Late that afternoon Lieutenant Rankin of the Toronto Police Department called back and told me everything he had learned from others and the case record about the death of a robbery detective named James Mervain.
'This is what it comes down to,' he said. 'Mervain was one of those fellows whose life seemed to be going out of control-booze, a brutality charge, a wife in the sack with another cop, some suspicions that maybe he was gay-so when he got a little shrill, people dismissed what he had to say. You with me?'
'Yes.'
'He'd been working with a recruit named Kuhn or Koontz. Maybe he knew the guy off the job, too, through some kind of gay connection…'
'I don't understand, you're not sure of the name?'
'That's what's strange. A couple of cops around here still remember this recruit, and they're sure the name was Kuhn or Koontz, but the name's not in the computer. Maybe it got wiped out, I don't know. Anyway, Mervain started telling people that Kuhn, or whatever his name was, had some problems; in particular, he liked to hurt people. But if that was true, he never did it on the job. Which made everybody think Mervain had a secret life, out there in the gay bars somewhere, and he had some kind of personal or sexual grievance with this fellow.
'Then some rather serious weapons were stolen from a departmental arms locker-ten-gauge pumps, stun guns, three-fifty-sevens, nine-millimeter automatics, armor-piercing ammunition, stuff like that. Mervain maintained Kuhn was behind it. Actually, a custodian was arrested for it, but he died before he went to trial. This is about the time Kuhn disappeared, at least as far as anyone remembers.
'Then Mervain seemed to go crazy. He got arrested for drunk driving, he got beat up in a bar, he'd come to work so hungover nobody could talk to him till noon without getting their heads snapped off. He put his name on mailing lists of a half dozen hate groups, then he'd bring all this Nazi literature to the office and try to convince people Kuhn was part of an international conspiracy to bring back the Third Reich. The department sent him to a psychologist, but he just became more obsessed.
'Then one Monday he didn't come in to work. His ex-wife had no idea where he was, his apartment was empty, and some kids had stripped his car. Two weeks later the owner of a skid-row hotel called us. Maggots were crawling out from under the door crack in one of the rooms. Our people had to break open the door with a sledge. Mervain had nailed boards across the jamb. How much do you want in the way of detail?'
'Go ahead,' I said.
'The detective who did the investigation is still with the department. He says he never had a case like it before or since. Mervain hung himself, naked, upside down by the ankles with piano wire, then put a German Luger into his eye socket and let it off.'
'You're telling me y'all put this down as a suicide?'
'Forensics showed there's no question he fired the gun. The door was nailed shut. The window was locked from the inside. Both his personal and professional life were a disaster. How would you put it down?'
I tapped a paper clip on my desk blotter.
'Look, it bothered other people at the time, but there was no indication that anyone else could have been in that room,' he said.
'What do you mean bothered?'
'The room was full of Nazi and hate literature. The walls and floors were papered with it. But all his clothes, except what he'd been wearing, were gone. So were his billfold and the notebook that he always carried.'
'Does anyone remember what this man Kuhn looked like?'
'Two cops used the same words-"a big blond guy."'
'I'm going to fax y'all a composite. Would you send me everything you have on the Mervain case?'
'Sure. Look, there's one other thing. A couple of days after the death was ruled a suicide, the desk clerk called and said Mervain's coat was on the back of a chair in the lobby. He wanted to know what he should do with it.'
'Yes?'
'There was a napkin from a gay bar in one of the pockets. Mervain had written a note on it. Somebody stuck it in the case folder. I'll read it to you. "Schwert… Schwert… Schwert… His name is Schwert. I have become his fool and slave. I know he's out there now, flying in the howling storm. No one believes, I see no hope." Sounds kind of sad, doesn't it? You have any idea what it might mean?'
'What was Mervain's educational background?'
'Let's see… Bachelor's in liberal arts, a master's degree in administration of justice. Why?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Maybe we blew this one.'
'It's a big club. Thanks for your time, sir.'
