“What did Blue Melton know about y’all that was so important you had to kill her? She was seventeen years old. Does that weigh on you at all, Mr. Donnelly?”
“I’ve killed no one. You have no right to say that.”
“Get your nose out of the air, bud,” Clete said. “As we speak, Varina Leboeuf is selling your snooty ass down the drain.”
“Tell me, Mr. Purcel, if what you say is true, why are you staging this little show for us? I don’t wish to offend you gentlemen, but don’t you think it’s time to grow up? An oil company doesn’t deliberately destroy its own drilling apparatus. It was an accident, a blip that is nothing compared to the daily environmental and human cost in the Middle East. I don’t hear you objecting to the things that go on over there. The Saudis cut off people’s heads.”
Clete lit his cigarette, the smoke drifting out of his mouth, his eyes focused on nothing. “This is our state, Jack. You and your friends are tourists,” he said.
“I have news for you, friend,” Donnelly said. “The sidewalks you stand on are paid for with money you borrow from foreigners.”
Donnelly and Woolsey got in the backseat of the Buick. The two security men looked at us from behind their shades, their expressions flat. The wind blew the coat of the man with the bump on his nose, exposing the strap of a shoulder holster. Then all of them drove away, leaving Clete and me in the parking lot, leaves swirling around our shoes.
“How did that just happen?” Clete said.
“We came on their turf. It was a mistake,” I said. “Take a look across the street.”
“At what?”
“The guy in the pickup truck. It’s Jesse Leboeuf,” I said.
“What’s he doing here?”
“I hate to guess,” I replied. I began punching in a 911 on my cell phone, but Leboeuf pulled into the traffic before I had finished.
When I got back to the department, I asked Wally, our head dispatcher, if he had received any reports on Jesse Leboeuf. Wally had been with the department for thirty-two years and still lived with his mother and never answered a question directly if there was a chance of turning it into a two-cushion bank shot. A conversation with Wally was as close to water torture as it comes. “You mean the Breat’alyzer test or causing a disturbance on Railroad Avenue?” he said.
“His daughter told me he was drunk. I guess she knew what she was talking about,” I said, determined not to take the bait.
“I t’ink he got a free pass on the Breat’alyzer.”
“Really? Thanks for the feedback.”
I started toward my office.
“Down on Railroad, it was a li’l different,” he said.
“That’s right, you did mention something about Railroad Avenue. Leboeuf got into it with somebody?”
“You could say that. A new black pimp was working the corner wit’ a couple of rock queens. They were both white. Leboeuf t’ought he’d straighten him out.”
“No kidding?”
“A kid wit’ a slingshot fired a marble into the back of Leboeuf’s head.”
“It couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.”
“You know what I t’ink?”
“What’s that, Wally?”
“Pretty sad, an old man full of hate like that, carrying it around all these years.”
“Don’t waste your sympathies.”
“He had a t’row-down on him.”
I stopped. “Say again?”
“He was carrying a drop. He’s retired. He don’t have no business doing that. He don’t like you, Dave. I wouldn’t want a man like that mad at me, no.”
I went to my office and called Varina at her father’s home on Cypremort Point.
“Oh, you again. How nice of you to call,” she said.
“Your father is obviously having some kind of breakdown. Either get him under control or we’ll lock him up,” I said.
“He’s taking a nap now and he’s fine, no thanks to you.”
“I saw him earlier today in Lafayette. I think he was following me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. He had a medical appointment there,” she said.
“Think back, Varina. My family and I have done nothing to harm you. I tried to be your friend. Alafair popped you in the mouth, but only after you verbally abused her friend. Isn’t it time to man up, or woman up, or whatever you want to call it, and stop blaming others for your problems?”
“I can’t express how I feel about you,” she replied.
So much for the Aquinian advice about erring on the side of charity, I thought.
Helen called me from outside the IC unit in Shreveport where her half sister was hospitalized and asked how everything was going in the department. Obviously, she was asking how everything was going with me and Clete and Gretchen Horowitz and my circular and unproductive investigation into the murder of Blue Melton. I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t want to deceive her, nor did I want to add to her troubles while she was already dealing with her half sister’s near-fatal injuries. “We’re doing okay,” I said. “When do you think you might be coming back?”
“Two or three days, I think. I get the sense you want to ask me or tell me something.”
“Jesse Leboeuf has been on a drunk and might try to square an old beef or two.”
“If you have to, put him in the jail ward at Iberia General. I’ll have a talk with him when I get back.”
“The situation with Gretchen Horowitz has gotten a little more complicated.”
“In what way?”
“She told Clete she was given a contract on me and Alafair. She was also told to clip Clete.”
“You and Clete clean this shit up, Pops. I don’t want to hear that girl’s name again.”
“Clean it up how?”
“I don’t care. Just do it. I’m too old for this kiddie-car stuff, and so are you. What else is going on?”
“Kiddie-car stuff?”
“Yeah, because I have a hard time taking this girl seriously. If she wants to be Bonnie Parker, she’s picked a pretty small stage to do it on. Anything else on your mind?”
“I think Alexis Dupree was an SS officer at Auschwitz. I think his real name is Karl Engels.”
“You’ve got evidence to that effect?”
“Nothing that’s going to put him in handcuffs.”
I could hear her breathing in the silence. “Okay, stay with it,” she said. “One way or another, the Duprees are mixed up with Tee Jolie’s disappearance and the murder of her sister. Let’s use whatever we can to make life interesting for them.”
“I’ve got to be honest with you, Helen. Gretchen Horowitz is the real deal. She’s not to be taken lightly.”
“Look, sometimes I turn a deaf ear to you and pretend you create problems that in actuality are already there. You’re bothered by injustice and can’t rest till you set things right. In other words, you’re an ongoing pain in the ass. In spite of that, I don’t know what I’d do without you. Say a prayer for Ilene. She might not make it.”
“I’m sorry, Helen.”
“Don’t let me down, bwana,” she said, and hung up.
20
That night it rained again, the way it always does with the advent of winter in Louisiana, clogging the rain
