I walked away and got in my truck and drove home, the steel grid on the drawbridge rattling under my tires.
* * *
MONDAY AFTERNOON CARROLL LEBLANC came into my office without knocking, a clipboard in one hand. “Reptile blood,” he said.
I stood up, a fishhook in my windpipe. “You got the lab report?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The tech wasn’t real happy. Something about giving lab priority to the death of a snake.”
I sat back down and lowered my head into my hands, breathing slowly through my mouth. “Thanks, Carroll.”
“No problem. You all right?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t look like it.”
I sat up straight, dizzy, spots before my eyes. “Tell the lab I owe them one.”
“The less said about this stuff, the better.”
“I saw what I saw out there.”
“No, you didn’t. Nothing happened.”
I opened my desk drawer and took out the three slave marbles I’d found behind the shack. I rolled them on my blotter. “I don’t think finding these was a coincidence.”
“Don’t get back in your spaceship, Robo.”
“Can you call me Dave, please?”
“I’ll call you crazy if I hear any more of this.”
I looked through the glass in my door. A patrolman had hooked up a man with thick salt-and-pepper hair and was walking him down the hall. LeBlanc followed my eyes. “What?”
“That’s Marcel LaForchette.”
“Yeah, he pulled a knife on a guy in Clementine’s.”
“What’s Marcel doing at Clementine’s?” I said.
“Upgrading his lifestyle. How would I know? Stay out of it.”
“Nobody was hurt?”
“Ask the chamber of commerce guy he threatened. He dumped in his pants—literally, on his shoes.” LeBlanc’s eyes lingered on my face. “Why the look?”
“I don’t buy it.”
“What’s with you and LaForchette?”
“I could have been him.”
“I know where this is going,” LeBlanc said.
“Then you know more than I do.”
“You’re a laugh a minute, Robo. I mean Dave.”
* * *
I FOUND MARCEL LAFORCHETTE and the patrolman and a detective in an interview room at the end of the hallway. I talked with the detective outside, then asked if I could have a few minutes with Marcel. After the patrolman and detective were gone, I sat down across from Marcel at a steel table that was bolted to the floor. He was wearing a navy blue sport coat and pressed gray slacks and a red silk shirt and polished needle-nosed Tony Lama boots. His wrists were cuffed behind him, the ratchets hooked too tight, biting into the veins.
“You could be charged with aggravated battery, Marcel,” I said.
“Yeah, I deserve it. I don’t know what made me do that.”
“Neither does anyone else. The detective said you asked for segregation.”
“Yeah, I don’t like being around amateurs. I need to relax a bit, too, get some shut-eye, watch a little TV.”
“I got good news for you,” I said.
“Yeah?” He shifted in his chair, a flicker of pain in his face.
“The guy you threatened is a good guy. He figures you were just drunk, which you and I know was not the case.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“The guy says no harm, no foul.”
Marcel’s eyes searched in space, then came back to mine. “You getting off on this?”
“We don’t like people wasting our time. You want wit pro, talk to the feds.”
“Wit pro is for snitches.”
“It beats the boneyard.”
I got up from my chair and used my handcuff key to unlock the bracelet on his left wrist, then locked it on a table leg.
“What are you trying to do to me?” he said.
“You’re afraid of Mark Shondell. The question is why.”
“I tried to tell you once before.”
“You saw lights flashing in his face during an electrical storm. That doesn’t mean he has supernatural powers.”
“Two days ago I was working in the garden and he was on the patio when he got a call from Eddy Firpo. Firpo’s a lawyer and a music promoter or some shit. Maybe he’s mixed up with Nazis, too.”
“I know who Firpo is. What about him?”
“He must have told Shondell his nephew and Isolde Balangie are releasing a music album. Shondell went nuts. The girl ain’t supposed to get near Johnny. Now they got an album out.”
“What does any of this have to do with you?”
“When he got off the phone, he knew I’d heard everyt’ing.”
“Heard what? Say it. Specifically.”
“He said to Firpo, ‘This is on you. I’m sending Gideon.’ ”
My mouth went dry.
“I’ve seen this guy. He doesn’t look human,” Marcel said. He began jerking the bracelet against the table leg. “Put me in lockdown or let me go. You hear me, Dave?”
“You saw Gideon Richetti?”
“I don’t know about his last name. But a guy named Gideon was in Shondell’s backyard. His skin was green. His neck looked like it was dripping scales into his shirt. I t’ought it was because of the light in the trees. Then I saw his fingers. I never seen fingers that long.”
“I’m going to get us a couple of cold drinks from the machine,” I said. “I think you need to talk to Father Julian.”
“How’s Father Julian gonna get rid of a guy like that?” he said. “Dave, I was in lockdown wit’ the worst people in the world. What we’re looking at now is different. You got to believe me.” Both his hands were shaking, the bracelet rattling against the table leg. “I heard somet’ing that don’t make sense. About a Jewish woman. Shondell said to the guy on the phone, ‘Drown her. Or gut her and weigh her with stones.’ ”
“I take back what I said about your alcohol content,” I said. “I think you left the dock too early today, partner.”
