A ten-thousand-mile network of canals that had been cut for the installation of pipelines and the use of industrial workboats had poisoned the root systems of living marsh along the entirety of the coast. The consequences were not arguable, as any collage of aerial photography would demonstrate. Over the years, the rectangular grid of the canals had turned into serpentine lines that had taken on the bulbous characteristics of untreated skin tumors. In the case of the Abelard plantation, the effects were even more dramatic, due in part to the fact that the grandfather had allowed drilling in the black lagoons and hummocks of water oaks and gum and cypress trees that had surrounded his house. Now the house sat in solitary fashion on a knoll, accessible only by a plank bridge, the white paint stained by smoke from stubble fires, its backdrop one of yellowed sawgrass, dead trees protruding from the brackish water, and abandoned 1940s oil platforms whose thick wood timbers were as weightless in the hand as desiccated cork.
For whatever reason, for whatever higher cause, the collective industrial agencies of the modern era had transformed a green-gold paradisiacal wonderland into an environmental eyesore that would probably make the most optimistic humanist reconsider his point of view.
I had called ahead and had been told by Kermit Abelard that he would be genuinely happy if I would come to his home. I did not ask about his friend Robert Weingart, the convict-author, nor did I mention the reason for my visit or that I would be bringing Clete Purcel with me, although I doubted if any of these things would have been of concern to him. I did not like Kermit dating my daughter, but I could not say he was a fearful or deceptive man. My objections to him were his difference in age from Alafair’s and that he was an experienced man in the ways of the world, and a great part of that experience came from the exploitive enterprises with which the Abelards had long been associated.
We rumbled over the bridge and knocked on the front door. A storm was kicking up in the Gulf, and the wind was cool on the porch. In the south I could see a bank of black thunderheads low on the horizon and electricity forking inside the clouds the way sparks fork and leap off an emery wheel.
“What a dump,” Clete said.
“Will you be quiet?” I said.
He screwed a filter-tip cigarette into his mouth and got out his Zippo. I started to pull the cigarette out of his mouth, but what was the use? Clete was Clete.
“Who’s Abelard’s cooze?” he said.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Alafair is going out with him.”
His face looked as though it had just undergone a five-second sunburn. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I thought maybe you’d figured it out.”
“Is there another agenda working here, Dave?”
“Not a chance,” I replied.
He lit his cigarette and puffed on it. When Kermit Abelard opened the door, Clete took one more drag and flipped the cigarette in the flower bed.
“How do you do?” Kermit said, extending his hand.
“What’s the haps?” Clete replied.
“You’re Clete Purcel, aren’t you? I’ve heard a lot about you. Come in, come in,” Kermit said, holding the great oaken door wide.
The interior of the house was dark, the furnishings out of the Gilded Age, the light fixtures glowing dimly inside their dust. The carpet was old and too thin for the hardwood floor, and I could feel the rough grain of the timber through my shoes. Clete touched his nose with the back of his wrist and cleared his throat.
“Something wrong, Mr. Purcel?” Kermit asked.
“I have allergies,” Clete replied.
“I’ve fixed some drinks for us and a cold Dr Pepper or two and a snack if you’d like to come out on the sunporch,” Kermit said.
I couldn’t hold it back. “You’re keen on Dr Pepper?” I said.
“No, I thought you might want—” he began.
“You thought I would like a Dr Pepper instead of something else?” I said.
“No, not necessarily.”
“You have water?” I said.
“Of course.”
“I’ll take a glass of water.”
“Sure, Dave, or Mr. Robicheaux.”
“Call me whatever you like.”
I saw Clete gazing out the side door onto the sunporch, trying to hide a smile.
“What is it I can help y’all with?” Kermit said.
“Is your friend Robert Weingart here?” I said.