Early the next morning I drove to New Orleans and, after going to the bail bonds office that fronted points for the Caluccis, I found Max at his mother's in an old residential neighborhood off Canal, not far from Mandina's restaurant. The house was late Victorian, with a wide gallery, a fresh coat of gray and white paint, and rose-bushes blooming all over the lawn.
The family was celebrating the birthday of a little boy and eating lunch on redwood picnic tables in the backyard. Balloons were tied to the trees and lawn furniture, and the tables were covered with platters of pasta and cream pastry, bowls of red sausage, beaded pitchers of lemonade and iced tea. Max Calucci sat in the midst of it all, in undershirt and slacks, the pads of hair on his brown shoulders as fine as a monkey's.
I had to hand it to him. His expression never changed when he saw me at the garden gate. He cut pieces of cake and handed them to the children, continued to tell a story in Italian to a fat woman in black and an elderly man on a thin walking cane, then excused himself, rubbed a little boy on the head, and walked toward me with a glass of lemonade in his hand.
'You got business with me?' he asked.
'If you've got business with Clete Purcel, I do.'
'He can't talk for himself?'
'You better hope he doesn't, Max.'
'Is this more hard guy stuff? You got your shovel with you?'
'Nope.'
His eyes were as black and liquid as wet paint.
'You got some kind of deal you want to cut? That why you're here?' he said.
'Maybe.'
He drank from his lemonade, his eyes never leaving mine. Then he pushed opened the short iron gate with his foot.
'It's a nice day, a special occasion. I got no bad feelings on a nice day like this. Eat a piece of cake,' he said.
'We can talk out here.'
'What, you too good to sit down at my nephew's birthday party?' he said.
I ate a custard-filled eclair in a sunny spot by the garden wall. The air was dry and warm, and the breeze blew through the banana trees along the wall and ruffled the water in an aboveground swimming pool. The guests around the tables were his relatives and family friends-working-class people who owned small grocery stores and cafés, carried hod, belonged to the plumbers' union, made the stations of the cross each Friday in Lent, ate and drank at every meal as though it were a pagan celebration, married once, and wore widow black with the commitment of nuns.
Max combed his hair back over his bald pate at the table, cleaned the comb with his fingers, then stuck the stub of a filter-tipped cigar in his mouth and motioned me toward a gazebo on the far side of the yard. The latticework was covered with purple trumpet vine; inside, the glass-topped table and white-painted iron chairs were deep in shadow, cold to the touch.
Max lit his cigar and let the smoke trail out of his mouth. His shoulders were brown and oily-looking against the white straps of his undershirt.
'Say it,' he said.
'I hear you and Bobo put out an open contract on Clete.'
'You get that from Lonighan?'
'Who cares where it came from?'
'Lonighan's a welsher and a bum.'
I leaned forward and rubbed my hands together.
'I'm worried about my friend, Max.'
'You should. He's got a radioactive brain or something.'
'I'm not here to defend what he does. I just want you guys to take the hit off him.'
'He's the victim? Have you seen my fucking car? It ain't a car no more. It's a block of concrete.'
'Come on, Max. You guys started it when you leaned on his girlfriend.'
'That's all past history. She paid the loan, she paid the back vig. All sins forgiven.'
'Here's the deal. You and Bobo tried to take out Nate Baxter. I think you probably did this without consent of the Commission. What if some reliable information ends up in their hands about a couple of guys in New Orleans trying to cowboy a police administrator?'
'That's what you got to work my crank with?' he said.
'Yeah, I guess so.'
'Then you got jack shit.'
'What's going to make you happy, Max?'
He smiled. I felt my pulse swelling in my throat; I rubbed the top of my knuckles with my palm. I kept my eyes flat and looked at the curtain of trumpet vine that puffed in the breeze.
'I want the two hundred large Tommy Lonighan owes me and Bobo,' he said. 'That fucking mick is gonna die and take the debt to the grave. You twist him right, we get our money, then I don't have no memory about troubles with Clete Purcel.'
