Creole Belle

by James Lee Burke

  She was standing behind her desk. “I want all your notes on the Jesse Leboeuf shooting,” she said.

  “I don’t think they’ll be very helpful.”

  I could see lights of impatience and irritability flicker in her eyes. “Who’s your prime subject, Dave?”

  “Gretchen Horowitz.”

  “An out-and-out execution?”

  “No, she stopped a rape and probably a murder. If you ask me, Jesse got what he deserved.”

  “You questioned Horowitz?”

  “Yep, but I got nowhere. Here’s what interesting. Before he died, Jesse said something to the killer in French. Catin Segura heard it but says she doesn’t speak French.”

  “Catin has no idea who the shooter was?”

  “You’d better ask her.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “The damage Jesse did to her was off the scale.”

  “Where’s Catin now?”

  “Back home with her kids. You want me to call her and tell her to come in?”

  I saw Helen’s eyes searching in space. “No,” she said. “I’ll talk to her at her house. No evidence at the scene or eyewitness account puts Horowitz there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I passed by your door when you were on the phone. Was that Dana Magelli you were taking to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “Maybe Clete busted up a guy named Lamont Woolsey in the Garden District last night.”

  “I just don’t believe it,” she said.

  “It’s the way it is, Helen.”

  “Don’t tell me that,” she said, turning her back to me, her hands on her hips. The muscles in her upper arms looked like rolls of quarters.

  “Helen—”

  “Don’t say any more. Just leave. Now. Not later. Right now,” she said.

  AT QUITTING TIME, I drove to Clete’s cottage. The air was damp, the sky plum-colored, and stacks of raked leaves were burning and blowing apart in the wind on the far side of the bayou, the ash glowing like fireflies. I didn’t want to accept that winter was upon us and soon frost would speckle the trees and the cane fields that were already being turned into stubble. I was bothered even more by the fact that dwelling too much on the cycle of the seasons could turn one’s heart into a lump of ice.

  Clete was barefoot and wearing unpressed slacks and a strap undershirt and was watching the news on television in his favorite deep-cushioned chair. He poured from a pint bottle of brandy into a jelly glass and added three inches of eggnog from a carton. There was a wastebasket by his foot. A roll of toilet paper was tucked between his thigh and the arm of the chair. “Get yourself a Diet Doc,” he said, barely looking at me.

  “I don’t want a Diet Doc.”

  “Rough day?”

  “Not particularly. What’s with the toilet paper?”

  “I get the sense Helen is back on the job.”

  “Helen’s not the problem. Magelli called. He says you busted up Lamont Woolsey.”

  “Woolsey dimed me?”

  “No, the neighbors saw you kick his face in.”

  “Things got a little out of control. Magelli say anything about Ozone Eddy Mouton and a broad named Connie?”

  “He said Eddy and a female employee were kidnapped.”

  “It gets worse. On the five o’clock news, there was a story about a pair of bodies found in the trunk of a burned car in St. Bernard Parish. One victim was male, one female. No ID yet. I screwed up real bad on this one, Streak.”

  “Maybe it’s somebody else.”

  “A hit like that? Even the Giacanos didn’t kill like that. It’s Woolsey.” Clete coughed and wadded up a handful of toilet paper and pressed it to his mouth. Then he compressed the paper tightly in his hand and lowered it into the wastebasket and took a drink of eggnog and brandy from the jelly glass. I sat down on the bed and pulled the wastebasket toward me. “You coughing up blood?” I said.

  “No, I had a nosebleed.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Woolsey went down hard. He got off a couple of good shots. I’m fine.”

  “I’m taking you to Iberia General.”

  “No, you’re not. Whatever is in my chest is going to stay in my chest. Listen to me, Dave. At a certain point in your life, you accept the consequences of your choices, and you play the hand out. I’m not going to have anybody cutting on me or sticking tubes down my throat or injecting radium into my bloodstream. If I catch the bus with an eggnog and Hennessy in my hand, that’s the way it flushes.”

  “Hospitals are bad, and eggnog and booze are good. Do you know how dumb that sounds?”

  “That’s the only way I know how to think.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  He got up from his chair and took a long-sleeve scarlet silk shirt off a hanger and put it on, then sat on the side of his bed and began pulling on his socks.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Taking you and Molly and Alafair to dinner. Enjoy the day, Dave. It’s all we’ve got.”

  “I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”

  “We’re running out of time, big mon. I’m talking about with the Duprees and Woolsey and this phony preacher and Varina and whoever the hell else they’re mixed up with. Look at what they did to Ozone Eddy and his broad. They hate our guts. Gretchen tore Pierre Dupree apart with a blackjack. You and I have been rubbing shit in their faces from the jump. It’s a matter of time before they get even. How about those locks of hair the old man keeps in his study?”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Cletus.”

  “You’re not hearing me. Helen doesn’t listen. She thinks like an administrator. Administrators don’t believe in conspiracies. If they did, they’d have to resign their jobs. That’s the problem. In the meantime, we’re waiting for Bed-Check Charlie to come through our wire and park one in our ear, if not worse.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He poured more brandy into his glass, swirling it, watching the eggnog turn brown before he drank it. “Burn them out.”

