A Private Cathedral

Chapter Forty-one

Clete pulled me aside. He had taken Carroll’s butcher knife from him. He put a fresh magazine in the semi-auto and pulled and released the slide and clicked on the safety and placed the gun in my hand. “I got to get to Bell. You keep him busy until I can get behind him.”

“That’s a bad idea,” I said.

“No arguments, big mon.”

“Where’s Adonis?” I said.

“Who cares?”

“He’s a survivor,” I said. “He’ll cut a deal. Maybe he can get us some serious weapons.”

“Adonis may also be rallying the troops. I can’t believe I ever stood up for that guy. Come on, we got to put it in gear. Hey, I got one for you.”

“What?”

“Know what Ambrose Bierce called a pacifist?”

“Wrong time for it, Cletus.”

“A dead Quaker.” He hit me on the arm. “Stomp ass and take names, noble mon. The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide are forever.”

Then he was gone.

The only other time I had ever been in such close proximity to a murderous enemy was in Vietnam. We got into night-trail firefights when Sir Charles was no more than five feet from us. Oddly, we had come to respect Sir Charles and his ability to live inside the greenery of a rain forest and suddenly materialize out of the mists, his uniform little more than black pajamas, his sandals cut from an automobile tire, his day’s ration a rice ball tied inside a sash around his hips.

Sir Charles could be incredibly cruel, as the VC demonstrated in the capture of Hué when they buried alive both civilians and prisoners of war. But Sir Charles was brave and had a cause, one that he saw as noble. Mark Shondell could lay no such claim. He sought revenge on others for his own failure, and helped inculcate racial hatred and fear in the electorate to divide us against ourselves. I had known his kind all my life. Except Shondell was not an ordinary man. Marcel LaForchette believed Shondell may have been in league with diabolical powers. I don’t know if there is any such thing. But I do believe there are people in our midst who wish to make a graveyard of the world, and their motivation may be no more complex than that of an angry child flinging scat because he was left with regularity in a dirty diaper.

The ribbon of green light on the southern horizon was creeping higher into the sky, the waves subsiding, the sailboat rising and falling with the rhythm of a rocking horse. I felt a drop of rain on the back of my neck, like a reminder of the earth’s resilience. Then I looked at Father Julian and felt the same sense about him. There are those among us who can walk through cannon smoke and grin about it while everyone else is going insane. That was Father Julian Hebert.

We were in the lee of the superstructure of which the bridge was part, but not at an angle where Bell could fire upon us. “How you doin’, Julian?” I said.

“Not bad,” he replied.

“You’re not a very good liar.”

“I’ll practice.”

“I’ve got to entertain Bell,” I said. “I hope to come back. If I don’t, try to get on board a lifeboat. Penelope is on the bridge. Maybe she can go with you.”

“You still have feelings for her?”

“None that are good.”

“Who’s the liar?” he said. But at least he smiled.

I went up the ladder. The bridge windows were broken, the jagged and burnt frames like empty eye sockets against the watery greenish band of light in the south. I saw no sign of Bell. He had told Clete he was in the First Cav. I suspected he was telling the truth. He didn’t silhouette, he didn’t give away his position; he made no sound at all.

“Dave Robicheaux here, Mr. Bell,” I said.

No answer.

“Is Penelope okay?”

“Go away, Dave,” she said.

“Mr. Bell, how about we drink mash and talk trash? You can drink the mash, I’ll talk the trash.” I had the semi-auto in my right hand. “Hey, I’m lonely out here,” I said.

No response.

“You doing all right, Mr. Shondell?” I said.

The entire yacht was quiet. The sailboat was closer, its black sails taut with wind, flecked with foam. I thought I could see someone in the wheelhouse. I also thought I saw a swimmer knifing through the waves, headed for the sailboat. I wiped my eyes and looked again. The swimmer had no flotation equipment, wore no shoes, and took long, even strokes, twisting his head sideways to breathe, like a long-distance pro. I couldn’t see the swimmer’s face, but I was almost certain I was looking at Adonis Balangie.

I was crouched on the ladder, just below the bridge. “Hey, Mr. Bell!” I said. “You were in the First Cav? That’s righteous, brother. Central Highlands, right? I was there. Came home alive in ’65. Sorry for the incoming. Let’s start over.”

Still no response. Bell was hard-core, the kind of cynic who concludes he’s going to hell the day he’s born.

“Did you hear me, Mr. Bell?”

“Yeah, I got the message. Come on in. Have some coffee.”

