A Private Cathedral

Chapter Twenty-five

Penelope Balangie didn’t knock on the door. She clicked on the glass with her nails as though afraid she would wake me up. I took the chain off the door and opened it. She was holding a lemon meringue pie in a covered pie pan. “I thought you’d need something to eat.”

“Where’d you get the pie?”

“At the bakery.”

I looked at my watch. It was 6:23 A.M. “The bakery is closed.”

“I woke them up.”

“You know what happened here?” I said.

“The whole city knows.”

Behind her, the fog was so thick I could hardly see the yard or trees or streetlamps. “Come in.”

I had thrown out the rug Marcel died on and had cleaned the blood from the floor. I had also showered and shaved and changed clothes, and hoped I did not look like I felt. She walked past me into the kitchen and began making coffee without asking permission.

“I don’t know if you should be here, Miss Penelope,” I said.

She was no longer wearing the lavender suit and pillbox hat but a baby-blue cashmere suit with a white blouse and white hose, which meant she had come to New Iberia with luggage. “Sit down,” she said.

“Kind of you to ask me,” I replied, and remained standing.

“The man who died here? He was the one the killers were after?”

“He may have been my half brother. At least that’s what he said before he shot himself.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“You have to forgive me, but I don’t understand you. In fact, nothing about you makes sense.”

She took the plastic cover off the pie and got cups from the cabinet. “No one will believe my story. Nor will they believe yours or Mr. Purcel’s. That means we’re members of a very lonely club.”

“So tell me the story.”

“Maybe later. Eat first. Please. I want to explain something you’re probably experiencing now or will experience later.”

“Oh, really?”

“Don’t be sarcastic.” She placed her hand on my chest. I could feel my heart beating against it. I sat down.

“Start eating,” she said.

I didn’t argue.

“People who commit suicide in a dramatic fashion often have an agenda and are involved in a fantasy that leads to their death. They’re filled with rage and seek revenge against those who have hurt them. They slash their wrists or jump from buildings or fire bullets into their brain. In their fantasy, they witness the discovery of their body by people they hate. In that way, they leave behind a legacy of guilt and sorrow. Don’t let this happen to you, Mr. Robicheaux.”

I put a teaspoon of pie in my mouth and drank from the coffee cup she had placed by my elbow. But neither would go down. I choked and held a napkin to my mouth. She was standing behind me now. She spread her hand across my back. It felt as warm as an iron on cloth. “You’re shaking,” she said.

“I have malaria.”

“From where?”

“Vietnam or the Philippines. Who cares where you get it?”

“After all these years?”

“Give it a break, Ms. Balangie,” I said.

“You’re one of us now.”

I stopped trying to eat. “One of what?”

“The people who have to see into the other world, the one we try to deny in modern times.”

“Sorry, I’m not up to listening to any more craziness, Italian or otherwise.”

“Did the man who died see Gideon Richetti?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What does that tell you?”

“The price of knowing the Balangie and Shondell families is too expensive.”

“Your wife died recently?”

“I’ve lost two wives.”

“I didn’t know.”

My hand was trembling on the teaspoon. “You need to leave.”

“Walk me to the door.”

“You can find your way.”

“No. Get up.”

I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and rose from the table. I looked straight into her eyes.

“Well?” she said.

“You’re a big girl. You need an escort to leave someone’s house?”

“I want you to do just that. I mean, escort me.”

My eyes lingered on hers. I felt a longing I couldn’t explain, as though I had never smelled a woman, or kissed one, or slept with one. I felt as I did when my mother abandoned her family. I felt as though I were on the edge of a grave, that the only light in the world was trapped inside my home, inside the fog, and the rest of the earth was disappearing.

I put my arms around her and lifted her against my chest and put my mouth on hers. I felt her feet barely touching the tops of my shoes, her breasts against me, her fingernails digging into my back, her auburn hair warm and clean-smelling in my face, the ache in my loins unbearable.

Then we were in my bed, and I went beneath a harbor off Bimini, the sunlight shattering on the surface, a coral cave inviting me deep into its recesses, its walls covered with pink lichen and the gossamer threads of sea life that had no name. Some believed this was the eastern edge of ancient Atlantis, a suboceanic kingdom where spring was eternal and mermaids wore flowers in their hair and where each morning one could cup water from the fountain of youth.

