Creole Belle

by James Lee Burke

  Molly was still asleep. I slipped on a pair of khakis and a sweater and lit the kitchen stove and set a pot of coffee on the burner and picked up a folding chair from the mudroom and walked down to the bayou. I could barely make out Clete’s shape in the fog. He was leaning forward in his chair, studying the cattails and elephant ears and the water sliding over the cypress knees that marbled the bank. Somewhere deep inside the fog, I heard the giant cogged wheels lifting the drawbridge into the air.

  “Did I wake you up?” he said.

  “You know me. I’m an early riser,” I replied. I unfolded my chair and sat down beside him. I could smell the booze and weed and the odor of funk and stale deodorant trapped inside his clothes. “Rough night?”

  “I guess it depends on how you read it. Varina Leboeuf has a photo of her husband with Tee Jolie Melton. It was taken in a club, maybe one of those zydeco joints up by Bayou Bijoux. I told her to give it to you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I replied, waiting for him to get to the real reason he had come to the house.

  “Think it’s enough to get him in the box?”

  “It’s not proof of a crime, but it’s a start.”

  “Varina came across it by accident. She wanted to do the right thing with it.” He kept his attention fixed on the water and the bream starting to feed among the lily pads. “I agreed to take her on as a client.”

  “She wants you to get the gen on her husband?”

  “She came into the office yesterday with a minister. She thinks she’s in danger. What should I have done? Kicked her out?”

  “That’s all that’s bothering you?”

  “More or less.”

  “It’s just another gig. If it doesn’t work out, let it go.”

  “That’s the way I figured it.”

  “I’ve got some coffee on. How about some Grape-Nuts and milk and blackberries?”

  “That’d be nice. I didn’t want to wake you up, that’s all. So that’s why I thought I’d sit on the bank awhile and watch the sun come up.”

  “What happened last night, Clete?”

  He turned and looked at me sideways. He grimaced. “I went out to her old man’s place on Cypremort Point. The old man is in Iberia General.”

  I nodded, trying to show no expression.

  “We played badminton,” he said. “Then I knocked back a few shots of tequila, and she showed me the photograph. She collects Indian artifacts, all kinds of junk from Santa Fe and around Mesa Verde and other places out west. She goes on archaeological digs. She found some ancient pottery in a cave, bowls that go back to the thirteenth century. That’s when there was a big drought in the Southwest. She knows all about that kind of stuff.”

  “People who go on archaeological digs don’t get to keep their artifacts, Clete.”

  “Yeah, I brought that up a little later.”

  “Later than when?”

  “After we got it on.”

  “You were in the sack with Varina Leboeuf?”

  “In the sack, on a chair, standing up, against the wall, you name it. I think we might have broken some of her old man’s furniture. She’s like a portable volcano. About four A.M. she was ready to rock again. We fell on top of her teddy bear.”

  “Her what?”

  “She has this teddy bear on a couch under all her Indian artifacts.”

  “Varina Leboeuf keeps teddy bears in the room where she gets it on with guys our age?”

  “Come on, Streak, I already feel like somebody ran over me with a garbage truck. I don’t mean about her. I’m talking about me. I’m old and fat, and all I think about is getting my ashes hauled. It’s the way I am, but having somebody else tell me that about myself doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Go over it again.”

  “What for?”

  “Just do it. Don’t leave out one detail.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, his hands splayed on his knees, and repeated everything. I cupped my hand on the back of his neck. It felt as hard as iron, the pockmarks in his skin oily and hot and as coarse as pig hide on the edges. He looked at the water, his face wan, his coat almost splitting on his back. “I feel awful,” he said.

  “The teddy bear, did it look like an old one?”

  “Now that you mention it, no.”

  “Think about it, Cletus. What doesn’t fit in the story you just told me?”

  “I can’t follow you,” he said. “I feel like the Tijuana Brass is doing a Mexican hat dance inside my head.”

