Light of the World

by James Lee Burke

  “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Not at all?” he said.

  “Maybe a little. Like a thought that’s buried in the unconscious. Like an old girlfriend winking at you on the street corner.”

  “That bad?”

  “It comes and goes. I don’t think about it as often; I dream about it. The dreams are always nightmares. Sometimes I can’t wake myself up, and I walk around thinking I’m drunk.”

  “How often do you dream about it?”

  “Every third night, about four A.M.”

  “All these years?”

  “Except when I was back on the dirty boogie. Then I didn’t have to dream. My life was a nightmare twenty-four hours a day,” I said.

  He stared through the trees into the sunlight. Down below, Albert was watering the grass. I could hear birds singing and chipmunks clattering in the rocks. I thought of all the days Clete and I had hiked through woods to get to an isolated pond in the Atchafalaya Basin. I thought about diving the wreck of a German sub that drifted up and down the Louisiana coast, and knocking down ducks inside a blind on Whiskey Bay, and trolling for marlin south of Key Largo, the bait bouncing in our wake. I thought of all the Cubans and Cajuns and Texas fisherpeople we had known along the southern rim of the United States, and the open-air oyster bars we had eaten in and the boats on which we had hauled tarpons as thick as logs over the gunwales. What is the sum total of a man’s life? I knew the answer, and it wasn’t complicated. At the bottom of the ninth, you count up the people you love, both friends and family, and you add their names to the fine places you’ve been and the good things you’ve done, and you have it.

  Clete stood up and dusted off the seat of his trousers. “Let’s hike on up a bit higher,” he said.

  “Where’s Gretchen?”

  “I wish I knew. When it comes to her old trade, she’s a loner. She said something I hadn’t thought about. That Surrette is going to come apart.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “She’s known guys like him, guys the Mob took out. She said they’re all anal-retentives. They’ve got a master plan. When it doesn’t work out, their world goes to shit.”

  “What’s Surrette’s master plan?”

  “Breaking Felicity.”

  I didn’t look at his face. The implication in his voice was enough. I heard him lift the bottle again, the whiskey sloshing inside the neck.

  “Sometimes you have to keep an empty space in your head and not let the wrong thoughts get in it,” I said.

  “That’s why I drink this. It’s why I need a little slack sometimes, noble mon,” he said.

  I heard him take another hit and squeak the cork tight in the bottle.

  We walked up the hill, me in front, angling toward the crest in a northwesterly direction. The new grass was coming up between the winter thatch, and in places where a spring had leaked down the slope, I could see the sharply defined tracks of deer and at least one canine.

  “Is that a wolf track?” Clete said.

  “I think it is.”

  “That’s another thing that’s weird,” he said. “Surrette comes and goes and doesn’t seem to give the wolves any thought.”

  “They’re brothers-in-arms?”

  “I didn’t say that. Don’t pretend it’s not weird, though. I don’t feel easy out here unless I’ve got my piece.”

  “He’s a sociopath. He thinks the universe can’t go on without him.”

  Clete pointed down the slope at a depression where a large animal, probably a bear, had been digging grubs. The soil was black and loamy and burrowed out from under a log. Inside the dirt and the disturbed leaves and pine needles, I could see a rusty length of chain. I worked my way down the slope and jerked on the chain until the bear trap on the other end pulled free from the ground.

  “That’s the one he almost got Gretchen with?” Clete said.

  I ran my thumb along the teeth on the two half-moon steel bands that had sprung tightly together. “Yeah, this is probably it.”

  “You think he buried it because his prints are on it?” Clete said.

  “There’s a good chance. Or he planned to come back and get it.”

  Clete looked toward the north, the trees swaying overhead. A hawk was drifting on the wind stream, its feathers ruffling. “Surrette is closer to us than we think.”

  “Or he was,” I replied.

  “Maybe we should start knocking on some doors,” he said.

  I followed him down the hill, dragging the bear trap through the thatch and detritus on the forest floor, the chain as cold and damp as a serpent in my palm.

