Bring Him Back Dead Page 3

  Rita apologized for the poor lighting. “We used to have a gasoline pressure lantern but Jacques knocked it over one night when he was drunker than usual. We’re lucky it didn’t explode.” She inclined her head toward the far end of the trailer. “He sleeps in there.”

  Latour carried the showman the length of the trailer and dropped him on the double bed in the small bedroom. The old man continued to snore. Latour tried to shake him awake, then gave it up as a bad job. It would be morning before Lacosta would be able to answer any questions.

  He loosened the old man’s tie and took off his shoes and returned to the living area of the trailer. Rita was dipping water from a pail into a coffeepot and having difficulty moving around in the narrow aisle because of her hoop skirt.

  “Thanks a lot.” She smiled. “I can’t offer you a drink. That comes in Jacques’s department. But how about a cup of coffee?”

  Latour tossed his Stetson on a built-in sofa behind a narrow table. “Thanks. I could go for a cup of coffee.”

  Rita kept having trouble with her hoop skirt. “Damn this thing. I don’t see how women ever put up with them.”

  “I’ve often wondered,” Latour admitted. He sat on the sofa next to his hat.

  Rita lighted the bottled-gas burner under the coffeepot. It was hotter in the trailer than it was outside. “I sure fell on my head. I mean when I married Jacques.” She opened a drawer of a built-in chest and took out what appeared to be a two-piece white play suit. “Would you excuse me while I put on something cooler than this Scarlett O’Hara outfit?”

  What she did was immaterial to Latour. “Go right ahead. It’s your trailer.”

  Rita fought her hoop skirt down the aisle. “His trailer. And it’s mortgaged for more than it’s worth. If it wasn’t, believe me, I’d have sold it some night when he was potted — with him in — and would be gone by now.”

  She closed the small door of the bedroom firmly behind her.

  Latour fanned himself with his hat. The delta had two faces, one for day and one for night. With the rank vegetation rising out of the fertile mud around the trailer, the clearing smelled like some jungles he’d known. Insects, attracted by the light, droned at the screened windows. He could almost hear the pad of fur-bearing night animals. In the distance, the wells continued to pump. Suddenly, somewhere far offshore, after weeks of testing and drilling, a well came in, causing the bedrock connecting the floor of the Gulf with the mainland to vibrate with the force of the explosion.

  The unblocked trailer rocked slightly. The closed door of the bedroom opened on silent hinges.

  Standing sideways to him, secure in the knowledge that she’d closed the door, the red-haired girl continued to undress.

  It was a lovely, if unintentional, strip tease.

  Instinctively Latour compared her to Olga. Where Olga was lush with a touch of the Oriental, Rita was slim, almost lean. Her breasts were firm and peaked. Her stomach was flat and made a perfect juncture with her flared hipbones. Her legs were long and tapering, ending in slim ankles and perfectly formed feet. She was naturally red-haired. He couldn’t help himself. The attraction was basic, primitive. He sucked in his breath.

  Rita turned her head at the sound and realized that the door was open. She stood a moment looking at him through the yellow glow of the oil lamp, then reached out and closed the door. When she opened it again she was wearing a pair of white shorts and a matching halter.

  “It wasn’t,” she said, “intentional.”

  Latour resumed fanning himself. “I know.”

  The girl seemed to be trying to convince herself. “When I said coffee, I meant coffee.”

  Latour laid his hat back on the sofa and lighted a cigarette. “Have I tried to force myself on you?”

  “No,” Rita admitted. She ran her fingers through her hair and they came away moist with perspiration. “No,” she repeated. “You haven’t.” She filled two cups with coffee and set them and a bowl of sugar and a can of evaporated milk on the table in front of Latour. “It’s just that it’s all so damn hopeless. Whenever I let myself think about it, I’m afraid I’ll blow my top.”

  “You mean being married to Jacques?”

  “What else?” Rita sat beside Latour. “You’ve no idea what it’s like. You couldn’t know.”

