But Baby Huey Lagneaux's encounter with Legion was not over. Toward closing time that night, after he had returned to his uncle's club, he glanced through a back window and saw Joe Zeroski's automobile parked at the cafe next door. He called a telephone number Joe had given him, but there was no answer. He went out the back door of the club and crossed the parking lot and looked through a side window of the cafe.
Legion was eating at a table by himself. At the next table was a group of shrimpers who had just come off the salt, hard-bitten men in rubber boots who hadn't shaved for weeks and who filled the air with cigarette smoke and drank mugs of beer while they ate platters of fried crabs with their fingers.
In his mind's eye Baby Huey saw himself confronting Legion, here, in public, demanding the keys to Joe Zeroski's car, somehow regaining a degree of the self-respect he'd lost when a shotgun was screwed into his neck and his bowels turned to water. He entered the cafe's side door and stared at Legion's back, at the untrimmed locks of hair on his neck, the power in his shoulders, the way the bones in his jaws stretched his skin while he chewed. But Baby Huey could not make his feet move any closer to Legion's table.
Then Tee Bobby Hulin came through the front door and sat at the counter, within earshot of the shrimpers, some of whom must have recognized him as the man about to go on trial for the rape and murder of Amanda Boudreau. At first they only looked at him and whispered among themselves; then they seemed to ignore him and concentrate on their food and beer and the burning cigarettes they left teetering on the edges of ashtrays. But willingly or not, their eyes began to drift back to Tee Bobby, as though he were a troublesome insect that someone should swat.
Finally one of the shrimpers turned in his chair and aimed his words at Tee Bobby's back: "You ain't got no bidness in here, buddy. Get what you need and carry it outside."
Tee Bobby stared at his menu, as though he were nearsighted and had lost his glasses, his hands clenched on the corners, his spine and shoulders rounded like a question mark.
The same shrimper, silver and black whiskers festooned on his jaws, made a soft whistling sound through his teeth. "Hey, outside, bud. Don't make me walk you there, no," he said.
Legion had set his knife and fork on the rim of his plate. He half-mooned one of his nails with a toothpick, his back hard as iron against his khaki shirt, his eyes studying Tee Bobby's profile. Then he rose from his chair and walked to the counter, the board floor creaking with his weight, the inside of his hands as yellow and rough as barrel wood under the overhead light. "Get up," Legion said.
"What for?" Tee Bobby asked. His gaze lifted into Legion's, then his face twitched, as though he recognized a figure from a dream he had never defined in daylight.
"Don't you let them men talk down to you," Legion replied, and pulled Tee Bobby off the counter stool. "You stand up, you. Don't you never take shit from white trash." The shrimpers looked blankly at both Tee Bobby and Legion, confused, unable to connect the indignation of the towering white man with a diminutive black musician who only a moment ago had been an object of contempt. "Y'all looking at somet'ing? Y’all want to go outside wit' me? How 'bout you, yeah, big mouth there, the one telling him to carry his food outside?" Legion said.
"We ain't got no problem with you," one of the other shrimpers said.
"You better t'ank God you don't," Legion said.
He paid his bill in the silence of the cafe, put two half-dollars by his plate, and walked outside, into the darkness, into the flicker of heat lightning and the tink of raindrops on the tin roof of the cafe. He heard Tee Bobby come out the door behind him.
"You're him, ain't you?" Tee Bobby said.
"Depends on who you t'ink I am," Legion said.
"The overseer. From Poinciana Island. The one called Legion. The one who-"
"Who what, boy?"
"The overseer who slept wit' my grandmother. I'm Tee Bobby. Ladice Hulin is my gran'mama."
"You look like her. But you ain't as pretty."
"What you done inside the cafe, it's 'cause of what happened at the plantation, ain't it? It's 'cause maybe you're my-"
"Your what, boy?"
"My mama was half-white. Everybody on the plantation know that."
Legion laughed to himself and shook a cigarette out of his pack and fed it into the corner of his mouth.
"Your daddy didn't know how to use a rubber. That's how you got here, boy. That's how come other people try to wipe their shit on your face," he said.
