think about it.”

“I knew that,” Shade said as he followed Shuggie to the door. “I just wanted to be reminded.”

9

A
S THE
sliding doors to the pool area were opened and Shade and Shuggie entered, a loud voice was raised: “Solve the riddle! Solve the riddle! Don’t spin the wheel, Miss Greedy, solve the riddle!”

Auguste Beaurain sat at poolside on a wicker chair that had Tahitian pretensions but had been made in Memphis, watching a game show. The swimming pool was enclosed by glass, roofed with same, and plants of several sizes were growing from pots on the parquet floor. Beaurain wore a white suit with a blue shirt and a jaunty yellow tie. The pool was calm and empty and the air conditioner was on.

“Afternoon, Mr. Beaurain,” Shuggie said. “This is Rene Shade.”

“I know,” Beaurain said. He did not take his eyes from the TV until the contestant went bust, then he growled, “Greedy people get what they deserve
sometimes
.” He then snapped the TV set off and said, “Detective Shade, do you understand the world you live in?”

“Which part of it?” Shade asked.

“The whole of it.”

“No, I don’t. And neither do you.” Shade sat down on a nearby chair and set his feet on a small, glass-topped table, thereby establishing his insolence. “Mind if I sit?”

“Of course not.” Beaurain lifted a bowl of nuts and held it toward Shade. “Help yourself. I particularly like the cashews, myself. I’d appreciate it if you left them for me.”

“No thanks.”

“Okay.” Beaurain set the bowl down. “Shuggie, sit, be comfortable.”
Beaurain measured five foot seven standing on your neck. He had a lean but lined face, with a pleasant arrangement of features, and a nearly constant smile. His hair was gray, thin, and carefully combed. He had all the attributes of a “Disney Hour” grandpappy but his was in fact the whip hand held over the insolvent and indictable of St. Bruno. “We’ve met before,” he said to Shade. “Twice. Once when you were a small boy. Your daddy is John X. Shade, isn’t it? You were with him, years ago. There were three of you boys, one not so little. Your daddy used to book bets for me, Detective.”

“He ever give you a short count and lam out on you?”

“No, he never did.”

“Then it must’ve been a different John X. Shade, Mr. B.”

“You really
don’t
understand the world you live in, do you? Ah”—Beaurain shook his head like a displeased schoolteacher—“that will make this harder.”

“He’s a knucklehead,” Shuggie said. “I’ve known him since we had to stand on a bicycle seat to sneak through a window.”

“You told me that,” Beaurain said.

“You said twice,” Shade drawled. “When was the other time we met? I don’t remember it. I’ve seen you around, but I don’t remember meeting you.”

“Well, you were sort of distracted the second time. The first time you were a child and the second time you’d just encountered Foster Broome in your one chance at the title. I’m not certain you could even see, your eyes looked like tomatoes squashed on cement.” Beaurain laughed. “That nigger whupped you like he’d caught you stealing chickens, didn’t he?”

“He was a great fighter,” Shade said. “I was offered a shot at him so I took it and he kicked my ass. Big deal.”

“I knew you’d take the fight,” Beaurain said. He extracted a cashew from the bowl and ate it. “And I knew you’d lose.”

“What do you mean, you knew?”

Beaurain laughed and said to Shuggie, “He really is a knucklehead, ain’t he?” He then turned to Shade, looking disgusted. “How do you
think you got that fight, asshole? Your record was what—eighteen and seven?”

“Eighteen and six at the time,” Shade said. “I ended up twenty-four and nine.”

“Whatever. I put up the guarantee for that fight, Detective. I wanted to see a local boy get a chance at the big brass ring. I guaranteed Broome’s purse so you could get it.”

“Why?” Shade pulled his feet off of the table and sat up straight. There was nothing insolent about him now, and he needed to know more. “Why would you do that?”

“Like I said, I knew you’d lose. But I remembered your daddy, and I always liked him, and I knew every redneck, half a wise guy, and straight citizen from this town would bet on you. It got even better when the niggers went for you, too. That surprised me, but they bet you probably, oh, sixty percent. Go figure, you see. That’s why it’s called gambling.”

“Well, I came through for you,” Shade said. “I lost.”

