A Private Cathedral

by James Lee Burke

  I went around to the rear of the shack. The back door hung by one hinge. The prints of small bare feet led from the front door out the back, then faded like cat whiskers on the ground. However, other prints were dramatically visible and freshly etched by someone wearing at least size-eleven shoes or boots with lug soles. They led up a broken levee into a clutch of willows and disappeared into a canal lined with cattails and blanketed with lichen as thick as paint. But I could see no muddy clouds in the water, no broken reeds, no imprints of a shoe or boot on top of the stenciled tracks of raccoons and possums and nutrias and deer that crisscrossed the mudbank.

  I returned to the shack. The ground under my feet was badly eroded by the runoff from the levee. In a glistening pool I saw three small rough-surfaced tan balls that any kid raised on Bayou Teche would recognize. They were called slave marbles. In antebellum times, black children made them from the clay they dug from the bayou and baked in a tin oven. I picked the balls from the dirt and rolled them in my palm. I wondered how much time had passed since a child had touched them. I wondered what his life had been like, the travail and suffering that had probably been his only legacy.

  Out in the fog I heard a clunking sound, like wood on wood. I dropped the slave marbles in my left coat pocket, took out my .45 and eased a copper-jacketed hollow-point into the chamber, then walked to the edge of the swamp. I heard the knocking of wood on wood again.

  “Who’s out there?” I called. “Tell me who you are!”

  My words were lost inside the thickness of the fog, the dripping of trees I could not see.

  “I have no doubt that’s you, Gideon!” I called. “I wanted to believe you were a misguided guy trying to do a good deed or two! But only a coward would use children to front for him!”

  I heard the labored sound of oars. This time I saw no galleon traveling through time. The bow of a wood boat appeared at the edge of the fog bank, a shadowy figure couched in the middle, the oars resting in the locks. The figure was wearing a hooded raincoat. The boat bumped against a cypress stump and drifted sideways. I held my .45 behind my back. “You’re Gideon?”

  “Correct.” He turned his head and I saw his face. It made me swallow.

  “What’d you do with those kids?” I said.

  “They’re safe.”

  “Are you using a voice box of some kind?”

  “You’re a stupid man,” he said.

  “Probably. Why’d you want to hurt Clete Purcel?”

  “Mr. Purcel injures himself.”

  “How about you row up on the bank and we talk about it?”

  “I’m a revelator,” he said. “You should feel honored. We don’t give our time to everyone.”

  I could feel the pulse beating in my right wrist, the cold steel frame in my hand. “Where are you from, Richetti?”

  “Address me as Mr. Richetti or as Gideon.”

  “Tell me where the children are, partner. I’d owe you a big solid on that.”

  “You’re a simpleton, Mr. Robicheaux. You want the children out of the way so you can do as you will.”

  I felt like he had stuck a dirty finger inside my brain. “Come a little closer. I can hardly hear you.”

  “Idiot,” he said.

  “You got that right. I should have capped your sorry ass as soon as I saw you.”

  I gripped my .45 with both hands and began firing at the boat’s waterline. There were seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. I could see the flash leaping from the muzzle, hear the spent cartridges splashing in the shallows, hear a round go long and hit a tree trunk. I saw wood fly from his boat and float in the water. But Gideon Richetti showed no reaction, not even when a round went high and whanged off an oar lock.

  The slide on the .45 locked open on the empty chamber. Richetti and his boat drifted into the mist. I opened and closed my mouth to clear my hearing. I could hear the sound of his oars thinning among the flooded trees. I could not believe what I had just done. I had fired into a fog bank that could have been occupied by hunters or other fishermen or even the children who wanted to sell me night crawlers.

  I got into my boat, my hands shaking, and started the engine and drove into the fog. The aluminum hull screeched against the cypress knees protruding from the water, all of them as hard and shiny as wet stone. I saw no sign of Richetti and his boat. Nor did I see any channels in the lichen that floated between the trees.

  I killed the engine and drifted in the silence. The water was black, the sun a smudge of egg yolk on the horizon. Inside that soiled piece of Eden, I saw the worst image I could possibly see under the circumstances. There was a patina of blood on a tupelo stump, and a strip of wash-faded cloth that was as thin as Kleenex.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY was Saturday. My first stop early that morning was Father Julian’s house outside Jeanerette. The sun was just above the trees when he opened the door. He made a pot of coffee while I told him everything that had happened the previous evening at Henderson Swamp. He sat down at the kitchen table, his face empty. He stared through the window at the graveyard. I felt my heart constricting.

  “You think a stray bullet hit the little girl?” he said.

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “But you feel you shouldn’t have fired at the boat?”

  “I should have gotten in my boat and gone after him.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I thought he’d get away in the fog.”

  “That’s not convincing, Dave.”

  “I thought this was my only chance,” I said.

  “To do what?”

  “To prove he was human.”

  “Because you think that may not be the case?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He wiped at his chin with his thumb. “I think you did the best you could.”

  “What are you not saying?” I asked.

