Bring Him Back Dead Page 2

  Whoever wanted him dead had had two tries for him. The third try might be successful. And he hadn’t the least idea who his would-be killer was.

  Night was complete when he braked his car in the parking lot behind the jail and ordered Lant Turner to precede him through the door.

  Mullen was still on the duty desk. He glanced over the top of the newspaper he was reading and saw Turner, but neither of them spoke. Latour set the demijohn on the desk and labeled it, then walked Turner back to the lockup.

  He wasn’t proud of himself. He had a feeling he’d been used. He wished now he’d taken the hundred dollars that Turner had offered him. The chances were that if a squeeze was on, Mullen would get five times that amount.

  “No hard feelings?” he asked Turner.

  Turner made himself at home in the cell. “No hard feelings,” he said. “In my business a man expects t’ take a fall now and then.” He stretched out on the bunk. “But you have a lot t’ learn, sonny.”

  Latour stopped in the washroom before returning to the office. He washed his hands and face and combed his hair, but there was nothing he could do about the sour buck on his trousers. He smelled like a walking distillery.

  When he did return to the office, the demijohn had moved from one side of the desk to the other and Mullen was wiping his mouth with the mat of hair on the back of his hand.

  “How come you brought Lant in?” he asked.

  “I was given a warrant to serve.”

  “Smashing his still would have been enough.”

  “That wasn’t the way the warrant read.”

  From force of habit, Latour unbuckled his gun belt and started to hang it on its hook, then strapped it around his waist again.

  Mullen was interested. “How come you’re wearing your gun if you’re going off duty?”

  Latour told him. “Because someone is trying to kill me. I was shot at as I walked out of my house this morning, and again a few minutes ago from a cane brake on the Lacosta plantation.”

  “You saw the man?”

  “No. Neither time.”

  “Do you know of any reason why anyone should want to kill you?”

  “No.”

  Mullen drank from the demijohn again, openly this time, handling it as easy as most men handled a gallon jug. “Look, Andy. The way you run your life is your own affair. But if I were you — ”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d stop being so damn noble and try being human for a change. There are a lot of men in town, and quite a few in Angola, who have reason not to like you. So if I were you, I’d walk a little lighter.”

  “In other words, if I’m found shot to death, it might embarrass certain parties.”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “There might even be an investigation of how French Bayou is being run.”

  “It’s bound to come sooner or later.”

  “But you would prefer to have it come later.”

  “Much later.”

  Latour walked to the front door of the office. When he turned in the doorway, Mullen was drinking from the jug again.

  “Oh, by the way,” Latour told him. “Just in case you’re interested, it seems that Lant uses chicken manure to hurry his buck along.”

  Mullen spat the whisky in his mouth into a brass cuspidor. His normally red face turned even redder. “You smug son-of-a-bitch. Now you tell me. No wonder people take shots at you.”

  Chapter Three

  LATOUR STOOD on the front steps of the jail and lighted a cigarette. He didn’t feel noble. He certainly wasn’t smug. All he felt was confused, confused and a little frightened.

  Between the Army and Olga and a dry hole in the ground, his life had turned out a lot differently than he’d planned it.

  He looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock, too late to go home for supper. Not that Olga cared if he ever came home.

  He crossed the square of lawn in front of the jail and walked up Lafitte Street. If one had never seen a wide-open town, French Bayou was something to see. The street was one long blaze of neon. Music blared from every second doorway. The bars and the clubs and the walk were crowded with men with money burning their pockets. And there were almost as many girls as there were men, pretty young things in bright dresses, weaving in and out of the pack, willing for a price to cater to any desire that couldn’t be served on a plate, poured from a bottle, or rolled out of a dice cup.

  Two drunks, one of them a local charter-boat captain named George Villere, were fighting on the walk in front of Portugee Joe’s Café while an enthusiastic crowd urged them on.