  “Why don’t you leave him?”

  “I intend to, as soon as I get a stake.” Rita spooned sugar into her coffee. “But let’s get one thing straight. Jacques lied back there on the street. Maybe I don’t amount to much, but I don’t put out to every man who wants me.” She continued to feel sorry for herself. “If that was all I wanted, I could have done it in Ponchatoula. You know how I mean, for money. A lot of guys offered me plenty.”

  Latour sipped his coffee. It was strong and fragrant with chickory. Seeing the girl in the nude had affected him more than he’d realized. It was an effort for him to keep his voice level. “Hustling isn’t much of a life.”

  “No,” Rita said. “But neither is being a waitress in a small-town café. That’s why I married Jacques. Big joke. I was trying to better myself.” She helped herself to a cigarette from the package that Latour had laid on the table. “How about you? Are you married?”

  “A little over two years.”

  “To a local girl?”

  Latour hesitated. It was difficult to catalogue Olga. “No. I imagine you’d call her a White Russian. Her grandparents were big shots. You know, years ago. The old man was a baron or something, until the Commies took over the country. But both she and her parents were born in Japan.”

  “She’s pretty?”

  “Very pretty.”

  “How did you happen to meet her?”

  “At a party.”

  “Where?”

  “In Singapore. She was working as a secretary at the British Embassy. And I was a captain in the C.I.D.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Criminal Intelligence Division of the Army.”

  “Like a military cop, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  Rita started to say something and changed her mind.

  Latour looked sideways at her. She was young. She was lonely. She wanted a man. She wasn’t cheap, but in spite of what she’d said, she was his if he wanted her. All he had to do was lay his hand on the bare thigh next to his. She would say, “No,” and “Don’t,” a few times, but he could have her.

  He was tempted. It would be nice, for a change, to make love to a woman who didn’t act as if she were doing him a favor. Still, having an affair, even a one-night quickie, with a seventeen-year-old girl who wanted out of an impossible marriage would only complicate matters. So many things could happen.

  He picked his hat from the sofa and stood up.

  Rita stood up with him. “What’s the idea?”

  “I think I’d better go.”

  The red-haired girl’s eyes turned sullen. “That’s up to you.” She walked to the door with him. “Thanks for everything.”

  “You’ll see me again,” Latour said. “In the morning. I want to talk to Jacques.”

  “About those shots I heard?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You were one of the men in that car?”

  “I was.”

  “And the shots were fired at you?”

  “They were.”

  “Who fired them?”

  “I’m hoping Jacques may know. Well, until morning.”

  Rita’s smile was twisted. “I’ll be here.” She seemed to be trying to come to some decision. She made it. “O.K. So I’m being cheap, I’m being cheap. You’ve been nice to me, Latour. I like you. I could like you a lot. You’re the kind of guy I always hoped I’d meet.” She wet her lips with her tongue. “And here’s something for you to think over until I see you again. You remember how Jacques talked back there on the street?”

  “Of course.”

  “There was a reason. Frustration.”

  “Frustration?”

&nb
sp; “Let’s just say the bottled stuff he sells is just so much colored water.”

  Latour pulled her to him and kissed her.

  “You know what you’re saying?”

  “I know.”

  Latour was practical. “O.K. But not here. You can’t ever tell about drunks. The old man might come to and walk in on us. We’ll make some arrangement in the morning, maybe drive up to Grand Isle.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Latour opened the door and walked the few feet to his car. He should feel good. He didn’t. He didn’t even feel particularly amorous. For some reason he felt sad, perhaps because, as strained as his relations with Olga were, when and if he did take Rita, it would be the first time he’d gone to bed with another woman since he and Olga had been married.

  He almost wished he’d gone straight home after he’d locked up Lant Turner. He wished he hadn’t walked up Lafitte Street.

  Chapter Five

  THERE WAS a light in the sheriff’s office but no deputy in back of the duty desk. As far as Latour could tell, the five-gallon demijohn of whisky he’d labeled in evidence was gone.