  “I’m troubled about this hooded man who has shown up in your life and Clete’s.”

  “You think he’s actually an evil spirit?”

  “I prefer not to,” he replied.

  “Prefer?”

  “Superstition has its origins in fear. Ultimately, all our problems have their origins in fear.”

  “I saw the guy’s face. It looked reptilian.”

  “I think this man Richetti is linked with evil forces. But they’re human, not cartoon characters out of a fable.” He held his eyes on mine. But there was a quiver in his throat.

  “Thanks for listening to me,” I said.

  “Don’t let them undo you. For the love of God, don’t do that.”

  “Who is ‘them’?” I said.

  “Take your choice,” he replied.

  * * *

  MY NEXT STOP was at a dirt-smudged two-story stucco house with a Spanish-tile roof on the ragged end of West Main, where Carroll LeBlanc lived in solitude except when an occasional woman or two moved in and then moved out. LeBlanc was long removed from his role as an NOPD vice cop, but I always had the sense that he kept one appendage or another in the game. He answered the door bare-chested and barefoot and wearing blue jeans. Behind him, on the sunporch, I could see a young blond woman in tight white shorts and a pink blouse chewing gum and rolling a Ping-Pong ball around on a paddle.

  “It’s Saturday, Robo,” LeBlanc said. “I hope this isn’t about work.”

  “Yeah, it is about work. I’m dropping the dime on myself.”

  “Great. Write it up. Mail it to me. Or stick it under my office door Monday morning.”

  “I need to talk to you now.”

  “I’m in the middle of a Ping-Pong game.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. You’re bridging the generation gap?”

  “That’s my daughter,” he said.

  I felt my face flush. “Sorry. I’ve got to talk to you, Carroll.”

  “So talk.”

  “I may have shot a child.”

  “The fuck you say?” His face had drained. The string of moles under his eye loo
ked as stark as dirt on his skin.

  “May I come in?” I said.

  “Yeah, just keep it down. I don’t believe what you just said.”

  “Believe it.”

  He looked sick. I had never seen LeBlanc like this. He talked to his daughter, then motioned me into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. I gave him every detail about my confrontation with Gideon Richetti in the swamp. By the time I was finished, he was trembling.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be all right?”

  “You look like you’re about to hit the deck.”

  “I shot a black kid in the Desire Project when I was a rookie,” he said. “He was nine years old. That’s how I ended up in vice after I made plainclothes. Nobody wanted to partner with me.”

  I looked away from the shame in his eyes. “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “Yeah, try to sell that when you’re in the barrel,” he said. “So we’re talking about blood on a stump and a piece of cloth?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘that’s it’? We’re going out there.”

  “What for?”

  “Because I don’t believe this shit.”

  “What shit?” I said.

  “This fucking guy from outer space or whatever.”

  “Your agitation isn’t about Richetti,” I said. “What are you keeping from me, Carroll?”

  “Mark Shondell has a hard-on for you. You slapped his face in public.”

  “What does that have to do with you?”

  “I was a juicer and taking freebies and collecting for a shylock and had to find another job. Shondell smoothed the way for me. Here in New Iberia.”

  “Why the favor?” I said.

  He clenched his teeth and breathed through his mouth before he spoke. “The Balangie family was starting to slip. Crack was replacing all the other drugs on the street. A handful of black pukes were taking over the projects. Shondell wanted to make a move. I helped him.”

  “Shondell is involved with narcotics?” I said.

  “I think it was personal with him. He wanted to screw up Adonis Balangie any way he could.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Carroll?”

  “I wanted to help people and be a good cop. I saw a kid on a fire escape with a gun. I swear he pointed it at me. I let off three rounds. One went through a window and hit the nine-year-old in his bed. The kid on the fire escape had a BB gun.”

  “You want my badge?” I said.

  “No, we’re going to Henderson Swamp. You weren’t drinking, were you?”

  “No.”

  “I want you to UA at Iberia General.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Know why I’m going along with this stuff you just told me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m a loser. Just like you. Know what losers have in common? They tell the truth because they don’t have anything to lose.”

  I gave a urine specimen to the lab at Iberia General, then hitched up my boat trailer and met Carroll LeBlanc two hours later at the swamp.

  * * *

  THE SKY WAS clear and blue and bright as silk when the bow of my boat clunked against the tupelo stump. The strip of cloth was gone, but the blood had dried in the grainy wood.

  “You’re sure this is it?” LeBlanc said.

  “No doubt about it,” I replied.

  “There’s stumps all over here. A bird could have smacked into this one. The cloth looked like it was from the girl’s dress?”

  “Yes,” I said, my stomach hollow.

  “Nope, this is a scam, Robo. Somebody is trying to mess up your head.”

  “I saw what I saw.”

  He stood up in the boat and used his pocketknife to cut a piece of the bloodied wood from the stump. He placed it in a Ziploc bag. “We’ll check it out at the lab. I could use something to eat. You hungry?”

  “You’re an okay guy, Carroll,” I said.

  “Say again?”

  “You’re on the square.”

