A Private Cathedral

by James Lee Burke

  “I’ll hook you up and put you in a cage if I have to,” I said.

  He got in his pink Caddy and slammed the door, then started the engine and rolled down the window. “Mark Shondell turns people against each other. You’re falling into his trap, Streak. Now step back.”

  He put his vehicle in reverse and almost drove over my foot, then floored the accelerator and bent down on the wheel like an albino ape. As I watched him drive away in the darkness, the blue-dot brake lights coming on at the drawbridge, I felt I was witnessing the end of an era or perhaps the end of innocence in our lives. For the first time, I truly understood why the music of Johnny Shondell and Isolde Balangie laid such a large claim on our souls.

  * * *

  ON SUNDAY HELEN told reporters from The Daily Iberian, The Daily Advertiser, and The Associated Press that the death of Delmer Pickins was being investigated as a hit-and-run homicide and that Pickins, a former inmate of Huntsville Penitentiary, was in all probability fleeing the scene of an assault on a local priest when he was struck by a vehicle traveling at high speed. The violence of the impact indicated the vehicle was a large one, perhaps a truck.

  Two days later, Mark Shondell and a houseguest, a Central American army general who may have been involved in the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero, were having breakfast by the pool when a sniper locked down on them from across the bayou and let off three rounds. The first splattered a decanter of tomato juice on the white tablecloth; the second clipped off the general’s right index finger; and the third popped through Shondell’s blue silk kimono as he was racing for the safety of the house, with no injury to Shondell.

  As soon as we got the 911, I called Clete’s cell phone, which went immediately to voicemail. I also called his office in New Iberia and his office in the French Quarter. Both receptionists told me he was out of town, perhaps fishing in the Florida Keys. Or Biloxi. Or Kemah over in Texas. “You know how Mr. Clete is,” the receptionist in New Iberia said.

  “No, I don’t know how Mr. Clete is,” I said. “Can you tell me?”

  “He goes here, he goes there. You never know where he’s at. Want to leave a message?”

  There is nothing like life in southern Louisiana.

  At noon I called Penelope Balangie at her home on Lake Pontchartrain. That probably does not seem a wise thing to have done. But I had no doubt about the identity of the shooter on the bayou. Clete was a dead shot. That the shooter had fired three times without mortally wounding his target suggested either an amateur or a pro. I believed it was the latter. My only doubt had to do with Clete’s intention.

  “Is that you, Dave?” Penelope said.

  Her voice had an effect on me I wasn’t expecting. You remember what it was like after you had a fling or a romance or even a marriage and you thought it was over, that it was better for both of you to part, that after a kiss or a handshake or even a last go-round in the sack you’d say goodbye and remain friends, then you’d see her or him walking down a street or getting on the elevator unexpectedly with you, and your heart would drop and your mouth would go dry and you knew that in fifteen minutes you were going to be out of breath and pawing at her or his clothes as well as yours, knowing you were back on the dirty boogie and about to get it on in serious fashion.

  “How you doin’, Pen?” I said.

  “Not bad. How about you?”

  “We’ve had a few troubles over here,” I said. “Somebody shot at Mark Shondell this morning. That means he’s going to go full out in his war against us.”

  “Who is ‘us’?”

  “That depends. I’m wondering if Adonis might help Shondell by parking one between my shoulder blades.”

  “Adonis wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah? Johnny Shondell said you bear me ill will.”

  “That isn’t true. Do you know where Johnny is?” she said.

  “He said he and Isolde were going to Nashville to cut a Hank Williams tribute record.”

  “They left Nashville on a rented plane. Johnny has a pilot’s license. No one knows where they are. I’m very worried. Mark Shondell won’t rest until he ruins Isolde’s life.”

  “Why did you ever turn her over to him?” I asked.

  “Because I was a fool,” she said.

  “Maybe she’ll call. She and Johnny are kids. They don’t know what parental worry is like.”

  There was a silence. Then she said, “There’s still a chance for us, Dave.”

  I had to get out of my discussion with her. She was beautiful and educated and smelled like the ocean or perhaps a mermaid and a garden full of flowers when she made love. “Is Mark Shondell mixed up with white supremacists?”

  “He’s an elitist. He looks down on them.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” I said.

  “He uses them.”

  “Gideon saved the life of Father Julian.”

  “What?”

  I told her what had happened at Julian’s house.

  “I’m glad he helped Father Hebert, but that will not free Gideon of his burden,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “To reclaim his soul, he has to be forgiven by someone he has injured. Gideon has the intellect of a peasant. He’s dull-witted and heavy-handed, and he often hurts rather than helps people. That’s why he’s so dangerous. He hurt your friend Mr. Purcel. If I were you, I would be protective of my friend.”

  “Are you trying to mess me up, Penelope?”

  “I don’t think this conversation is serving any purpose.”

  “Put Adonis on,” I said.

  “I loved you,” she said. “I thought you were the one.”

  She hung up slowly, so the receiver would rattle in the phone cradle.