If he wasn’t a cop now, he had probably been one in the past. He knew what waited for him if he got locked up in a mainline joint. A cop in the shower is a bar of soap; on the yard, he can be shanked in the time it takes for a guard to turn his back; in the mess hall, his food is a cuspidor. In a joint like Angola, multiply everything I said by ten. But I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

“I can guarantee you friend-of-the-court status,” I lied. “Maximum bounce, three to five. With luck, fifteen months. You can do it on your hands.”

“No kidding?” he said. “Come a little closer. My hearing aid isn’t working.”

“Sure,” I said. “If you guys can get a Mayday out, we’ll have the chopper on the way.”

“Can’t hear you, sweetheart.”

A bucket lay on its side between the ladder and the bridge. I picked it up and threw it across the deck. Bell tilted the Kalashnikov out the window and began firing, the ejected shells bouncing on the console and the deck. He had jungle-clipped a second thirty-round magazine to the one inserted in the magazine well. With a flick of his wrist, he could reverse an empty magazine and replace it with a fresh one and be back on rock and roll in less than three seconds.

Then I saw Clete’s silhouette looming behind him.

Bell had just eased off the trigger and was probably trying to see if he had ricocheted a couple of rounds into me. For just a second I looked straight into his face. He seemed to realize he had blown it and that Clete was standing behind him. I even thought I saw him smile as he would at a fellow traveler, one who poses as a servant of the people or the nation but secretly knows he’s a mercenary. Any way you cut it, I think he knew he was about to do the Big Exit and was trying to sign off with a measure of good cheer, perhaps with a few words such as “Way to go, laddie. Kiss the ladies for me and pour a toddy in my coffin.”

A bit romantic? Yeah, probably. But watching a violent death can eat your lunch, particularly when you’re a participant.

Clete formed his left arm into a hook and wrapped it under Bell’s chin and jerked back his head, curving the butcher knife into his heart. Bell’s lips pursed silently like the mouth of a fish out of water. It should have been over. Bell went straight down, his arms flopping at his sides, the Kalashnikov dropping out of view. I heard the steel butt strike the deck. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself running into the bridge, finding Penelope all right, looking at Clete with relief, convinced we were about to reenter the rational world and flee forever the web in which we had entangled ourselves, not unlike Stephen Crane’s soldier returning from the war and rediscovering the beauty in a buttermilk sky and green pastures blooming with wildflowers.

Alas, there is always the canker in the rose, the shaved dice in the cup, the loss of the nail in a horse’s shoe that brings down a kingdom. Clete could not believe his eyes. The Kalashnikov bounced once off the deck and landed in the lap of Mark Shondell.

“Oh, my, isn’t this a gift?” he said. “Thank you so much, Mr. Purcel.”

Clete barely got through the hatch before Shondell lifted the muzzle and opened up.

The fire was spreading through the ship. I could see other people on the stern, but I didn’t know if they were crew members or prostitutes or Shondell’s goons. If the latter, I suspected they were calculating the risk of deserting Shondell by going over the side or getting into a firefight on the bridge. The half-clothed body parts of the two private investigators stuffed in an oil barrel and dropped in Vermilion Bay had been a reminder of Shondell’s policy regarding employee disloyalty or failure. Someone had tried to launch a lifeboat but had made a mess of the pulleys and tipped the boat over. Two people were trying to hold on to the sides. They wore life jackets and one of them may have been the man Clete threw overboard. If the yacht went down, the hull or the screws might take them with it.

Then I saw three men working their way forward. They stayed in the lee of the superstructure and were crouched in the manner of infantry approaching an objective. We were running out of time, and I saw no solutions to our problems. Johnny and Father Julian and Carroll LeBlanc and Clete and I were huddled in the shadows perhaps twenty yards aft of the bridge. We were a sorry-looking bunch, I’m sure. My system could no longer produce adrenalin, and Clete was in the same shape. We were hungry and cold and probably on the edge of physical and nervous collapse, unable to think clearly or distinguish the tricks of the mind from Gideon’s supernatural manifestations and the very real possibility that we were about to die.

Johnny was sitting on the deck, his knees pulled up before him, his head down.

Clete shook him gently by the shoulder. “Get out of it, kid. Slip the punch and swallow your blood. Don’t let your enemy know you’re hurt.”

“Isolde is dead,” Johnny said.

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“These things have happened before, Mr. Dave,” he said. “My uncle always wins. I have to stop him.”

“What are you doing, Johnny?” Father Julian asked.

“Getting up,” Johnny said. “Ending this.”

