A Stained White Radiance

CHAPTER 9

It was after midnight before I finished with the paramedics, local sheriff's deputies, an angry detective who accused me of operating in his jurisdiction without first contacting his office, and the parish medical examiner, who, like many of his kind, had aspirations to be a comedian.

"You could can that guy's B.O. as a chemical weapon and bring the Iranians to their knees," he said. "I'd consider rabies shots."

When I got into my truck I knew I should drive straight back to New Iberia. That would have been the reasonable thing to do. But my late-night hours had never been characterized by reason, neither as a practicing or as a recovering drunk.

Less than an hour later I was on Highland Drive, west of the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, and I turned out of the long corridor of oaks into a brick-paved driveway lined with a brick fence and rosebushes. It led to an enormous white house with antebellum pretensions that might have been built five minutes ago on a Hollywood movie set. The trim on the front door was pink, the brass-work as bright and portentous as gold.

When he opened the front door in his pajamas, the breeze made the chandelier over his head ring with sound and light.

"Bootsie needs your help," I said. "No, that's not really true. I need it for her. I'm out there on the rim, Lyle."