But in truth I was unnerved, and my show of incredulity was hypocritical. “What was the woman’s name, Marcel?”
“I can’t t’ink.”
“How do you know she’s Jewish?”
He stared as though seeing an image inside his head. “The name was Rosenberg. Leticia Rosenberg.”
“Go on,” I said.
He blinked. “I take that back. The first name was Leslie. Yeah, that’s it. Ever hear of somebody named Leslie Rosenberg?”
Chapter Twenty-one
I COULDN’T SLEEP THAT night. I thought about the late afternoon when I’d stood on the dock not far from the amusement pier and watched the waves swell in the sunset and boom on the beach and fill the air with a spray that was like the healing power of water from a baptismal font. Considering the present gravity of my situation, these were probably foolish thoughts to muse upon. But what recourse did I have in my dealings with either wicked men or unseen forces whose origins I didn’t want to think about?
Clete and I had the same problem. Telling others what we had seen or what we knew about the man named Gideon served only one purpose: Our listeners wanted to flee our presence. In effect, we were collaborating with the enemy and destroying ourselves. Somehow we had to turn our situation around.
Stonewall Jackson was an eccentric and improbable military figure, homely and unkempt, simplistic and doctrinaire. He paused to pray before an attack, giving the enemy more time to prepare, and galloped in battle with his right hand in the air because he believed there was an imbalance of blood in his body. He was also one of the greatest tacticians in the history of warfare. His most quoted tactical advice is “Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy.”
This was the opposite of everything Clete and I had done in our confrontations with the Shondell and Balangie families. It was not entirely our fault. The events I have described so far were frightening because they seemed born from a separate dimension
and, more disturbing, they had no connection to the world as we know it or the physical sciences on which we daily rely to explain our origins. It was like waking up one day and speculating that the spirits haunting the massive forests of pre-Christian Europe were indeed real and the Druids who hung ornaments on trees to seek their favor were not superstitious after all.
I feared for Clete more than for myself. The pain of his childhood, his memories of an accidental killing in Vietnam, the loss of his career as a detective were the invisible crown of thorns that sat always on his forehead. He already had enough weight on his shoulders without having to hump my pack.
Tuesday morning I went into Carroll LeBlanc’s office and told him I was going to New Orleans.
“To do what?” he said.
“Investigate the dismemberment of the two guys in the barrel.”
“That’s Vermilion Parish’s case.”
“That’s where they were dumped,” I said. “The homicide started here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Cut it out, Carroll. Mark Shondell had somebody put a meat saw to those poor bastards, and you know it.”
He had both feet on his desk. He picked up the yellow legal tablet from his blotter and stared at it. “I just got a call from Dana Magelli. He said Isolde Balangie showed up in a homeless shelter on Airline Highway, stoned out of her head.”
“Where is she now?”
“At her house. With Penelope and Adonis Balangie.”
I thought about the implications of that simple statement. LeBlanc caught it. “Yeah, exactly,” he said. “Mark Shondell just got his nose rubbed in it. You’re not going to New Orleans about the two guys in the barrel, are you?”
“No.”
“So why are you going?”
“A woman named Leslie Rosenberg.”
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“You know her?”
“She was a stripper on Bourbon,” he said. “I heard she hooked up with Adonis Balangie.”
“Past tense,” I said.
He let his feet drop to the floor. “What does Leslie Rosenberg have to do with anything?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” I said.
“Try.”
“Mark Shondell wants her disemboweled.”
He rubbed his face.
“What is it?” I said.
“That spot where you found the slave marbles? I heard that was part of a barracoon owned by the Shondell family. You know, one of those slave pens? I heard awful things got done there.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Probably coincidence?” he said, his face lowered, one hand twitching on his thigh.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Like hell,” he replied.
* * *
I CHECKED OUT A cruiser, turned on the flasher, and drove straight to Adonis Balangie’s home on Lake Pontchartrain. Out on the lake, I saw the boat with black sails that I had seen on my last visit to the Balangie home. Its sails were swollen with wind, the nylon shiny and wet from the waves bursting on the bow. I rang the doorbell. When I looked back at the lake, the sailboat was gone.
Adonis pulled open the door. He was wearing brown dress trousers with a stripe in them and thin suspenders and a yellow shirt that looked as soft and smooth as butter. “What do you want, Robicheaux?”
“What’s with the sailboat that has black sails?” I replied.
“You’re here to ask about sailboats?”
“No, I want to see how your stepdaughter is.”
“None of your business.”
“You went to Clete Purcel’s apartment with a couple of your trained morons and made a threat against me. How about you step outside and repeat your threat to my face?”
He looked over his shoulder, probably to see where Penelope was, then looked back at me. He started to speak, but I cut him off. “I hear Leslie Rosenberg is trying to clean up her life. That means you stay away from her. You copy on that, you fucking greaseball?”
