A Private Cathedral

by James Lee Burke

  This is not a complaint. It’s just the way it is, and to pretend otherwise only intensifies the neurosis. The daylight is not necessarily a cure, either. The same images can hit you at a traffic light, or at your workplace, or when you’re making love, or when you’re getting swacked out of your head in a bar that has no clocks.

  Call it PTSD or agitated depression or psychoneurotic anxiety or all three in one package. The unconscious or the memory bank finds images that fit the emotion, and all of them are obscene or depraved or unbearably cruel. If you have a history as a juicer or as a user of army-hospital dope or as a romancer of barmaids who look like Elizabeth Taylor under the glow of a Dos Equis sign, you can find yourself not only back on the full-tilt boogie but inside a straitjacket, maybe sedated into the fourth dimension, no extra charge.

  If you are very unlucky and talk to untrained or inexperienced people about this syndrome, people who perhaps mean well but tell you to toughen up or to control your thoughts, you will probably enter a place that is the psychological equivalent of the Iron Maiden. In other words, as a black kid who’d had both arms blown off said to me on a hospital ship, “Welcome to Shitsville, Loot. Come on in, the water is fine. Just a little dirty.”

  I felt overcome with sorrow about Marcel’s death. I had thought him a psychopath and hence someone who, of his own volition, had murdered the light in his soul. But he had tried to go straight, had sought out Father Julian’s help, and had trusted me with many of his private thoughts, admitting in the last moments of his life his envy of me.

  I had identified him with the forces of cruelty, but in reality he was more a victim than a perpetrator, and my experience in the world, for what it was worth, had brought me no closer to an understanding of man’s predilection for inhumanity. No matter the society or the historical era, the succubus and the incubus seemed to work their way into our midst, or were latent or embryonic in us from the jump.

  Both Catholics and Protestants burned tens of thousands of women as witches. When the Puritans finished exterminating the Indians, they turned their talents on their neighbors and hanged nineteen of them and took three days in pressing one to death. In Europe, drawing and quartering, mass hangings, public emboweling, and death by fire—including the burning of Joan of Arc at age nineteen—were the message of the elite to those who had no power. Serfs impaled noblemen and raped their wives in front of them; they skinned bishops as well. Martin Luther despised Jews and was often quoted by the Nazis in their defense of the Final Solution. Hiroshima, Nanking, My Lai, their legacy is always there, their exponents and justifiers at the ready, the banner of heaven or nation flapping above their heads.

  By five A.M. I was shaking and wanted desperately to talk to Clete Purcel. But my calls went straight to voicemail. I also wanted to drive to St. Martinville and start drinking at sunrise in a dark brass-railed saloon with slow-moving ceiling fans not far from the Evangeline Oak where I had first kissed my wife, Bootsie. No, I didn’t want to simply drink. I wanted to swallow pitchers of Jack Daniel’s and soda and shaved ice and bruised mint, and chase them with frosted-mug beer and keep the snakes under control with vodka and Collins mix and cherries and orange slices, until my rockets had a three-day supply of fuel and I was on the far side of the moon.

  But I was about to learn that I didn’t need to drive to St. Martinville to blow out my doors. My deliverer from the sauce pulled into my driveway just as the rain stopped and the stars and moon went out of the sky and a fog bank forty feet high and as white and dense as cotton rolled off the bayou and swallowed my house. Talk about frying your own grits. I was just getting started.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  PENELOPE BALANGIE DIDN’T knock on the door. She clicked on the glass with her nails as though afraid she would wake me up. I took the chain off the door and opened it. She was holding a lemon meringue pie in a covered pie pan. “I thought you’d need something to eat.”

  “Where’d you get the pie?”

  “At the bakery.”

  I looked at my watch. It was 6:23 A.M. “The bakery is closed.”

  “I woke them up.”

  “You know what happened here?” I said.

  “The whole city knows.”