“Yes, but you were given a chance. I want you to note this, too. It wasn’t the nuns at St. Peter’s who got it for you. It wasn’t a group of lawyers, judges, doctors and poets who got it for you. No, Shade, there was not a consortium of moneyed saints and sporting bankers from Hawthorne Hills interested in seeing a Frogtown boy like you get a chance to punch out a place in history. No,” Beaurain said with a slow head shake, “the good people of St. Bruno stood apart from you, but I didn’t.”

This was all news to Shade, and it went back to a not so distant phase of his life when he’d been on the cusp of both worlds, straddling the street and the straight and narrow, and it was the fact that he’d actually, miraculously, been given a title shot that had convinced him that the world was benign more often than he’d given it credit for. He was not old now by any calculations other than the athletic, but he suddenly felt like an ancient dupe, a moron, a man who couldn’t tell fresh creamy butter from pig fat.

“I hear you,” he said, “but I don’t think I owe you shit.”

“Oh, no, you don’t owe me anything. I’m just helping you toward understanding the world you live in.” Beaurain clapped his hands and said, “Norman, bring us some drinks!”

A pale, round-faced man came out from behind a green curtain of plants. He was bald and wore a shoulder holster.

“Who’s that?” Shade asked.

“That’s my son-in-law, Norman the Jew. He watches over me here, him and my daughter. This is a bad neighborhood, you know.”

All of the men chuckled, for none of them had ever willingly lived anywhere else. Beaurain’s house was very modest when viewed from the street, but the interior was richly furnished, and he’d added on the pool room in back. He had the down payment for a palace anywhere but he stayed here, in Frogtown, not two full blocks from the house he’d been born in.

Presently, Norman came back carrying a tray of drinks. He set the tray on the table and went silently back to his sniper blind behind the plants.

“I only drink tonic water in summer,” Beaurain said. “The quinine, you know.”

Shade was feeling the first tingling waves of illegal alertness. He lifted a glass and gulped from it.

“You ever been arrested?” he asked. “I heard we’ve never popped you for anything.”

“That’s right,” Beaurain said. “I’ll go to heaven. My record is free of criminal charges.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Well, I’m a likable person, Shade. People seem to want to be nice to me. Plus, I’m not greedy, so I don’t make enemies the way you’d expect.”

Mr. B.’s rep, though clangorous and fearful, was, Shade knew, that he was a fair-minded breed of gangster. Street slime and sly businessmen considered him to be more decisive than the legal system, a good deal more fair, but when he convicted someone his sentences tended to be forty-five caliber.

“Maybe I’ll nail you,” Shade said. His teeth were grinding and he had a black-beauty sense of optimism.

“Jerk,” Shuggie said.

“What would be the point?” Beaurain asked. “I’m a good governor. Let me tell you, Detective. Let me tell you about greed, which I don’t have. Down on the south side here, there’s Del McKechnie and Benny Kreuger and Georgie Sedillo, and, oh, one or two others. Do I fuck with them? Do I make life a heartache for them? No. No, maybe I accept a tithe, presents really, when they offer them to me, which is, frankly, always. Do I want more? Do I want it all? No, that’d be greedy. Greed makes trouble. So I accept a tithe and things go smooth. And over in Pan Fry Mr. Sundown Phillips has things pretty much under control but, still, I know people he doesn’t and maybe he gives me a piece, a small percentage, out of respect. I accept graciously. I don’t send Shuggie over there to make trouble, and I don’t let Rudy Regot or Steve Roque or any of the Frogtown cliques go into the south side and come on rugged with the fellas down there.”

“Yeah,” Shade said, “and does everybody live happily ever after?”

“Jerk.”

“Shade,” Beaurain said, “if you weren’t a cop, what would you be?”

“I might be you.”

“Never, never, you don’t even understand the world you live in, how could you be me?”

“I could dress spiffy and talk like a duke, too, if it wasn’t that I’d rather wear rags and feel free to spit on dukes.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Beaurain,” Shuggie said. “This is how he always is.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Beaurain said. He ferreted out another cashew and put it in his mouth, then sucked on it behind a smile. “He’s what you said he’d be. Shade, I wonder, are you a good Christian?”

“My case is under review.”