But I could no longer control the images in my head, and I felt them slipping like confetti from my body into hers, and I buried my face in her hair and bit her shoulder and heard myself saying, “Pen... Pen... Pen,” as though it were the only word I knew.

I didn’t go to work that day. At six P.M. I bought a bucket of fried chicken and biscuits and a sealed cup of gravy at Popeyes, then took them to Clete’s cottage in the motor court on East Main. The rain had flooded the tree trunks along the banks of the Teche and quit at sunset. The sky was magenta and looked as soft as velvet, the bayou swirling with organic debris and yellow froth and dimpled with the water dripping from the trees. Clete saw me through his window and opened the door. “I’ve been calling you all day,” he said. “Where have you been?”

I walked past him into his small living room. “I had my phone turned off. I was asleep.”

“The whole day?”

“Why not?” I said.

He closed the door. “Did you ever figure LaForchette for a suicide?”

“I had him figured wrong on several levels. You want to eat?” I put the Popeyes sack on the breakfast table.

“Yeah, sure,” Clete said. He gave me a look. “I got a feeling more is on your mind than LaForchette going off-planet.”

I told him how I’d busted up Adonis Balangie in his home theater, and how I’d moved Leslie Rosenberg and her daughter from Metairie to New Iberia, and finally, how I’d ended up under the waves off Bimini with Penelope Balangie at my side. He listened without interrupting, his hands like big animal paws on the breakfast table, his gaze focused on empty space.

After I finished, he continued to stare without speaking.

“Hello?” I said.

“Let’s see if I have this straight,” he said. “You start the day by beating the shit out of Adonis in his home, in front of his wife, then motor on over to the house of his regular punch and move her to New Iberia. His wife drops by your house after a guy blows out his brains in your living room, and to celebrate the occasion you put the blocks to her?”

“Lay off it, Cletus.”

“Excuse me, I left something out. You also put in some boom-boom time with what’s-her-name, the stripper and regular pump for Adonis?”

“Leslie Rosenberg.”

“Right,” Clete said. “So you think Adonis might be a little upset? A guy who thinks women are property?”

“He dealt the play,” I said.

“No, Penelope Balangie did.”

“Wrong.”

“Keep telling yourself that. She’ll have you mumbling to yourself.”

“She swears she’s not married to Adonis.”

“You believe her?” he said.

“Yeah, I do.” But I stumbled on my words.

“Why would a broad with her kind of class use up her life as a house ornament for a greaseball? Ask yourself another question: Why would a guy like Adonis not try to nail her? How would you like to look at those knockers every morning and say, ‘Nope, not for me. Hands off.’ ”

“Can you stop thinking in those terms?”

“You know I’m telling the truth.”

“You don’t know her.”

“And you do?”

This time I didn’t try to answer. “I’ll see you later.”

“You didn’t ask why I was calling you all day. Li’l Face Dautrieve came to my office. She’s still living in the Loreauville quarters and hooking halftime. A piece of shit named Jess Bottoms fixed her up with some of his friends and paid her with bills that were marked with purple dye.”

“Like the bills given to the hooker in New Orleans by Gideon Richetti?”

“That was my first thought,” he said. “I called Dana Magelli and got him to run the serial numbers. Bingo. Li’l Face’s bills are part of the same series.”

“Who is Jess Bottoms?”

“He manages pit bull fights.”

“Why did Li’l Face bring the bills to you?”

“She thinks there’s a gris-gris on them,” he said. “Bottoms says he’ll give her fresh bills, but he’s got to get the marked ones back. She already spent some of them.”

“So you think Richetti tried to buy another prostitute out of the life, and instead the money got spread around to her friends?”

“Something like that,” Clete said. “Li’l Face is scared of Bottoms. He’s big on beating up women.”

“Where’s Bottoms now?” I asked.

“Sunset,” he said. “Once known as the nigger-knocking capital of Louisiana.”