  “Varina has a long history with men. She never asks for quarter and never gives it. She’s not a sentimentalist. If Wyatt Earp ever had a female counterpart, it’s Varina Leboeuf.”

  “The teddy bear?” he said.

  “It doesn’t belong in the picture, does it?”

  “Why would she want to trap me with a nanny-cam? Who cares if a guy like me can’t keep his stiff red-eye under control?”

  “The better question is how many guys around here are in stag films they don’t know about?” I said.

  A HALF HOUR later, Gretchen Horowitz could barely contain her anger as she began dissecting Clete inside the cottage they were sharing at the motor court down the Teche. “You stay out all night and don’t bother to call or leave a message?”

  “I’m sorry, Gretchen. I was in the bag. I was doing tequila shots and mixing it with beer, then somebody ripped the hands off the clock.”

  “That’s not all you were doing.” She fanned at her face with a magazine.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Get in the shower. I’m going to open up some windows. Why don’t you show some discretion? Who was the broad?”

  Clete was taking off his shoes on the edge of the bed. “These things are none of your business,” he said.

  “It was Varina Leboeuf, wasn’t it?”

  He dropped a shoe on the floor and stood up and took off his shirt. Lipstick was smeared on the collar, and the underarms were dark with sweat. He threw the shirt in the corner. “She had a photo of Pierre Dupree with Tee Jolie Melton. That’s why I went to her place. It was supposed to be business.”

  “They’re playing you, Clete.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “She and her husband.”

  “Varina hates his guts.”

  “Use your head. From a legal perspective, that photo doesn’t mean squat. Dupree knows you and Dave Robicheaux will eventually find out he knew Tee Jolie. So she provides you with a photo that he can claim he doesn’t remember, and then both of them are off the hook. In the meantime, she gets you on a leash and gains access to everything you and Dave Robicheaux are doing. You’d see that if your brains weren’t in your putz. Get undressed and give me your clothes. I’m going to take them to the Laundromat.”

  “Say that again about the two of them working together?”

  “Not until you get in the shower,” she said, throwing open a window, flooding the inside of the cottage with sunlight and fresh air.

  After she heard the water beating on the sides of the tin stall, she went into the bathroom and picked up his underwear and stuffed it in a dirty-clothes bag. Then she went through his slacks and the top shelf of his closet and his dresser drawers. She opened the bathroom door and leaned inside, steam billowing around her head. “I took your car keys, your sap, and your Beretta,” she said. “Take a nap. While I’m gone, I’ll do your laundry. In the meantime, you keep your harpoon in your tackle box. I’ll be back this evening.”

  She got in the Caddy and drove to the McDonald’s on East Main and used the pay phone so there would be no personal record of her calls. Then she bought a fish sandwich and a milk shake to go and rolled down the top on the Caddy. The trip to New Orleans on the four-lane, going through Morgan City, would take only two hours. The sky was a hard blue, the sun so bright she couldn’t look directly at it, but there was a dark border of clouds low on the southern horizon, and the trees were starting to swell with wind. She burned
rubber going down East Main, the unchecked power of the engine throbbing through the steering wheel into her hands.

  SHE PARKED THE Caddy on a side street off St. Charles, not far from a restaurant that recently was redone in art deco. After she used the electric motor to put up the top, she tied a scarf on her head and removed a pair of sunglasses from her tote bag and put them on and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. She reached in the bag again and removed a tube of lipstick and rubbed it on her mouth. She could see the old iron green-painted streetcar coming up the neutral ground from the Carrollton district, its bell clanging. The sun had gone behind a rain cloud, and the homes along the avenue, most of them built in the 1850s, had fallen into deep shade, the white paint on them suddenly gray, the only touch of color in the yards from the camellia bushes that bloomed year-round. The barometer had dropped precipitously, the wind had started to gust, and the air was colder and smelled of dust and the advent of winter. Some of the restaurant’s patrons were eating outdoors on a patio covered by a green-and-white-striped nylon awning. The streetcar stopped at the corner, discharging several passengers, then clanged its bell again and lumbered down the tracks through the tunnel of live oaks that extended almost to the Pontchartrain Hotel, near downtown. Gretchen studied the patrons at the tables and tried with no success to see through the smoked-glass windows in the side of the building. When the passengers who had been on the streetcar walked by her, she concentrated on locking the Caddy’s doors, her face angled down. She adjusted the strap of her tote bag on her shoulder and entered the restaurant through a side door.