  Latour cuffed them apart and wished he hadn’t. Villere took exception to the interference with his pleasure and Latour was forced to fight him back across the walk and against a parked car. His back muscles tensed as he fought. The shots from the cane brake had come close. A man with a pistol could do better in a crowd. In the blare of brass and thump of drums and babble of excited voices, the reports wouldn’t even be heard. He was relieved when Villere decided he’d had enough.

  “You think you’re God Almighty, don’t you?” Villere panted.

  “No,” Latour said. “Just the law.” He tried to get the crowd moving. “Now, come on. Break it up. All of you.”

  A little brunette in the front row of the crowd laughed. “Don’t reach for that sawbuck, girls. You heard what the man said. He’s the law.”

  The dispersing crowd laughed with her.

  The back of Latour’s ears felt hot. First Tom Mullen, now a chippy. He didn’t care how much moonshine the Lant Turners made. He didn’t care if all the chippies in French Bayou were laid end to end. But this trying to walk a tightrope in a wide-open town put him in a strange position. Whatever he did was wrong.

  He walked into Joe’s Cafe. Mamma Joe had seen the fight through the window. She brought him a clean wet towel to wipe the blood from his mouth and knuckles.

  In her mouth the word sounded dirty. “Oil!”

  Latour agreed with her, but he doubted if Joe did. The swarthy restaurant man was netting as much in a week as he’d formerly grossed in a year. He ordered the evening special and a glass of orange wine and sat sipping his wine as he studied the faces in the café.

  Most of the old-timers ate at Joe’s, not out of sentiment, but because he had the best food in town.

  Both of them so drunk they neither knew nor cared what they were doing,” Sheriff Belluche and a new girl were sitting in a back booth. She was the second girl in a month. Latour tried not to judge the old man. For thirty years Belluche had been an honest and underpaid sheriff. Now, in the last years of his life, Belluche had fallen into a neon-lighted outhouse filled to the crescent with crude oil and had come up with both fists filled with hundred-dollar bills; and every hustler who wanted to work French Bayou was eager to submit her fair white merchandise for his personal stamp of approval.

  Closer by, Jean Avart was dining alone.

  He saw Latour looking at him and nodded pleasantly. The attorney, a wealthy landowner, was another of the few old-timers who hadn’t changed. All the discovery of oil had done for him was to make him more wealthy.

  Latour envied the attorney. For one thing, he was successful in the profession Latour had hoped to enter. For another, the older man was everything Olga had assumed he would be, everything he could have been if the test well on his land hadn’t turned out to be a dry hole.

  Avart finished his meal and came over to the table. “Nice to see you, Andy. Mind if I have my coffee with you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “How’s Olga?”

  “Fine.”

  “I hear her brother is visiting you, all the way from Singapore.”

  “That’s right. He’s been with us for a month.”

  “How nice.”

  Latour was glad Avart thought so. To him his brother-in-law was merely an added annoyance, an extra mouth to feed on a deputy sheriff’s pay.

  The attorney sipped his coffee. He
said, “Drop over some evening, the three of you. I’d like to meet Olga’s brother. Better still, let’s make it a definite date. Ask Olga what evening next week will be convenient and we’ll dine together — at my place.”

  “Thanks,” Latour said. “I’ll do that.”

  He was pleased by the invitation. Olga would be more pleased. She could spend days pondering what to wear to the dinner and afterward more days thinking about it. Jean Avart lived in the style in which she had hoped to live.

  Avart inclined his head in the general direction of the booth where Sheriff Belluche was sitting. “Not very pretty, eh, Andy?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Avart confided, “It won’t go on much longer. God knows I’m no prude. Fun’s fun. I like a drink. I like to entertain a pretty girl. But this thing has got out of hand and we’re going to change it. A few of us are working on it now.” His shrewd eyes studied Latour’s face. “What happened to you, Andy? Did someone give you a bad time?”

  “I had a fight with a drunk.”

  “I saw that. I’m referring to that nick in your chin. It looks like a bullet burn to me.”