Tee Bobby brushed a raindrop out of his eye and continued to stare at Legion, his sequined purple shirt puffing with air in the wind.
"I said you slept with my grandmother. That ain't true. You raped her. You pushed old man Julian around and you raped my gran'mama," he said.
"The white man gonna screw down whenever he got the chance. Nigger woman always gonna get what she can out of it. Which one gonna lie about it later?"
"My gran'mama don't never lie. You better not call her a nigger, either," Tee Bobby said.
Legion struck the flint on his lighter and cupped the flame in the wind, inhaling on his cigarette.
"I'm leaving now. Them shrimpers gonna be coming out of there. You better get your ass home, you," he said.
Legion got behind the wheel of Joe Zeroski's automobile and started the engine, his cigarette hanging from his mouth. But before he could back out and turn around, Tee Bobby picked up a piece of broken cement the size of a Softball and smashed the driver's-side window with it.
Legion braked the car and got out, a huge hole in the window, his forehead bleeding, his cigarette still in his mouth.
"You got sand," he said.
"Fuck you," Tee Bobby said.
"Ax yourself where you got it. The parents who didn't want you? Be proud of the blood you got, boy," Legion replied.
He got back in Joe Zeroski's automobile, tossed his cigarette through the hole in the window, and drove away.
Late that night Baby Huey Lagneaux stole Joe Zeroski's automobile out of Legion's yard and was driving it back to New Iberia when he was stopped for speeding. Baby Huey sat in jail for suspicion of car theft until Monday morning. Before he went back on the street, I had a deputy bring him by my office.
"You were taking the car back to Joe?" I asked.
"Yes, suh."
"I don't get it. His men used a stun gun on you."
"Mr. Joe t'rew down his.38 and got on his knees to save my life. He don't even know me."
The chair he sat in groaned with the strain, his skin so black it had a purple sheen to it. He gazed out the window at the freight train clicking by on the rail crossing.
"See you around, Huey," I said.
"I can go?"
"Why'd you ever become a pimp?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I ain't one now. Can I go?"
"You bet," I said. I leaned back in my chair, my fingers laced behind my head, and wondered at the complexities and contradictions that must have existed in the earth's original clay when God first scooped it up in His palm.
Twenty minutes later my desk phone rang.
"This kid Marvin Grits or whatever was handing out Bible pamphlets at the motor court this morning. But that ain't why he's here. He's got the hots for Zerelda. I want him picked up. Besides, he's drunk," the voice said.
"Joe?"
"You thought it was the pope?"
"Marvin Oates is drunk?"
"He looks like he got hit by a train. He smells like puke. Maybe he just come from First Baptist," Joe said.
"I'll see what I can do. Baby Huey Lagneaux just left my office. He told me about your run-in with Legion Guidry."
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"I always said you were a stand-up guy."
"Go soak your head," he said, and hung up.
I told Wally, our dispatcher, to have Marvin Oates picked up at the motor court.
Later, I walked downtown to eat lunch. When I came back to the department, Wally stopped me in the corridor. He was holding three pink message slips that he was about to put in my mailbox.
"This woman keeps calling and axing for you. How about getting her off my neck?" he said.
He put the message slips in my hand. The telephone number was in St. Mary Parish, the caller's name one I didn't immediately recognize.
"Who is she?" I asked.
"Hillary Clinton, in coonass disguise. How do I know, Dave? By the way, Marvin Oates wasn't at the motor court when the cruiser got there," he answered.
The woman's name was Marie Guilbeau. I returned her call from my office phone. When she picked up, I suddenly remembered the face of the cleaning woman who had claimed a man in a rubber mask, wearing leather gloves, had invaded her house and molested her. "The priest tole me I got to tell you somet'ing," she said.
"What's that, Ms. Guilbeau?" I asked.
There was no response.
"I'm a little busy right now, but if you like, I can drive out to your house again," I said.
"I clean at the motel out on the fo'-lane," she said. "They was a nice-looking fellow staying there. I kind of flirted wit' him. Maybe I give him the wrong idea," she said.
"Was he a white or black man?" I asked.