We drove in Clete’s Caddy to a paintless farmhouse south of Opelousas. It was surrounded by burning sugarcane stubble that glowed alight whenever the wind gusted. There was no grass in the yard, no livestock in the pens. I could see the silhouette of a two-story barn in back, and hear dogs barking.

“How do you want to play it?” I said.

Clete cut the engine and killed the headlights. “He was a deputy sheriff in Mississippi.”

“So?”

“Don’t be subtle,” Clete replied.

We walked up on the gallery and knocked on the door. The sky was an ink wash, the smoke from the stubble eye-watering. Through the glass in the door, I saw a man rise from the kitchen table and walk through a hallway into the living room. I have been in law enforcement a long time. In the American South, there is a kind of lawman every decent cop instantly recognizes. His uniform is usually soiled and wrinkled, more like army fatigues or marine utilities, as though he has worked long hours in it. If allowed, he wears a coned cowboy hat. His posture and physicality exude a quiet sense of confidence, whether he’s leaning against a rail or gazing idly at something he doesn’t like. There is no moral light in his eyes. For reasons you cannot explain, he bears an animus toward the world, particularly toward people of color, no matter how poor or powerless they are.

Jess Bottoms opened the wood door but left the screen latched. His head had the shape of a smoked ham, his shoulders thick and humped like football pads. He wore khaki trousers and suspenders, half-top slip-on boots, and a long-sleeve snap-button white shirt with silver stripes in it. His stomach hung over his belt like thirty pounds of bread dough. He glared at Clete, then at me.

I opened my badge holder. “Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department, Mr. Bottoms. I’d like to get some information from you regarding a prostitute named Li’l Face Dautrieve.”

“Nigger works out of the quarters in Loreauville?” he said.

“Can we come in?” I asked.

“I’m eating.”

“It’s in your interest,” I said.

“What is this, Purcel?” he said.

“It’s like he says, Jess. We think you might be in danger.”

Bottoms unlatched the screen. “I got people coming over. They arrive, you leave.”

He pushed the screen open with his foot and then walked back into the kitchen. The interior of the house looked worn and old, the wallpaper water-stained; the lamps barely gave light. But the kitchen had obviously been refurbished, as though it were the only part of the home that had a purpose. The appliances were new; a flat-screen television was playing on the wall. I heard dogs barking again. Bottoms sat down and dug into a T-bone, chasing it with sips from a bottle of beer.

“You have a kennel?” I said.

His eyes were on the TV. “What’s this danger I’m in?”

“Can we turn off the television?” I asked.

“I’m watching a show,” he said, his eyes not leaving the screen.

“Li’l Face says you paid her three hundred dollars to pull a train,” Clete said.

“I never knew a nigger who didn’t lie,” he said.

“This is part of a homicide investigation, Mr. Bottoms,” I said. “We’re not interested in the sex life of your friends. You gave Li’l Face some marked bills. We’d appreciate your telling us where those bills came from.”

“I dug them out of your mother’s maggoty, insignificant cunt,” he said. “Does that answer your question?”

“That’s a mouthful,” I said.

Clete walked to the television and hit the off switch with the flat of his fist. “What’s with those dogs?”

“They’re dogs,” Bottoms said. “Turn the set on.”

“What time do you feed them?” Clete said. “You feed them after you fight them?”

Bottoms cut a piece of steak and lifted it to his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “How about you suck my dick, Purcel? When you finish, you can tell the Dautrieve girl her black ass is grass.”

“I’ll be right back, Dave,” Clete said. He went out the back door, letting it slam.

“What’s he doing?” Bottoms said.

“Search me.”

Bottoms looked out the screen at the darkness and the sparks twirling into the sky. “Maybe I can share some information with you,” he said.

“If I share some with you?”

“My enterprises tend to be cash-only. I made a mistake giving marked bills to a hooker. I was treating some businessmen. There’s nothing illegal in what I was doing.”

“Solicitation is not illegal?”

“I gave her money to be an escort. Her and maybe some of her friends. Both white and black ladies. It wasn’t a big deal. It’s part of the business. Where you been?”

“That remark you made about my mother? I let it pass because you’re dealing with an individual who is a big deal. I think you know it, too.”

