James Burke - Crusader's Cross

"Go ahead," I said.

"Mr. Val came into the room with two lawyers. They tried to get Mr. Raphael to dictate a will. But he wouldn't do it. Mr. Val was quite upset. No, the better term is irate."

"Thank you for telling me this," I said.

"You and Mr. Raphael must be very close."

"Why do you think that?"

"He only asked to see one other person. Someone named Ida. Fortunately, she showed up here about an hour ago. I saw her stroking his hair on the pillow. She seemed a very elegant person. Do you know her, Detective Robicheaux?"

At three that afternoon a nurse's aide found Raphael Chalons half out of his bed, his sightless eyes staring out of his head as though he had looked into a camera's flash. The blanket and sheet had cascaded over his shoulders, like the mantle a medieval lord might wear as he walked toward a blade of light on the earth's rim.

Wednesday evening Molly and I towed my boat to Henderson Swamp and fished at sunset inside a grove of flooded cypress trees. In the distance we could see car headlights flowing across the elevated highway that traverses a chain of bays and canals inside the center of the Atchafalaya Basin. The air was breathless, the moon rising above the cypress into a magenta sky, the water so still you could hear the hyacinths popping open back in the trees.

We kept two largemouth bass that we caught on plugs and headed across a long bay toward the boat landing. In the dusk I could see cows standing on a green levee and lights inside the baitshop and restaurant at the landing. We winched the boat onto our trailer, then drove up the concrete ramp and went inside the baitshop for a cold drink. Through the window I saw a man on the gallery pouring a bag of crushed ice into his cooler, rearranging the fish inside. He put the plastic wrapper in a trash can and drank from a bottle of beer while he admired the sunset.

"Wait here a minute," I said to Molly.

"Somebody you know?" she said.

"I hope not," I said.

I approached the man on the gallery. The wind had come up, and I could see the leaves of the cypress trees lifting like green lace out on the water. The man felt my weight on the plank he was standing on. He lowered the bottle from his mouth without drinking from it and turned toward me. "Yeah, I remember you used to talk about fishing over here," he said.

"Always a pleasure to see you, Johnny," I said.

He nodded, as though a personal greeting did not require any other response.

"How's your mother?" I asked.

"When you're that old and you smell the grave, you're thankful for little things. She don't complain."

He slid another bottle of beer out of his cooler and twisted off the cap. The fish in the cooler were stiff and cold-looking and speckled with blood and ice under the overhead light. Jericho Johnny's shirt puffed open in a gust of wind across the water. He turned his face toward the horizon, as though a fresh scent had invaded his environment. As he stood framed against a washed-out sky, his eyes devoid of any humanity that I could detect, his nose wrinkling slightly, I wondered if he wasn't in fact the liege lord of Charon, his destroyed voice box whispering in the blue-collar dialect of the Irish Channel while he eased his victims quietly across the Styx.

I leaned on the railing, my arm only inches from his. "You can't do business in Iberia Parish, Johnny," I said.

He raised his beer bottle to his mouth and took a small sip off it. He glanced over his shoulder at Molly, who sat at a table in the baitshop, reading a magazine. "That your lady?" he said.

"Look at me," I said. "Val Chalons is off limits. I don't care what kind of deal you cut with Clete Purcel."

He closed the lid on his cooler and latched it. "Purcel don't have anything to do with me, Robicheaux. You were nice to my mother. I was nice to you. In fact, twice I was nice to you. That means I go where I want. I do what I want," he said.

He placed his unfinished beer on the railing and walked toward his car, his cooler balanced on his shoulder, ice water draining down his shirtback as though his skin possessed no sensation.

I went to Clete Purcells office on Main Street during lunchtime the next day. His office had been a sports parlor during the 1940s,, then had been gutted by a fire and turned into a drugstore that went bankrupt after the Wal-Mart store was built south of town. In the last week an interior decorator had hung the ancient brick walls with historical photographs of New Iberia and antique firearms encrusted with rust that had been found in a pickle barrel under a nineteenth-century warehouse on the bayou. The new ambiance was stunning. So was the clientele going in and out of the office. Clete was now starting up his own bail bond service,, and the utilitarian furniture in the front of the office was draped with people whose idea of a good day was the freedom to watch trash television without interruption.

I walked through the litter and cigarette smoke and out the back door to the canvas-shaded brick patio where Clete often ate his lunch. He had planted palms and banana trees on the edge of the bricks, and had set up a huge electric fan by a spool table and sway-backed straw chair that served as his dining area. He was hunched over a crab burger, reading the Times-Picayune, the wind flapping the canvas over his head, when he heard me behind him.

"What's the gen, noble mon?" he said.

"You heard about Raphael Chalons's death?" I said.

"Yeah, tragic loss."

"I saw him just before he died. He asked me to stop his son."

"From doing what?"

"He didn't get a chance to say."

Clete set down his food and wiped his mouth. He gazed out at the whiteness of the sun on the bayou. "You're saying Val Chalons is a serial killer, maybe?"

"You tell me."

"He's a punk who thinks he can wipe his ass on other people. He made you out a perve and that's why I -"

"What?"

"Called up Jericho Johnny Wineburger after I'd been toking on some substances I should have left alone."

"That's the second reason I'm here. I saw him last night at Henderson Swamp."

Clete twisted in his chair, the straw weave creaking under his weight. "You saw Wineburger? Here?"

"I told him he wasn't going to do business in Iberia Parish. He told me to go screw myself."

"Dave, I called this guy back. I said I shouldn't have bothered him, that I was wired, that we didn't need his help, that Chalons is not worthy of his talents. We had an understanding."

"I didn't get that impression."

"Look, here's how it went down. Originally I told Johnny we didn't need Val Chalons as a factor in our lives right now. Don't look at me like that. Johnny owes twenty grand to a couple of shylocks. The vig is a point and a half a week. If he doesn't get his act together, he's going to lose his saloon. I told him the shylocks owe me a favor and I could get them to give him two free months on the vig if he could get the principal together. But I called him back when I was sober and told him it was hands-off on Chalons. I told him the deal with the shylocks was still solid – no vig for two months. But he doesn't hurt Chalons. That was absolutely clear."

"Maybe his pride won't let him take a free ride."

"Wineburger? That's like a toilet bowl worrying about bad breath."

"Then what is he doing here?" I said.

"With a guy like that -" Clete blew air up into his face and gave me a blank look. "Don't let me roll any more Mexican imports, will you?"

A thunderstorm pounded through town that afternoon, then disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. When I got home from work, the lawn was scattered with wet leaves and the birdhouse Molly had nailed in the fork of a live oak had split across the nail holes and cracked apart on the ground, spilling all the birdseed in a yellow pile. I gathered up the broken pieces, dropped them in the garbage can, and found the listing for Andre Bergeron in the Jeanerette section of our local telephone directory.