  He walked down the hall to the cell block.

  A middle-aged prostitute screamed obscenities at him from the women’s section. There were the usual drunks in the tank. George Villere had got into another fight. His face and shirt matted with blood, he was lying on his back on the floor of one of the cells. But Lant Turner was as nonexistent as the missing demijohn.

  I should have taken his money, Latour said to himself.

  Jack Pringle was in the office when he returned to the front of the jail. “What happened to Turner?” Latour asked him.

  The night deputy glanced at the docket. “It says here he made bail.”

  “I’ll bet. Who was on the desk?”

  “Mullen, I imagine. Right after I came on duty I had to go over to Amy’s and put the arm on a drunk who got into a brawl with one of the girls.”

  “George Villere?”

  Pringle adjusted his gun belt. “If he’s the lad with the blood all over him. He was too drunk to give me his name and he wasn’t carrying any identification.”

  “He looks like he could stand some patching.”

  Pringle shrugged. “I’ve been trying to locate Doc Walker. That’s where I was just now.”

  “You have to work him over?”

  Pringle shook his head. “No. He was that way when I got there. The way I get the story, he bit one of the cats, you’d be surprised where, and she let him have it with a pair of four-inch heels.” The night deputy in charge looked out the open window of the office at the men milling on the walks on both sides of Lafitte Street. “Some fun, eh, Andy?”

  “Yeah,” Latour agreed. “Fun.”

  “All for two hundred and fifty bucks a month.”

  Latour wondered whom Pringle thought he was fooling. Pringle was one of the boys who were getting rich, along with Tom Mullen and Sheriff Belluche. They didn’t need to own oil wells. They had their own private gold mine.

  It had been a long day. He was tired. He had to go home sometime. “Well, I guess I’ll shove on.”

  Pringle’s voice, sly and oily, stopped him in the doorway of the office. “How was she?”

  “How was who?”

  The night deputy grinned. “Stop being so modest. The story is all over town.”

  Latour realized what Pringle was talking about. “Oh. You mean me driving Lacosta home.”

  “That and his crying in his beer the way he did. A man that old is a fool to marry a young girl. The boys tell me she’s cute.”

  “She is.”

  “Red-haired?”

  “Red-haired.”

  “And young?”

  “I’d say about seventeen.”

  Pringle had a front gold tooth. He sucked it. “I don’t know what it is. Some guys have all the luck. Now me, when I want quail I have to settle for a professional.” He added, “On the house, of course.”

  Beyond the square oasis of comparative darkness containing the whitewashed-brick city hall and the municipal court and fire station and jail, a clarinet player in one of the all-night clubs hit a hot lick on his licorice stick and held it. It was a high, thin, reedy sound, more of a wail than a musical note.

  Latour was suddenly sick of the whole business. He felt dirty. He wished he hadn’t come home. He wished he hadn’t brought Olga to French Bayou. He wished he’d stayed in the Army.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told Pringle, and walked down the back steps of the jail and across the unlighted parking lot to his car.

  The heavy gun in his holster sagged comfortingly against his thigh. The more he thought about the two attempts on his life, the less sense they made. True, he’d pushed around a lot of petty punks during his two years as a deputy sheriff. But if any of them wanted to kill him, why had they waited till now?

  Latour drove slowly out of town, the lights and the blare of the music fading until they were absorbed by the chirping of the cicadas and the creaking of the tree frogs.

  There was something almost amateurish about the two attempts on his life, amateurish and hurried. His would-be killer didn’t want him to die tomorrow or next week. He wanted him to die right now.

  He could be a punk he’d pushed around. He could be Georgi. Still, most of the punks in the delta were good shots. They hit what they shot at. And Georgi didn’t have a car, nor did he know the back country.

  Then there were Belluche and Tom Mullen. By refusing to take what they offered, he was a pain in their necks, a potential witness against them. Still he doubted, he doubted very much, if either of them wanted him dead, at least violently so. Mullen had said as much in so many words when he’d asked him to walk a little more lightly. The last thing that they wanted was to call state-wide or national attention to French Bayou.

