I made room for her beside me. Both Tripod and Snuggs looked up from their bowls, then resumed eating. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“I’ve made a couple of decisions. I don’t know how you’ll feel about them,” she said.
The tenor of her voice was of a kind I never took lightly. Alafair made mistakes, particularly of the heart. She could be emotional and impetuous, but once she made up her mind about a matter of principle, she stayed the course, no matter how much she got hurt.
“I didn’t go to the Abelard house because of your relationship with Kermit,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. One way or another we’re at a juncture, Dave. Until I work my way through a couple of things, I think it’s better I move out.”
“This is your home, Alafair. It’s been your home since I pulled you out of a submerged plane.”
There was no question I was using emotional blackmail against her, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe that either the Abelard family or my own ineptitude had brought us to this point. Also, there are times when loss is not acceptable under any circumstances.
“This has less to do with you and Molly than it does me,” she said. “I know you want what’s good for me, but no amount of reasoning has any influence on you. Yesterday Kermit and I went out in the boat to talk about my novel. His agent is flying in today. Kermit has already sent him a couple of chapters. The agent thinks he can sell my novel as a work in progress. Kermit’s agent is with William Morris. I should be delighted. But I have a serious problem. Know what it is? I think maybe I shouldn’t let Kermit’s agent represent me. Why? Because maybe you’re right and I shouldn’t be around the Abelards or Robert Weingart. Maybe I’m taking advantage of my relationship with Kermit to get an introduction to a publisher in New York. Or maybe the opposite is true. Maybe I’m about to throw it all away to satisfy my father’s obsession about people who he thinks have too much money and power.”
“Listen, forget Weingart and the Abelards. Yesterday there was a man fishing in a pirogue out in the cypress trees in front of the Abelard house. Do you know who that man was?”
“Somebody Robert is trying to help.”
“His name is Vidor Perkins. He did time with Weingart in Huntsville Pen. He’s the same guy who told me I had an emergency call at the bait shop on Henderson levee.”
“Are you sure?”
“You think I’d forget the guy who said there was a fire at our house and that you were in trouble and that I’d better haul my ass up to the levee?”
She leaned forward on the step, clasping her ankles. She was barefoot and the tops of her feet were pale, and there was a solitary mosquito bite on her skin just above her left big toe. Her hair was raven-black with shades of brown, and I could smell the odor of shampoo in it. “Kermit isn’t a bad person,” she said.
“I have some photos at the office that maybe you should look at. One shows the body of a girl named Bernadette Latiolais. She was an honor student and about to enter the nurses’ program at UL. The guy who killed her virtually sawed her head loose from her shoulders. I also have a picture of a Canadian girl named Fern Michot. She was probably abducted, bound with ligatures, starved, and kept in a state of constant fear, at least according to the coroner. The same person or persons killed both girls. Kermit knew the Latiolais girl but did not indicate that to anyone until we got the information on our own. Robert Weingart was in the Latiolais girl’s neighborhood, probably with Herman Stanga. Maybe these guys are innocent of any wrongdoing, but no matter which turn the investigation takes, their names keep coming up again and again.”
She watched Snuggs and Tripod eating. I put my hand on her back. Her skin was still warm from sleep.
“He was the only one,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Kermit was the only one.”
“You don’t have to go into detail if you don’t want to.”
“He said he’d had other girlfriends, but none like me. He said I was the most talented writer he’d ever met. He said I was a lover and a sister to him. He said our souls knew each other in another time.”
“Kermit was probably being honest with you. But maybe he has problems he can’t overcome. Sometimes we have to let go of certain kinds of people and let them find their own destiny. But that doesn’t mean we have to think less of them or less of ourselves for having known or liked or trusted them.”
“I’m having dinner tonight with Kermit and his agent. Robert is going to be there, too.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Because I don’t. I don’t see anything. I feel stupid and gullible. I’ve never felt like this before.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Alf.”