“He’s just getting out of the shower. We were splitting wood on the lawn. Robert is marvelous at carving ducks out of wood. Both of us write through the morning, then have a light lunch and do a little physical exercise together. I’m glad you came out, Mr. Robicheaux. I think so highly of Alafair. She’s a great person. I know you’re proud of her.”
He was patronizing and presumptuous, but nevertheless I wondered if I hadn’t been too hard on him; if indeed, as Clete had suggested, I’d had my own agenda when I’d brought Clete to the Abelard home.
When Kermit was only a teenager, his parents had disappeared in a storm off Bimini. Their sail yacht had been found a week later on a sunny day, floating upright in calm water, the canvas furled, the hull and deck clean and gleaming. I suspected that regardless of his family’s wealth, life had not been easy for Kermit Abelard as a young man.
Earlier I mentioned that his ancestors had not invested themselves in the comforting legends of the Lost Cause. But as I glanced at a glassed-in mahogany bookcase, I realized that southern Shintoism does not necessarily have to clothe itself in Confederate gray and butternut brown. A Norman-Celtic coat of arms hung above the bookcase, and behind the glass doors were clusters of large keys attached to silver rings and chains, the kind a plantation mistress would wear on her waist, and a faded journal of daily life on a southern plantation written in faded blue ink by Peter Abelard’s wife. More significantly, the case contained framed photographs of Kermit’s grandfather, Timothy Abelard, standing alongside members of the Somoza family in Nicaragua, supervising a cockfight in Batista-era Cuba, receiving a civilian medal for the productivity of munitions that his defense plant had manufactured during the Vietnam War, and finally, Timothy Abelard overseeing a group of black farmworkers in a field of wind-swirling sugarcane.
In the last photograph, the cane cutters were bent to their work, their shins sheathed in aluminum guards. Only Timothy Abelard was looking at the camera, his pressed clothes powdered with lint from the cane. His expression was that of a gentleman who had made his peace with the world and did not consign his destiny or the care of either his family or his property to others.
Then I realized that I was being stared at, in a fashion that is not only invasive but fills you with a sense of moral culpability, as though somehow, through a lapse of manners, you have invited the disdain of another.
Timothy Abelard was sitting in a wheelchair no more than ten feet away, a black female nurse stationed behind him. Eight or nine years ago he had become a recluse without ever offering a public explanation of his infirmity. Some people said he’d developed an inoperable tumor in the brain; others said he had been dragged by his horse during an electric storm. His skin was luminescent from the absence of sunlight.
“Hi, Pa’pere. Did you want to join us?” Kermit said.
But Timothy Abelard’s eyes did not leave my face. They had the intensity of a hawk’s, and like a hawk’s, they did not occupy themselves with thoughts about good or evil or the distinction between the two. He was well groomed, his hair thin and combed like strands of bronze wire across his pate. His smile could be called kindly and deferential, even likable, in the way we want old people to be wise and likable. But the intrusive nature of his gaze was unrelenting.
“How are you, sir?” I said.
“I know you. Or I think I do. What’s your name?” he said.
“Dave Robicheaux, from the Iberia Sheriff’s Department,” I said.
“You investigating a crime, suh?” he said, his eyes crinkling
at the corners.
“I had some questions about the St. Jude Project.”
“That’s a new one on me. What is it?” he said.
“I guess that makes two of us,” I said. “Do you remember my father? His name was Aldous Robicheaux, but everyone called him Big Aldous.”
“He was in the oil business?”
“He was a derrick man. He died in an offshore blowout.”
“I’m forgetful sometimes. Yes, I do remember him. He was an extraordinary man in a fistfight. He took on the whole bar at Provost’s one night.”
“That was my father,” I replied.
“You say he was killed on a rig?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, as though the event were yesterday.
I waited for Kermit to introduce Clete, but he didn’t. “Miss Jewel, would you get Pa’pere ready to go to Lafayette? He’s having dinner with friends this evening. I’ll have the car brought around.”
“Yes, suh,” the nurse said.