  Behind her, the fog was so thick I could hardly see the yard or trees or streetlamps. “Come in.”

  I had thrown out the rug Marcel died on and had cleaned the blood from the floor. I had also showered and shaved and changed clothes, and hoped I did not look like I felt. She walked past me into the kitchen and began making coffee without asking permission.

  “I don’t know if you should be here, Miss Penelope,” I said.

  She was no longer wearing the lavender suit and pillbox hat but a baby-blue cashmere suit with a white blouse and white hose, which meant she had come to New Iberia with luggage. “Sit down,” she said.

  “Kind of you to ask me,” I replied, and remained standing.

  “The man who died here? He was the one the killers were after?”

  “He may have been my half brother. At least that’s what he said before he shot himself.”

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Robicheaux.”

  “You have to forgive me, but I don’t understand you. In fact, nothing about you makes sense.”

  She took the plastic cover off the pie and got cups from the cabinet. “No one will believe my story. Nor will they believe yours or Mr. Purcel’s. That means we’re members of a very lonely club.”

  “So tell me the story.”

  “Maybe later. Eat first. Please. I want to explain something you’re probably experiencing now or will experience later.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic.” She placed her hand on my chest. I could feel my heart beating against it. I sat down.

  “Start eating,” she said.

  I didn’t argue.

  “People who commit suicide in a dramatic fashion often have an agenda and are involved in a fantasy that leads to their death. They’re filled with rage and seek revenge against those who have hurt them. They slash their wrists or jump from buildings or fire bullets into their brain. In their fantasy, they witness the discovery of their body by people they hate. In that way, they leave behind a legacy of guilt and sorrow. Don’t let this happen to you, Mr. Robicheaux.”

  I put a teaspoon of pie in my mouth and drank from the coffee cup she had placed by my elbow. But neither would go down. I choked and held a napkin to my mouth. She was standing behind me now. She spread her hand across my back. It felt as warm as an iron on cloth. “You’re shaking,” she said.

  “I have malaria.”

  “From where?”

  “Vietnam or the Philippines. Who cares where you get it?”

  “After all these years?”

  “Give it a break, Ms. Balangie,” I said.

  “You’re one of us now.”

  I stopped trying to eat. “One of what?”

  “The people who have to see into the other world, the one we try to deny in modern times.”

  “Sorry, I’m not up to listening to any more craziness, Italian or otherwise.”

  “Did the man who died see Gideon Richetti?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What does that tell you?”

  “The price of knowing the Balangie and Shondell families is too expensive.”

  “Your wife died recently?”

  “I’ve lost two wives.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  My hand was trembling on the teaspoon. “You need to leave.”

  “Walk me to the door.”

  “You can find your way.”

  “No. Get up.”

  I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and rose from the table. I looked straight into her eyes.

  “Well?” she said.

  “You’re a big girl. You need an escort to leave someone’s house?”

  “I want you to do just that. I mean, escort me.”

  My eyes lingered on hers. I felt a longing I co
uldn’t explain, as though I had never smelled a woman, or kissed one, or slept with one. I felt as I did when my mother abandoned her family. I felt as though I were on the edge of a grave, that the only light in the world was trapped inside my home, inside the fog, and the rest of the earth was disappearing.

  I put my arms around her and lifted her against my chest and put my mouth on hers. I felt her feet barely touching the tops of my shoes, her breasts against me, her fingernails digging into my back, her auburn hair warm and clean-smelling in my face, the ache in my loins unbearable.

  Then we were in my bed, and I went beneath a harbor off Bimini, the sunlight shattering on the surface, a coral cave inviting me deep into its recesses, its walls covered with pink lichen and the gossamer threads of sea life that had no name. Some believed this was the eastern edge of ancient Atlantis, a suboceanic kingdom where spring was eternal and mermaids wore flowers in their hair and where each morning one could cup water from the fountain of youth.

