Part 36 (2/2)
”No, I was scared of them people, 'cause when I come out of the box I knowed the gunbulls was gonna kill me. I seen them do it befo', up on the levee, where they work them Red Hat boys double-time from cain't-see to cain't-see. They shot and buried them po' boys without never missin' a beat, just the way somebody run over a dog with a truck and keep right on goin'.
”I had me a big Stella twelve-string guitar, bought it off a Mexican on Congress Street in Houston. I used to keep it in the count-man's cage so n.o.body wouldn't be foolin' with it while I was workin' or sleepin'. When I come out of the box and taken a shower and eat a big plate of rice and beans, I ax the count-man first thing for my guitar. He say, 'I'm sorry, Sam, but the bossman let Big Melon take it while you was in the box.'
”I waited till that night and went to Big Melon's 'hunk,' that's what we call the place where a wolf stay with his punk. There's that big fat n.i.g.g.e.r sittin' naked on his mattress, like a big pile of black inner tubes, while the punk is playin' my guitar on the floor, lipstick and rouge all over his face and pink panties on his li'l a.s.s.
”I say, 'Melon, you or your punk f.u.c.k wit' my guitar again and I gone cut that black d.i.c.k off. It don't matter if I go to the electric chair for it or not. I'm gonna joog you in the shower, in the chow line, or while you pumpin' your poke chops here. They's gonna be one fat n.i.g.g.e.r they gonna have to haul in a piano crate down to the graveyard.'
”Melon smile at me and say, 'We just borrowed it, Hogman. We was gonna give it back. Here, you want Pookie to rub your back for you?'
”But I knowed they was comin'. Two nights later, right befo' lockup, I was goin' to the toilet and I turn around and his punk is standin' in the do'. I say, 'What you want, Pookie?' He say, 'I'm sorry I was playin' your guitar, Hogman. I wants be yo' friend, maybe come stay up at your hunk some nights.'
”When I reached down to pull up my britches, he come outta his back pocket with a dirk and aim it right at my heart. I catched him around the neck and bent him backwards, then I kept bendin' him backwards and squeezin' acrost his windpipe, and he was floppin' real hard, shakin' all over, he s.h.i.+t in his pants, 'cause I could smell it, then it went snap, just like you bust a real dry piece of firewood acrost your knee.
”I look up and there's one of the hacks who's selling the dope. He say, 'Hogman, we ain't gonna let this be a problem. We'll just stuff this li'l b.i.t.c.h out yonder in the levee with them others. Won't n.o.body care, won't make no difference to n.o.body, not even to Big Melon. It'll just be our secret.'
”All that time they'd been smarter than me. They sent Pookie to joog me, but they didn't care if he killed me or if I killed him. It worked out for them just fine. They knew I'd never cause them no trouble. They was right, too. I didn't sa.s.s, I done what they tole me, I even he'ped hoe them dope plants a couple of times.”
”I don't understand, Sam. You're telling me that the lynched black man was killed by one of these guards?”
”I ain't said that. I said they was a bunch of them sellin' that dope. They was takin' it out of the pen in a police car. What was the name of that n.i.g.g.e.r you dug out of the sandbar?”
”DeWitt Prejean.”
”I'll tell you this. He was f.u.c.kin' a white man's wife. Start axin' what he done for a livin', you'll find the people been causin' you all this grief.”
”Who's the guy I'm looking for?”
”I said all I can say.”
”Look, Sam, don't be afraid of these gunbulls or cops from years ago. They can't harm you now.”
He put a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, then took a pint bottle of rum from his coat pocket and unscrewed the cap with his thumb. He held the bottle below his mouth. His long fingers were glistening with grease from the pork chops he had eaten.
”This still the state of Lou'sana, or are we livin' somewhere else these days?” he said.
I COULDN'T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. I POURED A GLa.s.s OF MILK ANDwalked down by the duck pond in the starlight. A pair of mudhens spooked out of the flooded reeds and skittered across the water's surface toward the far bank. The pieces of the case wouldn't come together. Were we looking for a serial killer who had operated all over the state, a local psychopath, a pimp, or perhaps even a hit man from the mob? Were cops involved? Hogman thought so, and even believed there was someone out there with the power to send him back to prison. But his perspective was colored by his own experience as a career recidivist. And what about the lynched black man, DeWitt Prejean? Would the solution to his murder in 1957 lead us to the deviate who had mutilated Cherry LeBlanc?