  Latour stopped and looked in his mailbox. There was no mail. Getting the mail was one of the self-appointed chores that Georgi had taken upon himself to help pay for his board and keep. Latour hoped he wasn’t straining himself. There was usually nothing in the mail but bills, and God knew there were plenty of them.

  He turned into the tree-lined lane leading back to the old manor house that had been in his family’s possession for over 150 years. Time was when he’d hoped to remodel and refurbish it, restore it to its former grandeur — for Olga. It was just another one of the dreams that had died in that dry hole.

  It was dark here and quiet. The only sounds were the chirping of insects and the soft lap of the tide on the beach. The only light was a distant glow from the powerful lights on one of the floating platforms belonging to an oil rig out in the Gulf. The night air was fresh with salt and spiced with the fragrance of jasmine and climbing honeysuckle.

  This was the French Bayou he knew, the French Bayou he’d hoped Olga would learn to love.

  Latour got out of his car and crossed the open gallery to look through one of the sagging French windows. With her pale golden hair drawn straight back from her forehead and fastened in a shining chignon, wearing a simple white cotton dress that accentuated the curves and hollows of her body, Olga was watching a television program. Latour smiled wryly as he thought of the price he’d paid for the massive combination television receiver, radio, and record changer he’d bought when he first came home, when he still thought he’d be rich.

  Latour looked from his wife to his brother-in-law, and burned, as he did every time he looked at Georgi.

  He walked into the living room. Olga arose from her chair. “Oh, you are home.”

  Latour laid his hat on a table. “So it would seem.”

  “Quiet, please,” Georgi reproved them. “They are just coming to the interesting part of the story.”

  Latour started to tell him off and thought better of it. Every time he opened his mouth he merely dug himself in deeper. It was incredible how both Olga and Georgi, by a single word or gesture, could make him feel like a field hand in his own house.r />
  Olga ignored her brother. “You are probably hungry. I have kept some food warm for you.”

  “Thanks,” Latour said shortly, “but I ate in one of the cafés uptown.”

  He walked into the wood-paneled den to build himself a drink before going to bed. Georgi had been working on the bottle. There was a scant inch of whisky left. It had been almost full that morning. It was possible, just possible, that Georgi had something on his mind.

  Latour took his rifle from its pegs. The .30-.30 Winchester had been used and cleaned recently, just how recently he had no way of knowing. He returned the gun to the wall and walked upstairs to the bedroom that he and Olga shared.

  It was as hot in the high-ceilinged room as it had been in Lacosta’s trailer. Latour unbuckled his gun belt and took the gun from its holster and laid it on the night stand beside the double bed. Then, stripping, he showered and threw himself on the bed. It was too hot to wear his pajamas.

  He tried to sleep. He couldn’t. He was awake and staring at the ceiling when Olga climbed the stairs and came into the room. Despite her sincere effort to Americanize herself, she still had a trace of accent. At one time he’d thought it was cute.

  “I wondered if you had gone to bed. You had a tiring day?”

  Latour shrugged. “So-so. And you?”

  Olga pulled her dress over her head. “As they say on the television, it was a day like all days. And I was here.” She removed her underclothing and sat at her dressing table to brush her hair.

  Latour watched her with sullen eyes. He wondered how he could have been so blind. Even during the first months of their marriage, Olga had felt no real emotion for him. Her simulated passion, the frenetic writhings of her beautiful body, had merely been part of the merchandise she had exchanged for a wealthy husband.

  The chump had laid his money on the line. Give the sucker a good time.

  It had been years since her family had had money, but she’d been raised with the idea that her beauty was to be the aces that would put them back in the yellow chips. And when she’d learned that her wealthy captain was just another guy, a guy who had to grab the first job he could get to put grits and side meat on their table, her passion had run as dry as the oil wells on which he’d built his dreams.