  “It is. I’ve been shot at four times today.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Once when I came out of the house this morning and again about half an hour ago, from a cane brake on the Lacosta plantation.”

  “You saw the man?”

  Latour took the battered slug from his shirt pocket and laid it on the table. “No. All I know is he’s been using a thirty-thirty rifle.”

  Avart examined the piece of lead. “Nasty-looking little thing. Do you know anyone who might want to kill you?”

  Latour evaded the question. “Well, as Tom Mullen pointed out, there are quite a few men in town who have reason not to like me.”

  “True,” Avart said thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll inquire around. When a lawyer has practiced as long as I have, especially in one town, he develops sources of information that aren’t available to the law.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Jean.”

  Avart finished his coffee and stood up. “Meanwhile, take care of yourself. You happen to be one of my favorite clients.”

  “A lot of business you get out of me.”

  The other man smiled. “Unfortunately for both of us. But for a time there, two years ago, I thought you were going to be one of my best accounts.”

  “Yeah. Two years ago,” Latour agreed.

  He watched the attorney move out of the café. It was nice to know there were men like Jean Avart in French Bayou.

  His meal finished, still reluctant to go home, he continued up Lafitte Street. Jacques Lacosta’s red-and-gold station wagon was parked at the curb in front of the Tarpon Bar and he and the red-haired girl were making some sort of pitch.

  Latour thumbed a cigarette into his mouth and leaned against the plate-glass window of the bar. The cane brake from which he’d been shot at wasn’t more than two hundred yards from the clearing where the carnival man’s house trailer was parked. Lacosta had been in the clearing when he’d driven by with Lant Turner. It was possible that Lacosta had seen the man who’d fired the three shots at him.

  He joined the group of men around the platform built onto the tailgate of the station wagon. The girl was young and pretty. To add to the flash of his act, the carnival man had dressed her in an old-fashioned off-the-shoulder, wasp-waisted, hoop-skirted outfit whose bodice showed plenty of cleavage. And the girl had plenty to show.

  She looked like a nice kid. Latour hoped she knew what she was doing. Lacosta had a golden throat. He also had a reputation for being rough on his women. One thing was certain: The minute he got a few dollars he didn’t need for gasoline or food, he invested it in whisky. Right now he was so drunk he could hardly stand.

  But drunk or not, he knew his business. While the girl played a banjo and sang, Lacosta talked up a crowd. Then, satisfied with the tip that had formed around the tailgate, he nodded to the girl and went into his talk.

  He was pitching medicine this time.

  Latour listened to his spiel and was amused. Lacosta was using a lot of big words. He knew how to use them to good effect. But boiled down to fundamentals, the old man was selling a combined cathartic and stimulant guaranteed to keep both ends of a young man active and rejuvenate older Romeos who had lost their pep.

  It was the perfect product for French Bayou.

  Eternal youth at a dollar a bottle.

  Chapter Four

  LATOUR WAITED for Lacosta to conclude his pitch so he could talk to him. But the showman had overestimated his capacity. In the middle of his spiel the old man, still clutching a bottle of the product he was pitching, crumpled slowly to the platform.

  The red-haired girl tried to lift him to his feet. A man in the crowd called for a doctor.

  “Doctor, hell,” another man said. “The old goat ain’t sick. He’s stinking.”

  Latour forced his way through the crowd and climbed up on the platform. The girl was still trying to lift Lacosta to his feet. “Here. Let me do that,” he said.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Deputy Sheriff Andy Latour.”

  “You’re going to arrest him?”

  Latour shook his head. Arresting Jacques Lacosta for voluntary public intoxication in a town filled with drunks would be like putting falsies on Gina Lollobrigida.

  “No,” he told the girl. “All I want to do is get him off the street. I’ll carry him around to the seat and you can drive him back to the trailer.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” the girl said. “We can’t afford a pinch.”