No, the case was not as simple as Hogman had wanted me to think, even though he was obviously sincere and his fears about retribution were real. But I had no answers, either.
Unfortunately, they would come in a way that I never antic.i.p.ated. I saw Elrod come out of the lighted kitchen and walk down the slope toward the pond. He was s.h.i.+rtless and barefoot and his slacks were unb.u.t.toned over his skivvies. He clutched a sheet of lined notebook paper in his right hand. He looked at me uncertainly, and his lips started to form words that obviously he didn't want to speak.
”What's wrong?” I said.
”The phone rang while I was in the kitchen. I answered it so y'all wouldn't get woke up.”
”Who was it? What's that in your hand?”
”The sheriff. . .” He straightened the piece of paper in his fingers and read the words to himself, then looked up into my face. ”It's a friend of yours, Lou Girard, Dave. The sheriff says maybe you should go over to Lafayette. He says, I'm sorry, man, he says your friend got drunk and killed himself.”
Elrod held the sheet of paper out toward me, his eyes looking askance at the duck pond. The moonlight was white on his hand.
CHAPTER 16.
He did it with a dogleg twenty-gauge in his little garage apartment, whose windows were overgrown with bamboo and banana trees. Or at least that's what the investigative officer, Doobie Patout, was telling me when I got there at 4 A.M., just as the photographer was finis.h.i.+ng and the paramedics were about to lift Lou's body out of a wide pool of blood and zipper it inside a black bag.
”There's a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey on the drain-board and a spilled bottle of Valium on the coffee table,” Doobie said. ”I think maybe Lou just got real down and decided to do it.”
The single-shot twenty-gauge lay at the foot of a beige-colored stuffed chair. The top of the chair, the wall behind it, and the ceiling were streaked with blood. One side of Lou's face looked perfectly normal, the eye staring straight ahead like a blue marble pressed into dough. The opposite side of his face, where the jawbone should have been, had sunk into the rug like a broken pomegranate. Lou's right arm was pointed straight out onto the wood floor. At the end of his fingers, painted in red, were the letters SI.
”You guys are writing it off as suicide?” I said.
”That's the way it looks to me,” Doobie said. The tops of his jug ears were scaled with sunburn. ”He was in bad shape. The mattress is covered with p.i.s.s stains, the sink's full of raw garbage. Go in the bedroom and take a whiff.”
”Why would a suicide try to write a note in his own blood?”
”I think they change their minds when they know it's too late. Then they want to hold on any way they can. They're not any different from anybody else. It was probably for his ex-wife. Her name's Silvia.”
”Where's his piece?”
”On his dresser in the bedroom.”
”If Lou wanted to buy it, why wouldn't he use his .357?” I said. I scratched at a lead BB that had scoured upward along the wallpaper. ”Why would he do it with twenty-gauge birdshot, then botch it?”
”Because he was drunk on his a.s.s. It wasn't an unusual condition for him.”
”He was helping me on a case, Doobie.”
”And?”
”Maybe he found out something that somebody didn't want him to pa.s.s along.”
The paramedics lifted Lou's body off the rug, then lowered it inside the plastic bag, straightened his arms by his sides, and zipped the bag over his face.
”Look, his career was on third base,” Doobie said, as the medics worked the gurney past him. ”His wife dumped him for another d.y.k.e, he was getting freebies from a couple of wh.o.r.es down at the Underpa.s.s, he was trembling and eating pills in front of the whole department every morning. You might believe otherwise, but there's no big mystery to what happened here tonight.”
”Lou had trouble with booze, but I think you're lying about his being on a pad with hookers. He was a good cop.”
”Think whatever you want. He was a drunk. That fact's not going to go away. I'm going to seal the place now. You want to look at anything else?”
”Is it true you were an executioner up at Angola?”
”None of your G.o.ddam business what I was.”
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