DR13 - Last Car to Elysian Fields Read Online Free
Author: James Lee Burke
reality she was not only sentimental rather than loving, she could also be terribly cruel.
After the family moved to New Orleans and took up life in the Iberville, Merchie became known as a mama's boy who was anybody's punching bag or hard-up pump. But at age fifteen, he threw a black kid from the Gird Town Deuces off a fire escape onto the cab of a passing produce truck, then outraced a half dozen cops across a series of rooftops, finally leaping out into space, plummeting two stories through the ceiling of a massage parlor.
His newly acquired nickname cost him a broken leg and a one-bit in the Louisiana reformatory, but Jumpin' Merchie Flannigan came back to Canal Street and the Iberville Project with magic painted on him.
When I called him at home he was gregarious and ingratiating, and said he wanted to see me. In fact, he said it with such sincerity that I believed him.
His home, of which he was very proud, was a gray architectural monstrosity designed to look like a medieval castle, inside acres of pecan and live oak trees, all of it in an unzoned area that mixed pipe yards and welding shops with thoroughbred horse barns and red-clay tennis courts.
He greeted me in the front yard, athletic, trim, wearing pleated tan slacks, half-top, slip-on boots, and a polo shirt, his long hair so blond it was almost white, a V-shaped receded area at the part the only sign of age I could see in him. The yard was covered in shadow now, the chrysanthemums denting in the wind, the sky veined with electricity. In the midst of it all Merchie seemed to glow not so much with health and prosperity as confidence that God was truly in His heaven and there was justice in the world for a kid from the Iberville.
He meshed his fingers, as though making a tent, then pointed the tips at me.
"You were out at the Crudup farm in St. James Parish today," he said.
"Who told you?" I asked.
"I'm trying to clean up the place," he replied.
"Think it might take a hydrogen bomb?"
"So give me the gen on it," he said.
"The Crudup woman says she was cheated out of the title."
"Look, Dave, I bought the property three years ago at a bankruptcy sale. I'll check into it. How about some trust here?"
It was hard to stay mad at Merchie. I knew people in the oil business who were openly ecstatic at the prospect of Mideastern wars or subzero winters in the northern United States, but Merchie had never been one of them.
"Been out of town?" I said.
"Yeah, Afghanistan. You believe it?"
"Shooting at the Taliban?"
He smiled with his eyes but didn't reply.
"The woman in St. James Parish? Her grandfather was Junior Crudup," I said.
"AnR&Bguy?"
"Yeah, one of the early ones. He did time with Leadbelly. He played with Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner," I said. But I could see him losing interest in the subject. "I'd better go. Your place looks nice. Give me some feedback later on the Crudup situation, will you?" I said.
"My favorite police officer," I heard a woman say.
The voice of Theodosha Flannigan was like a melancholy recording out of the past, the kind that carries fond memories but also some that are better forgotten. She was a member of the Lejeune family in Franklin, down the Teche, people whose wealth and lawn parties were legendary in southwest Louisiana, and she still used their name rather than Merchie's. She was tall, darkly beautiful, with hollow cheeks and long legs like a model's, her southern accent exaggerated, her jeans and tied-up black hair and convertible automobiles an affectation that belied the conservative and oligarchical roots she came from.
But in spite of her corn bread accent and the pleasure she seemed to take in portraying herself as an irreverent and neurotic southern woman, she had another side, one she never engaged in conversation about. She had written two successful screenplays and a trilogy of crime novels containing elements that were undeniably lyrical. Although her novels had never won an Edgar award, her talent was
After the family moved to New Orleans and took up life in the Iberville, Merchie became known as a mama's boy who was anybody's punching bag or hard-up pump. But at age fifteen, he threw a black kid from the Gird Town Deuces off a fire escape onto the cab of a passing produce truck, then outraced a half dozen cops across a series of rooftops, finally leaping out into space, plummeting two stories through the ceiling of a massage parlor.
His newly acquired nickname cost him a broken leg and a one-bit in the Louisiana reformatory, but Jumpin' Merchie Flannigan came back to Canal Street and the Iberville Project with magic painted on him.
When I called him at home he was gregarious and ingratiating, and said he wanted to see me. In fact, he said it with such sincerity that I believed him.
His home, of which he was very proud, was a gray architectural monstrosity designed to look like a medieval castle, inside acres of pecan and live oak trees, all of it in an unzoned area that mixed pipe yards and welding shops with thoroughbred horse barns and red-clay tennis courts.
He greeted me in the front yard, athletic, trim, wearing pleated tan slacks, half-top, slip-on boots, and a polo shirt, his long hair so blond it was almost white, a V-shaped receded area at the part the only sign of age I could see in him. The yard was covered in shadow now, the chrysanthemums denting in the wind, the sky veined with electricity. In the midst of it all Merchie seemed to glow not so much with health and prosperity as confidence that God was truly in His heaven and there was justice in the world for a kid from the Iberville.
He meshed his fingers, as though making a tent, then pointed the tips at me.
"You were out at the Crudup farm in St. James Parish today," he said.
"Who told you?" I asked.
"I'm trying to clean up the place," he replied.
"Think it might take a hydrogen bomb?"
"So give me the gen on it," he said.
"The Crudup woman says she was cheated out of the title."
"Look, Dave, I bought the property three years ago at a bankruptcy sale. I'll check into it. How about some trust here?"
It was hard to stay mad at Merchie. I knew people in the oil business who were openly ecstatic at the prospect of Mideastern wars or subzero winters in the northern United States, but Merchie had never been one of them.
"Been out of town?" I said.
"Yeah, Afghanistan. You believe it?"
"Shooting at the Taliban?"
He smiled with his eyes but didn't reply.
"The woman in St. James Parish? Her grandfather was Junior Crudup," I said.
"AnR&Bguy?"
"Yeah, one of the early ones. He did time with Leadbelly. He played with Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner," I said. But I could see him losing interest in the subject. "I'd better go. Your place looks nice. Give me some feedback later on the Crudup situation, will you?" I said.
"My favorite police officer," I heard a woman say.
The voice of Theodosha Flannigan was like a melancholy recording out of the past, the kind that carries fond memories but also some that are better forgotten. She was a member of the Lejeune family in Franklin, down the Teche, people whose wealth and lawn parties were legendary in southwest Louisiana, and she still used their name rather than Merchie's. She was tall, darkly beautiful, with hollow cheeks and long legs like a model's, her southern accent exaggerated, her jeans and tied-up black hair and convertible automobiles an affectation that belied the conservative and oligarchical roots she came from.
But in spite of her corn bread accent and the pleasure she seemed to take in portraying herself as an irreverent and neurotic southern woman, she had another side, one she never engaged in conversation about. She had written two successful screenplays and a trilogy of crime novels containing elements that were undeniably lyrical. Although her novels had never won an Edgar award, her talent was
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