Creole Belle

28

I sat down next to Molly. Alafair’s chair was empty. I looked around and couldn’t see her anywhere. “Where’s Alf?” I said, my voice almost lost inside the volume of Bob Wills’s most famous song.

“She went to find Gretchen Horowitz,” Molly said.

I tried to think and couldn’t. Everything happening around me seemed fragmented and incoherent but part of a larger pattern, like a sheet of stained glass thrown upon a flagstone. A truck like the one from which a man had blown out my windshield was parked outside the building, and its driver had just told me he’d gotten his job from the same woman Gretchen Horowitz had warned me about. Could Clete and I have been wrong all this time? Had Julie Ardoin been a key player in all the events that had transpired over the last two months? Were we that blind? And now “The San Antonio Rose” was thundering inside my head, the same song Gretchen Horowitz had been whistling after she pumped three rounds into Bix Golightly’s face.

I got up and worked my way around the back of the crowd toward the beer concession. I could see Clete sitting at the end of a row, but there was no sign of Alafair or Gretchen or Julie Ardoin. I sat down next to him and scanned the audience. “Have you seen Alf?” I asked.

“Yeah, she and Gretchen were just here. They went to the ladies’ room,” he replied.

“Where’s Julie?”

“She went with them.”

“Clete, I just ran into that guy Bobby Joe Guidry, the Desert Storm vet.”

“Yeah, yeah, what about him?” he said irritably, trying to concentrate on the band.

“The company Guidry works for is supplying the ice cream for the concert. It’s the same company that owned the truck used by the guys who tried to kill me in Lafayette.”

“The truck was stolen, right? What’s the point? A guy who works for the same company is scooping ice cream outside? Big deal.”

“Guidry says he got his job through Julie Ardoin. She told him to call the company and use her name.”

“Julie is on the Sugar Cane Festival committee. She helps with all the events connected with the building.”

“No, it’s too much coincidence. Guidry says her husband was flying dope into the country.”

“That’s not exceptional,” he said. “Most of the guys who do that stuff are either crop dusters or helicopter pilots who get tired of landing on rigs in fifty-knot gales. For fuck’s sake, let’s listen to the band, okay?”

“Think about it, Cletus. When we landed in that harbor off the island, she came in like a leaf gliding onto a pond.”

“Yeah, because she’s a good pilot. You want somebody from the Japanese air force flying us around?”

“You’re not going to listen to anything I say, are you?”

“Because nothing you say makes sense,” he replied. “You’ve got me worried, Dave. I think you’re losing it.”

“I’ve got you worried? That’s just great,” I said, and punched him in the top of the chest with my finger.

I saw the pain flicker in his face and wanted to shoot myself. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” I said.

“Forget it, big mon. I’m right as rain. Now let’s listen to the music.”

I propped my hands on my knees, then squeezed my temples and closed my eyes and reopened them and stared at a spot between my shoes. I felt as though I were drowning. I felt exactly as I had when a black medic straddled my thighs and tore a cellophane wrapper from a package of cigarettes with his teeth and pressed it over the red bubble escaping from the hole in my chest, my lung filling with blood, my body dropping from beneath his knees into a black well. When I raised my head, the audience and the western band were spinning around me.

“Speak of the devil,” Clete said, “here she comes.”

“Who?”

“Who else? Every time I think of that woman, I want to unscrew my big boy and mail it to the South Pole in hopes the penguins will bury it under a glacier.”

Varina Leboeuf was not merely passing by. She was headed right toward us. “I’m glad I found you,” she said.

“Yeah, what’s the haps? I thought Halloween was over,” Clete said.

“You asshole,” Varina said.

“I hear that a lot-mostly from skells and crack whores. I’m sorry for whatever harm I caused you, Varina, but how about giving us a break here?”

“You don’t know who your friends are,” she said.

“You had my office creeped,” he said.

She clenched her jaw, her mouth tightening. “Is everything all right?” she said.

“Why shouldn’t it be?” Clete said.

“Because I saw Alafair and Gretchen outside,” she said. “I think they were with Julie Ardoin.”

“They went to the restroom,” Clete said.

“No, they didn’t. They were outside.”

“Why would they be outside? So what if they were?” Clete said.

“You’re not listening to me. Two men were out there. I know them. They work for Pierre. I think they’re involved with stolen paintings or something. They’re the ones Gretchen beat up.”

“Sit down and say all that again,” I said.

“I’m trying to help out here. Don’t be angry at me,” she said.

“I’m not angry at you. I can’t hear you. There’s too much noise. Sit down,” I said.

“Did Julie Ardoin ever work for you?” Clete said.

“Of course not. Why would she work for me? I hardly know her. Her husband used to fly Pierre around, but I never spent any time with Julie. I have to go.”

I took her by the arm and pulled her down to Julie Ardoin’s empty chair. “Are you telling us Alafair and Gretchen are in harm’s way?” I said.

“God, you’re an idiot. Do I have to write it on the wall?” she said. She walked away from us, her southwestern prairie skirt swishing on the backs of her legs.

