face.”
“That’s a graphic image, Mr. Robicheaux. Why are you telling me this?”
“It’s probably just the ambience. I remember when Didi Gee used to hold a person’s hand in an aquarium over by that wall. I came in here once when the water was full of blood.”
“I’m not one who needs convincing of man’s inhumanity to man.”
“I meant you no offense.”
“Of course you did,” he said. “Good day to you, sir.”
I started to leave. He was an elderly man. The tattoo on his left arm was of a kind that only a visitor to hell could have acquired. Sometimes there are occasions when charity requires that we accept arrogance and rudeness and deception in others. I didn’t feel this was one of them. “You lied to me, sir.”
“How dare you?” he replied, his eyes coming to life.
The next morning at work, Helen Soileau called me into her office. She was watering the plants on her windowsill with a tin sprinkler painted with flowers. “I just got off the phone with Alexis Dupree. You called an eighty-nine-year-old man a liar?” she said.
“I said he lied to me. There’s a difference.”
“Not to him. My ear is still numb. What were you doing in his office?”
I explained to her about Didoni Giacano’s old safe and the marker that supposedly was found inside it. “The receptionist said the safe was taken out five or six months ago. The old man said otherwise. In front of her. Her face turned red.”
“Maybe Dupree was confused. Or maybe the receptionist was.”
“I think he was lying. I also think he was mocking me.”
“What happens in New Orleans is not our business.”
“I went there on my own time.”
“You identified yourself at Dupree’s office as a member of this department. That’s why he called here and yelled in the phone for five minutes. I don’t need this kind of crap, Pops.”
“That old man is corrupt.”
“Half the state is underwater, and the other half is under indictment. Our own congressional representative said that.”
“What was the name of the death camp Dupree was in?” I asked.
“What difference does it make?”
“Was it Ravensbruck?”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“I’m almost sure it was Ravensbruck. I read a feature on Mr. Dupree in the Advocate about two years ago.”
“Why do you care which camp he was in? Dave, I think you’re losing your mind.”
“Ravensbruck was a women’s camp, most of them Polish Jews,” I said.
“I’m about to throw a flowerpot at your head,” she said.
“I don’t think the problem is mine,” I replied.
I went back to my office. Ten minutes later, Helen buzzed my extension. “I Googled Ravensbruck,” she said. “Yes, it was primarily a women’s extermination camp, but a camp for male prisoners was right next to it. The inmates were liberated by the Russians in 1945. Does this get World War Two off the table?”
“That old man is hinky, and so is his grandson,” I replied.
I heard her ease the receiver into the phone cradle, the plastic surfaces clattering against each other.
It started raining again that night, hard, in big drops that stung like hail. Through the back window, I could see leaves floating under the oaks and, in the distance, the drawbridge at Burke Street glowing inside the rain. I heard Molly’s car pull into the porte cochere. She came through the back door, a damp bag of groceries clutched under one arm, her skin and hair shiny with water. “Did you see my note on the board?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Clete called,” she said, putting down her groceries on the breakfast table.
“What did he want?”
She tried to smile. “I could hear music in the background.”
“He was tanked?”
“More like his boat left the dock a little early.”
“Was he in town or phoning from New Orleans?”
“He didn’t say. I think Clete is trying to destroy himself,” she said.
When I didn’t reply, she began putting away the groceries. She had the arms and shoulders of a countrywoman, and when she set a heavy can on a shelf, I could see her shirt tighten on her back. She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and looked at me. “I don’t want to see you lying on a gurney in an emergency room with a bullet hole in your chest again. Is that wrong?” she said.
“Clete’s in serious trouble, and he doesn’t have many friends.”
“Don’t get mixed up in it.”
“All of us would be dead if it wasn’t for Clete.”
“You can be his friend without making the same kinds of choices he does. You’ve never learned that.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t,” she said.
She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her and turned the lock.
I put on my raincoat and hat and drove to Clete’s motor court down the Teche. His cottage was the last one on a driveway that dead-ended in a grove of live oaks by the bayou. His Caddy was parked by the trees, the rain clicking loudly on the starched top. The cottage was dark, and pine needles had clotted in the rain gutters, and water was running down the walls. I knocked, then knocked again harder, with the flat of my fist. A lamp went on inside, and Clete opened the door in his skivvies, the unventilated room sour with the smell of weed and beer sweat and unchanged bed linens. “Hey, Dave, what’s the haps?” he said.
“You ever hear of opening a window?” I said, going inside.
“I nodded out. Is it morning?”
“No. Molly said you called.”
“Yeah?” he said, rubbing his hand over his face, moving toward the breakfast table, where a manila folder lay open. “I forgot why I called. I was drinking doubles at Clementine’s, and a switch went off in my head. It’s not morning?”
“It’s not even ten P.M.”
“I guess I was having some kind of crazy dream,” he said. He closed the folder and moved it aside, as though straightening things so we could have a cup of coffee. His nylon shoulder holster and blue-black snub-nosed. 38 were hanging on the back of a chair. A huge old-style blackjack, one teardropped in shape and stitched with a leather cover and mounted on a spring and wood handle, lay by the manila folder. “I dreamed some kids were chasing me through the Irish Channel. They had bricks in their hands. What a funny dream to have.”
“Why don’t you take a shower, and then we’ll talk.”
“About what?”
“Why you called me.”
“I think it was about Frankie Giacano. He called me up and begged me to help him.”
“Frankie Gee begged?”
“He was about to shit his pants. He thinks he’s going to get capped like Bix Golightly and Waylon Grimes.”
“Why?”
“He won’t say.”
“Why does he think you can get him off the hook?”
“He mentioned your name. He said, ‘You and Robicheaux won’t let this thing die.’”
“What’s he talking about?” I asked.