"He was white. I t'ink he t'ought I was a prostitute from the truck stop. I tole him to get away from me. I was ashamed to tell you about that when you come out to my house."
"You think the man in the rubber mask was the guy from the motel?"
"I don't know, suh. I don't want to talk about this no more," she replied. The line went dead.
What do you say to sexual assault victims?
Answer: You're going to catch the guys who hurt them and bury them in a maximum-security prison from which they will never be paroled, and with good luck they'll cell with predators who are twice their size and ten times more vicious.
Except it's usually a lie on every level. More often than not the victims get torn apart on the stand by defense attorneys and ultimately exit the process disbelieved, discredited, and accused of being either delusional or opportunistic.
I once heard an elderly recidivist say, "Jailing ain't the same no more. Folks just ain't rearing criminals like they used to." Any old-time lawman, if he's honest, will probably tell you he's sickened by the class of contemporary criminals he's forced to deal with. As bad as the criminals of the Great Depression were, many of them possessed the virtues Americans admire. Most of them came from midwestern farm families and were not sexual predators or serial killers. Usually their crimes were against banks and the government, and at least in their own minds they were not out to harm individuals. Even their most vehement antagonists, usually Texas Rangers and FBI agents, granted that they were brave and died game and asked for no quarter and pleaded no excuse for their misdeeds.
Clyde Barrow was beaten unmercifully with the black Betty in Eastham State Prison and made to run two miles to work in the cotton fields and two miles back to the lockup every workday of his sentence. He swore that one day he would not only get even for the brutality he suffered and witnessed there, but he would return to Eastham a free man and break out every inmate he could. Sure enough, after he was paroled, he and Bonnie Parker shot their way into the prison, then shot their way back out with five convicts in tow, whom they packed into a stolen car and successfully escaped with.
Doc Barker and four others got over the wall at Alcatraz Island and were almost home free, a rubber boat waiting for them in the shoals, when one man sprained his ankle on the rocks. The other four went back for him, got caught in the searchlights, and were blown apart by automatic-weapons fire. Oddly, the prison authorities named the stretch of rocky sand where they died Barker Beach.
Lester Gillis, also known as Baby Face Nelson, declared war on the FBI and hunted federal agents as though he was the offended party, not they, carrying their photos and names and license tag numbers in his automobile, on the last day of his life actually making a U-turn and pursuing two of them down a road, forcing them into a ditch and a firefight that lasted over an hour and left Gillis with seventeen bullet holes in his body.
He managed to drive away and receive the church's last rites.
Helen opened the door of my office without knocking and came inside. "Lost in thought?" she said.
"What's up?"
"The bartender at the Boom Boom Room says Marvin Oates is stoking up the neighborhood. The skipper wants a net over him," she said.
"Send a uniform," I said.
"Marvin got into it with Jimmy Dean Styles."
A drop of rain struck the window glass.
"Let me get my hat," I said.
We signed out a cruiser and drove out past the city limits, crossed a drawbridge spanning the Teche, next to a leafy pecan orchard, and entered the black slum community where Jimmy Sty operated the Boom Boom Room. When Helen got out of the cruiser, she slipped her baton into the ring on her gun belt.
Styles was inside, behind the bar, his face still swollen from the beating I had given him. The room was dark except for the lit beer signs on the wall and the glow of a jukebox in the corner. Two black women sat at the end of the bar, their mouths thick with lipstick, their hair in disarray, glasses of bulk synthetic wine in front of them.
"Hey, my man Lou'sana Chuck, I hear you lucking out. My charge against you being dropped," Styles said.
"News to me," I said.
"My lawyer got the word. Marse Purcel say he saw me pull a switchblade knife. Funny how a big fat pig like that can see a knife when he wasn't even there."
"Marvin Oates been giving you a bad time?" I said.
"Passing out religious tracts in a bar? Trying to hide the boner in his pants at the same time? You tell me, Lou'sana Chuck."