  The maître d’ approached from his station at the front of the restaurant, a menu under his arm. “Would you like a table?” he said.

  “I’m supposed to meet Pierre Dupree here. But I don’t see him,” she replied.

  “Mr. Dupree and his party have a private room. Please follow me,” the maître d’ said.

  Gretchen did not remove her sunglasses or her scarf. When she entered the private dining area in back, she saw an elegantly dressed, tall, black-haired, handsome man sitting at a table with two other men, neither of whom wore a jacket. She pulled up a chair and sat down. The tall man was eating a shrimp cocktail, chewing in the back of his mouth, the fork dwarfed by his big hand. He had tucked a napkin into the top of his shirt. “Are you sure you have the right table, miss?” he said.

  “You’re Pierre Dupree, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Then I’m in the right place. My name is Gretchen Horowitz. I’ve met your wife and your grandfather, so I thought it was time I meet you.”

  “How thoughtful. But I have no idea who you are or how you would know my whereabouts,” he said.

  “I called your answering service and explained to the woman there that I was from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was going to take a message, but I told her I had to catch a plane this afternoon and I wanted to see you before I left. She was very helpful.”

  “You’re with the Guggenheim?”

  “I went there once. But I don’t work there. I work for Mr. Purcel. You know Clete Purcel?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure. Your name is Horowitz?”

  “That’s right. Do you know Tee Jolie Melton?”

  “You lied to my answering service, and now you want to sit down at my table and question me about whom I do or do not know?”

  “You mind if I order? I haven’t eaten yet.”

  “This is a put-on, isn’t it?”

  “You wish.”

  “The name is Horowitz, emphasis on the first syllable?”

  “Any way you want to say it.”

  He set down his fork and removed a granule of crushed ice from the corner of his mouth. He studied her face, his eyes vaguely amused. The two men with him were smiling. One man wore his hair combed straight back, the sideburns buzzed off. There was a thick bump in the top of his nose; his eyes were wide-set and not in line with each other and gave the impression that he saw everything and nothing. The other man was fleshy, too big for his clothes, his neck chafing against a starched collar, his coat flecked with dandruff. He had a small, cruel mouth and wore a big ring on his right hand, inset with a sharp-edged emblem rather than a stone.

  “How can I help you, Ms. Horowitz?” Dupree said.

  “Here’s the gen on your wife’s situation,” Gretchen said. “She—”

  “The what?” Dupree said.

  “The gen. That means the ‘background,’ the ‘information.’ Here’s the gen on your wife. She’s sending us signals that she’s trying to screw you on your divorce settlement. So out of nowhere, she comes up with a photo that shows you with Tee Jolie Melton. That’s the singer you told Dave Robicheaux you didn’t know. But your wife has evidence proving that you’re a liar. Except I don’t believe Varina Leboeuf is trying to screw you. I think she and you are working in concert in order to rat-fuck Mr. Purcel.”

  “I see,” Dupree said, snapping his fingers for the waiter.

  “You gonna have me eighty-sixed?”

  “Oh, no, no. Andre, bring me some more hot water. Ms. Horowitz, all my dealings with my wife are through a lawyer. The other thing she and I work on together is staying out of each other’s way. That’s about all I can tell you, so let’s call this business quits.”

  The fleshy man whose collar was biting into his neck said something to his friend. The friend’s hair was greased and as shiny as wire against his scalp. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Gretchen said.

  “It was nothing,” the fleshy man said.