  GRETCHEN ONCE READ an autobiographical work titled Something About a Soldier, written by a Miami novelist named Charles Willeford. At age thirteen, in the bottom of the Depression, the author ran away from an orphanage and rode the rods all over the American West. Three years later, he enlisted in the horse cavalry and was stationed in the Philippines and at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. In his account, Willeford talked about certain individuals for whom there were no lines. Some of them were fellow enlisted men, twenty-year-olds who looked him straight in the face and said, never blinking, “There are no lines.” They were talking about sexual intercourse with Filipino children.

  The lesson Willeford took away from the experience was simple: There are always lines. No matter how bad it gets, at Normandy or in the Hürtgen Forest or at Arnhem, where he commanded a tank, there are lines. Under a black flag, inside the belly of the beast, in a man-made hell like Auschwitz, there are still lines, and the day you say otherwise is the day something flies out of your breast and does not return.

  Gretchen had read Willeford’s autobiography two weeks before she popped Bix Golightly. For years she had created different scenarios in anticipation of catching up with him one day. She had convinced herself that a man who would sodomize a six-year-old girl deserved anything that happened to him.

  She took the contract without fee and flew to New Orleans and followed him around the city for two days. On the third night, he crossed the bridge into Algiers and parked on a deserted side street. She could see every detail of his face as she approached his vehicle—the scar tissue in his eyebrows, the bonelike forehead, the Mongolian eyes, the crooked bridge of his nose, the flat profile from the punches he had taken at Angola and in the ring. He was smoking a perfumed cigarette and at first showed no particular interest in her presence. Then he recognized her as the contract hitter he knew only as Caruso, an almost mythic figure with obscure origins in Miami’s Little Havana. He may not have made the connection between Caruso and the little girl whose life he had ruined, but he knew that the intersection of his life with Caruso’s on this backstreet not far from the oily water of the Mississippi was not coincidence and that the last page on his calendar was about to be ripped off.

  He began talking to her through the window as though they were old friends, his words spilling out nonsensically, his breath rife with funk. She never spoke. She watched him as she would a hamster racing around inside a glass box. She thought of popping him in the neck and pulling him out on the asphalt, where she would finish the job. She didn’t. There were always lines.

  She squeezed off three rounds, so fast that Golightly never knew what hit him. The side of his head slapped the steering wheel, his mouth dropped open, his eyes stared at a garbage can on the opposite curb as though it were the most interesting object on earth.

  Then she spat on his corpse, indifferent to the possibilities of DNA analysis, and walked away.

  Now she was troubled again by Charles Willeford’s anecdotal admonition regarding lines. She had talked for forty-five minutes at the hospital with Rhonda Fayhee and had concluded that the simple and innocent girl would live with nightmares the rest of her life. Fortunately, she had been sedated so heavily by Surrette that she did not remember some of the things he probably did to her.

  During the captivity, the bag had stayed on Rhonda’s head, and she never saw her surroundings. Nevertheless, s
he remembered details that were unmistakable: the smell of damp stone or brick, a faint glow of sunlight through a window at dawn, a sound like the chuck of waves against a boathouse or a beach.

  She also thought she’d heard a plane, the motors gunning during takeoff, the sound muffled by wind blowing in trees that were thickly leafed and grew side by side. There was another detail, one that seemed out of context, surreal, one that a drowning person might remember if he had been sucked into a whirlpool while people chatted on dry land a few feet away. Rhonda was sure she heard people singing while she was being loaded into a vehicle. The words she heard just before the door slammed shut were “Life is like a mountain railroad, with an engineer that’s brave.”

  Later, Gretchen Googled the lyrics and discovered they were part of a hymn often sung in southern churches.

  Where was Rhonda Fayhee held prisoner? In all probability, it was the same place Felicity Louviere was being held now.

  “Rhonda, do you think there was an airstrip close by? Did you hear planes coming in overhead?” Gretchen asked.

  The girl said the sound of the plane had been down below somewhere.

  “Below the level of the basement?” Gretchen asked.

