the truck used by the guys who tried to kill me in Lafayette.”
“The truck was stolen, right? What’s the point? A guy who works for the same company is scooping ice cream outside? Big deal.”
“Guidry says he got his job through Julie Ardoin. She told him to call the company and use her name.”
“Julie is on the Sugar Cane Festival committee. She helps with all the events connected with the building.”
“No, it’s too much coincidence. Guidry says her husband was flying dope into the country.”
“That’s not exceptional,” he said. “Most of the guys who do that stuff are either crop dusters or helicopter pilots who get tired of landing on rigs in fifty-knot gales. For fuck’s sake, let’s listen to the band, okay?”
“Think about it, Cletus. When we landed in that harbor off the island, she came in like a leaf gliding onto a pond.”
“Yeah, because she’s a good pilot. You want somebody from the Japanese air force flying us around?”
“You’re not going to listen to anything I say, are you?”
“Because nothing you say makes sense,” he replied. “You’ve got me worried, Dave. I think you’re losing it.”
“I’ve got you worried? That’s just great,” I said, and punched him in the top of the chest with my finger.
I saw the pain flicker in his face and wanted to shoot myself. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” I said.
“Forget it, big mon. I’m right as rain. Now let’s listen to the music.”
I propped my hands on my knees, then squeezed my temples and closed my eyes and reopened them and stared at a spot between my shoes. I felt as though I were drowning. I felt exactly as I had when a black medic straddled my thighs and tore a cellophane wrapper from a package of cigarettes with his teeth and pressed it over the red bubble escaping from the hole in my chest, my lung filling with blood, my body dropping from beneath his knees into a black well. When I raised my head, the audience and the western band were spinning around me.
“Speak of the devil,” Clete said, “here she comes.”
“Who?”
“Who else? Every time I think of that woman, I want to unscrew my big boy and mail it to the South Pole in hopes the penguins will bury it under a glacier.”
Varina Leboeuf was not merely passing by. She was headed right toward us. “I’m glad I found you,” she said.
“Yeah, what’s the haps? I thought Halloween was over,” Clete said.
“You asshole,” Varina said.
“I hear that a lot-mostly from skells and crack whores. I’m sorry for whatever harm I caused you, Varina, but how about giving us a break here?”
“You don’t know who your friends are,” she said.
“You had my office creeped,” he said.
She clenched her jaw, her mouth tightening. “Is everything all right?” she said.
“Why shouldn’t it be?” Clete said.
“Because I saw Alafair and Gretchen outside,” she said. “I think they were with Julie Ardoin.”
“They went to the restroom,” Clete said.
“No, they didn’t. They were outside.”
“Why would they be outside? So what if they were?” Clete said.
“You’re not listening to me. Two men were out there. I know them. They work for Pierre. I think they’re involved with stolen paintings or something. They’re the ones Gretchen beat up.”
“Sit down and say all that again,” I said.
“I’m trying to help out here. Don’t be angry at me,” she said.
“I’m not angry at you. I can’t hear you. There’s too much noise. Sit down,” I said.
“Did Julie Ardoin ever work for you?” Clete said.
“Of course not. Why would she work for me? I hardly know her. Her husband used to fly Pierre around, but I never spent any time with Julie. I have to go.”
I took her by the arm and pulled her down to Julie Ardoin’s empty chair. “Are you telling us Alafair and Gretchen are in harm’s way?” I said.
“God, you’re an idiot. Do I have to write it on the wall?” she said. She walked away from us, her southwestern prairie skirt swishing on the backs of her legs.
“She’s wearing a gold belt,” Clete said.
“So what?”
“So was the woman I saw with Pierre Dupree at Dupree’s house.”
My head was splitting.
I went back to my seat. Molly was still sitting by herself. “You didn’t see Alf?” I said.
“No. She wasn’t with Clete?” she said.
“She and Gretchen went to the restroom with Julie Ardoin. I thought maybe she came back here.”
“She’s fine. Stop worrying. Come on, Dave, enjoy yourself.”
“Varina Leboeuf said some gumballs who want to hurt Gretchen were outside, and so were Alafair and Gretchen.”
“Varina likes to stir things up. She’s a manipulator. She wants to stick pins in Clete for dumping her. Now sit down.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Where’s Clete?”
“Looking for Gretchen.”
“I’m coming, too.”
“No, stay here. Alafair won’t know where we are if she comes back and you’re gone.”
Maybe I was losing it, as Clete had said. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Would a couple of goons try to do payback on Gretchen Horowitz at a music festival attended by hundreds of people? Was Varina Leboeuf telling the truth? Was she a mixture of good and evil rather than the morally bankrupt person I had come to regard her as? Did she have parameters I hadn’t given her credit for?
Clete and I had thrown away the rule book and were paying the price. We had protected Gretchen Horowitz and, in the meantime, had accomplished nothing in solving the abduction of Tee Jolie Melton and the murder of her sister, Blue. The greatest irony of all was the fact that our adversaries, whoever they were, thought we had information about them that we didn’t. Ultimately, what was it all about? The answer was oil: millions of barrels of it that had settled on the bottom of the Gulf or that were floating northward, like brownish-red fingers, into Louisiana’s wetlands. But dwelling on an environmental catastrophe in the industrial era did little or no good. It was like watching the casket of one’s slain son or daughter being lowered into the ground and trying to analyze the causes of war at the same time. The real villains always skated. The soldier paid the dues; a light went out forever in someone’s home; and the rest of us went on with our lives. The scenario has never changed. The faces of the players might change, but the original script was probably written in charcoal on the wall of a cave long ago, and I believe we’ve conceded to its demands ever since.
At the moment I didn’t care about the oil in the Gulf or Gretchen Horowitz or even Tee Jolie Melton. I didn’t care about my state or my job or honor or right and wrong. I wanted my daughter, Alafair, at my side, and I wanted to go home with her and my wife, Molly, and be with our pets, Tripod and Snuggs, in our kitchen, the doors locked and the windows fastened, all of us gathered around a table where we would break and share bread and give no heed to winter storms or the leaves shedding with the season and the tidal ebb that drained the Teche of its water.
The acceptance of mortality in one’s life is no easy matter. But anyone who says he has accepted the premature mortality of his child is lying. There is an enormous difference between living with a child’s death and accepting it. The former takes a type of courage that few people understand. Why was I having these thoughts? Because I felt sick inside. I felt sick because I knew that Clete and I had provoked a group of people who were genuinely iniquitous and who planned to hurt us as badly as they could, no matter what the cost. This may seem like a problematic raison d’etre for the behavior of villainous individuals, unless you consider that there are groups of people in our midst who steal elections, commit war crimes, pollute the water we drink and the air we breathe, and
