“If he worked at hard as trying to win as he does trying to lose, he’d make a decent living for himself. That boy’s so strong he could hold an elephant away from a barrel of peanuts.”
Chapter 10
As the Taurus neared the outskirts of Lafayette that afternoon, Karen said, “It’s after two o’clock. I’d like something to eat.”
“Sure,” Damon said. A few blocks later, he pulled into the small, dusty parking lot of Guerin’s Cafe. Seated at one of the six tables inside, they discussed strategy over bowls of gumbo and a shared platter of fried catfish-barbue frittes, as the worn menu described it. As usual, Karen ate with rapid relish, while Damon worked his way methodically through his meal.
Besides the friendly, heavy-set waitress, the only other people in the place were two elderly men in work clothes. They were sitting at the small counter, talking quietly and drinking bottles of Dixie beer. An ancient black radio, positioned on the shelf dividing the kitchen from the counter, played Cajun music from station 1050-AM. “The races?” replied the waitress to Karen’s question. “Sure, they goin’ on now.”
Following the waitress’ directions, the agents drove a couple of miles to LaCombe Downs, one of Louisiana’s last remaining bush tracks, meaning horse racing at its most rudimentary: amateur jockeys wear T-shirts, jeans, and gym shoes; a handwritten, mimeographed track program lists the day’s races and entries; and the horses have been trained on their owners’ farms, then trailered over to the track for the day. No pari-mutuel betting adds to the excitement, as at the larger, recognized tracks; instead, all the wagering done here is up front and personal between interested patrons.
As they slowly walked on a sand path that led from the little paddock to the railing that rimmed the racetrack, Engel and Tirabassi observed racing fans of all ages, from very small children to extremely senior citizens, all rooting on their favorites, then talking about the next race to come. Women sat in lawn chairs, fanning themselves against the heat as they watched lively, laughing children. Groups of men wearing straw cowboy hats talked softly, so softly that Karen could barely discern that the language they were employing was French. As Clayton Fugette had said, Karen thought, this is a different world.
Damon made inquiries as they advanced through the crowd; the third one produced directions to the tented area in which food and drink were served. “You can’t miss her,” Damon was told by a helpful young girl. “Old Alice Cormier’s big enough to take up two chairs. She’s that Mortvedt boy’s aunt.”
The agents approached a corner table at which sat a middle-aged white woman who appeared to weigh at least two hundred fifty pounds. She was wearing a flower-patterned yellow dress. Her bright, brown eyes were almost lost in the folds of fat that served as her cheeks. A small, red mouth above a triple layer of chins widened into a guarded smile when Tirabassi introduced himself and Karen, being careful to display his badge discreetly so that onlookers could not see it.
“Don’t have to show me no badge,” Alice Cormier said. “If you weren’t FBI or some such, don’t think you’d be out here in your business clothes on a afternoon hot as this.”
She motioned for them to sit down across from her, then pushed forward a plate of meat. “That’s barbequed raccoon,” Alice said. “Help yourself. If you don’t like that,” she added, “the red beans and rice are awful good here.” Alice briskly transferred three forkfuls of food into her mouth, her eyes never leaving their faces as she did.
Karen learned forward. “We just had our lunch, Ms. Cormier,” she said, “but thank you anyway.
“The reason we’re here,” Karen continued, “is to try to get an idea of how to locate a man you’re related to. His name is Ronald Mortvedt. We understand he’s your nephew.”
Alice Cormier slowly lowered her fork onto her plate. She looked pained under the weight of unbidden memory. “Oh Lord,” she sighed, “what’s that boy gone and done now?”
In the sweltering south Louisiana afternoon, as a portable fan swept back and forth nearby, making ripples in the fetid air but cooling nothing, Karen and Damon listened patiently as Alice Cormier recounted her recollections of “my sister Audrey’s only child.”
“Ronnie,” she said, “was an unhappy baby, crying all the time, poor little fella, and as he got older he was just a real mean-tempered little boy. And he got to be meaner every year, it seemed.
“Ronnie’s daddy, Maurice, would come home drunk and beat on the both of them, Audrey and Ronnie. It was terrible, what went on there for years. Audrey went to the sheriff a lot of times but never got no help that I remember. I don’t know why. Finally, Audrey just up and run out on them, and later on Ronnie left here, too. I ain’t seen him since. I read about him the papers, though. Last I heard he was over in that prison west of here. I wrote him some letters up there, but I never heard back from him.”
Alice paused to run a kerchief across her forehead. She took a long drink of iced tea before continuing. “Ronnie’s a boy that probably was no good just from his father’s blood-them Mortvedts are nothing but trouble. Never been nothing else. But I always felt sorry for Ronnie. There’s many a time, Audrey told me, that Maurice would whup him for no reason at all. So he was never surprised when he got whupped for something he did do.
“By the time he was nine or ten and starting to ride in the match races around here, he was as hard as oak. There didn’t seem to be anything he was scared of or could bother him-even the beatings from his daddy. Boys four or five years older than him was afraid of Ronnie.”
Over the course of the next hour, Alice took considerable pains to emphasize that Ronnie Mortvedt’s character was in no way representative of his mother’s side of the family. “I’ll tell you all day long that them Mortvedts was the matter here,” Alice said forcefully. “Our people hardly never got into no trouble with the law. And we sure didn’t enjoy it when we did.
“We had people in racing, too,” Alice emphasized. “My daddy, Mervin Cormier, was a very, very well respected horseman. He was known over in New Orleans. He raced his horses there for many years and made a lot of friends doing it.
“I’ll never forget when daddy died. Before they brung him back here to be buried, they had a service for him right there at the Fair Grounds racetrack in the morning. We all drove over there for it.
“It was kind of a memorial service. They held it right after the workouts was over. All daddy’s friends from the racetrack turned out, even though it was a rainy morning, and kind of cool, too. The racetrack chaplain gave a little talk, and then the hearse with daddy in it drove all the way around the track. That’s a mile around there, I believe.
“When that hearse turned into the homestretch one of daddy’s old friends, a horse owner named Jack Muniz, he hollered out, “‘Yeah! Here he comes, here comes the winner!’
“And everybody else started joining in, saying the same thing: “‘Here comes the winner!’ I remember standing right by the winner’s circle when that hearse moved by real slow. I was crying, and so was most of the rest of them.”
Alice Cormier sat back in her chair. “When you think of what kind of people Ronnie came from-at least on one side,” she said with a snort-“it is hard to believe he turned out so bad, it truly is.”
“So he left to work at the racetrack about”-Karen paused to consult her notes-“eleven or twelve years ago?”
“That’s about right.”
“Has he ever come back here for a visit?” Karen continued.