“Your uncle is going to kill anyone who comes through that hatch,” Clete said.

“That’s the point,” Johnny said. “Then you can shoot him.”

Julian stepped in front of him. “It’s time I have a talk with your uncle.”

“No, he hates you, Father,” Johnny said.

“Then I must have done something right in my life,” Julian said. He looked at me. “Keep Johnny here, Dave.”

I knew we had only minutes, if that. Shondell’s people would soon have us surrounded. Julian was about to give his life so I could get a clear shot at Shondell. Arguing with him would not change his mind. If I didn’t act, his sacrifice would be for nothing. “I’ll be behind you,” I said.

But I had forgotten about Carroll LeBlanc. “Give me back the knife,” he said to Clete.

“What for?” Clete said.

“It’s my knife.”

I looked at Clete and shook my head. But he ignored me. “It’s LeBlanc’s decision,” he said. He let Carroll take the knife from his hand.

Carroll grinned at me, his face sweaty and bloodless, looking like a deathly ill man burning with fever, the string of moles below his eye as dry as baked dirt. “Let’s do it, Robo.”

He went up the ladder, his grin like a half-moon slit in a muskmelon. Clete and I went behind him. I had the .25 semi-auto in my right hand. Then Carroll turned briefly and stared into my face. “Sorry I let you guys down. I hope this makes it right.”

“It’s okay,” I said. Then I stumbled. The semi-auto caught on the rail and fell from my hand and tumbled into the darkness.

Carroll never faltered. He went through the hatch and took a burst from the Kalashnikov in the chest and the face. Shondell was sitting down, his back propped against the console; his mouth resembled a horizontal keyhole where he had bitten off half of his upper lip, exposing his teeth. Carroll went down on his face and I knew I was next. I saw the glee in Shondell’s eyes as he raised the muzzle of his weapon. I had no defense, no moat or castle behind which to hide. This time it was for real: In two seconds I would be spaghetti on the bulkhead, and Clete would catch the next burst and tumble on top of me, and the weapon that couldn’t get us in Vietnam would have gotten even at last.

But that’s not what happened. Shondell pulled the trigger and the firing pin snapped on a dud. I had never seen a man look so surprised and so afraid. In the corner of my eye, I saw Penelope getting to her feet. “Run, Dave,” she said.

I didn’t have time. Clete almost knocked me down. He kicked the Kalashnikov from Shondell’s hands and pulled him to his feet and slammed his face on a glass-covered chart table. I had not seen the emergency flare he was carrying in his side pocket, but there it was. He tore off the cap and banged the striker on the tip. There was a spark, then the flare was aflame, hissing like a snake. Clete shoved it over Shondell’s teeth and down his throat.

I tried to pull Clete away from Shondell but to no avail. I knew he had gone back in time and was walking with the Jewish woman and her three daughters to a gas chamber at Auschwitz. I stepped back and did not try to intervene.

He grabbed Shondell by the neck and began beating his head on the chart table. The glass did not break, but Shondell’s head did. It broke the way a flower pot full of dirt does, and then it came apart, a sanguine mist rising from Shondell’s hair. Clete couldn’t or wouldn’t stop. He knotted the neck of Shondell’s shirt and coat in his fists and hammered the remnants of Shondell’s head against the edge of the glass until Clete’s hands slipped loose and Shondell slid to the deck, his neck a stump.

Clete stared down at Shondell’s body as though he did not know where it had come from. Penelope was pressed against the bulkhead, her skin and purple dress freckled with blood and brain matter. There was no fear in her face, only dismay and perhaps disappointment.

“What did you expect, Penelope?” I said. “Where did you think this would end?”

“Look!” she said, pointing at the sailboat as it crossed in front of the yacht. “There’s Isolde on the deck with Adonis. If you had just listened to me and waited.”

“Can I ask you a question, Miss Penelope?” Clete said.

“What?”

“Do you know where I could put together a pitcher of Jack on shaved ice with a few mint leaves on top and a lime slice or two? I’d be in your debt.”

Small hailstones began clicking on the ceiling of the bridge, then grew in size and volume and velocity until they were bouncing like Ping-Pong balls all over our ship, their cool white purity shutting out the world, chastening the wind, denting the waves and swells, creating an operatic clanging of ice and steel that Beethoven’s Fifth couldn’t match.

But it wasn’t over. I’ll try to explain. See, it’s got everything to do with Clete Purcel. As Clete would say, I’ll give you the straight gen, Ben. I wouldn’t give you a shuck, Chuck.