  “Something about lipstick?” she said.

  The fleshy man shook his head, grinning broadly at his friend. The waiter arrived with a stainless steel teapot, a damp cloth wrapped around the handle; he set it in front of Pierre Dupree and went away.

  “I wear lipstick when I work,” Gretchen said. “I wear shades sometimes, too. Sometimes a scarf. Know why that is?”

  “No,” the man with the greased hair said. “Clue us in on that.”

  “It depersonalizes. Certain things shouldn’t be personal. That’s the way I look at it. What was that about a pig?”

  “Don’t know what you mean,” the fleshy man said.

  “You said something about lipstick on a pig. That’s what I look like, a pig wearing lipstick?”

  “Who would think that?” the fleshy man said.

  Gretchen pulled off her shades and set them on the tablecloth, then untied her scarf and shook out her hair. “Now you can get a better idea of what I look like,” she said. “Except now it’s gotten kind of personal. I hate it when that happens.”

  Dupree rolled his eyes like a man reaching the limits of his patience. He pulled his napkin from the top of his shirt and dropped it on the table. “Ms. Horowitz,” he said, the Z sound hissing off his teeth, “we have to say good-bye to you now. Say ‘ta-ta’ to everyone and squeeze your way through the dining room and out the door. I’ll ask the waiter to help if you need assistance.”

  Another thought besides his own cleverness was obviously on Pierre Dupree’s mind. He suppressed an obvious laugh by coughing on his hand. “I’m going to take a guess. Miami, right? Family originally from Coney Island? How do y’all say it, ‘Me-ami’?”

  “I went over to Burke Hall at UL and checked out some of your artwork. I thought it was pretty keen,” she said. “What I didn’t understand was why all the figures look like they’re made of rubber. They made me think of ectoplasm or maybe spermicide being squeezed out of a tube. My favorite painting was the abstract, the one that’s all smears and drips, kind of like a big handkerchief someone with a brain hemorrhage blew his nose on.”

  Pierre Dupree reached out and took her hand in his. “You have eyes that are like violets. But they don’t fit in your face or with the rest of your coloration,” he said. “Why is that? You’re a woman of mystery.”

  She felt his hand tighten on hers, squeezing her fingers into a cluster of carrots.

  “No answer?�
� he said. “No more cute one-liners from our clever little kike from ‘Me-ami’?”

  The pain in her hand traveled like a long strand of barbed wire up her wrist and into her arm and shoulder and throat. She felt her eyes water and her bottom lip begin to tremble.

  He tightened his grip. “Are you trying to tell me something?” he said. “Did you think perhaps you fucked with the wrong people? Have you experienced a change of heart? Nod if that’s the case.”

  With her left hand, she fumbled the top off the teapot and threw the scalding water in his face. A cry rose from Dupree’s throat as if he were being garroted. He jabbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, pushing back his chair, his shrimp cocktail spraying in a pulpy red shower on the tablecloth.

  “Waste not, want not. Here’s the rest of it,” she said, and emptied the pot on top of him.

  Dupree crashed backward on the floor, his arms wrapped around his head, his legs thrashing. Both of his friends had kicked back their chairs and were headed for her, their faces twisted with rage. She pulled Clete Purcel’s blackjack from her tote sack, the wood handle clenched tightly in her palm. The blackjack was weighted at the large end with a lump of lead the size of a golf ball, snugged tight inside stitched leather and mounted on a spring that generated a level of torque and velocity that could knock an ox unconscious. She swung it backward across the mouth of the fleshy man and heard his teeth break against his lips. The man with the greased-back hair got one hand on her shirt, but she whipped the blackjack down on his collarbone and saw his mouth open and his shoulder drop as though it had been severed from a string. She was wearing alpine shoes with lug soles, and she kicked him in the groin so hard the blood drained from his face and his knees buckled and he took on the appearance of a griffin crouched in the middle of the room. She whipped the blackjack across his ear and knocked him sideways into a stack of chairs.