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“He had a country accent, but not one from around here. He was grinning all the time, like there was some kind of joke going on between us. Except I couldn’t figure out what the joke was. He had a binocular case hanging from his arm.”
“What kind of car was he driving?”
“I didn’t pay it much mind, sir.”
“What did you tell this fellow?”
“Same thing I told you. I was in the army for the last six years and haven’t kept up much with the news at home. You know this guy?”
“Yes, I do.” I wrote my cell phone number on the back of my business card and gave it to the clerk. “If you see him again, call me. Don’t try to detain him and don’t provoke him.”
“He’s dangerous?”
“Maybe, maybe not. His name is Vidor Perkins. Personally, I wouldn’t touch him with a soiled Q-tip. But that’s just one man’s opinion.”
“A soiled Q-tip?” the ex-soldier said. He shook his head and stuck my card under the corner of his register.
I washed my hands in a sink outside the men’s room and dried them on a paper towel. Through the window I saw a semi go through the intersection, hauling huge machinery of some kind that was snugged down on the flatbed with boomer chains. A low-slung white car, one with charcoal-tinted windows, was following close behind it. The hood was painted with primer so that it resembled a blackened tooth inset in the car body. The driver was obviously irritated by the slow momentum of the semi and kept gunning his engine, swinging out to pass, then ducking back behind the semi’s rear bumper, so close he couldn’t adequately see the road. His engine was loud and sounded too powerful for the vehicle. When he gained a clear spot on the road, he floored the accelerator, his vehicle sinking low and flat on the springs, blowing dust and newspaper in his wake, ripping a strip of gravel out of the road shoulder.
There was a Florida plate on the vehicle, the numbers obscured with dirt. There was also orange rust around the bottoms of the doors and fenders, the kinds of patterns you see in automobiles that have been exposed over a long period of time to a saltwater environment. Any Florida-licensed automobile, particularly one built for high speed, is suspect along the I-10 corridor that runs from Jacksonville all the way to Los Angeles. But for those who transport narcotics, and for the cops who try to put them out of business, the area of concern begins at I-95 in Miami. I-95 feeds into I-10 just north of Lake City, Florida, and a westward journey from that point on allows the transporter to make drop-offs in Tallahassee, Mobile, Biloxi, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Houston. Like the modern equivalent of Typhoid Mary, one transporter can string systemic misery and death across 20 percent of the country.
Except the transporters have a problem they didn’t anticipate. I-10 is heavily patrolled by narcs in the state of Louisiana, particularly in Iberville Parish. As a consequence, transporters often swing off the interstate and use Old Highway 90 or any number of parish roads that are not patrolled.
“Did you ever see that white car that just went south through the intersection?” I asked the clerk.
“It’s funny you mention it. He drove by here a couple of times. Once right after the guy with the binoculars was in here.”
> “Did you get a look at the driver?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. I only noticed him because of how loud his engine was.”
“If he comes back and you get a look at his tag number, give me a call, will you?”
“Yes, sir, I can do that. What’s the problem with this guy?”
“Probably nothing,” I said.
I drove north on the road, retracing my route, my radio on, my windows down. The air was balmy, the cow pastures on either side of the road emerald-green and dotted with buttercups and pooled with shadows. But I couldn’t shake a feeling that had occurred periodically in my life for decades, often without cause. It was like the tension in a banjo or guitar string that is wrapped too tightly on the peg. Or a tremolo that can travel through the fuselage of an airplane just before you glance out the window and see engine oil blow back across the wing. Or perhaps the cold vapor that wraps around your heart on a night trail, one sown with Bouncing Betties and Chinese toe poppers, or the peculiar distortion in your vision when you climb down into a spider hole and realize you have just touched a thin strand of trip wire attached to a booby-trapped 105 dud.
Years ago I could rid myself of my apprehensions with VA dope and Beam straight up and a Jax back. But I didn’t have my old parachute anymore. So I said the Serenity Prayer that is recited in unison at the beginning of every A.A. meeting in the world. If that didn’t work, I would use the short form of the same prayer, which is “Fuck it” and is not meant as an irreverent statement.
I pulled to the side of the road and took a deep breath. The wind was cool, and gulls were cawing overhead. Not far away, a black family was cane-fishing in a canal, swinging their bobbers onto the edge of the cattails. It was Sunday, I told myself. A day of rest. A respite from anxiety and fear and ambition and greed and all the other forces that seem to drive our lives. A truck pulling an empty cane wagon rattled past me, then a delivery van with a cargo door. A red airplane that looked like a crop sprayer came in low over a field and, just before it reached a power line, gained altitude again and disappeared beyond a windbreak that had been created by a hedgerow of gum trees.
Now the road was totally empty, both behind and ahead of me. I realized that although my radio was still on, I was unaware of what was being broadcast. It was a baseball game. I clicked off the switch and put my truck in gear. I had accomplished virtually nothing on my trip to Jefferson Parish. Maybe I should at least drop by the home of Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother, I thought. If nothing else, I could offer to drive her somewhere or do a chore for her that she could not do for herself. Something good could come out of my trip.
I parked in front of the grandmother’s white frame house and tapped on the screen door, but no one answered. One of the coffee cans planted with petunias had been blown or knocked off the gallery into the yard. I opened the screen and knocked on the inside door. Then I twisted the handle. The door was locked. I walked around the side of the house and into the backyard. The rear door was locked as well, and all the curtains were closed. No vehicle was parked in the yard. I returned to the front yard and stared at the house. The pecan trees and water oaks on the sides of the house were in partial leaf, and the shadows they cast looked like rain running down the walls and tin roof. I picked up the spilled coffee can and repacked the dirt and uprooted petunias with my fingers, then replaced the can on the porch. Hard by the circular spot where the can had originally stood was a muddy smear, the kind the bottom of a shoe or a boot would make.
I was letting it get away from me. Maybe the grandmother had gone to the home of relatives for Sunday dinner. Maybe she was sick and in the hospital. Maybe she had died. I could not think of any reason she would be in danger.
Unless the seven arpents of land owned by Bernadette Latiolais had automatically reverted upon Bernadette’s death to the grandmother.
I sat down on the steps and dialed 911 on my cell phone and told the dispatcher who and where I was. “Can you send out a cruiser? I’m a little worried about Mrs. Latiolais,” I said.
“What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“I’m not sure there is one. But I’m out of my jurisdiction, and I’d like somebody from your department to help me check things out.”
“We’ll send someone as soon as—” the dispatcher began.
