Pinky drains his coffee. “His father was crippled?”
Vicky Sims dabs at her lips with a napkin. “Claude, Byron’s daddy – he worked out on the rigs for Anadarko. Had some kind of accident and surgery. He was on the mend, but he was still in a wheelchair at the time of the murder – which seemed to make it even more terrible.”
“What’d he do – shoot his old man?” To me Pinky adds: “We tend to be kinda heavily armed down here.”
“Oh, no, nothin’ that normal,” Vicky says. “Poisoned him in some sneaky way – through his skin, I think it was. Can that be right?”
“Transdermal,” Pinky says. “Hell, yes! But wow. How’d he get caught?”
Vicky frowns. “I don’t know as I ever knew that. It never did come to trial. But since it was poison – there was no question it was premeditated. So that’s why they were going to try Byron as an adult.”
“He pled insanity,” I say.
“Right. The lawyers said he was crazy, that he heard voices, that his daddy abused him from when he was a little guy.” She sprinkles some more salt on her grits. “Usual stuff. There’ll be more about it in the court records. Or in the paper – The New Iberian might be your best bet there. Come to think of it, I know the editor – Max Maldonado. You want his telephone number?”
We call from my hotel room, with Pinky on the extension. I explain who I am and what I want, and Maldonado says he’s on deadline but he was a reporter back in the day and of course he remembers the Boudreaux case. He’ll call me in the afternoon. I’m agreeing to that when Pinky weighs in.
“Shame on you, Max. Start talking right this minute. Surely you can spare five minutes of your invaluable time for two missing bambinos. Come on now.”
“Am I talking to the whitest private investigator in Louisiana?” Maldonado says. “Shit, Pink, why didn’t you say it’s you?”
“I’m testing your moral compass, Max.” He lets out a rumble of laughter at the protesting hoot from Maldonado. “I am. I’m not kiddin’. All we want is a heads-up on this fellow. Like where did he live, where did he work, somethin’ to go on. We don’t want to twiddle our thumbs while we’re waiting for them to find the damn court record.”
“My moral compass, huh? Well, all right, I’ll try to swing it around your way, Pink. Byron Boudreaux – why am I not surprised we didn’t hear the last of him?” A sigh. “I can give you five minutes now, all the time you want later tonight.”
“Great.”
“Well, let’s see. Byron’s family lived over to Berwick in a trailer park called Meadowlands. Kind of a dog-assed place, although chez Boudreaux was neat as a pin. I know that because at the time of Claude’s murder I was filling in for the photographer at the time and I took a bunch of pictures over there. Marie, Byron’s mother – she was a fine woman, to all accounts. Claude – he was a good man, too, is what I hear, a hard worker. Worked for Anadarko out on the rigs. Imagine being poisoned by your own son! That boy was just plain rotten through and through. Most folks didn’t believe that crap about Claude abusing the boy, that was a boatload of bullshit.”
“Like the Menendez brothers.”
“Just like that. Really – word was Claude was a stand-up guy. Let’s see – if I was y’all, I’d head over to Meadowlands. Good chance there’s still folk around knew the family. In the meantime, I’ll set someone here to pulling up the old papers covering the case.”
“Where do we find Meadowlands?” Pinky asks.
“Where are you?”
“Morgan City Holiday Inn.”
“You get on across the bridge to Berwick, go along about… hmmm… maybe half a mile. Meadowlands, it’s off… hmmm… Tupelo, maybe. Or Live Oak. One of the tree streets. You won’t have any trouble finding it.”
We hear a bunch of shouting in the background. Maldonado covers the receiver, but we hear him talking. Then he’s back. “Okay.”
“Does Boudreaux still have family there?” I ask. My voice sounds shaky. The emotion in it comes across so clearly that Pinky raises his sunglasses and shoots me a look from across the room.
“I don’t think so,” Maldonado says. “No family left I know of. Daddy died from the poisoning, mom died a few years beforehand. And – hang on.”
He’s interrupted again.
“Sounds like you gotta go,” Pinky says.
“I can meet you later tonight if you like – after we get this baby to bed.”
“Buy you dinner,” Pinky suggests.
“Deal,” Maldonado says.
We cross the expanse of the Atchafalya River (“’Chafalaya,” Pinky tells me) on the Huey P. Long Bridge, and find Meadowlands within ten minutes. Despite the bucolic name, there’s nothing resembling a meadow in sight. The complex consists of two dozen trailers, most of which have obviously been there for decades. Some are fenced in by stretches of chain link; most are patched together with slabs of plywood. A few stand out from the rest, with shutters and fresh siding, picket fencing, and plantings of flowers.
A sign shows a logo of children hand in hand and posts a speed limit of five miles per hour. The sign is bullet-pocked, with the concentration of hits within the silhouetted children. Brown plastic Dumpsters, most too full to allow their tops to close, sit out in front of many of the trailers. Ragged front yards hold plastic chairs, more seating in the form of inverted white buckets, kids’ bicycles, toys of all sorts, plastic wading pools, boat trailers, discarded tires. Every trailer seems to have a vehicle or two parked in front – most of them pickups.
Pinky rolls down the road and pulls up in front of number 14, a siding-covered trailer with an awkward bay window clapped onto the front. The BMW gleams on the rutted dirt like an alien spaceship.
CHAPTER 34
I rap on the door. A gray-haired woman with her hair in pink foam curlers (I’ve never seen this before, except on old TV shows) calls over from the porch of the trailer next door. “They ain’t home. Help you with somethin’?”
“We’re looking-,” I start, but Pinky takes over.
“How’re you doing today, ma’am?” he says.
“You selling something, sugar? ’Cause I don’t have a dime; I might as well tell you that right off. I got time, though, so y’all can practice on me if you want.”
“We’re not selling anything,” Pinky says. “We’re-”
“Pardon me but are you a albino?”
I start to say something, offended on Pinky’s behalf, but Pinky just laughs.
“Yes, I am,” he says in a booming voice. “I’m a genetic oddity standing right here in your front yard, ma’am. I know it can throw people off their normal manners at first, just like someone with an unfortunate deformity. In a funny kind of way, I think it’s a form of racism. Now, who would believe that here in Louisiana there’d be such a thing as being too white?” He smiles.
“Let me ask you something,” the woman says. “You get sunburnt easy?”
“It’s a big problem,” Pinky admits.
“I’m really fair myself, plus I have the rosacea and I burn right up. Lord, I put sunscreen on with a spoon. Why don’t you and your friend come on up here out of the sun, and tell me what brings you to Meadowlands.”
Up here is a rickety deck made out of plywood and elevated by cinder block columns. Metal folding chairs and an ancient wicker coffee table comprise the deck furniture. On the table is an ashtray and a plastic caddy of manicure supplies. The woman has given herself a pedicure, her feet in some kind of device, her gleaming red toes separated from each other by nubs of foam.