  “You and I? Like the White League?”

  “They’re going to kill us, Dave.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “They almost got us in the shootout on the bayou. I dream about it every second or third night. You know what’s worst about the dream? We were supposed to die there. That paddle wheeler was real. Both of us were supposed to be on it, and that son of a bitch is still out there, waiting for us in the fog. But this time they’re going to take everybody. You, me, Alafair, Molly, and Gretchen, all of us. That’s what I see in the dream.”

  I could feel a cold wind on the back of my neck. I turned around to see if the door was open, but it wasn’t.

  “You okay?” Clete said.

  No, I wasn’t okay. And neither was he. And I had no way to set things right. Also, at that moment I had no way of knowing that Gretchen and Alafair and, in her sad way, Tee Jolie would write the fifth act in our Elizabethan tale on the banks of Bayou Teche.

  GRETCHEN HAD RENTED a cottage in the little tree-shaded town of Broussard, located on the old two-lane highway midway between New Iberia and Lafayette. On Wednesday morning she looked out her front window at a scene she had trouble assimilating. Across the street, Pierre Dupree was walking a child through the side door of a Catholic church. The child could not have been over eight or nine years and wore metal braces on both of his legs. Gretchen took a cup of coffee out on her gallery and sat down on the steps and watched the church. A few minutes later, Dupree came back outside with the little boy and escorted him to a playground and placed him on a swing and began pushing him back and forth. Dupree seemed to take no notice of anyone around him or the fact that he was being watched.

  Ten minutes passed, and Dupree strapped the little boy in the front seat of his Humvee. Gretchen set down her coffee cup and walked out onto the swale and leaned on one arm against the live oak that
shaded the front of her cottage. Still Dupree did not notice her. He pulled out on the street and drove toward the only traffic signal in town. Then she saw his face reflected in the outside mirror as his brake lights went on. He made a U-turn in the filling station at the intersection and drove back toward her, turning in to her driveway, the shadows of the live oak bouncing on his windshield. He opened the door and got out. “I didn’t realize that was you,” he said.

  “Who else do I look like?” she asked, her arm still propped against the tree trunk.

  “If you don’t want to talk to me, Miss Gretchen, I understand. But I want you to know I hold no grudge against you.”

  “Why is it I don’t believe that?”

  “I guess I’m a mighty poor salesman.”

  The little boy was looking out the passenger window at her, his head barely above the windowsill. She winked at him.

  “This is Gus. He’s my little pal in Big Brothers,” Pierre said.

  “Been at it long?” Gretchen said.

  “Just of recent. I was enrolling Gus in the Catholic school here. I’m endowing a scholarship fund.”

  She nodded and tucked her shirt into her jeans with her thumbs. “How you doin’, Gus?” she said.

  “Fine,” the little boy replied. He had a burr haircut and eyes that were mere slits, as though his face had not been fully formed.

  “I blame myself for what happened in the restaurant in New Orleans,” Pierre said. “I got involved in some business dealings that had consequences I didn’t foresee. That’s my fault and not yours. I think you’re quite a woman, Miss Gretchen. I’d like to know you better.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “How many times does a guy meet a one-woman army?” He held his gaze on hers. “At least think about it. What’s to lose? You’ve already shown what you can do if a fellow gets out of line.”

  Something was changed about him, she thought, though she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe it was his hair. It looked freshly washed and blow-dried. Or was it his eyes? They were free of scorn and arrogance. Also, he seemed genuinely happy.

  “Is Mr. Dupree treating you all right, Gus?” she said to the little boy.

  “We went to the carnival in Lafayette. We went to the zoo, too,” Gus replied.

  “How about it?” Dupree said.

  “How about what?” she said.

  “Having lunch with me and Gus. Then I have to get him back home. It’s a beautiful day.” Again, his eyes lingered on hers. They were warm and seemed free of guile. “Have you ever modeled?”

  “Sure, steroid ads when I rode with Dykes on Bikes.”

  “Stop it,” he said.

  He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. She gazed down the street, her chin raised slightly, her pulse fluttering in her throat.

  “I’d love to get you on canvas,” he said. “Come on, have lunch and we’ll talk about it. I’m no Jasper Johns, but I’m not bad at what I do.”

  “Sorry, no cigar,” she said.

  “I’m disappointed. Keep me in mind, will you? You’re a pistol, Miss Gretchen.”

  Her face and palms were tingling as she watched him drive away, the paint job on his Humvee as bright as a yellow jacket in the sunlight. Dammit, she thought. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  AFTER SUPPER ON Wednesday evening, Alafair received a call on her cell phone from Gretchen Horowitz. “Take a ride with me,” she said.

  Alafair shut and opened her eyes and wondered how she could hide the reluctance she felt in her chest. “Now?” she said.

  “I need your advice.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”

  “I was thinking of taking a walk in a few minutes.”

  “Your father doesn’t want you around me?”

  “It creates certain kinds of conflicts for him, Gretchen. Be realistic.”