  Latour attempted to lift Lacosta and the showman shook off his alcoholic stupor and became a belligerent drunk.

  “Take your goddamn hands off me.”

  “Shut up,” the girl said. “The officer is trying to help you.”

  Lacosta continued to struggle. “I know how he wants to help me. An’ you’re damn anxious for it to happen, aren’t you, baby?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The hell you don’t.” Lacosta appealed to the watching men. “Well, don’t just stand there staring. Don’t let him arrest me, boys.” Lacosta stopped being belligerent and started feeling sorry for himself. “You know why he wants t’ throw me in the tank. So he can crawl in between the sheets with my wife.”

  “Please,” the girl pleaded with him.

  Lacosta waggled a finger at her. “Please, nothin'. You want the lousy cop t’ pinch me, don’t you?” He stared blearily at the watching men. “An’ that goes for the rest of you, too. Why don’t you all get in line an’ she can take you on, one at a time? Wha’ do you think I am, a fool? I’ve seen the way you crowd aroun’ the platform, tryin’ t’ see up her skirt.” Tears of alcoholic self-pity trickled down his face. “Jus’ because she’s young an’ pretty an’ married t’ an old man, you want t’ climb into my saddle. An’ for all I know, whenever my back is turned, she lets you.”

  The girl began to cry.

  Latour lost patience with Lacosta and manhandled him to the walk and onto the front seat of the station wagon. “All right,” he told the girl. “Don’t just stand there bawling. Start the motor and get him out of here or I will pinch him.”

  Still sobbing, the girl got behind the wheel of the station wagon and backed into the bumper of the car behind. She shifted gears with an effort and smashed into the car in front. Then she leaned her head on her hands and cried.

  Latour reached in through the window and shut off the ignition.

  “All right,” he said, resigned. “You aren’t in much better condition than he is. Just lock it up and I’ll get my car and drive both of you home.”

  • • •

  What breeze there had been had died. The back road was hot and black and humid. Latour drove faster than he normally would, ignoring what the chuckholes in the mud might do to Lacosta, who was passed out and snoring in the back seat of his car.


  The girl had stopped sobbing.

  “What’s your name?” Latour asked her.

  “Rita.”

  “You and Lacosta are married?”

  “I’m not proud of it.”

  “How long have you been married to him?”

  “Four months.”

  Latour stopped feeling put upon and felt sorry for her. As young and pretty as she was, she could have done a lot better for herself.

  The girl read his mind. “I know. I’ve made a mess of it, haven’t I? I was waiting table in a grease joint in Ponchatoula and I got damn sick of it and he promised to put me in show business. Some show business. I was better off in Ponchatoula.”

  “I see,” Latour said. “When did you and Jacques reach town?”

  “This afternoon, about two o’clock.”

  “Did you see anyone in or around the clearing when you pulled in?”

  “No.”

  “But you were still in the trailer up to, say, seven-thirty?”

  “I was. Jacques was working on the motor of the station wagon.”

  “Did you hear some shots around that time?”

  “Yes. Quite a few of them. Right after two men in a big car drove past the clearing.”

  “Jacques heard them, too?”

  “I suppose he did.”

  “Did he say anything about them when he came in?”

  Rita shook her head. “No, he didn’t. But just before he came in, I thought I heard him talking to someone. Why? What did he do except get drunk?”

  “Nothing,” Latour assured her. “But I want to talk to him when he’s sober. It’s just possible he may know something I want to know.”

  He drove past the bay tree by which he’d marked the stand of cane from which the shots had been fired and turned down the weed-grown lane leading to the unlighted house trailer.

  “I’ll help you get him inside.”

  The girl was completely indifferent. “If he gets inside, you’ll have to help him. I’ve got so I let him lie where he falls. Wait. I’ll light a lamp.”

  Latour sat slapping at mosquitoes until the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp outlined the windows and screen door of the trailer. Then he picked up Lacosta’s limp body and carried it inside.