“Come on, Dave, let’s go out here on the porch,” Kermit said, jiggling his fingers at me, using my first name now, showing some of the imperious manner that I associated with his background. I was beginning to wonder if my earlier sympathies with him had been misplaced.
Entering the sunporch was like stepping into another environment, one that was as different from the interior of the house as a sick ward is from a brightly lit fairground on a summer evening. The windows on the porch were paneled with stained-glass designs of bluebirds and parrots, kneeling saints, chains of camellias and roses and orchids, unicorns and satyrs at play, a knight in red armor impaling a dragon with a spear. The western sunlight shining through the panels created a stunning effect, like shards of brilliant color splintering apart and re-forming themselves inside a kaleidoscope.
“Sorry to be late for our little repast,” Robert Weingart said behind me.
He was wearing sandals and a terry-cloth robe that was cinched tightly around his waist, his hair wet and freshly combed, his small mouth pursed in an expression that I suspected was meant to indicate sophistication and long experience with upscale social situations. Kermit introduced Clete to him, but Clete did not shake hands. Nor did I.
A confession is needed here. Most cops do not like ex-felons. They don’t trust them, and they think they got what they deserved, no matter how bad a joint they did their time in. In the best of cases, cops may wish an ex-felon well, even help him out with a job or a bad PO, but they do not break bread with him or ever pretend that his criminal inclinations evaporated at the completion of his sentence.
By no stretch of the imagination could Robert Weingart be put in a best-case category.
The glass-topped table was set with place mats and tiny forks and spoons and demitasse cups and bowls of crawfish salad, hot sauce, veined shrimp, dirty rice, and soft-crusted fried eggplant. Two dark green bottles of wine were shoved deep in a silver ice bucket, alongside two cans of Dr Pepper. Neither Clete nor I sat down.
“Well, time waits on no man,” Robert Weingart said, sitting down by himself. He dipped a shrimp in red sauce and bit into it, then began reading a folded newspaper that had been in the pocket of his robe as though the rest of us were not there.
“You know Herman Stanga?” I asked Weingart.
“Can’t say I’ve heard of him,” he replied, not looking up from his paper.
“That’s funny. Herman says he’s working for the St. Jude Project,” I said. “That’s your group, isn’t it?”
Weingart looked up. “No, not my group. It’s a group I support.”
“I’m familiar with Herman Stanga, Dave,” Kermit said. “He doesn’t work for St. Jude, but I’ve had conversations with him and tried to earn his trust and show him there’s a better way to do things. We’ve gotten two or three of his girls out of the life and into treatment programs. You see a problem in that?”
“Down on Ann Street, I met this sawed-off black kid named Buford. He was slinging dope on the corner. He was probably twelve years old at the outside. He’s Herman Stanga’s cousin,” Clete said. “I guess Herman’s outreach efforts don’t extend to children or his relatives.”
“Does Herman know this boy is dealing drugs?” Kermit asked.
“It’s hard to say. I broke Herman’s sticks at the Gate Mouth club in St. Martinville. He’s in the hospital right now. You could drop by Iberia General and chat him up.”
“Your sarcasm isn’t well taken, Mr. Purcel,” Kermit said. “You attacked Herman?”
“Your man spat in my face.”
“He’s not my man, sir.”
“Is he your man?” Clete said to Robert Weingart.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, my friend,” Weingart replied.
“There’s something wrong with the words I use? You can’t quite translate them? How about taking the corn bread out of your mouth before you say anything else?”
Weingart put away his paper and unfolded a thick linen napkin and spread it on his lap. His robe had fallen open, exposing the thong he was wearing. “Have you ever tried writing detective stories, Clete? I bet you’d be good at it. I could introduce you to a couple of guys in the Screenwriters Guild. Your dialogue is tinged with little bits of glass that would make Raymond Chandler envious. Really.”
Clete looked at me, his face opaque, his hands as big as hams by his sides, his facial skin suddenly clear of wrinkles. Don’t do it, Cletus, don’t do it, don’t do it, I could hear myself thinking.