  “If I were, I’d hang Shondell out to dry. But I want my job.”

  “He’ll burn his own kite,” I said.

  “Good luck on that.”

  We drove to the levee and ate crab burgers and gumbo on the dock and watched a black kid fly a kite that resembled a quivering drop of bright red blood in an otherwise immaculate sky.

  Chapter Twenty

  CLETE HAD JUST gotten back from New Orleans and asked me to meet him on Sunday morning by the recreation building in City Park. I went to an early Mass at St. Edward’s, then drove across the drawbridge at Burke Street onto the oak-shaded serpentine lane that led to the playground and the swing sets and the jungle gyms in the park.

  Clete was sitting at a picnic table, dressed as though for church, his porkpie hat crown down on the table, except he was not headed for church and was drinking from a long-neck, even though it was barely ten A.M. I sat down across from him. There were gin roses in his cheeks.

  “Why’d you want to meet me here?” I asked.

  “Somebody tried to creep my cottage and my office. I got to do a sweep.”

  “Who’d want to bug your cottage and office?”

  “For openers, that pus head Shondell.” His fingers were curled around the label on the beer bottle, his gaze unsteady, his knuckles as rough as barnacles.

  “Hitting it pretty early today, aren’t you?” I said.

  “It’s afternoon somewhere. I think you’re about to go in the skillet, Streak.”

  “Not me.”

  “Adonis Balangie came to my apartment in the Quarter last night. He had two of his gumballs with him. He said either you get your head on straight or you get disappeared, and disappeared will be the least of it.”

  “Straight about what?”

  “Getting into the wrong bread box. I’m not talking about Penelope Balangie, either.”

  “So who are you talking about?” I said, trying not to clear my throat before speaking.

  He took a piece of notepaper from his shirt pocket and looked at it. “Leslie Rosenberg, who evidently is his regular punch. He says you not only got it on with her, but you told her to quit the job he gave her. You know this broad?”

  “She’s not a broad.”

  “Excuse me. Did you pork this lady who probably graduated from Sophie Newcomb?”

  “I’m not going to talk to you on this level.”

  “Answer my question, Dave.”

  “I don’t know. I was at her house. It was raining. I had some kind of blackout.”

  “That’s convenient. I got to try that the next time I get caught milking through the fence.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “Got it on?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember the rain and a voice that said, ‘I’ve waited for you a long time. I was born to be with you.’ ”

  “Don’t do this to me, Dave. One of us has got to stay sane.”

  “Then the voice said, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ ”

  He looked at me, an alcoholic shine in his eyes. “You mean like—”

  “Yeah, a climax.”

  “I hope she took snapshots. You can send them to Adonis. You know how to do it, big mon.”

  “I don’t care about any of this, Clete. I may have shot a child in Henderson Swamp.”

  I told him everything. His face drained. His voice sounded like a bucket of rust. His eyes were damp. “That guy Richetti is real, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he is,” I said.

  “I’m going to bring this shit to an end.”

  “It’s not that easy. You know it, too,” I said.

  “What if I just take Mark Shondell off at the neck? What if I put his head on a spike?”

  “You’re serious?”

  “You weren’t hung upside down from a wrecker hook,” he said. “I can’t get that out of my head.”

  “We don’t know that Richetti is working for Shondell.”

 
“Mark Shondell is putting the blocks to a teenage girl everybody has deserted, including her mother and stepfather. I say we cap him. I also say we cap anybody who gets in our way, starting with Adonis Balangie. In the meantime, you stay away from his punch, what’s-her-name?”

  “You shouldn’t drink for the rest of the day. Let’s hammer down some bacon and eggs.”

  He threw me his cell phone. “Call Victor’s. They’ll deliver. I need something from the car.” He went to his Caddy and came back with another beer. He twisted off the cap and sat down. “You’re not going to say anything?” he said.

  “It wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Dave, something political is going on with Shondell and Bobby Earl. Like Father Julian said. Maybe it’s like Hitler going into the Rhineland in 1936. Nobody stood up to him, so he decided to take Czechoslovakia and then Poland.”

  “This is New Iberia.”

  “Tell Huey Long that. Do you realize you just told me that maybe you shot a little girl? That we’re sitting here talking about it? We should have already shoved a twelve-gauge up Shondell’s ass.”

  “I’m with you in whatever you want to do,” I said.

  “Talk to the Jewish broad. Find out what’s going on. And keep your flopper on lockdown.”

  “You’re talking about Leslie Rosenberg?”

  His eyes went out of focus. Or maybe he deliberately crossed them. “Duh! What did you tell her that made her quit her job with Adonis?”

  “I told her she deserved a better life.”

  “Then you got it on?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “No clue, huh?” he said. “What was the status of your pole when you got home?”

  “Will you—”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said.

  I waited for him to start taking me apart again. Instead he poured his beer on the grass and set the bottle on the picnic table and stared at it. “Dave, we’ve got to get to the bottom of the business at Henderson Swamp. This isn’t us. There’s got to be an explanation. I’m about to have an aneurism here.”