bowl.
I DROVE TO Helen Soileau’s house in an old neighborhood close to the downtown area. Her house had a wide gallery and tall windows with ventilated shutters like my own. Almost every Saturday morning children came to her house ostensibly to help with the yard work, but the morning activities usually ended with homemade ice cream and hot dogs. On this particular morning four or five kids were helping her weed her flower beds. I parked my pickup at the curb and walked up on the lawn. She got up from her knees, brushing grains of dirt from her gloves. She looked at my face.
“You okay, Pops?” she said.
“We need to get Bledsoe into custody.”
“What else is new?”
“He may have taken a shot at Bertrand Melancon last night. If that’s the case, I suspect he’s about to blow town. I think he might try to get even with a few other people before he does.”
“You said ‘if.’”
“Maybe it wasn’t Bledsoe. Sidney Kovick’s gumballs are in New Iberia. Maybe they’d like to take Melancon off at the neck, too. Plus, I think Otis Baylor may have found out Melancon was staying at his grandmother’s in Loreauville.”
“How does one black kid get half the planet on his case?”
“But the one certifiable psychopath in the mix is still Ronald Bledsoe. He also has the greatest motivation. He tried to cut his own deal with Melancon and Melancon dimed him with Kovick.”
The day was cool, the sky a hard blue, the sunlight through the trees like gold coins on her face. She watched two children spraying charcoal lighter on the portable grill in the side yard. “You guys wait for me to do that,” she said.
Then she looked back at me, her thumbs hooked in the sides of her jeans. “We rousted him once. It didn’t work. We can’t tell the guy ‘We don’t like you. Get out of town before sundown.’”
“How would you like him around these kids?”
“You want my job, run for office. In the meantime, don’t lecture me, Streak.”
I got back in my truck without saying good-bye and drove away. In my rearview mirror I saw her toe at the grass, her thumbs still hooked in her jeans, like a teenage girl who had just lost something of value.
ALAFAIR CAME HOME at noon, blowing out her breath as she came through the door, a drawstring bag slung over her shoulder. I wanted her to tell me her overnight stay in Lafayette had been uneventful, that somehow my concerns were inflated. But I knew better, even before she spoke.
“I think I saw Ronald Bledsoe this morning,” she said. “We were eating breakfast in a cafe by the university. He was parked in a blue car under a tree. We went to the mall and I saw him again.”
“Why didn’t you call me, Alf?”
“Because I wasn’t sure the man in the blue car was Bledsoe. At the mall I was. Are you going to arrest him because he goes to the same mall I do?”
“If there’s a pattern, we can get a restraining order.”
“With Bledsoe, that’s like writing a traffic citation on the guys who flew planes into the Towers.”
She was right. To make matters worse, we were now arguing among ourselves about a degenerate.
“Stay close today, will you, kiddo?”
“I’m not a child, Dave. Don’t treat me like one,” she replied.
Clete Purcel had always said “Bust them or dust them.” But what do you do with those who have probably been looking for an executioner all their lives, perhaps ensuring their evil lives on in the rest of us long after they are gone? What do you do when those you love most become angry when you try to protect them?
Maybe there was another way to deal with Ronald Bledsoe.
I WENT TO CITY PARK and used my cell phone to call Sidney Kovick’s flower shop. His wife answered the phone.
“It’s Dave Robicheaux, Eunice. I need to talk to Sidney.”
“He’s not here.”
“On Saturday?”
“No, he’s not here,” she repeated. But she didn’t tell me where he was.
“This isn’t a courtesy call. Marco Scarlotti and Charlie Weiss are in New Iberia. I think I know why they’re here, too. Sidney needs to talk with me.”
“Give me your number.”
I gave her both my cell and home numbers. I thought the conversation was over, but it wasn’t.
“Dave, you don’t know what’s going on. Years ago, Sidney committed a terrible deed. It never allowed him any peace. But he met Father Jude LeBlanc through Natalia Ramos, the El Salvadoran girl he hired to clean his office. You remember my mentioning her to you?”
“Yeah, I do,” I replied, my attention starting to wane.
“Father Jude talked to Sidney about changing his life and making up for what he did. Sidney is trying hard to be the best man he can. He’s not always successful, but he’s trying. Be patient with him, will you?”
Patient with Sidney Kovick? Sidney as victim was a hard act to buy into. “He’s in New Iberia, isn’t he?”
“I’m not sure.”
Yeah, you are, Eunice, I thought. But I let it go. “I look forward to hearing from him,” I said, and closed my cell phone.
Actually, at this point I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk with Sidney or not. Was Sidney actually trying to change or just feeding Eunice’s illusions? I was tempted to turn my cell phone off. But as I sat in the picnic shelter on the bayou’s edge, I could look across the water and see the shadows in my backyard and the caladiums rippling around the trunks of the trees and the lighted kitchen where Molly and Alafair were preparing an early supper so we could go to Saturday afternoon Mass in Loreauville.
Somewhere out there in the larger world, William Blake’s tiger waited to take it all from me.
Which was more important, protecting one’s family or worrying about the redemption of a man who had put on a raincoat and rubber boots before entering a basement with a chain saw? In my mind’s eye I saw his victim-in handcuffs, probably bound at the ankles, his mouth taped, his eyes popping with terror. What kind of human being could do something like that to his fellow man?
Just as I got to my truck, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I flipped it open and placed it against my ear. “Dave Robicheaux,” I said.
“My wife says you want to talk with me,” a voice said.
“You in town, Sidney?”
“Why did you call my shop?”
“I warned you a long time ago about Ronald Bledsoe, but you wouldn’t listen. He’s got his own deal going on those blood diamonds. I think he’s planning to hurt my daughter as well. If that happens, you’re going to have the worst fucking experience of your life.”
“No, you’re the one who doesn’t listen, Robicheaux. Marco and Charlie and a few other guys from the Giacano family work for me. Bledsoe doesn’t. You got that straight? I want my goods back. It’s a pretty simple concept.”
“Then who does he work for?”
“Maybe the Fuller Brush Company. They hire a lot of bald-headed guys.”
There was still time for one more run at Sidney before he broke the connection. “After the loss of your little boy, did you kidnap your neighbor, Sidney? Did you take his legs off with a chain saw?”
“I’m going to give you a short answer here. Did I use a chain saw on somebody? No. Did a guy in Jefferson Parish disappear? Yeah, he did. Is he coming back? No, he ain’t. Tell Bertrand Melancon I’m the only person in this state who can keep him alive.”
The line went dead.
THAT AFTERNOON we attended Mass in Loreauville, then returned to the house. The wind was blowing hard
