“Shut up,” Clete said, walking him toward Tee Boy, who was sitting on a low wall that separated the parking lot from the hospital. Tee Boy was eating a sandwich partially wrapped in aluminum foil.
“What you got here?” he asked.
“Bertrand Melancon, three bench warrants, strong-arm robbery, intimidating witnesses, and general shit-head behavior since he was first defecated into the world. I’m surrendering custody of Bertrand to you. I already warned him about what happens to people who step on your shoeshine.”
“This ain’t funny, Purcel.”
“You’re right, it isn’t. Bertrand and his brother Eddy ran me down with their car on Saturday evening. They did this while I was searching the panel truck of their fellow scum wad Andre Rochon. In the back of that panel truck I saw a stuffed animal and a coil of polyethylene rope. Just before shit-breath here ran me over, I remembered an article I saw in the newspaper about three black guys who abducted a fifteen-year-old girl. She was walking back from a street fair in the Lower Nine. She was carrying a stuffed bear. These guys dragged the girl into a panel truck and tied her up and raped her. You still live in the Lower Nine, don’t you, Tee Boy?”
“Yeah,” Tee Boy replied, brushing crumbs off his face, his eyes settling on Bertrand.
“You think this outstanding example of young manhood could be a possible suspect?” Clete asked.
“What about it, boy?” Tee Boy said.
“What about what?” Bertrand said.
“Are you planning to step on my shoeshine?”
“Are you crazy, man?”
Tee Boy hit him hard in the face with the flat of his hand, the kind of blow that rattles eyeballs in their sockets. “I ax you a question. You gonna answer it?”
“No, suh, I ain’t planning to step on your shoeshine.”
“You kidnap and rape a girl in the Lower Nine?”
“I brought my brother to the hospital ’cause somebody shot him t’rou the t’roat. A kid wit’ us was killed, too. I ain’t tried to run away. I come here for help. I missed my court appearance ’cause I was sick. That’s all you got on me. You quit hitting me.”
“Turn around. Look out there at that boat tied to the car bumper,” Clete said. “See those bodies in there? Those bodies belong to dead people. You’re going to be cuffed to them. It’s a long way to the chain-link jail at the airport. If you were Tee Boy and you got stuck with four corpses and a dog turd like yourself and you had a chance to deep-six the whole collection at a convenient underwater location, what would you do?”
But Clete realized he was firing blanks. Bertrand Melancon had seen a bullet turn his brother’s body into yesterday’s ice cream, and manufactured horror scenarios from a bail-skip chaser came in a poor second on the shock scale. Clete also realized that Tee Boy Pellerin was not listening to him, either, that his eyes were fastened on Bertrand and that his face was breaking into a grin as he connected dots and information Clete had no knowledge of.
“Want to let me in on it?” Clete said.
“We had a ‘shots fired’ and a fatality about two or three hours ago. Four looters were working out of a boat back toward Claiborne. A kid took a big one through the head. Guess whose place they’d just hit?”
“I don’t know,” Clete replied.
“Guy owns a flower store. Also a bunch of escort services. His wife looks like the Bride of Frankenstein.” Tee Boy was starting to laugh now.
“Sidney Kovick?” Clete said.
“These pukes ripped off the most dangerous gangster in New Orleans and tore his house apart on top of it. One of our guys went inside and said it looked like somebody had drove a fire truck through the walls.” Tee Boy was choking on his sandwich bread now, laughing so hard that tears were rolling down his cheeks. “Hey, kid, if you stole anything from Sidney Kovick, mail it to him COD from Alaska, then buy a gun and shoot yourself. With luck, he won’t find your grave.”
Tee Boy stood up and coughed into his palm until his knees were buckling.
“Who’s this Kovick guy?” Bertrand said to Clete. “Y’all just jerking my stick, right?”
Chapter 11
AFTER SEVEN DAYS I was rotated back to New Iberia. I had almost forgotten Natalia Ramos, the companion of Father Jude LeBlanc. In fact, I had deliberately pushed her name out of my mind. I wanted no more of New Orleans and other people’s grief. I just wanted to be back on Bayou Teche with my family and Tripod, our raccoon, and our unneutered warrior cat, Snuggs. I wanted to wake in the morning to the smell of coffee and moldy pecan husks in the yard and camellia bushes dripping with dew and the fecund odor of fish spawning in the bayou. I wanted to wake to the great gold-green, sun-spangled promise of the South Louisiana in which I had grown up. I didn’t want to be part of the history taking place in our state.
“Phone’s ringing, Dave,” Alafair said from the kitchen.
“Would you answer it, please?”
Through the doorway I could see her frying eggs and ham slices in a heavy iron skillet, lifting it by its handle without a hot pad, her back to me. It was hard to believe she was the same little El Salvadoran Indian girl I had pulled from a submerged plane out on the salt many years ago. She clanged the skillet on the stove and picked up the phone, resting her rump against the drain board, giving me a look.
“Is Dave Robicheaux here? Wait a minute. I’ll check,” she said. She lowered the receiver, the mouthpiece uncovered. “Dave, are you here? If you are, a lady would like to speak to you.”
That’s what you get when your kid goes to Reed College and joins kickboxing clubs.
I took the receiver from her hand. “Hello?” I said.
“This is Natalia Ramos, Mr. Robicheaux. I’m here at the shelter, the one you told me to go to. Have you found out where Jude went? I can’t get no information from anybody at the shelter. I thought maybe you had lists of people who was picked up by the Coast Guard.”
“No, ma’am, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Jude’s in pain all the time from his cancer. He went down to the Lower Nine to give his people communion. He’d always been scared to give people communion at Mass. ”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Ramos, but you’re not making sense.”
“His hands tremble all the time. He thinks he’ll drop the chalice. He’d always let another priest give out Communion at Mass. But this time he was gonna say Mass and give people Communion.”
In the background I could hear voices echoing in a large area, perhaps inside a gymnasium or a National Guard armory. Alafair was setting my breakfast on the kitchen table, placing the plate and knife and fork and coffee cup and saucer carefully on the surface so as not to make any noise. Her hair was long and black on her shoulders, her figure lovely inside her jeans and pink blouse.
I didn’t know what to say to Natalia Ramos. “Where are you?” I asked.
“At the high school in Franklin.”
“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Where’s Chula at?” she asked.
“Your brother?”
“Yeah, where’d you put him at?”
“In the Iberia Parish Prison, along with his fall partner.”
I thought her next statement would be an abrasive one. But I was wrong.
“Maybe he can get some help there. Jail is the only place Chula ever did all right. I’ll be waiting for you, Mr. Robicheaux.”
I placed the telephone receiver back in the cradle, already regretting that I had taken the call.
“Who was that?” Alafair said.
“A Central American prostitute and junkie who was shacked up with a Catholic priest.”
I sat down and began eating. I could feel Alafair behind me, like a shadow breaking against the light. She rested her hand on my shoulder. “Dave, you have the best heart of any man I’ve ever known,” she said.