  But I could no longer control the images in my head, and I felt them slipping like confetti from my body into hers, and I buried my face in her hair and bit her shoulder and heard myself saying, “Pen… Pen… Pen,” as though it were the only word I knew.

  * * *

  I DIDN’T GO TO work that day. At six P.M. I bought a bucket of fried chicken and biscuits and a sealed cup of gravy at Popeyes, then took them to Clete’s cottage in the motor court on East Main. The rain had flooded the tree trunks along the banks of the Teche and quit at sunset. The sky was magenta and looked as soft as velvet, the bayou swirling with organic debris and yellow froth and dimpled with the water dripping from the trees. Clete saw me through his window and opened the door. “I’ve been calling you all day,” he said. “Where have you been?”

  I walked past him into his small living room. “I had my phone turned off. I was asleep.”

  “The whole day?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  He closed the door. “Did you ever figure LaForchette for a suicide?”

  “I had him figured wrong on several levels. You want to eat?” I put the Popeyes sack on the breakfast table.

  “Yeah, sure,” Clete said. He gave me a look. “I got a feeling more is on your mind than LaForchette going off-planet.”

  I told him how I’d busted up Adonis Balangie in his home theater, and how I’d moved Leslie Rosenberg and her daughter from Metairie to New Iberia, and finally, how I’d ended up under the waves off Bimini with Penelope Balangie at my side. He listened without interrupting, his hands like big animal paws on the breakfast table, his gaze focused on empty space.

  After I finished, he continued to stare without speaking.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Let’s see if I have this straight,” he said. “You start the day by beating the shit out of Adonis in his home, in front of his wife, then motor on over to the house of his regular punch and move her to New Iberia. His wife drops by your house after a guy blows out his brains in your living room, and to celebrate the occasion you put the blocks to her?”

  “Lay off it, Cletus.”

  “Excuse me, I left something out. You also put in some boom-boom time with what’s-her-name, the stripper and regular pump for Adonis?”

  “Leslie Rosenberg.”

  “Right,” Clete said. “So you think Adonis might be a little upset? A guy who thinks women are property?”

  “He dealt the play,” I said.

  “No, Penelope Balangie did.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Keep telling yourself that. She’ll have you mumbling to yourself.”

  “She swears she’s not married to Adonis.”

  “You believe her?” he said.

  “Yeah, I do.” But I stumbled on my words.

  “Why would a broad with her kind of class use up her life as a house ornament for a greaseball? Ask yourself another question: Why would a guy like Adonis not try to nail her? How would you like to look at those knockers every morning and say, ‘Nope, not for me. Hands off.’ ”

  “Can you stop thinking in those terms?”

  “You know I’m telling the truth.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “And you do?”

  This time I didn’t try to answer. “I’ll see you later.”

  “You didn’t ask why I was calling you all day. Li’l Face Dautrieve came to my office. She’s still living in the Loreauville quarters and hooking halftime. A piece of shit named Jess Bottoms fixed her up with some of his friends and paid her with bills that were marked with purple dye.”

  “Like the bills given to the hooker in New Orleans by Gideon Richetti?”

  “That was my first thought,” he said. “I called Dana Magelli and got him to run the serial numbers. Bingo. Li’l Face’s bills are part of the same series.”

  “Who is Jess Bottoms?”

  “He manages pit bull fights.”

  “Why did Li’l Face bring the bills to you?”

  “She thinks there’s a gris-gris on them,” he said. “Bottoms says he’ll give her fresh bills, but he’s got to get the marked ones back. She already spent some of them.”

  “So you think Richetti tried to buy another prostitute out of the life, and instead the money got spread around to her friends?”

  “Something like that,” Clete said. “Li’l Face is scared of Bottoms. He’s big on beating up women.”

  “Where’s Bottoms now?” I asked.

  “Sunset,” he said. “Once known as the nigger-knocking capital of Louisiana.”