  “I bought a whole bunch of film equipment. I’m going to make the documentary on the 1940s music revue.”

  “That’s not why you called.”

  “I’ll be parked by the drawbridge on Burke Street. If you don’t feel like talking with me, don’t worry about it.”

  “Gretchen—”

  Minutes later, Alafair walked past the Shadows and the old brick building that had been a Buick agency and was now a law office. She turned up the street that fed onto the drawbridge and saw Gretchen’s chopped-down pickup parked by the corner, its exposed chrome-plated engine gleaming in the twilight. Gretchen got out on the sidewalk. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

  “What’s the trouble?” Alafair said.

  “Something happened today. I’m a little mixed up about it. You want a drink?”

  “No. Tell me what it is.”

  “I saw Pierre Dupree take a crippled child into the Catholic church in Broussard this morning. He saw me watching him and pulled into my driveway. He invited me to lunch.”

  A pleasure boat loaded with revelers emerged from under the bridge and passed the old convent and hospital on the opposite side of the bayou. They were holding balloons and smiling, and their expressions seemed garish and surreal among the balloons. “You’re not going to say anything?” Gretchen asked.

  “Did you go with him?”

  “No.”

  “I think you made a wise choice,” Alafair said.

  Gretchen folded her arms on her chest and looked at the diners eating and drinking in the courtyard behind Clementine’s. There were white cloths and candles that flickered inside glass vessels on the dining tables, and the candles made shadows on the banana plants that grew along the restaurant’s walls.

  “I called the church,” Gretchen said. “Pierre—”

  “Pierre?”

  “That’s his name, isn’t it? He not only paid for the crippled boy’s tuition, he set up a scholarship fund.”

  “Don’t be taken in by this guy,” Alafair said.

  “He had no way of knowing I’d see him at the church with the little boy.”

  “I think something else is going on with you, Gretchen. You’re having second thoughts about your own life, and you want to believe that people can be redeemed. Pierre Dupree is no good.”

  “Where do you get all this knowledge about what goes on in other people’s heads?”

  “Sometimes I want to believe certain things for reasons I don’t want to accept,” Alafair said.

  “You’re talking about me, not you, right? Don’t start that twelve-step psychobabble with me.”

  “If you want to have lunch with him, do it,” Alafair said.

  Gretchen’s face was flushed, her eyes moving from the bayou to the diners in the courtyard to the drawbridge, without seeming to see any of it. “You’re supposed to be my friend. I came to you for advice, nobody else.”

  “Some people have to work at being assholes. That’s not true of Pierre Dupree. He was born one.”

  “Explain to me how he knew I’d see him with the crippled boy.”

  “He’s afraid of you. He knows what happened to Jesse Leboeuf. He doesn’t want to end up in a bathtub with a bullet in his brisket.”

  “You’re saying I killed Leboeuf? You know that for a fact?”

  “No, I don’t know anything. I don’t want to, either.”

  “That’s a chickenshit attitude.”

  “What other attitude can I have? You ask me for advice, then you argue about it.”

  “The 1940s revue is this weekend. I thought you’d be there with me.”

  “I’m trying to make some headway on my new novel.”

  “You and Clete are the only two people I ever thought of as friends.”

  “I think Pierre Dupree will hurt you. You’re not being honest with yourself. You’re about to let a bad man use you. The worst thing we can do to ourselves is to help other people injure us. The feeling of shame never goes away.”

  “Anything else you want to say?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s going to rain.”

 
; Gretchen widened her eyes, her face hot and bright in the sunset. “I won’t call you again,” she said. “I’m really angry right now and having thoughts I don’t like to think.”

  THAT SAME EVENING Clete had a caller he did not expect. When he opened the cottage door, he had to look down to see her face. She was holding a pot of soup with two hot pads. “I put too much in. It’s sloshing over the sides. Where can I put this down?” she said.

  She went past him without waiting for him to answer. It was Julie Ardoin, the pilot who had flown him to the island southeast of the Chandeleurs. She set the pot heavily on the stove and turned around. “Dave said you were sick. So I took the liberty,” she said.

  “Dave exaggerates. I had a nosebleed,” Clete said.

  “Can I sit down?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling a chair out from the breakfast table.

  “I’m not a ‘ma’am,’” she said.

  “You want a drink or a beer?”

  She looked around at the general disarray that characterized his room. She wore makeup and jeans and a short-sleeve embroidered shirt spotted with rain. Her hair was damp and shiny under the light. “I had another reason for coming here.”

  “Yeah?” he replied.

  “I know you and Dave had words on the island. He thinks the world of you. He’d do anything for you. I figured you ought to know that.”

  “You came out in the rain to tell me that?”

  “What, you think I’m minding y’all’s business or something?”

  “No, I meant that’s a kind thing to do. Excuse the way the place looks. I was just cleaning up when you knocked.” He picked up the wastebasket and opened a cabinet under the sink and put it inside.

  She glanced at his raincoat and hat on top of his bed. “You fixing to go out?”

  “I’m moving my boat from East Cote Blanche Bay, but it can wait. What all did Dave tell you?”