"Watch your language," Helen said.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"Think he met a girlfriend. He be converting her now," Styles said. He reached into the cooler behind him and unscrewed the cap on a bottle of chocolate milk. In the light of the beer sign above his head, his gold-textured face seemed grotesque, a blood knot on the ridge of his nose, the skin puckered where it had been stitched. He drank until the bottle was half empty, then rested his hands on the bar and lowered his head and belched.
"Can you give us a minute?" I said to Helen.
"No problem. I just hate to give up the eau de caca coming from the bathroom," she said, fitting on her sunglasses, stepping out the front door into the hazy midday glare, her baton at a stiff angle on her left side.
Styles looked at me curiously.
"I think you're a sorry sack of shit, Jimmy. But I didn't have the right to take you down the way I did. I also think you're getting a lousy deal with the St. Martin D.A.'s office. But you know the rules. Cops take care of their own. Anyway, I apologize for busting you up," I said.
"Lookie here, Chuck, you want to feel good about yourself, go somewhere else to do it. You want to shut my bidness down, come back wit' a court order. In the meantime, get the fuck out of my life."
“You helped Tee Bobby get on the spike, Jimmy. How's it feel to ruin one of the greatest musicians ever to come out of Louisiana?" I said.
"Had about all this I can stand," he replied. He walked to the front door and called outside. "Gots a problem in here!"
Helen came through the door, pulling off her sunglasses, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.
"What's the trouble?" she said.
"I hear you a dyke who's straight up and don't take shit from nobody. 'Predate you being a witness if Chuck here decides to assault me again," Styles said.
"Say again?" Helen said.
Styles blew out his breath and made an exasperated face. "Lady, I ain't give you the reputation. You walked in here wit' it. Yesterday, in the McDonald's on Main, male cops was laughing about you. I ain't lying. Ax Chuck here they don't do it."
Styles upended his bottle of chocolate milk. He had worked the hook in deep, with a good chance of getting away with it. Except he let his eyes light on Helen's while a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Helen pulled her baton from the loop on her belt and swung it backhanded across his face. The bottle shattered in Styles's hand, speckling his face with chocolate milk and fragments of glass.
She placed her business card on the bar.
"Have a nice day. Call me if you need any more assistance," she said.
We drove through the neighborhood, past shacks with rusted screen galleries that were still hung with Christmas lights, and crossed a coulee that was shaded by pecan trees and whose banks were green and raked clean and sprinkled with periwinkles. Then, back among the trees, we saw a pale yellow shotgun house and Marvin's suitcase on the porch. Music came from the windows, and, incongruously, a bright red Coca-Cola machine sat in the carport, the refrigeration unit vibrating, the exterior beaded with fat drops of moisture.
We pulled into the yard and walked up on the porch. The inside door was open and a heady, autumnal odor, like wet leaves burning, drifted through the screen. I knocked, but no one answered.
Helen stayed in front and I walked around to the rear door. Then, through the screen, I witnessed one of those scenes that makes us wish we knew less about the human family's potential for deceit and the manipulation of those who are weaker than ourselves.
Marvin Oates sat at a bare kitchen table, his shirt off, his eyes pinched shut, his balled fists trembling with anxiety or perhaps visions that only he saw on the backs of his eyelids. His forehead was barked and there was a bruise along his jawbone like the discoloration in an overripe banana. A pair of marijuana roach clips sat in an ashtray, smoldering at the tips.
A young black woman, her short hair curled and peroxided at the ends, stood over him, kneading his shoulders, letting her breasts touch his head, her loins rub against his back, blowing her breath in his ear. She wore white shorts rolled up into her genitalia, a denim shirt embroidered with flowers, a rose tattooed on her throat, bracelets that jangled on her ankles, and pink tennis shoes, like a little girl might wear.
"Leona got what you want, honey. But I got to have a li'l more money than what you give me. That ain't hardly enough to cover Jimmy Sty's end of things. Girl got to have some money for rent. Got to pay for the liquor you drunk, the dope you smoked, too, darlin'. Don't make me go down the road and get another date. You a cute t'ing…"
She traced her hands down his chest and touched his sex. His chin lifted and his face seemed to sharpen, to blade with color and the heated energies he could barely control. He opened his eyes, like a man waking from a dream.