“Ah, but I think you want to be. I admire that. The higher-calling angle, you see, can inspire men toward greatness. It can also delude them. Ponder it.” Beaurain hunched forward, his hands on his knees. “I’m glad to have met you. But now is business. As you know there are
some ruffians going around, hurting people, fucking things up. They’re greedy, they’re stupid, they’re going to pay. Your team feels the same as my team, Detective, and it’s all of us against the umpires.”

“So I was told,” Shade said. “I’m not a fuckin’ hit man, though.”

“Jerk.”

“Shuggie, you call me a jerk again and I’m gonna kick your fat ass in front of your boss.”

“Come on
with it
, Rene.”

“Shut up,” Beaurain said with a wince of offended elegance. “Both of you. I feel like I’m a kid again, with all this fistfighting shit, and, believe me, my kid years are
not
my favorite memory.” Beaurain looked over his shoulder toward the gun position behind the petunias. “Norman, show these gents the door.” He then quickly spun back to Shade. “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Detective Shade, but you don’t know enough about the world you live in. I could tell you, but I don’t have time.”

Shade stood and shook his legs loose and felt the pleasant amphetamine back beat of his heart.

“They whacked one of ours, Mr. B., and I’m in it because of that. But later, I might get on you just to see your moves.” Shade extended his hand to the overlord of his town.

“Very well. Bonne chance. I look forward to it.” Beaurain stood and shook Shade’s hand. “Just remember the birds-and-bees of business—I fuck you or you fuck me. And there aren’t many birthday parties for fellas who’ve fucked me.”

Shade smiled widely and stared hard into Beaurain’s face.

“You talk a lot of shit about knowing the world we live in, Mr. B., but you’re dangerously fuckin’ confused about me. I want you to know that up-front.”

10

A
S IT
had been on so many key days in Wanda Bone Bouvier’s life, the sky above her head was murky, backed up by soiled wads of cloud. She drove west from home looking for a through street to the north. A smoking stick of boo was in her left hand, clasped to the steering wheel. Her right hand held a bottle of Pepsi that she’d clogged with salted peanuts and called a late lunch.

She hit River Road and jumped on the gas, prompting gut checks in oncoming motorists when she passed the old pokies in her path. She sucked on the doobie, chomped and swished her southland snack, speeding on by a seedy stretch of small businesses and stores where the cashiers tended to keep their hands beneath the counter when strangers came in.

It was a gray, hot, horsefly afternoon, and her skin felt slick with sweat when she pulled into the parking lot of The Rio, Rio Club. The joint was a large prefab aluminum concoction, guaranteed to go south in a heavy wind, with a sign above the door that said,
BUSCH ON TAP, ROOMS TO LET
.

Wanda had pondered several themes she might embody and had opted to attempt the fresh-out-of-high-school-but-willing approach. She wore a pale green and yellow summer dress, with fifty cents’ worth of pearls around her neck, red lipstick and yellow spike heels. When she came in the club she saw a round stage with a light above it, and a woman lying on a blanket doing splits. Jerry Lee Lewis, a regional hero, was booming from the speakers, “The Killer” singing a vigorously
sad song about bad love gone worse, and beating his piano like he was married to it.

Wanda took a seat up against the stage and studied the bare gal’s performance. The audience was a steamy-eyed group therapy conglomeration of night-shift factory drones, expense account raconteurs and countrified shy guys. The dancer did her limber thing lying on a pink blanket, seemingly unaware that others were in the room, doing her gynecologically revealing calisthenics as if she were at home with the curtains drawn.

Wanda looked into the supine dancer’s eyes and decided that the woman seemed so aloof because she
was
aloof, likely hiding behind a reds and daiquiri veil.

“What’ll you have, sister?” the bartender asked.

“A glass of whatever’s on tap.”

The bartender was a husky old hustler, in a nice white shirt with a red bow tie. When he set the beer in front of Wanda he said, “Pardon me for askin’, ma’am, but are you a dyke?”

“Does it matter?”

“It’d break my heart.”

“I’m just watchin’ her out of boredom—my TV’s on the fritz.” Wanda tasted the beer. “Mmm, good’n cold. Leon around?”

“Leon? Leon?” The bartender did a mock stagger, his hand over his heart. “You ain’t gonna stop ’til you do break it are you?”

Wanda dealt the old boy a smile as a reward for still having the pluck to try.