  * * *

  CLETE CALLED ME on my cell that night. I had just spread newspaper on the floor and fed my cats and my pet raccoon Tripod. One of the cats believed Tripod was hogging the food and bit him in the tail. “Where are you?” I said to Clete, trying to distribute a can of sardines with one hand.

  “In Texas. My receptionist says you were looking for me.”

  “Big surprise?”

  “Johnny and Isolde might have gotten abducted in Nashville. I think I got a lead on them.”

  “Did you finally embalm your brain?”

  “Do you want to know what I found out about Johnny and Isolde or not?”

  “No, I don’t. You shot off an El Salvadoran general’s finger. You just missed blowing one of Mark Shondell’s kidneys out of his side.”

  “Says who?”

  “There’s only one person I know who’s that crazy.”

  “Gee, I’m really story to hear that a pair of great guys like Shondell and the greaser had their breakfast disturbed,” he said.

  “I didn’t say it happened at breakfast.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I talked with Penelope Balangie today,” I said. “Gideon Richetti can’t redeem himself until he’s forgiven by someone he has hurt. She thinks he may unintentionally do harm to you.”

  “You called Penelope Balangie?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m the guy with bad judgment? Tell me who’s sticking his dork in the light socket.” He waited. “You there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t blame you,” he said. “That broad is every guy’s wet dream. She might even be on the square. Look, I’ve been checking out some ties Mark Shondell has in Miami and Jersey, Fat Tony Salerno’s crowd, mostly. There’s this rich-boy gutter rat that’s about to make some political moves. The gutter rat is also mixed up with the Russian mafia.”

  “What’s that got to do with us?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But Shondell is a big player. This is how one guy close to the gutter rat put it: Working-class people think liberals look down on them, and they think the black people and Hispanics want to take away everything they’ve worked for. Shondell thinks the gutter rat is headed for the White House.”


  “Are you in the slop chute?”

  “One other thing. Remember when we saw a boat with black sails out on Lake Pontchartrain, in front of the Balangie compound? I saw one yesterday.”

  “Talk to you later, Clete.”

  “Don’t hang up on me. This Gideon stuff is tearing me apart. I see that guy in my sleep. I see the fire he was building under my head.”

  “You know how I feel when you say that?”

  “No.”

  “I wish you’d parked one in Shondell’s face.”

  * * *

  BUT SYMPATHIZING WITH Clete’s irrational behavior brought me no solace. I woke each day with the sense that time was ending. This was a phenomenon I had carried with me since childhood, when an evil man named Mack seduced my mother and made her a whore and destroyed our family. After Mack came into our lives, I had nightmares about the sun turning black in the sky and dipping over the edge of the earth, never to return.

  The dream followed me to the Central Highlands of Vietnam and the bars of Saigon and Hong Kong and Manila and the drunk tank in the New Orleans French Quarter. But now the dream was no longer a dream. The feeling of loss didn’t end with the dawn; I carried it throughout the day. The season did not follow its own rules. At the end of the day, the moon was orange and low in the sky, the dust rising like ash from the fields, as though autumn were upon us rather than the end of winter and the advent of spring.

  I felt as though I had stepped inside a place that was outside time, a place where reason and the laws of cause and effect held no sway, where the fears we inherit from our simian forebears flare in the unconscious and lead us back to the monsters we thought we had left behind.

  Helen Soileau assigned Carroll LeBlanc and me to the assault on Father Julian and what she called the “hit-and-run.” One of the first people we questioned was Leslie Rosenberg. In my case the reason was not entirely professional, either. I had the same inclinations toward her as I did Penelope Balangie. This does not speak well for me. A psychiatrist would probably say the loss of my mother at an early age was responsible for my absorption with women, but I cannot imagine any man not being absorbed with them. If you live long enough, you eventually learn that almost every aspect of the universe is a mystery, no more understandable by the scientist than by the metaphysician. And the greatest mystery in creation is the spiritual and healing transformation of a woman when she gives herself to you. It’s a gift you cannot repay, a memory that never dies. That was the way I felt about Leslie. She had another quality, one possessed by almost every badass biker girl. They may pop chewing gum and have a pout on their face and eyes that say “Wanna fuck,” but I’ve yet to see one who wasn’t a closet flower child.

  I say “we” questioned Leslie. That’s not quite right. When Carroll and I went to her cottage, he didn’t get out of the cruiser.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “My stomach,” he said. “You mind going in by yourself?”

  “No problem.”

  I knocked on the door. Leslie opened the screen and let me in but continued to stare at the cruiser. “Who’s that with you?”

  “Carroll LeBlanc.”

  “A vice cop?”

  “No, he’s Homicide. He was a vice cop at NOPD.”

  “I remember him. He tried to grab my ass.”

  “He’s a different guy today,” I said.

  “I’ll send a few bucks to Franklin Graham. I got to pick up the sitter and get to work. Is this about Father Julian and the guy who got splattered on the two-lane?”

  “Yeah, we’ve had a hard time catching up with you.”

  “I don’t like to be used,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I talked with Father Julian. You already know what happened. Nobody is going to believe any of us. Why be a pincushion?”

  “Did you see Gideon Richetti?”

  “I saw him last night. Outside my window.”