Clete sniffed again, as though he were coming down with a cold. He looked back at the doorway into the interior of the house. “You have rats?”
“No, not to my knowledge,” Kermit said. “Mr. Purcel, no one meant to offend you. But what we’re hearing is a bit of a shock. The St. Jude Project isn’t connected with Herman Stanga, no matter what he’s told you.”
“We’re glad to hear that, Kermit,” I said. “But why would you be talking with a man like Stanga to begin with? You think he’s going to help you take his prostitutes off the street?”
“I’ve spoken with Alafair regarding some of these things. I thought maybe she had talked with you. She’s expressed a willingness to help out.”
“You’re trying to involve my daughter with pimps and hookers? You’re telling me this to my face?”
Kermit shook his head, nonplussed, swallowing. “I’m at a loss. I respect you, Mr. Robicheaux. I respect your family. I’m very fond of Alafair.”
I could feel my moorings starting to pull loose from the dock. “You’re almost ten years older than she is. Older men don’t have ‘fond’ in mind when they home in on younger women.”
“Why don’t I walk outside with Mr. Weingart and let y’all talk?” Clete said. “How about it, Bob ? Can you hitch up your robe and tear yourself loose from that fried eggplant? What do you say, Bob ?”
Inside my head I saw an image of hurricane warning flags flapping in a high wind.
Weingart rested his fingertips on the tabletop, his lips pursed, his cheeks slightly sunken, every hair on his head neatly in place. He seemed to be thinking of a private joke, his eyes lighting, a smile flickering at the corner of his mouth. “What would you like to do on our little stroll?”
“Robbie, don’t do this,” Kermit said.
“I just wondered what the big fellow had in mind. He looks like a gelatinous handful.”
I saw the crinkles around Clete’s eyes flatten, the blood draining from the skin around his mouth. But he surprised me. “Time to dee-dee, Streak,” he said.
Weingart repositioned his newspaper and began reading again, detached, wrapped in his narcissism and contempt for the world, indifferent to the embarrassment flaming in Kermit’s face.
“Thank your grandfather for his hospitality,” I said to Kermit.
“Mr. Robicheaux, I want to apologize for anything inappropriate that may have occurred here.”
“Forget the apology. Don’t take Alafair anywhere near Herm
an Stanga or his crowd. If you do, I’d better not hear about it.”
Kermit blanched. “Absolutely. I wouldn’t—”
“Mr. Weingart?” Clete interrupted.
“Yes?” Weingart said, reading his paper.
“Don’t ever call me by my first name again.”
“How about ‘Mr.’ Clete? Do come back, Mr. Clete. It’s been such a pleasure,” Weingart said. “Absolutely it has.” He lifted his gaze to Clete, his eyes iniquitous.
I fitted my hand on Clete’s upper arm. It was as tight as a fire hydrant. We walked back through the living room, past the photos of Timothy Abelard with members of the Somoza family, past a copy of a Gauguin painting, out the door and across the porch and onto the lawn. I could taste the salt in the wind and feel the first drops of rain on my face. Clete cleared his throat and turned to one side and spat. “Did you smell it in there?”
“Smell what?”
“That odor, like something dead. I think it’s on the old man. You didn’t smell it?”
“No, I think you’re imagining things.”
“He sends chills through me. He makes me think of a turkey buzzard perched on a tombstone.”
“He’s just an old man. He’s neurologically impaired.”
“I’ve been wrong about you for many years, Dave. You know the truth? I think you want to believe people like the Abelards are part of a Greek tragedy. Here’s the flash: They’re not. They should have been naped off the planet a long time ago.”
“Get in the truck.”
“Did you know Kermit Abelard was gay?”
“No. And I don’t know that now.”
“Weingart is a cell-house bitch. Those two guys are getting it on. Don’t pretend they’re not.”