  “Yes,” the girl replied. “It droned a long time before it took off. It sounded like it was turning. It made a fluttering sound.”

  The details about the place of captivity did not fit together.

  For Gretchen, the answer to the riddle probably lay with Caspian Younger, a man whose whole life had been one of entitlement, a man who may have been complicit in the murder of his adopted daughter. Should lines be an issue? Should a man like Caspian Younger be protected from accountability while his wife was tortured to death? What a stupid question to ask, Gretchen thought.

  She drove to the Younger compound, expecting to be confronted with security personnel who would do everything in their power to turn her away. That’s what should have happened. Instead, she would learn that the Younger family drama was not the stuff of Macbeth or Oedipus Rex or King Arthur and Mordred or the horns blowing along the road to Roncevaux. Rather, it was the same material to be found in soap opera, as sordid and saccharine and petty as the behavior of the players in any work of pathos. The portrayal of the patrician protagonist and his tragic descent from grace made for lovely entertainment, but it seldom had anything to do with reality.

  Gretchen parked her truck in front of the Younger compound and walked down the flagstones to the front door. The only vehicle she could see was a faded compact parked by the carriage house. It had dents in one fender and silver duct tape wrapped around a broken side mirror. The yard was empty, the heavy oak door ajar. She could hear voices inside and a sound like someone diving off a springboard into a swimming pool. With the tips of her fingers, she eased the door wider and walked through the foyer into the living room. Down a hallway, she could see Caspian Younger in swim trunks and a bathrobe, standing by French doors that gave onto a patio. He was pouring from a bottle of Cold Duck into a wineglass. He was unshaved and his robe was open, the mat of hair on his bony chest glistening with water. In the background, a girl not over nineteen climbed out of the pool, her bikini clinging to her body with little more density than wet Kleenex. Jack Boyd put his cigar in an ashtray on top of a glass table and handed her a towel.

  Caspian took a sip from his wineglass, his gaze roving over Gretchen’s face and throat and breasts. “You again,” he said.

  “You look like you’re pretty busted up over your wife’s abduction,” she said.

  “I have no control over Felicity’s fate. She goes her own way. I go mine. You should know that by this time,” he replied.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “I’m not sure. Out and about, I guess. It’s what he does best,” he replied. “He’s never been a homebody. Do you know I can read your thoughts?”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Try this. You think I know where Felicity is. You’re going to do horrible things to me until I tell you.”

  “How’s it feel?” she asked.

  “How does what feel?”

  “To be controlled by a guy like Surrette. The man who suffocated your daughter.”

  He brushed at one eye as though a lash had caught in the lid. He was standing by a black granite–topped wet bar. A piece of stationery containing a note written in flowing blue calligraphy was positioned neatly under a paperweight on the granite.

  “I know about your illegitimate birth, Ms. Horowitz,” he said. “I know that your mother was a whore and a heroin addict, and I know that you’ve murdered people for hire. So I’m going to share some things with you that might help you to understand a situation I’ve lived with most of my life.” He picked up the piece of stationery from the wet bar. The paper was thick, the color of French-vanilla ice cream. A family coat of arms was embossed delicately in the grain. “I’ll give you the highlights,” he said. “I took a nap earlier, and when I woke up, I discovered that my father had decided to tell me of his fear that Wyatt Dixon was his son. This is something I’d known for many years, primarily because my father has screwed women all over the world and used to brag about it. In his note, he said he has proof that Dixon is not his son, and for that he is thankful. He also says I am his only surviving son and that he loves me. Isn’t that sweet? It’s a bit like my father drinking a glass of champagne and pissing it into a cup, then handing it to me to drink.” He paused and studied her face, perhaps waiting to see what effect his words would have. “A little too complex?” he said. “To explain: If Dixon were my father’s offspring, his affections might be divided. Isn’t that a grand compliment to receive? You get it now?”

  “What kind of day do you think your wife is having?” Gretchen asked.

  “I’ve had that kind of guilt heaped on me all my life, Ms. Horowitz. You still didn’t get the gist of my story, did you? I thought the Mob hired intelligent people to do the kind of work you do.”

