The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (5 page)

“So nobody else can complain?”

“They can complain all they want, but I don’t care.”

“You have no sympathy for yourself,” Shade said.

“I guess I’d need more college to see the smartness in that silliness, partner.”

The street lights became brighter when they’d passed out of Pan Fry. Saint Bruno, with a population of two hundred thousand, was a city of many neighborhoods, Frogtown and Pan Fry being the largest and most fabled, and great numbing stretches of anonymous, bland, and nearly affluent subdivisions.

At Clay Street Blanchette turned east with rubber-squealing confidence and stomped the gas pedal since traffic was light. Pio’s Italian Garden was still open, the red neon pizza in the window flashing an all-night invitation. Blanchette found his memories of repasts taken there to be varied but sufficient, and he suddenly wheeled into the parking lot.

He looked at Shade and said, “A man’s got to eat. Hungry?”

“For chrissake no, man.”

Blanchette climbed from the car, then leaned in the door.

“Tragedy saps your energy, Rene. Does mine anyhow. Think I’ll grab a meatball grinder.”

“You’re a real man, How.”

Blanchette nodded in agreement, then closed the door and went into Pio’s.

For reasons that Shade found to be too tangled to articulate and too elusive to grasp, he liked How Blanchette. That put him in a very small club. But he’d known Blanchette too long, their Frogtown pasts were too interwoven for him not to forgive him, even for the unforgivable.

How had started life in Frogtown, about three alleys north of the Shades, as Arthur Blanchette. His father, the eccentric and locally cherished Leigh Blanchette, had provided material for exuberant, arm-spreading barroom tales, and closely huddled, snide, post-mass anecdotes that were recounted by several generations of Frogtowners, while sticking his son with a nickname that would become both his burden and his distinction.

When How was fifteen and still known as Arthur, the Dunne family, who lived behind them, had given their sons bows and arrows as birthday presents. Soon they had an informal archery range, sending arrows flying toward the bank of dirt that formed the boundary between the Dunne and Blanchette backyards. Pappy Dunne was an Irishman with fantasies of personal talent, enormous tabs at neighborhood taverns, and a job at Jerry’s Seat Covers. He wanted his children to be better than he was, better at all things, so one evening after seriously exercising his elbow with several mugs of brew, he decided to show them the proper form of archery. He pulled an arrow back, and aimed it with bold innovation by timing his staggers, then letting it fly at the zenith of his lurch. The fateful arrow cleared the dirt mound by several feet, glided past the trees in the adjacent yard, and crashed through the window of the Blanchettes’ TV room.

History would never get it straight, for it was an incident clouded with possibilities from the beginning. But Leigh Blanchette did come slowly, almost furtively, into the backyard with the catalyst arrow in his hand. He gave it back to the concerned Pappy Dunne, then reclined on the dirt. It had given him quite a start, he explained, that arrow tearing through the window toward his heart. Handball is all that saved him, he reported. It gave him the reflexes to twist just that necessary bit to the side and allow the razor-tipped vessel of death to pass. Pappy Dunne was drunk but comfortable in that state and mentioned that it was just a blunt-ended kid’s arrow that might KO a bird if it caught it just right, but was no real threat to your average accidental target. “Gunsmoke,” Pere Blanchette responded. Could it be more than coincidence that he was watching “Gunsmoke” at the exact time when an arrow, a danger that had never before occurred to him, came at him from ambush? That’s not on on Tuesdays, Pappy Dunne said. No one was listening.

Within a week Pere Blanchette would explain that he had been mystically chosen by the wily spirits of warriors past and rained upon by arrows of such number and deadly force that all he could do was cross himself in wonder that he had survived. And the really inspirational thing was, he said, that he’d been watching television and it was just at
the point where Tom Jeffords and Cochise shake hands in
Broken Arrow
when atavistic combat interceded in his life. Many bottles of red wine were garnered through the elaboration of his tale, and within a month Pere Blanchette had begun to haunt secondhand shops and the Goodwill, searching for Navajo rugs and plaster Indians.

