In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead Part 32

"What is it?" Bootsie said.

"Mr. Sykes just did the rainbow yawn."

"What?" I said.

"He vomited on the picnic table," Alafair said.

I waited until Bootsie and Alafair had driven off to the grocery store in town, then I went out into the backyard. Elrod's slacks and s.h.i.+rt were pasted to his skin with water from the bayou and grimed with mud and gra.s.s stains. He had washed down the top of the picnic table with the garden hose, and he now sat slack-jawed on the bench with his knees splayed, his shoulders stooped, his hands hanging between his thighs. His unshaved face had the gray color of spoiled pork.

I handed him a cup of coffee.

"Thanks," he said.

I winced at his breath.

"If you stay on at our house, do you think you can keep the cork in the jug?" I said.

"I can't promise it. No, sir, I surely can't promise it."

"Can you try?"

He lifted his eyes up to mine. The iris of his right eye had a clot of blood in it as big as my fingernail.

"Nothing I ever tried did any good," he said. "Antabuse, psychiatrists, a dry-out at the navy hospital, two weeks hoeing vegetables on a county P-farm. Sooner or later I always went back to it, Mr. Rob.i.+.c.heaux."

"Well, here's the house rules, partner," I said, and I went through them one at a time with him. He kept rubbing his whiskers with the flat of his hand and spitting between his knees.

"I guess I look downright pathetic to you, don't I?" he said.

"Forget what other people think. Don't drink, don't think, and go to meetings. If you do that, and you do it for yourself, you'll get out of all this bulls.h.i.+t."

"I got that kid beat up real bad. It was awful. Balboni kept jumping up in the air, spinning around, and cracking the sole of his foot across the kid's head. You could hear the skin split against the bone."

He placed his palms over his ears, then removed them.

"You stay away from Balboni," I said. "He's not your problem. Let the law deal with him."

"Are you kidding? The guy does whatever he wants. He's even getting his p.o.r.no dirt bag into the film."

"What p.o.r.no dirt bag?"

"He brought up some guy of his from New Orleans, some character who thinks he's the new Johnny Wadd. He's worked the guy into a half dozen scenes in the picture. Look, Mr. Rob.i.+.c.heaux, I'm getting the shakes. How about cutting me a little slack? Two raw eggs in a beer with a shot on the side. That's all I'll need. Then I won't touch it."

"I'm afraid not, partner."

"Oh man, I'm really sick. I've never been this sick. I'm going into the D.T.s."

I put my hand on his shoulder. His muscles were as tight and hard as cable wire and quivering with anxiety. Then he covered his eyes and began weeping, his wet hair matted with dirt, his body trembling like that of a man whose soul was being consumed by its own special flame.

I DROVE OUT TO SPANISH LAKE TO FIND JULIE BALBONI. Noone was in the security building by the dirt road that led into the movie location, and I dropped the chain into the dirt and parked in the shade, close by the lake, next to a catering truck. The sky was darkening with rain clouds, and the wind off the water blew leaves across the ground under the oak trees. I walked through a group of actors dressed as Confederate infantry. They were smoking cigarettes and lounging around a freshly dug rifle pit and ramparts made out of huge stick-woven baskets filled with dirt. Close by, a wheeled canon faced out at the empty lake. I could smell the drowsy, warm odor of reefer on the breeze.

"Could y'all tell me where to find Julie Balboni?" I said.

None of them answered. Their faces had turned dour. I asked again.

"We're just the hired help," a man with sergeant's stripes said.

"If you see him, would you tell him Dave Rob.i.+.c.heaux is looking for him?"

"You'd better tell him yourself," another actor said.

"Do you know where Mr. Goldman is?"

"He went into town with some lawyers. He'll be back in a few minutes," the sergeant said.

"Thank you," I said.

I walked back to my truck and had just opened the door when I heard someone's feet in the leaves behind me.

"I need a moment of your time, please," Twinky Lemoyne said. He had been walking fast, holding his ballpoint pens in his s.h.i.+rt pocket with one hand; a strand of hair hung over his rimless gla.s.ses and his face was flushed.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to know what your investigation has found out."

"You would?"

"Yes. What have you learned about these murders?"

I shouldn't have been surprised at the presumption and intrusiveness of his question. Successful businessmen in any small town usually think of policemen as extensions of their mercantile fraternity, dedicated in some ill-defined way to the financial good of the community. But previously he had stonewalled me, had even been self-righteous, and it was hard to accept him now as an innocuous Rotarian.