  “I got in through affirmative action,” she replied.

  “My father got it all wrong. Wyatt Dixon is his bastard son. His girlfriend was here and told me. Dixon is my half brother. That’s a little hard to deal with. How would you like to find out your half sister is the bride of Dracula?”

  “Bertha Phelps was here?” Gretchen said.

  “An hour ago. I sent her down the road with a kick in her fat rump. I suspect she ran back to her cowboy.”

  “You kicked Wyatt Dixon’s girlfriend in the butt?”

  “I’m about to do it to you, too. And I’ll do it to him if he comes around here again.”

  “You’re going to do a beat-down on Wyatt Dixon?”

  “There’re ways,” he replied. “What are you doing?”

  She stepped out on the patio. The girl in the bikini was sitting in a deck chair, taking a hit off a pair of roach clips. “What’s your name, honey?” Gretchen asked.

  “Dora,” the girl said.

  “You need to hit the road, Dora. My father beat the shit out of these two assholes. I may have to do the same. You don’t want to be here when that happens.”

  The girl looked at Jack Boyd. He smiled and shook his head. “She’s a kidder,” he said.

  “This guy was fired from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department because he’s a dirty cop,” Gretchen said. “His bud was a geek named Bill Pepper who liked to tie up girls and rub his penis on them. A serial killer named Asa Surrette emasculated Pepper up at Swan Lake. Surrette is buds with Caspian Younger. That’s the kind of people you’re hanging out with.”

  The girl looked at Jack Boyd again, this time clearly frightened.

  “Don’t pay attention to her,” Boyd said. He was still smiling. “I was in a car accident. She makes movies. Ask her.”

  “Good-bye, Dora,” Gretchen said.

  Dora glanced at Jack Boyd, then at Gretchen. She pulled on a pair of sandals, picked up her beach bag, and walked hurriedly through the side yard to her car, her buttocks jiggling.

 
; “Why don’t you give Caspian a break?” Boyd said.

  “Where is Surrette?” Gretchen said.

  “You think I know that?” Boyd said.

  “I hope one of you does.”

  “Or it’s going to get rough?” Boyd said.

  “I’ll handle this, Jack,” Caspian said, stepping out on the patio, setting aside his wineglass. “Ms. Horowitz, I don’t want to be unkind, but would you please go away? You and your father and Mr. Robicheaux and his daughter have been a constant nuisance. Mr. Boyd and I could have had your father arrested for aggravated assault, but we didn’t. Know why? Because that’s not my way. With one phone call, I could have your father ground into fish chum. He would disappear without a trace, other than a bloody skim floating on Flathead Lake.”

  “You’re connected in Vegas?”

  “I know some of the same people you do. Except they listen to me because I have money,” he said. “You won’t change anything. I made some mistakes. There’s no way to undo them. What’s done is done.”

  “You’re going to give me Surrette. On this one, there are no lines.”

  His eyes shifted sideways, as though he were processing her words. “I’m sure that makes sense to you. It’s lost on me.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Your window of opportunity is closing,” she said.

  “I’ll walk you to your truck. You’re a filmmaker. Maybe I can help you later. I know a number of people in the industry.” He fitted his hand around her upper arm and squeezed it tentatively. “Nice. You lift weights?”

  Jack Boyd was grinning lasciviously.

  Gretchen wet her bottom lip before she spoke. “I was never good at communication skills. A psychologist told me that. He suggested I try what he called ‘massage therapy.’ He was going to do it for me in his off hours. For free.”

  Caspian was standing beside her as he clutched her arm. Without removing his hand, he stepped in front of her, looking warmly into her face. His eyes were pale blue and didn’t seem to belong inside the graininess of his face, like blond hair on a Mexican. He had a weak chin and a nose that was both sharp and small. She had seen toy men like him on the French Riviera. They seemed like caricatures of nineteenth-century aristocracy whose bloodline had run out. Gretchen wondered what life would have been like for Caspian Younger in the kinds of public schools she had attended in Miami and Brooklyn.