“When I was growing up, you weren’t home half the time. You were always on a case. It seemed like everybody else’s welfare came first. So I found somebody like Kermit. I never loved anybody as much. But he’s like you.”
“What?”
“Other people come first with him. I let myself see only half of Kermit. The other half belongs to Robert. He let Robert read my manuscript. He didn’t see what Robert wrote at the bottom: ‘This is wonderful. Package it with a free can of female hygiene spray and it should sell at least a hundred copies.’”
I couldn’t think through what she was saying. “You believe I’m no different from Kermit Abelard? You’re saying I put other people ahead of my family?”
She picked Tripod up and set him on her lap. She flipped him on his side, his thick tail slapping at the air. Her gaze seemed focused on him, but I’m not sure she saw anything at all. “You want me to move out?” she asked.
I got up from the steps and walked down to the bayou, wishing I could disappear into the fog and not hear the echoes of Alafair’s words inside my head. I wished I could step onto the deck of a paddle wheeler and disappear inside the nineteenth century.
AS SOON AS Clete Purcel woke in the refrigerated darkness of his cottage at the motor court, he sensed the absence on the other side of the bed even before he touched the empty depression in the mattress and the body warmth that was already dissipating in the sheets. Then he saw the note. When he pulled the pillow toward him and gathered the note in his palm, he could smell the odor of her hair and her perfume on the pillowcase. He felt the dry constriction of desire in his throat, a thickening in his loins, and the sick vapors of desertion and physical betrayal congealing around his heart. The note read:
Dear C.,
Don’t feel bad or worry about anything. I had fun. I put a couple of aspirins and vitamin B’s and a glass of water on the drainboard. You know how to ring a girl’s bell. Sweet dreams, big guy. Call me if you feel like it.
E.
He got into the shower and turned on the water as hot as he could stand it and stayed inside the steam until his skin was red and his pores were running with sweat. Then he turned on the cold water and felt the shock go through him like an icicle. He dried off and put on clean skivvies and slacks and a freshly pressed shirt and tried to eat a half cantaloupe. But his hand trembled on the spoon when he attempted to gouge the meat out of the rind, and he drove the shank of the spoon into his palm with an impact like a nail striking bone and knocked his coffee off the table with his elbow.
He looked at his watch. It was 7:14 A.M. The day had hardly begun, and he felt as though he had already trudged halfway up the path to Golgotha and still had miles to go.
He drove to the office and parked in back. The fog was drifting off the drawbridge at Burke Street, and he could hear car tires crossing the steel-mesh grid and thudding onto the street that led past the old Carmelite convent. He unlocked the back door and sat down behind his desk and did not turn on the lights. He pulled his blue-black, white-handled .38 from his shoulder holster and set it in the middle of the desk blotter, although he could not explain why. He picked it up and felt its cold weight in his grasp and set it down again. He gazed at the round edges of the brass casings that were inserted in t
he cylinder, the sheen of oil on the steel surfaces of the frame, the knurled tip of the hammer, the fine white bead on the barrel sight. He opened the cylinder and rotated it slowly against the heel of his hand and pushed it solidly back into place, notching a loaded chamber under the firing pin.
He set down the .38 and pushed his swivel chair slightly backward, propping his hands against the desk as though positioning himself for an impending impact, perhaps like an air traveler realizing that something has just gone terribly wrong with the flight he is on. He breathed deeply, his blood oxygenating, his head seeming to swell to the size of a basketball, the veins in his scalp tightening against his skull. He picked up the .38 and curled his thumb over the hammer and pulled it back two clicks to full cock. He thought he heard the machinery on the drawbridge ratcheting disjointedly into place and a boat’s horn blowing incessantly inside the fog, as though the elements in his environment had formed a single voice and were saying, It’s time, bub. Aren’t you weary of the hassle? Everybody gets to the barn. It’s only bad when the trip is prolonged and degrading.
He lay the .38’s frame flatly against his upper chest, the barrel aimed upward at a point midway between his throat and chin. He straightened in his chair, his left hand resting on his thigh, his gaze fixed on a 1910 photograph of the St. Charles streetcar headed down the neutral ground through a tunnel of trees, the wood seats loaded with Mardi Gras revelers.