As Shade could well recall, for he and his brothers, Tip and Francois, had been as guilty as any, Arthur Blanchette began to be greeted on the street by upraised palms and grunts of “How.” He was portly even then, and his face would redden while his hands clenched. It was well known that if Arthur got you down and dropped the bomb of his weight upon you it would mean victory for him, but it was equally well known that any but the most feeble of leg could outdistance him, and the more talented local hand-on-meat percussionists could do snappy Buddy Rich drumrolls about his head and shoulders before his seeking fist could hit anything solid. So he could not stop the advent of the new name.

Soon he was known only as How, his real name filed away with his lackluster childhood. Eventually he grew to accept his sobriquet after he found out that most great athletes became famous by a name other than the one they were born under. Even presidents were like that, and now so was he.

Shade sat in the dark car, watching headlights glare by on Clay Street, chuckling as he remembered minor histories.

Blanchette returned with a grinder in white wax paper, the red sauce dripping down his overaggressive fingers. He slid behind the steering wheel, then had to retrieve a meatball that he’d popped loose. He found it under the seat and slipped it back into the bun.

“If you didn’t wring it like it was a chicken’s neck it wouldn’t goo all over you, How.”

Blanchette bit into the grinder, a large, passionate bite, and chewed it with his mouth writhing in pleasureful smacks.

“Then I might drop it,” he said.

“You dropped it anyway.”

“Hey, man—I paid for it.”

Shade grunted. “That’s the crucial fact,” he said.

After taking another bite that was a meal in itself, Blanchette nodded.

“I always thought so,” he said.

At the corner near the station Shade hopped out of the car and walked while Blanchette pulled around to the parking lot. There were several cars parked illegally in front of the station and a gaggle of murmuring forms were flocked around the main entrance. Shade bounced his fist off the hood of a gray sedan and gestured to the man inside.

“Park it somewhere else,” Shade said.

The man inside yawned at Shade, then flipped his press badge at him.

“I’m from the
Daily Banner,
” he said, as if the words were armor.

Shade objected to his tone.

“They pay your tickets for you? Or are you too rich to care?”

“I’m here on a story, officer. You’re a detective, right?”

Shade walked to the driver’s window and leaned down. He thumped his fist against the car door and wondered why he had chosen this car to enforce the rules on.

“Mister,” Shade said. “I’d hate to have to ticket a conduit to the people, but you might make me do it. See, I don’t like being a prick, there, friend.” A jab of a smile crossed Shade’s face. “But it’s my job.”

The reporter nodded with resignation.

“We could go on with this dialogue for quite a while, couldn’t we?”

“And then I’d ticket you.”

“I get it,” said the reporter, then turned the key in the ignition.

Shade started up the steps to the station.

There was a collection of newsmen, gore seekers, and minor officials gathered on the steps. A coolly appraising ballgame crowd, their hands jerked to swat the bugs that rendezvoused below the archaic globes of light mounted on either side of the entrance, redundant with hand-painted
POLICE
. The word of the murder was spreading fast and more
people were arriving to loiter on the smooth stone steps that led up to the white rock building.

At the door a hangdog college boy reporter named Voigt, with a cowlick and too many Izod shirts, began to close in on Shade.

“Rene,” Voigt said, sidling up with a hand-slapping attempt at familiarity. Then, “Detective Shade, I mean. Any comment on the Rankin murder?”

Shade slowed down, rubbing his hair, and shook his head.

“Who’s the other guy from the
Banner
?” he asked, then nodded toward the street.

“What other guy?”

“The guy I just made move his car. Salt-and-pepper hair, skin like wilted lettuce.”

Voigt grimaced with understanding.

“Braverman! Damn!” Voigt threw his notepad to the ground. As Shade walked on he heard Voigt say, “I’m fine for covering kids who spray-paint bridges, or old ladies who smack muggers with umbrellas, but when a
good
story comes along…”

In the entrails of the building, on a floor waxed to approximate ice, near a door marked
MEN
that was propped open by a wastebasket that dribbled tan wads of paper, Shade found himself feeling strangely dumb. He was beginning to absorb the implications of the murder of Alvin Rankin. There would be gentle prods from the mount on this case. Spurs to the butt, heat and leverage, necessary doors overtly slammed.

When he passed the duty desk Shade mumbled an unfocused glob of words to the man who occupied it. He was entering the battered green door of the squad room when his name was called.