'Big order, Max.'
'You know anything easy? Like they say, life's a bitch, then you get to be dead for a long time.'
The ash from his cigar blew on my slacks. I brushed it off, then put on my sunglasses and looked out into the sunlight.
'What, you sentimental about Lonighan or something?' he said.
'No.'
'That's good. Because he's been jobbing you. Him and Hippo Bimstine, both.'
'Oh?'
'That's a surprise? People like you rip me up, Robicheaux. You think Jews are martyrs, the Irish are fun guys singing "Rosie O'Grady" on the corner, and Italians are colostomy bags. Tell me I'm wrong.'
'You were going to say something about Tommy Blue Eyes?'
'Yeah, he got his fat mick mush full of booze and was laughing about how you trust Hippo Bimstine and think he's big shit because he's got all these liberal causes.'
'I see.'
'You see? I don't think you see shit. Lonighan says Hippo stole some stuff out of the public library about that Nazi sub so you wouldn't find out what's inside it.'
'No kidding?'
'Yeah, no fucking kidding.'
I leaned forward and picked at the calluses on my palm. The breeze was drowsy with the smell of chrysanthemums and dead birthday candles.
'You and I have something in common,' I said.
'I don't think so.'
'I went down on a murder beef once. Did you know that?'
'I'm supposed to be impressed?'
'Here's the trade, Max. Take the contract off Clete and I stay out of your life.'
'You ain't in my life.'
'Here's the rest of it.'
'I ain't interested,' he said. 'I tell you what. It's my nephew's birthday, you came out to my mother's house and showed respect, you didn't act like the drunk fuck everybody says you are. That means I'm letting all this stuff slide, and that includes what you done to me out at Lonighan's place. So you can tell dick-brain the score's even, he's getting a free pass he don't deserve, I got businesses to run and I don't have time for this shit. Are we clear on this now?'
'I hope you're a man of your word, Max.'
'Fuck you and get outta here.'
When I opened the gate and let myself out, I noticed a tangle of ornamental iron roses tack-welded in the center of the pikes. The cluster was uneven where one rose had been snapped loose from its base. I rubbed the ball of my thumb over the sharp edges of the broken stem and looked back at Max. His eyes had never left me. He rotated an unlit cigar in the center of his mouth.
The AA meeting is held on the second floor of a brick church that was used as a field hospital for Confederate wounded in 1863, then later as a horse stable by General Banks's Union cavalry. Outside, the streets are wet and cool and empty, the storefronts shuttered under the wood colonnades, the trees still dripping with rain against a sky that looks like a red-tinged ink wash.
It's a fifth step meeting, one in which people talk about stepping across a line and admitting to God, themselves, and another person the exact nature of their wrongs. For many, it's not an easy moment.
Some of them are still zoned out, their eyes glazed with residual fear; those sent by the court try to hide the resentment and boredom in their faces; others seem to have the exuberance and confidence of airplane wing walkers.
Bootsie sits next to me, her hands folded tightly in her lap. She showered after supper and put on makeup and a new yellow dress, but in her cheeks are pale discolorations, like slivers of ice, and there's a thin sheen of perspiration at her temples.
'You don't have to say anything. Just listen,' I whisper to her.
They start to unload. Some of it seems silly-overdue library books, cavalier attitudes toward bills-then it turns serious and you feel embarrassed and voyeuristic; you find your eyes dropping to the floor, and you try not to be affected by the level of pain in the speaker's voice.
The details sometimes make the soul wince; then you remember some of the things you did, or tried to do, or could have done, while drunk and you realize that what you hear in this room differs only in degree from the moral and psychological insanity that characterized your own life.
Only one speaker makes use of euphemism. That's because he's told his story before and he knows that not everyone in the room will be able to handle it. He was eighteen years old, ripped on reefer and pills, when he pushed a blindfolded VC suspect out the door of a Huey at five hundred feet; he so impressed the ARVN and American officer onboard that they had him do it twice more the same afternoon.