His phone buzzed. He picked up the receiver slowly and placed it to his ear. He thought he could hear a sound like a metal top spinning on a wood floor.
“Mr. Purcel?” said Hulga, his secretary.
“Yes?”
“I got here a little early. I wasn’t sure that was you in there.”
“It’s me.”
“Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You sound strange.”
The frame and grips of the pistol had grown warm inside his hand. He touched the barrel to the roll of flesh under his chin, as though reminding himself about an unfinished chore.
“Do you want me to get you coffee?” she asked.
“What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“Funny how the week slips by. Everything is simpatico here, Hulga.”
“Mr. Purcel, I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but you don’t sound like yourself at all.”
“I broke the coffeemaker yesterday. Can you go down the street for some?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t do that right now.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Mr. Purcel, what can I say? You’re such a good man. You use profane language and have rough ways sometimes, but in your heart you’re always a gentleman. I’m proud to work for you.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m a gentleman. But thank you.”
“You were going to dictate a letter to the state attorney’s office yesterday. Can I come in there now and get that out of the way?”
“It can wait.”
“Let me come in there or call someone for you. Can I call Mr. Robicheaux?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Mr. Purcel, I know the signs. My husband died by his own hand. I apologize, but I’m going to call Mr. Robicheaux. It’s just something I have to do. Be mad at me all you want. Did you hear me, Mr. Purcel?”
He didn’t remember what he said next or even if he said anything. He remembered replacing the receiver in the phone cradle and easing the hammer down on the .38 and removing his finger from inside the trigger guard. Then the .38 was back in its holster, hanging below his left nipple and the top of his rib cage. He opened the door to the main office and made sure Hulga could see him. He smiled at her and put on his sport coat and his porkpie hat. He put on his aviator shades and tucked his shirt into his belt with his thumbs, his grin still in place, like a man on his way to the track or to buy a lady a bouquet. Then he went outside and started his Caddy and drove it down a brick alleyway onto Main Street, with no clue as to his destination, with a dead space like an ice cube in the center of his mind, with no solutions in sight, no mojo, no booze, no weed, to deal with the centipedes, his body dead to the touch except for an enormous weight that seemed to crush down on his shoulders like a cross that could have been fashioned from railroad ties.
Main Street was still partially in shadow, the steel colonnades beaded with moisture, the air smelling of flowers and coffee and hot rolls and the odor of fish spawning in the Teche. He saw a white Mustang convertible pull to the curb in front of the Gouguenheim bed-and-breakfast. The driver got out and stepped up on the sidewalk and dropped his cigarette on the concrete, exhaling his last puff into the breeze. He mashed the cigarette with his foot and fixed the collar on his pleated white shirt, one that was unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He wore black trousers and a gold watch with a black face. With his neatly clipped dark hair and clear skin, he reminded Clete of a Spanish matador who had started to go soft around the edges. Clete turned the Caddy out of the traffic and parked a short distance from the Mustang just as Robert Weingart, combing his hair as he walked, went inside the Gouguenheim.
Clete lounged against the front fender of his Caddy and watched the customers going in and out of Victor’s cafeteria, then a tug passing on the bayou, his gaze shifting sideways through the front door of the bed-and-breakfast, where Weingart was speaking with a woman at the registration desk. It was cool and breezy in the shadows, but Clete’s skin was hot, as though he had experienced a severe sunburn and the heat was radiating through his clothes. He could also feel a pressure band threading itself across the side of his head. When he adjusted his hat, hoping that somehow the pressure would go away, he felt the veins in his scalp tighten like pieces of kite twine.
