the department. I watched Clete load his duffel bag into the baggage compartment behind the cabin area. The muzzle of his AR-15 and my cut-down Remington pump were sticking out of the bag. “How hot is this going to be, Dave?” she asked.
“It’s a flip of the coin,” I said.
“I think I know that island,” she said.
“You’ve been there?”
“I think Bob may have flown there.” The wind was blowing hard out of a gray sky, flattening her khakis and blue cotton shirt against her body. “He got mixed up with a televangelist here’bouts. His name is Amidee Broussard. Bob took him on a couple of charters. You know who I’m talking about?”
“I sure do.”
“What are we into, Streak?”
“I haven’t figured it out. It involves the Dupree family in St. Mary Parish and maybe Varina Leboeuf. It may involve some oil guys, too. Maybe Tee Jolie Melton is on that island. Maybe these are the guys who killed her sister.”
“Does Helen know about this trip?”
“She’s got enough to worry about as it is.”
“Tee Jolie Melton is a singer, right? Why would she be with the Duprees? They wouldn’t take time to spit on most of us.”
“What the Duprees can’t have, they take.”
“Tell your friend to ride in back.”
Clete was on the edge of the tarmac, locking up his Cadillac. “You have a problem with Clete?” I asked.
“I need to balance the weight. I don’t need a freight car in the front seat,” she replied.
Clete opened the cabin door of the plane and threw a canvas rucksack of food inside. “Let’s kick some butt,” he said.
We took off buffeting in the wind and flew through a long stretch of low clouds full of rain and popped out on the other side into a patch of blue with a wonderful overview of Louisiana’s wetlands, miles and miles of marsh grass and gum trees and rivers and bayous and flooded woods and sandspits covered with white birds. Through the side window, I could see the plane’s shadow racing across an inaccessible lake that was lime green with algae; then the shadow seemed to leap from the water’s surface and continue across a dense canopy of willows and cypresses that had turned gold with the season. From the air, the wetlands looked as virginal as they had been when John James Audubon first saw them, untouched by the ax and the dredge boat, thousands of square miles that are the greatest argument for the existence of God that I know of.
At the edge of the freshwater marsh, the canals that had been dug in grid fashion from the Gulf were now bulbous in shape, like giant worms that had been stepped on. I didn’t want to look at it, in the same way that you don’t want to look at people throwing litter out of a car window, or at pornography, or at an adult mistreating a child. This was even worse, because the injury to the wetlands was not the result of an individual act committed by a primitive and stupid person; it had been done collectively and with consent, and the damage it had caused was ongoing, with no end in sight. Eventually, most of the green-gray landmass below me would probably turn to silt and be washed away, and there would be no Ionian poet to witness and record its passing, as there had been for the ancient world.
I looked straight ahead at the darkening horizon and tried not to think the thoughts I was thinking. We crossed Lafourche and Jefferson parishes and flew over Barataria Bay and then crossed the long umbilical cord of land extending into the Gulf known as Plaquemines Parish, the old fiefdom of Leander Perez, a racist and dictatorial politician who ordered a Catholic church padlocked when the archbishop installed a black man as pastor. In the distance, I could see the smoky-green waters of the Gulf and, on the horizon, a line of blue-black thunderheads forked with lightning.
Clete was sleeping with his head on his chest. I could feel the airframe shuddering in the updrafts. “That’s Grand Gosier Island,” Julie said. “I’m going down on the deck. Hold on to your ass.”
22
We made a wide turn east of the national wildlife refuge, rain hitting the windshield, the wings wet and slick and bright against a sky growing blacker by the minute. In the distance, I could see an island with a biscuit-colored apron of beach around it and a cove on the near side and a compound with palm trees in it. My ears began popping as we started our descent. “Anybody want a ham-and-onion sandwich?” Clete said.
“Tell him to shut up unless he wants to walk,” Julie said, her eyes fixed on the cove and the waves sliding across a sandbar at the entrance and capping inside it.
We leveled out at about one hundred feet above the water, the rain hitting as hard as pellets on the windshield and cabin roof, a downdraft pounding us so violently that for a moment I didn’t hear the engine. Up ahead I could see a strip of beach and pilings sticking out of the surf and what appeared to be a fortress with ten- foot walls around it. The tapered trunks of palm trees extended above the walls, beating in the wind. Our plane dipped down toward the water, then suddenly, the pontoons smacked the surface, and a dirty spray of foam blanketed the windshield and whipped back in strings across the side windows. A piling that probably once supported a dock or jetty missed the starboard wing by under six feet.
“Wow!” Clete said. “What do you do for kicks on your days off?”
Julie had cut the engine and was opening and closing her mouth, as though clearing her ears. “Would you mind?” she said.
“Mind what?” Clete said.
“Removing your onion breath from my face.”
“Sorry,” he said.
The rain was dancing on the chop and drumming on the wings and roof. The wind had pushed us into the shallows almost to the beach. There were wheels built into the pontoons, and I wondered why Julie didn’t take us onto the sand, but I did not want to ask. I suspected she was feeling less and less sure about the wisdom of our mission, and I couldn’t blame her. The walls around the house, like the house itself, were built of stucco and painted magenta. The glass from broken bottles was strewn along the top of the walls, but the security measure was of no value. The walls had been breached and reduced to rubble in several places, probably by Hurricane Katrina, exposing the cinder blocks inside. The interior of the compound was littered with flotsam and tangles of seaweed and shrimp nets and rotting tarps and hundreds of dead birds. The entirety of the beach was dotted with tar balls.
Clete and I put on our raincoats and hats and dropped down in the shallows up to our knees. Clete pulled his duffel bag from the baggage compartment and slung it over his shoulder. Through the rain, I could see a boat with two outboard engines and a small cabin moored on the south side of the island.
“I’ll come with you,” Julie said.
“Better stay here,” I said. “We might have to get out of Dodge sooner than we planned.”
“I thought I’d ask. Suit yourself,” she said, her voice almost lost in the rain.
I smiled at her and tried to indicate I appreciated her gesture, but Julie was not the kind of person you made a show of protecting, not if you wanted to retain her friendship.
Clete and I walked out of the surf onto the sand. The smell from the dead birds was eyewatering. Clete looked over his shoulder at the plane and at the silhouette of Julie Ardoin inside it. “She’s cute,” he said.
“Will you concentrate on the objective?”
He blew his breath on his palm and smelled it. “You got any mints?” he said.
“I can’t believe you.”
“What did I do wrong? I just said she’s cute. I take that back. She’s more than cute. I bet she’s heck on wheels. Is she getting it on with anybody?”
“When will you grow up?”
“I was just asking. When she yelled at me, my johnson started doing jumping jacks. That only happens with a very few women. It’s not my fault.” He pulled the Remington from the bag and handed it to me, then slung the AR-