Bootsie's eyes are filled with hidden thoughts. I slide my hand down her forearm and take her palm in mine. Her eyes move to the doorway and the darkened stairway at the front of the room. Her breath catches in her throat.
'What is it?' I ask.
Her eyes close, then open, like a doll's.
'A man at the door. Dave, I think-'
'What?'
'It was him.'
I get up from the folding chair and walk across the oak floor to the front of the room. I step through the open door, walk down the darkened stairway. The door to the street is open, and rain is blowing out of the trees onto the lawn. The violet air smells of wet stone and burning leaves.
I go back upstairs, and Bootsie looks at me anxiously. I shake my head.
Before the meeting ends, it's obvious she wants to speak. She raises her chin, her lips part. But the moment passes, and she lowers her eyes to her lap.
Later the room is empty. I turn out the lights and prepare to lock up. In the hallway downstairs she puts her arms around me and presses her face into my chest. I can feel her back shaking under my hands. A loose garbage can lid is bouncing down the street in the darkness.
'I feel so ashamed,' she says. Her face is wet against my shirt.
I went in to work early and looked at the notes I had taken during my conversation with the lieutenant at the Toronto Police Department.
It was time to try something different. On my yellow legal pad I made a list of aliases that Will Buchalter might have used. As a rule, the aliases used by a particular individual retain similarities in terms of initials or sound and phonetic value, or perhaps even cultural or ethnic identification, in all probability because most career criminals have a libidinal fascination with themselves.
I tried W. B. Kuhn, William Coon, Will Kuntz, Bill Koontz, then a dozen other combinations, making use of the same first and last names, in the same way that you would wheel pari-mutuel numbers in trying to hit a quiniela or a perfecta at the racetrack.
But more than a name it was a literary allusion written by the dead Canadian detective on the barroom napkin that gave me a brooding sense I almost did not want to confirm.
I began writing out the word Schwert with the combinations of first names and initials that I had already listed. The sheriff walked into my office with a cup of coffee in his hand and looked over my shoulder.
'That looks like alphabet soup,' he said. 'You going to run that through the NCIC?'
'Yeah, I want to go through the feds in New Orleans, too.'
'It can't hurt.' He gazed through the window at a black trusty in jailhouse issue sawing a yellowed palm frond from the tree trunk.
'You don't sound enthusiastic,' I said.
'I've got bad news. The tail we put on your girlfriend… She went through the front door of a supermarket in Lafayette, then out the back and poof… Gone.'
'Who was the tail?'
'Expidee Chatlin.'
I pressed my fingers into my temples.
'I didn't have anybody else available,' the sheriff said. 'I don't think it would have come out any different, anyway, Dave. Your gal's mighty slick.'
'I'd really appreciate your not calling her my gal or girlfriend.'
'Any way you cut it, she's one smart broad and she took us over the hurdles. That's just the way it plays out sometimes.'
'Too often.'
'Sir?'
I tried to concentrate on my legal pad.
'You and Bootsie have had a bad time. I don't think you should blame others for it, though,' he said.
'That wasn't my intention, Sheriff.' I could hear his leather gunbelt creak. I wrote the words William B. Schwert on the pad. He started to walk out of the room, then stopped.
'What've you got there, exactly?' he said.
'A Toronto cop wrote something on a napkin before he was found hanging by his ankles with a nine-millimeter round through his eye.' I glanced back at my notes. '"I know he's out there now, flying in the howling storm."'
'So?'
'It's from a poem by William Blake. It's about evil. As I remember it, it goes "O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm.
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy."'
'No, you misunderstood me, Dave. I was looking at the name you just wrote down there… Schwert. You never took any German at school?'
'No.'
'It means "sword," podna.'
He drank from his coffee cup and tapped me lightly on the shoulder with the flat of his fist.
But before I would get anything back from the FBI or the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C., Clete Purcel would write history of the New Orleans mob Purcel.
a new chapter in the and outdo even Clete Purcel.