The Gouguenheim was a restored nineteenth-century building with iron-scrolled balconies, tall windows, ventilated storm shutters, high ceilings, wood-bladed fans, glowing hardwood floors, and plaster walls painted with pastel colors that, along with the potted palms inside the entranceway, gave the visitor the sensation that he was stepping inside a historical artwork. The view in the morning from the balconies was not unlike looking out over the rooftops and canopy of trees in a Caribbean city at the end of the colonial era. Clete bit on a thumbnail and studied Robert Weingart’s back. Why did the Robert Weingarts of the world always manage to find and appropriate the last good places? Sometimes it took a while, but sooner or later they emerged from the weeds and slithered their way up the trunk of a tree heavy with fruit or, at the least, more prosaically, left fecal prints on everything they touched. Clete folded his arms across his chest, opening and closing his hands, breathing through his mouth, a sodden crescent of perspiration forming inside his porkpie hat. He straightened his back and lowered his hands to his sides when Weingart walked out from the building. “How’s your swizzle stick hanging, Bob?” he said.
“Patrolling the sidewalks today, are we?” Weingart said.
“That’s why I’m called the mayor of Main Street. You checking in to the Gouguenheim?”
“Not me. The agent who’ll probably be representing Mr. Robicheaux’s daughter will be staying there. Of course, you’re familiar with the William Morris Agency, aren’t you?”
“They sell insurance?”
“Oh, that’s very good. Would you like to join us for dinner? I understand you’re a wonderful raconteur. I’m sure everyone would be fascinated with the tales you could relate. Industrial espionage, CIA intrigue, that sort of thing.”
Clete folded his arms again and grinned and pushed his aviator shades up on the bridge of his nose with one finger. “I dig your wheels, Bob. You don’t mind if I call you Bob, do you?”
“It’s Robert. But call me whatever you wish.”
“No, you’re right. Bob is too commonplace. What about Roberto or Ro-bear, the way the French say it? No, that’s too foreign. How about the Bobster? Kind of like a name a welterweight might have. You duck, you weave, you bob, you’re slick as grease, you pop out their lights before they know
what hit them. You’re the Bobster.”
“To be honest, Mr. Purcel, I don’t think you have many arrows in your quiver.”
“Remember that nineteen-year-old waitress at Ruby Tuesday you knocked up? The one you told to get an abortion? Did that Mustang fire up her hormones? I wish I could have a car like that and get my ashes hauled by teenage girls with ninth-grade educations. You couldn’t bum the price of a box of rubbers off her?”
“Just stay on your Jenny Craig diet and keep saying your morning prayers, and you can drive a car like mine. But that might produce conflict for you. I suspect you’re a nice soft hump for Mr. Robicheaux. I imagine in a time of AIDS, a few extra pounds can give comfort on a couple of levels.”
Clete stuck a cigarette in his mouth but did not light it. He scratched at a mosquito bite high up on his arm, examining the flesh around the bite while he did it. “Good try, bub, but I checked you out. Over in Huntsville, you were lots of things, but straight wasn’t one of them. The warden said you chugged pug for every swinging dick on the yard. That brings up a question I’ve always had. Is it true the Midnight Special originally meant a late-night freight train up the ass, maybe with a three-hundred-pound black guy driving the locomotive?”
“Funny man,” Weingart said. “But answer me this, Mr. Purcel. Alafair’s breakthrough in New York will probably come about because of her friendship with me and Kermit. How does it feel to be stuck in a place like this? Why is it she’s with us and not you?”
Clete watched silently as Weingart started his car and drove away. Then Clete got into his Caddy and followed him around the block and all the way down to the old brick post office and the plantation house known as The Shadows and finally back onto Main Street, where Weingart parked his vehicle and went into Lagniappe Too and sat down behind the picture-glass window and ordered breakfast.
I GOT THE call from Hulga Volkmann two minutes after I had picked up my mail and sat down behind my desk. “He told me not to call you, Mr. Robicheaux, but I’m doing it anyway, whether you or he like it or not,” she said. “He’s under great stress, and I think he’s not entirely rational. He’s also drinking too much. Now this Mr. Blanchet is calling. He’s not a nice man and Mr. Purcel does not need to put up with that kind of abusive behavior at a time like this.”