I guess until that point I hadn’t realized the degree of animus I bore Adonis. Maybe it was the pride he seemed to take when he inspired fear in others, or the way he posed as a family man while he kept a triad of mistresses, or the fact that he used his stepdaughter as human currency with Mark Shondell. Or maybe I didn’t like to visualize his trysts with Leslie Rosenberg. No, this wasn’t a time for self-mortification. Adonis was everything I said he was: a bully and a parasite and a narcissist who deserved a .45 hollow-point in the mouth.
Penelope Balangie came through the French doors, a cat as plump as a pumpkin in her arms. “Oh, hello, Mr. Robicheaux. Please come in.”
“I understand Isolde is back home,” I said. “I just wanted to see how she’s doing.”
Adonis bit his lip and stared into space. “Mr. Robicheaux is here to cause trouble in any way he can, Penelope. It’s time he had a history lesson.”
I saw the apprehension in her eyes. “No. Don’t do that, Adonis. Please.”
“Oh, Detective Robicheaux won’t object,” he said. “He has all the answers. Some of his friends put my father in Angola. A seventy-two-year-old man working in a soybean field. My father aged a decade in three years.”
“Could I speak to your daughter, Miss Penelope?”
“I’m going to show you some film footage,” Adonis said. “After we’re finished, I think you’ll want to be on your way. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you have no interest in Gideon Richetti.”
I wanted to believe he was mocking me, that his mouth would twist in a cruel or amused fashion, that in effect he would become a categorical persona I could define and dismiss. But his eyes had darkened with the same cast I had seen in the eyes of men who had witnessed events and deeds that will never leave their dreams.
I followed him and Penelope into a small theater at the back of the house. There was a big screen on one wall and a projector on a platform at the back of the room. The seats were made of deep, soft leather and arranged stadium-style.
“The footage you’re going to see has been digitized,” Adonis said. “But none of the images or the lighting have been altered.”
“So?” I said.
“You’ve seen Gideon, haven’t you?” he said.
“Why would you think that?”
“He broke the neck of a cabbie in the Quarter,” Adonis said. “He must have shown up on a security camera in the vicinity or at the guesthouse where he was staying. But I suspect he also came to see you. Am I correct?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to confirm anything he said and add to his show of superiority. He turned on the projector. “This footage was taken at a fascist rally in Naples in 1927,” he said. “That’s Mussolini in the jodhpurs and tasseled fez in the midst of his Black Shirts on the platform. Keep your eye on the right-hand side of the screen.”
There was no soundtrack, but it wasn’t needed to convey the essence of the man and the probable content of his speech. His fists were knotted and propped on his hips, his chin and nose in the air, his rubbery lips moving in a way that made me think of a spastic colon. The faces of his followers were filled with delight. Then I saw, at the edge of the crowd, a tall, lithe, and muscular man wearing a slug cap and a disheveled suit, his nose hardly a bump, a half-grin on his face.
“Look familiar, Mr. Robicheaux?” Adonis said.
“Detective Robicheaux, if you don’t mind,” I said.
He froze the image on the screen. “Do you know the man in civilian clothes or not?”
“He looks like the guy named Gideon,” I said.
“Looks like?”
“Maybe he’s a relative of our guy,” I said.
“Right, there’re lots of people around who resemble pythons,” Adonis said. “I’ve got another question for you. Why is Gideon the only man on the platform who seems unsure if he got on the right bus?”
Again I refused to agree with him. I guess that was a foolish way to be. But I sincerely believed he was an evil man
and served no one’s interest except his own. “That’s the whole show?” I said.
He clicked the control button on the projector several times. “This next one is V-J Day 1945, on Bourbon Street. I wasn’t around then, but I hear it was a real blast.”
Yes, it was. On the day the Japanese surrendered, America was joyous from the East to the West Coast, and people in the Quarter poured into the streets, Dixieland bands blared on the balconies, and the dancers from the burlesque bars climbed on car tops and stripped off their clothes.
The footage on the screen had been taken at night not far from Tony Bacino’s gay joint at Bourbon and Toulouse. Maybe because of the late hour and the amount of alcohol consumed by the revelers, the faces in the crowd were grainy and stark, as though drawn with charcoal, their glee besotted and grotesque, more like a celebration of the fire-bombing of Dresden than the liberation of the earth. I don’t know why I felt this way. I know it seems unfair to the poor souls who were happy the war was over and that they or their family members would not have to die in it. All GIs who had seen the tenacity of the Japanese in the Pacific theater had ceased arguing with the doleful projection of “Golden Gate in ’48.” But the photos and newsreels that showed the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not easy to look at.
Adonis froze the frame again. “What do you see?”
“People getting loaded and having a fine time,” I said.
“Check the guy standing in the doorway at Tony Bacino’s.”
It was Gideon Richetti, if that indeed was his name. Except he had not aged from the 1927 newsreel; nor was he any older than the man I’d encountered at Henderson Swamp.
“How do you explain this, Mr. Robicheaux?” Adonis said.
“I can’t.”
“Look at his expression.”
“I don’t need to,” I said. “They’re all alike.”
“Who is?”
“Psychopaths. They’re unknowable. It’s a mistake to put yourself inside their head. If you do, you might not come back.”
“It looks as though the light is trembling on his face.”
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