James Burke - The New Iberia Blues

“I don’t know where Alafair is.”

“You think—”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I think, and it scares the hell out of me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go back to the airport and find out who was on those planes.”

“Maybe Alafair will show up, Dave. Don’t get too worried.”

“Do you remember what Hilary Bienville’s body looked like?” I asked.

I went from house to house up and down East Main, asking my neighbors if they had seen Alafair leave our simple shotgun home. I mention its simplicity at this point in my story to indicate the contrast I felt between the loveliness of the morning, the leaves blowing along the sidewalks, the flowers blooming in the gardens, the massive live oaks spangled with light and shadow, all of these gifts set in juxtaposition to the violence and cruelty that had fallen upon us like a scourge and now seemed to have cast their net over my daughter.

I walked past the Steamboat House, which sat like a dry-docked ornate paddle wheeler in an ambience of Victorian and antebellum splendor that often belied the realities of slavery and, later, the terrorism of the White League during Reconstruction. Farther down the street, an elderly lady was on her hands and knees, weeding the garden in the old Burke home, a pair of steel-frame spectacles on her nose. She looked up at me and smiled. “How do you do, Mr. Robicheaux?”

“Just fine,” I said. “Alafair went somewhere with a friend while I was at Mass. I wondered if you might have seen her.”

“I didn’t see her, but I did see an unusual car stop in front of your home,” she replied, still on her hands and knees. “I’ve seen it before.”

“Unusual in what way?”

“I think the name is Italian.”

“A Lamborghini?”

“I’m not much on the names of cars.”

“What color was it?”

“Definitely cherry-red. No question about that.”

Wexler.

“Have I upset you?” she asked.

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said, the backs of my legs shaking. “Thank you.”

I hurried away, my stomach sick.

I called Alafair’s cell phone again, and again it went straight to voicemail. I called Sean.

“Yo, Dave,” he said.

“What’s your twenty?”

“Just coming back from the airport. Couldn’t find anybody who knew anything positive. One guy said he thought he saw Cormier get on a private plane, but he wasn’t sure.”

“Lou Wexler rents a place in St. Martinville, but I don’t know where. He drives a cherry-red Lamborghini. Go to the St. Martin Sheriff’s Department and find out. We ROA there.”

“You can probably beat me there.”

“I’m picking up Clete Purcel.”

“What’s the deal on Wexler?”

“I don’t know. I missed something on him. Something Clete told me. Or maybe Alafair told me. I can’t remember.”

“Copy that,” he said. “Out.”

I got into my truck and drove past the Shadows, then swung over to St. Peter’s Street and headed for Clete’s motor court. On Sundays, Clete usually washed or waxed his convertible and barbecued a pork roast or a chicken on the grill under the oaks by the bayou. If the weather was warm, he wore his knee-length Everlast boxing trunks and LSU or Tulane or Raging Cajuns sweatshirt, his upper arms the circumference of a fully pressurized fire hose. With luck, his metabolism would be free of the toxins that had impaired much of his life.

This morning, however, none of the foresaid applied. He was walking up and down in front of his cottage, cell phone to his ear, wearing a Hawaiian shirt outside his slacks; his shoes were shined, his hair wet-combed. He looked thinner, twenty years younger, wired to the eyes. I stopped the truck and got out, the engine still running. “What’s going on?”

“I was just calling you. Where’s Alafair?”

“Maybe with Lou Wexler.”

He looked into space, then back at me. “Wexler?”

“Yes.”

“I thought maybe—”

“What?”

“I’m confused. I saw Cormier drive by early this morning.”

“Are you sure?”

“How many guys around here have an expression like a skillet and look carved out of rock? I thought maybe he went to your house.”

I rarely saw fear in the face of Clete Purcel. He pinched his mouth.

“What is it?” I said.

“I just got a call from Alafair.”

“You talked to her?”

“No. There was just a little hiccup of a voice, like she’d butt-dialed and was talking to somebody else and clicked off again. At least, that’s what I thought I was hearing.”

“You’re not making sense, Cletus.”

“I think maybe she was saying ‘Help.’ ”

I felt a hole open in the bottom of my stomach. “Was Desmond driving a Lamborghini?”

“No, he was in a Humvee, same one he was driving at the res.”

“The lady who lives in the old Burke home saw a cherry-red Lamborghini stop at my house.”

“It was Wexler?”

“There’s no other Lamborghini around here. Just a minute.” I called Helen at home. No one answered. I called Bailey Ribbons. “I think either Lou Wexler or Desmond Cormier has got his hands on Alafair,” I said.

“That doesn’t sound right,” she said. “Des is probably in Arizona now.”

“He’s not. Clete saw him a short while ago.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“It’s not difficult. Desmond Cormier is a liar.”

“You don’t have to talk that way,” she said.

I hung up.

“What do you want to do?” Clete said.

“We’re supposed to ROA with Sean McClain in St. Martinville.”

“I need my piece.”

“Get it,” I said.

“What have you got in the truck?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

We drove up the two-lane toward St. Martinville, through the tunnel of oaks on the north side of New Iberia. Perhaps it was the season or perhaps not, but the light was wrong. It was brittle, flickering, harsh on the eyes, suggestive of a cruel presence in the natural world. We passed the two-story frame house with a faux-pillared gallery that had been built by a free man of color before the War Between the States. According to legend, he had worn elegant clothes and spoken Parisian French and had his land and wealth stolen from him by carpetbaggers after the war. To this day, no one has ever succeeded in painting the building a brilliant white: within a short time, the paint is quickly dulled by dust from the cane fields or smoke from stubble fires, as though the structure itself bears the legacy of a man who betrayed his race and sought to become what he was not at the expense of his brethren and ultimately himself.

As I stared through the windshield, the two-lane unspooling before me, I knew something was terribly wrong in the external structure of the day, in the rules that supposedly govern mortality and the laws of physics. Dust devils were churning inside the uncut cane, troweling rooster tails seventy feet into the air, although the temperature was dropping and the wind was cold enough to dry and crack the skin. By the side of the road was a watermelon and strawberry stand with wooden tables under a live oak hung with Spanish moss. There had not been a fruit stand on that road for decades; plus, we never saw melons and strawberries after August, unless they were imported and on sale at an expensive grocery in Lafayette.

Then I saw two middle-aged people holding hands by the roadside. The man was huge and wore strap overalls and a tin hard hat slanted on his head. He grinned and gave me the thumbs-up sign. The woman wore a wash-faded print dress and a red hibiscus flower in her hair; she was also smiling, like someone welcoming a visitor at an entryway.