“What?” he asked the duty officer.

“Blanchette with you?”

“My man is parking the car,” Shade said, then started through the swinging green door.

“Hey, Shade. Hold it. The two of you are supposed to go directly
to Mayor Crawford’s place. Captain said to send you right over—no coffee, no squats in the library. Straight over.”

“Did he tell you to call me Shade, too?”

“What? What’s with you?”

Something in the man’s tone had sounded like a hidden insult, but now Shade felt petty.

“Nothin’,” he said. He looked down the long, glazed hall and smiled sardonically. “It’s just that some aspects of my adult life disappoint the ‘eternal boy’ in me.”

“Hunh,” said the duty officer. “And here I was just thinkin’ you were an asshole.”

“Now that,” Shade said as he stepped down the hall, “is another of the ‘eternal boy’s’ major concerns, if you can believe it.”

The officer sat down and swung his feet to the desktop.

“I probably could,” he said, “but I think I’ll pass.”

Blanchette leaned on Shade’s arm, a pantomime of crumbling health, and swatted at his thighs in a hit-and-run massage.

“Just left it,” he wheezed. “Parked it by the pole, there, you know. The pole in the corner of the lot. I think it’s the quarter-mile mark or something. Couldn’t Bonehead have radioed?”

Shade pulled from beneath Blanchette’s weight.

“They could’ve.”

“We need a union, you ask me. The man thinks he can dispense with technology out of callous disregard for our health. Unions make ’em pay extra, they want to do that.”

This time Shade insisted on driving. The streets had evolved through the nighttime cycle, from passageways to minor entertainments and basic sins, rampant with sad revelers and charades of Dubble Bubble bliss, into the emptiness of post-party, the asphalt tickled only by taxis, patrol cars, thieves, and swing-shift nurses. But now the people who gave the bulge to the city’s withering bicep had begun to commute with their hands rubbing at the spot behind their eyeballs while splashing a Thermos of scalding joe toward the seat where the cup sat, heading for
McDonnell-Douglas, the Salter-Winn Shoe Factory, the dairy, and, again, the hospital. Daylight was only a vague promise in the east, and night had girded itself for a final stand before it welcomed defeat.

Shade picked his way through the drowsy traffic toward Hawthorne Hills, a stretch of mounds that pimpled the southern edge of town, giving refuge to most of the monied and many of the elected of Saint Bruno.

A large white house lounged on a hill like a favorite chair on an afterdeck, one leglike section curled over a ribbon of creek and the other leg crooked around a swath of oaks. Shade pulled into the drive.

Captain Bauer had parked next to the tennis court. Shade parked next to him, and he and Blanchette started toward the door.

He knew that Mayor Crawford had done many things before he entered politics, but having been smart enough to be born rich beyond fear seemed like the experience most relevant to his subsequent career.

Their knock was answered by the mayor. He was in slacks and a polo shirt with a cherry half-robe loosely belted. Fit and silver-haired, he looked like the aging stud of a prime-time soap.

“Come in, officers,” he said. He was wearing his job-description grief, his solemnity working overtime. “How is Alvin’s family?”

“They’re taken care of,” Shade said.

“They must be in shock,” Crawford murmured with a shake of his head.

“No sir,” Blanchette said. “The woman, Rankin, Cleto or whatever, is standin’ up solid.”

Crawford looked at Blanchette dully.

“Her name is Cleo,” he said. “And she must certainly be shocked. You may not be, but I am as well.”

“What would shock How,” Shade said, “would turn thousands gray.”

“I see,” Crawford said. “How Blanchette, hunh. Leigh’s boy—am I right?”

“Yes, sir. Before I got to be two hundred pounds of short-fused earthquake, I was Leigh’s boy.”

Crawford laughed, then rubbed his mouth with his hand.

“Must be getting a cold,” he said. “I remember Leigh. Used to hear about him down at St. Peter’s, about every third mass.”

Blanchette grimaced, then put his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sure you did, sir.”

“He had, well, sort of an interesting mind, your father.”

“I really don’t want to hear about it.”

Crawford’s hackles did not even rise, the self-restraint of the indigenous lord confronted by a sulky serf. He smiled indulgently.