James Burke - A Private Cathedral

“When the two guys drove past the black kids, you thought they might be planning to hurt them?” he asked.

“I don’t know what I thought,” I said. “Sometimes I think too much.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What’s that mean?”

He shook off the question. “Marcel LaForchette was sprung five days ago and is in New Iberia?”

“In all probability.”

“Stay clear of this, Streak. Starting with LaForchette. He was the iceman for the Balangie family.”

“He admits to being the driver on a hit they ordered.”

“Driver, my ass. He was one of the guys who sawed up Tommy Fig and froze the parts and strung them from a ceiling fan. You got the tag on the Olds?”

“I couldn’t get a good look at it.”

“Who’s the missing girl?”

“They didn’t say.”

He was bareheaded and wearing a Confederate-gray suit and a Hawaiian shirt and oxblood loafers. His blond hair was cut short and neatly wet-combed, his cheeks freshly shaved. A scar like a flat pink worm ran through one eyebrow to the bridge of his nose. He picked up a longneck and tilted it against the light, drinking the bottle empty, the foam sliding into his mouth. “You want a soda with lime and cherries?”

“I’ll let you know when I do.”

“I was being courteous. You’re getting played by LaForchette. Why’d you visit a geek like that, anyway?”

“He got a bad break as a kid.”

“So did Thomas Edison. A train conductor slapped him upside the head and broke his eardrum. He invented the lightbulb instead of killing people.”

“Edison provided the electricity for the original electric chair. He did it to drive his competitor out of business.”

“Only you would know something like that, Dave.”

“Why would the two guys in the Olds follow me to the joint? Why are they interested in me at all?”

“Back it up. They saw you talking to the Balangie girl on the pier. Right?”

“That’s my guess. Why else would they be bird-dogging me?”

“Who knows? They sound like ex-cops with bubble gum for brains,” he said.

“The Balangie girl said she was being delivered.”

“You mean like white slavery?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“This has the smell of greaseballs all over it. Don’t go near it. Don’t give me that look, either. ‘Greaseball’ is not a racial slur. It’s a state of mind. The only guy who ever got the upper hand on the Balangie family was Mussolini. He tore their fingernails out.”

I went to the bar and ordered a po’boy sandwich loaded with fried catfish. I got an extra paper plate and cut the sandwich in half and went back to the pool table. I put Clete’s plate on the chair next to his empty beer bottle. “You want a refill?”

“Why do you always make me feel guilty, Dave?”

“It’s a talent I have.”

“You want me to see what I can find out?”

Clete knew almost every street dip, hooker, Murphy artist, button man, crack dealer, low-rent PI, car booster, and dirty vice detective or cop on a pad in Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.

“No,” I said. “You’re right. It’s not worth fooling with.”

He racked his cue on the wall, picked up the po’boy, took a big bite, and chewed slowly, gazing through the front windows at the rain and the headlights on the asphalt and the fog puffing out of an alleyway. “I don’t like those two pricks in the Oldsmobile bracing you.”

“They didn’t brace me,” I said.

“Call it what you want. The lowlifes aren’t allowed to disrespect the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide. I’ll show restraint. I’m completely copacetic and mellow these days, and think only about serene subjects. It’s part of a yogi program I’m in.”

“Clete—”

“Did I ever tell you I once played nine-ball with Jackie Gleason? Minnesota Fats and Paul Newman were there. So was Jake LaMotta. Rack ’em up, big mon. We don’t care what people say, rock and roll is here to stay.”

Two nights later, Clete pulled up in front of a line of cottages outside Broussard, midway between Lafayette and New Iberia. Most of the cottages were unoccupied. Fireflies flickered among the live oaks, then disappeared like pieces of burnt string. Balls of electricity rolled through the clouds and burst silently over the Gulf. He could smell rain blowing across the wetlands, like the smell of broken watermelons or freshly mowed hay. It was part of the Louisiana he loved, a hallowed memory he’d taken with him to Vietnam and into which he’d crawled when the rain clicked on his poncho and steel pot at the bottom of a hole or when an offshore battery lit the sky like heat lightning and the shells arched overhead and exploded with a dull thump in the jungle, the air suddenly bright with the smell of wet dirt and leaves and water that had been full of amphibian life.

A purple Oldsmobile was parked in front of the last cottage on the row. Clete tapped lightly on the door. He was wearing a porkpie hat tilted over his brow, his coat open, a lead-weighted blackjack in his right coat pocket, a manila folder rolled in a cone and stuffed in the other.

A bare-chested man with peroxided, coiled hair that hung in his face opened the door. His lips looked made of rubber, his torso a stump tapering to a thirty-inch waist. He wore sharkskin slacks and suspenders and flip-flops. One eye looked punched back in his skull. He took out a comb and began combing his hair, exposing his shaved pits. “What do you want?”

“Ray Haskell?” Clete said.

“Maybe. Who are you?”

“Clete Purcel. I called your office in New Orleans.”

“About what?”

“Dave Robicheaux. Can I come in?”

“Who told you where I was?”

“I asked around the Quarter. I’m a PI. Like you. You got a beer?”

“I look like a liquor store? What’s with you, man?”

“What I just said. Hey, I dig those sharkskin drapes. That’s fifties-style, right? Can I come in or not? It’s about to rain.”

“I’m a little occupied. Get my drift? Make an appointment.”

“Just want to know why you followed my podjo Dave to Huntsville, then dissed him on the bayou with that routine about driving golf balls. See, you diss Dave, you diss me. Diggez-vous on that, noble mon?”

Ray Haskell replaced his comb in his back pocket. “I got a friend due here you don’t want to meet. So I’m gonna do you a favor and close the door. Then I’m going to bolt it and put the night chain on and check on my lady. You reading me on this?”

“Sure,” Clete said. “But I got these printouts and photos of you and a guy named Timothy Riordan. It looks like you’re both former flatfeet now doing scut work for the Shondell family and maybe a few people in Miami. I’m talking about political nutcases who speak Cuban and like to feed body parts to the gators in the glades.”

“You read too many comic books. Regardless of that, we got the message. So I’m saying good night. Tell Robicheaux and tell yourself no foul, no harm. Now get the fuck out of here.”

The bathroom door opened. Clete heard sniffling, then saw a slight, pretty black woman step out into the light of a bed lamp. He had known her when she turned tricks for a pimp named Zipper, who got his name from the scars he left on girls who tried to go independent. Her name was Li’l Face Dautrieve. Her hair was shiny and thick and looked like a wig that was too large for her head. Her eyes and nose and mouth were concentrated in the center of her face, not unlike sprinkles on a cookie. Her upper lip was split and her left eye swollen behind a bloody Kleenex she held against it. One cheek looked like she had swallowed a mouthful of bumblebees.

“This guy did that to you, Li’l Face?” Clete said.