His voice was a rusty clot, a mixture of desire and guilt and need. "There's more money in my britches," he said.
The woman reached over to remove his wallet from his back pocket. When she did, I saw Marvin's naked back and the pockmarks on it that ran all the way down to his beltline.
I opened the screen door and stepped into the kitchen.
"Sorry to bother you, Leona, but Marvin has an appointment at the sheriff's department," I said.
At first her face jerked with surprise. Then she grinned and straightened her shoulders and pushed back her hair.
"Dave Robicheaux come to see me? I love you, darlin', and would run off wit' you in a minute, but I'm all tied up right now," she said.
"I realize that, Leona. But how about returning the money you were holding for Marvin so we can be on our way?" I said.
"He want me to have it. Tole me so wit' his hand on his heart," she said, rubbing the top of Marvin's head.
Helen came through the front of the house, whirled Leona against the table, and kicked her feet apart. She pulled a sheaf of bills from Leona's pocket. "You take anything else from him?" she said.
"No, ma'am," Leona said.
"Where'd you get the rock?" Helen said, holding up a two-inch plastic vial with a tiny cork in the top.
"Don't know where that come from," Leona said.
"Is that your baby in the other room?" Helen said.
"Yes, ma'am. He's eighteen months now," Leona said.
"Then go take care of him. I catch you turning tricks again, I'm going to roust Jimmy Sty and tell him you dimed him," Helen said.
"Can I have the rock back?" Leona said.
"Get out of here," Helen said. She picked up Marvin's shirt and draped it on his shoulders and put his hat on his head.
"Let's go, cowboy," she said, and pushed him ahead of her toward the front door.
It had started to rain. The trees were blowing on the bayou, and the air was cool and smelled like dust and fish spawning.
Marvin began putting on his shirt, drawing it over the network of scars on his back.
"Who did that to you, partner?" I asked.
"I don't know," he replied. "Sometimes I almost remember. Then I go inside in my head and don't come out for a long time. It's like I ain't s'pposed to remember some things."
Helen looked at me. I picked up Marvin's suitcase and placed it in the trunk of the cruiser, then shut the hatch and opened the back door for him.
"Why'd you get drunk?" I asked.
"No reason. I got beat up in the Iberville Project. I looked all over for Miss Zerelda, but she was gone. I dint know where she went," he replied.
"Think you can stay out of this part of town for a while?" I asked.
"I ain't gonna drink no more. No, sir, you got my word on that," he said. He shook his head profoundly.
Helen and I got in front. She started the engine, then turned and looked back through the wire-mesh screen that separated us from Marvin Oates. Lightning splintered the sky on the other side of the pecan trees that lined the coulee.
"Marvin, have you ever noticed you never answer a question directly? Can you tell us why that is?" she said.
"The Bible is my road map. The children of Israel used it, too. They crossed the Red Sea of destruction and God done seen them safely through. That's all I can say," he replied.
"That's very illuminating. Thanks for sharing that," she said, and shifted the cruiser into gear.
Fifteen minutes later we dropped him in front of his house. He hefted his suitcase out of the trunk and ran through the rain, his straw hat clamped on his head, his hand-tooled cowboy boots splashing on the edge of the puddles in his tiny yard, his shirt flapping in the wind.
"You think those scars on his back are from hot cigarettes?" Helen asked.
"That'd be my guess."
"It's a great life, huh?" she said.
I'm sure I knew a glib reply to her remark, which she had obviously intended to hide her feelings, but the image of a child being systematically burned, probably by a parent or stepparent, was just too awful to talk about
Through the window I saw a man walk against the red light at the intersection, a heavy piece of rolled canvas draped over his shoulders, like a cross, his unlaced work boots sloshing through the water.
"Let's take that fellow to the shelter," I said.
"You know him?" Helen said.
"He was a medic in my outfit. I saw him in New Orleans. He must have hopped a freight back to New Iberia."
She turned in the seat and looked into my face. "Run that by me again."
"When I was hit, he carried me piggyback into the slick and kept me alive until we got to battalion aid," I said.
"I'm a little worried about you, Pops," she said.