  * * *

  WE DROVE IN Clete’s Caddy to a paintless farmhouse south of Opelousas. It was surrounded by burning sugarcane stubble that glowed alight whenever the wind gusted. There was no grass in the yard, no livestock in the pens. I could see the silhouette of a two-story barn in back, and hear dogs barking.

  “How do you want to play it?” I said.

  Clete cut the engine and killed the headlights. “He was a deputy sheriff in Mississippi.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t be subtle,” Clete replied.

  We walked up on the gallery and knocked on the door. The sky was an ink wash, the smoke from the stubble eye-watering. Through the glass in the door, I saw a man rise from the kitchen table and walk through a hallway into the living room. I have been in law enforcement a long time. In the American South, there is a kind of lawman every decent cop instantly recognizes. His uniform is usually soiled and wrinkled, more like army fatigues or marine utilities, as though he has worked long hours in it. If allowed, he wears a coned cowboy hat. His posture and physicality exude a quiet sense of confidence, whether he’s leaning against a rail or gazing idly at something he doesn’t like. There is no moral light in his eyes. For reasons you cannot explain, he bears an animus toward the world, particularly toward people of color, no matter how poor or powerless they are.

  Jess Bottoms opened the wood door but left the screen latched. His head had the shape of a smoked ham, his shoulders thick and humped like football pads. He wore khaki trousers and suspenders, half-top slip-on boots, and a long-sleeve snap-button white shirt with silver stripes in it. His stomach hung over his belt like thirty pounds of bread dough. He glared at Clete, then at me.

  I opened my badge holder. “Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department, Mr. Bottoms. I’d like to get some information from you regarding a prostitute named Li’l Face Dautrieve.”

  “Nigger works out of the quarters in Loreauville?” he said.

  “Can we come in?” I asked.

  “I’m eating.”

  “It’s in your interest,” I said.

  “What is this, Purcel?” he said.

  “It’s like he says, Jess. We think you might be in danger.”

  Bottoms unlatched the screen. “I got people coming over. They arrive, you leave.”

  He pushed the screen open with his foot and then walked back into the kitchen. The interior of the house looked worn and old, the wallpaper water-
stained; the lamps barely gave light. But the kitchen had obviously been refurbished, as though it were the only part of the home that had a purpose. The appliances were new; a flat-screen television was playing on the wall. I heard dogs barking again. Bottoms sat down and dug into a T-bone, chasing it with sips from a bottle of beer.

  “You have a kennel?” I said.

  His eyes were on the TV. “What’s this danger I’m in?”

  “Can we turn off the television?” I asked.

  “I’m watching a show,” he said, his eyes not leaving the screen.

  “Li’l Face says you paid her three hundred dollars to pull a train,” Clete said.

  “I never knew a nigger who didn’t lie,” he said.

  “This is part of a homicide investigation, Mr. Bottoms,” I said. “We’re not interested in the sex life of your friends. You gave Li’l Face some marked bills. We’d appreciate your telling us where those bills came from.”

  “I dug them out of your mother’s maggoty, insignificant cunt,” he said. “Does that answer your question?”

  “That’s a mouthful,” I said.

  Clete walked to the television and hit the off switch with the flat of his fist. “What’s with those dogs?”

  “They’re dogs,” Bottoms said. “Turn the set on.”

  “What time do you feed them?” Clete said. “You feed them after you fight them?”

  Bottoms cut a piece of steak and lifted it to his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “How about you suck my dick, Purcel? When you finish, you can tell the Dautrieve girl her black ass is grass.”

  “I’ll be right back, Dave,” Clete said. He went out the back door, letting it slam.

  “What’s he doing?” Bottoms said.

  “Search me.”

  Bottoms looked out the screen at the darkness and the sparks twirling into the sky. “Maybe I can share some information with you,” he said.

  “If I share some with you?”

  “My enterprises tend to be cash-only. I made a mistake giving marked bills to a hooker. I was treating some businessmen. There’s nothing illegal in what I was doing.”