"Maybe you should call the sheriff's office or the FBI, Mr. Lemoyne. I'm suspended from the department right now."

"Is this man Balboni connected with the deaths of these women?"

"Did someone tell you he was?"

"I'm asking you an honest question, sir."

"And I'm asking you one, Mr. Lemoyne, and I advise you to take it quite seriously. Do you have some personal knowledge about Balboni's involvement with a murder?"

"No, I don't."

"You don't?"

"No, of course not. How could I?"

"Then why your sense of urgency, sir?"

"You wouldn't keep coming out here unless you suspected him. Isn't that right?"

"What difference should it make to you?"

The skin of his face was grained and red, and his eyelashes fluttered with his frustration.

"Mr. Rob.i.+.c.heaux, I think . . . I feel . . ."

"What?"

"I believe you've been treated unfairly."

"Oh?"

"I believe I've contributed to it, too. I've complained to others about both you and the FBI woman."

"I think there's another problem here, Mr. Lemoyne. Maybe it has to do with the price of dealing with a man like Julie Balboni."

"I've tried to be honest with you."

"That's fine. Get away from Balboni. Divest yourself of your stock or whatever it takes."

"Then maybe he was involved with those dead girls?" His eyes were bright and riveted on mine.

"You tell me, Mr. Lemoyne. Would you like Julie for your next-door neighbor? Would you like your daughter around him? Would you, sir?"

"I find your remark very offensive."

"Offensive is when a stunt man gets his nose and ribs broken and an ear torn loose from his head as an object lesson."

I could see the insult and injury in his eyes. His lips parted and then closed.

"Why are you out here, Mr. Lemoyne?"

"To see Mr. Goldman. To find out what I can."

"I think your concern is late in coming."

"I have nothing else to say to you. Good day to you, sir."He walked to his automobile and got in.

As I watched himturn onto the dirt road and head back toward the security building, I had to wonder at the self-serving naivete that was characteristic of him and his kind. It was as much a part of their personae as the rows of credit and members.h.i.+p cards they carried in their billfolds, and when the proper occasion arose they used it with a collective disingenuousness worthy of a theatrical award.

At least that was what I thought-perhaps in my own naivete-about Twinky Hebert Lemoyne at the time.

When I reached the security building Murphy Doucet, the guard, was back inside, and the chain was down in the road. He was bent over a table, working on something. He waved to me through the open window, then went back to his work. I parked my truck on the gra.s.s and walked inside.

It was hot and close inside the building and smelled of airplane glue. Murphy Doucet looked up from a huge balsa-wood model of a B-17 Flying Fortress that he was sanding. His blue eyes jittered back and forth behind a pair of thick bifocals.

"How you doing, Dave?" he said.

"Pretty good, Murph. I was looking for Julie Balboni."

"He's playing ball."

"Ball?"

"Yeah, sometimes he takes two or three guys into town with him for a pepper game."

"Where?"

"I think at his old high school. Say, did you get Twinky steamed up about something."

"Why's that?"

"I saw you talking to him, then he went barreling-a.s.s down the road like his nose was out of joint."

"Maybe he was late for lunch."

"Yeah, probably. It don't take too much to get Twinky's nose out of joint, anyway. I've always suspected he could do with a little more p.u.s.s.y in his life."

"He's not married?"

"He used to be till his wife run off on him. Right after sheemptied his bank account and all the money in his safe. I didn't think Twinky was going to survive that one. That was a long time ago, though."

He used an Exacto knife to trim away a tiny piece of dried glue from one of the motors on his model airplane. He blew sawdust off the wings and held the plane aloft.

"What do you think of it?" he asked.

"It looks good."

"I've got a whole collection of them. All the planes from World War II. I showed Mikey Goldman my B-17 and he said maybe he could use my collection in one of his films."

"That sounds all right, Murph."

"You kidding? He meant I should donate them. I figured out why that stingy Jew has such a big nose. The air's free."

"He seems like an upfront guy to me," I said.

"Try working for one of them."

I looked at him. "You say Julie's at his old high school?" I said.

"Yeah, him and some actor and that guy named Cholo."

He set his bifocals on the work table and rubbed his hands on the smooth blond surface of his plane. His skin was wrinkled and brown as a cured tobacco leaf.

"Thanks for your time," I said.

"Stop by more often and have coffee. It's lonely sitting out here in this shack."