  “Not the night of the assault? Last night?”

  “That’s what I said. He’s changing.”

  I was afraid to ask what she meant.

  “His skin, his pigmentation,” she said. “He has hands, not claws.”

  “I’d like for LeBlanc to hear this.”

  “He’s not coming in this house.”

  “What does Richetti want from you?”

  “Nothing. He says I’m already a spirit, so his apology to me is too late. He wants your friend.”

  “Clete Purcel?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “You have to talk to this guy, Leslie.”

  “My ass.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “God, are you weird,” she said.

  “I thought you might think better of me.”

  She stepped closer to me, her eyes six inches from mine. Her face was unlined, her teeth white. Her breath smelled like marinated strawberries. “Maybe I do. But I’m bad news.”

  “In what way?”

  “I wasn’t burned because I was a Jew. I was burned because I was a witch. I didn’t get on a pole on Bourbon Street because a bunch of drunk dimwits raped me; I loved every minute of it. I got high watching those fat shits drool on the bar.”

  “Yesterday’s box score,” I said.

  “Great metaphor. I’m fucked up, honey-bunny. I always will be. Spirit or not, that’s why I’m attracted to guys like you.”

  I could not believe I had just had a conversation of this kind. Who needs hooch and dope? I’ll take the natural world anytime.

  * * *

  CARROLL LEBLANC AND I headed back toward New Iberia. The tide was coming in on the Teche, and the wind was pushing waves up on the banks. There had been tornado warnings before sunrise.

  “I really don’t feel good, Dave,” Carroll said.

  “Want to go to the ER?”

  “Maybe to City Park for a few minutes. They got a Coca-Cola machine in the rec hall.”

  “Sure.”

  “What’d Rosenberg tell you?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We can talk later.”

  “I got a problem.”

  I looked at the side of his face. His eyes were half-lidded, as though he were nodding off or on downers. “You got a daughter,” he said. “You know how they get in trouble.”

  Alafair didn’t get in trouble. Or at least she didn’t look for it. But I didn’t correct him. “She’s at Reed in Portland.”

  “I let my daughter talk me into sending her to the University of Texas. I had to borrow the out-of-state tuition.”

  I didn’t want to talk about money and college debt. You borrow it for your kids or you don’t. As I mentioned, Alafair had an academic scholarship. “You sure about the ER, Carroll?”

  “Yeah, just get us to the park. I got to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, man. I can’t think straight.”

  I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with Carroll’s behavior. We drove down East Main, through the tunnel of oaks that ends at the Shadows, and crossed the drawbridge and pulled under the shade trees by the rec building in the park. Carroll opened the passenger door and vomited. I went inside and bought an ice-cold Coke from the soda machine and handed it to him. He drank from the can, then wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.

  “I don’t want to hear about people’s finances,” I said. “Mine are bad enough.”

  “A masseur knocked up my daughter and gave her herpes. She had an abortion. Now she’s using cocaine. How can this much shit happen in six months?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m broke and I got to get her in rehab.”

  I didn’t know where the conversation was going or why Carroll had chosen me to unload on. “Can I do anything?”

  “I think maybe this is punishment for all the things I did in vice at NOPD. That kid I killed, the freebies from the hookers, all the flake I packed up my nose.”

  “You’re not being punished for anythi
ng, Carroll. A bad guy hurt your daughter. He’s the issue, not you, not her. Tell the Man on High you’re sorry for your mistakes and you need some help down here. One day your daughter will be all right.”

  He blew his nose. “Sorry I got to talking so personal.”

  “I don’t think you heard me.”

  “About what?”

  “Talking to the Man.”

  “You’re probably right, but how do you handle all this stuff in the meanwhile? Anyway, thanks for the Coke. You didn’t tell me what Rosenberg said back there?”

  “Gideon Richetti is at the center of all this.”

  His face turned the color of a toadstool.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  CLETE CALLED ME on my landline that night. The moon was up, the clouds torn like strips of black cotton, leaves and broken tree limbs floating in the Teche. A tornado had touched down outside Lake Charles. I had brought in the cats and my raccoon, Tripod. All of them were lying down on the throw rug, tails flipping, as though they were observing the events of the evening. When Alafair was home, they got on the furniture, including the breakfast table, which they covered with seat smears. Why do I mention these little guys at this juncture? Because at that moment they were the only aspects of normalcy in my life.

  I picked up the phone on the third ring. “What’s the haps, Cletus?”

  “I’m on the bottom of Terrebonne Parish. I could use some backup in the next twelve hours or so. I think a pile of shit is about to go down.”

  “What kind of shit?”

  “Adonis and his old lady are over here. I saw them at a restaurant in Houma. Mark Shondell has a house on stilts south of here. This insider guy I know says Johnny and Isolde got kidnapped by some dickheads, guys who used to run with Delmer Perkins. Guys who carry blowtorches and pliers.”

  “Mark Shondell is behind the kidnapping?”

  “He wants to control their careers and screw up the Balangies. But the bigger deal is political. All these cocksuckers are. They’ve been with us since the German Bund. They’ve just been waiting for their time in history.”