“I got to piss. Get yourself a beer out of the refrigerator.”

He went into a hallway bathroom and closed the door. I heard him flush the toilet but heard no water run from the faucet. He came back in the kitchen and upended his beer bottle, the foam bubbling inside the neck. I heard a metallic clanking sound out in the dark. He stared at the screen door. “What’s he doing out there?”

I didn’t have a chance to reply. Clete came through the door with an aluminum boat paddle and slammed it across Bottoms’s head, knocking him sideways out of the chair.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Go see what’s in that barn,” Clete said. “There’s one dog dead in the straw. The others got sores all over them. The stink is awful. Get up, Jess.”

“No,” Bottoms said, holding his face.

Clete lifted Bottoms to his feet, then drove his head into the counter and beat it on the rim of the sink. Bottoms fell in a heap on the floor, his eyes crossed, his forehead laid open.

“Ease up, Clete,” I said.

“Stay out of it, Dave.”

Clete picked up the beer bottle and shoved it in the garbage disposal and flipped on the switch. The glass clanked and splintered and screeched and rumbled through the drainpipe. Clete hauled up Bottoms by his belt and wrapped one of his suspender straps around the faucet, then shoved Bottoms’s right hand into the disposal unit and rested his thumb on the wall switch. “Try taking out your big boy without fingers, Jess. Where’d the marked money come from?”

“A robbery,” Bottoms said, his face the color and texture of someone slipping into shock.

“Not good enough, Jess,” Clete said.

“The strap’s around my throat. I cain’t breathe.”

“Try.”

Bottoms was crying. I rested my hand on Clete’s shoulder. “It’s not worth it,” I said.

“Back off, Streak.”

“I will not,” I said, easing myself between him and Bottoms. I slipped the suspender strap from the faucet and lowered Bottoms to the floor.

“Don’t mess this up,” Clete said.

I squatted down next to Bottoms. “Jess is going to help us. We’re also going to have the Humane Society out here. Right, Jess? Are we on the same wavelength?”

But he couldn’t answer. He had obviously suffered a concussion or maybe a skull fracture.

“Take your time, partner,” I said. “Look on the bright side.”

He coughed and spat in a handkerchief, then wiped his face with it. “The guy who did the robbery gave it to a whore. To give her a better life or some bullshit. I took it from the whore and gave some of it to Dautrieve. The guy came in my yard and said I either get every dollar back and give it to him or I’m going somewhere I cain’t imagine. But that bitch Dautrieve had already spent some of it.”

“What did the guy look like?”

“He was wearing a hood. I couldn’t see his face. Except for his eyes. They looked like slits.”

I glanced at Clete. “Richetti,” he said.

“Who’s Richetti?” Bottoms said.

“A guy you want to run from,” I said, getting to my feet.

“Don’t leave me screwed up in the head like this,” Bottoms said. “I got a weak heart. You got to tell me who this guy is. That money is from the Mob? The guy is an assassin? Why you looking at me like that?”

“I hate people who hurt animals,” Clete said.

“Pit bulls are made to fight,” Bottoms said. “An animal has to earn its keep. It’s the law of nature.”

Clete slipped his .38 snub-nose from his shoulder holster, flipped out the cylinder, and dumped the rounds into his palm. I knew what he was going to do next. “Let it go, Cletus,” I said.

“Wait in the Caddy.”

“No.”

“I mean it, Dave.”

“No,” I repeated.

“You’re making me angry, big mon.”

I looked down at Bottoms. His face was white with blood loss. “What’s the last thing the guy in the hood said to you, Mr. Bottoms?”

He had to think. He looked up at me. “ ‘No matter what you do, you’ll eventually be mine.’ What’s that mean?”

“You don’t want to know,” Clete said.

He snicked the cylinder back inside the frame of his pistol, then replaced the pistol in his shoulder holster and dropped the loose rounds in his coat pocket. He took out his cell phone and dialed 911 as we went out the door.

“You need to get the Humane Society out to the home of Jess Bottoms in Sunset,” he said. “I’m going to call the Associated Press in New Orleans about what I saw here. My name is Clete Purcel. Bring an ambulance for Mr. Bottoms. Out.”