“She’s wearing a gold belt,” Clete said.

“So what?”

“So was the woman I saw with Pierre Dupree at Dupree’s house.”

My head was splitting.

I went back to my seat. Molly was still sitting by herself. “You didn’t see Alf?” I said.

“No. She wasn’t with Clete?” she said.

“She and Gretchen went to the restroom with Julie Ardoin. I thought maybe she came back here.”

“She’s fine. Stop worrying. Come on, Dave, enjoy yourself.”

“Varina Leboeuf said some gumballs who want to hurt Gretchen were outside, and so were Alafair and Gretchen.”

“Varina likes to stir things up. She’s a manipulator. She wants to stick pins in Clete for dumping her. Now sit down.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Where’s Clete?”

“Looking for Gretchen.”

“I’m coming, too.”

“No, stay here. Alafair won’t know where we are if she comes back and you’re gone.”

Maybe I was losing it, as Clete had said. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Would a couple of goons try to do payback on Gretchen Horowitz at a music festival attended by hundreds of people? Was Varina Leboeuf telling the truth? Was she a mixture of good and evil rather than the morally bankrupt person I had come to regard her as? Did she have parameters I hadn’t given her credit for?

Clete and I had thrown away the rule book and were paying the price. We had protected Gretchen Horowitz and, in the meantime, had accomplished nothing in solving the abduction of Tee Jolie Melton and the murder of her sister, Blue. The greatest irony of all was the fact that our adversaries, whoever they were, thought we had information about them that we didn’t. Ultimately, what was it all about? The answer was oil: millions of barrels of it that had settled on the bottom of the Gulf or that were floating northward, like brownish-red fingers, into Louisiana’s wetlands. But dwelling on an environmental catastrophe in the industrial era did little or no good. It was like watching the casket of one’s slain son or daughter being lowered into the ground and trying to analyze the causes of war at the same time. The real villains always skated. The soldier paid the dues; a light went out forever in someone’s home; and the rest of us went on with our lives. The scenario has never changed. The faces of the players might change, but the original script was probably written in charcoal on the wall of a cave long ago, and I believe we’ve conceded to its demands ever since.

At the moment I didn’t care about the oil in the Gulf or Gretchen Horowitz or even Tee Jolie Melton. I didn’t care about my state or my job or honor or right and wrong. I wanted my daughter, Alafair, at my side, and I wanted to go home with her and my wife, Molly, and be with our pets, Tripod and Snuggs, in our kitchen, the doors locked and the windows fastened, all of us gathered around a table where we would break and share bread and give no heed to winter storms or the leaves shedding with the season and the tidal ebb that drained the Teche of its water.

The acceptance of mortality in one’s life is no easy matter. But anyone who says he has accepted the premature mortality of his child is lying. There is an enormous difference between living with a child’s death and accepting it. The former takes a type of courage that few people understand. Why was I having these thoughts? Because I felt sick inside. I felt sick because I knew that Clete and I had provoked a group of people who were genuinely iniquitous and who planned to hurt us as badly as they could, no matter what the cost. This may seem like a problematic raison d’etre for the behavior of villainous individuals, unless you consider that there are groups of people in our midst who steal elections, commit war crimes, pollute the water we drink and the air we breathe, and get away with all of it.

I went outside through the front door and circled around the side of the building. The air was cold, the wind biting, and in the north the sky piled with clouds that looked as though they contained both snow and electricity. Bobby Joe Guidry was latching the doors on the freezer compartments of his truck.

“Did you see Miss Julie with a couple of young women?” I asked.

“I didn’t see Miss Julie,” he replied. “There were a couple of young women here, though.”

“What did they look like?”

“One had long black hair. The other one looked kind of AC/DC, know what I mean? Her eyes were purple.”

“That’s my daughter, Alafair, and her friend.”

“Sorry.”

“Where did they go?”

“I gave them ice cream and they went back inside. The one with the black hair is your daughter, Mr. Robicheaux?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Two guys were eyeballing them. One guy had grease in his hair and a bump on his nose. The other guy was fat. His suit looked like he got it out of a laundry bag. I didn’t like the looks of them. They were hanging around a long time, smoking cigarettes out there in the trees. I started to go over there and ask them what they were doing.”

“Why?”

“Because I heard one of them say something when he walked by. He said, ‘Maybe get them on the amphib and throw one of them out.’ Then they laughed. When your daughter and her friend showed up, they stopped talking. They just smoked cigarettes and watched everything from under the tree. I didn’t know that was your daughter, Mr. Robicheaux. I would have come got you.”

“Where’d the two guys go?”

“Through the back door right after your daughter and her friend went inside,” he replied.

I wrote my cell phone number on the back of a business card and handed it to him. “If you see these two guys again, call me.”

“I feel bad about this, Mr. Robicheaux. When I came back from Iraq, I gave up hunting. I promised to do a good deed every day for the rest of my life. I also made a promise that I’d be a protector for people who didn’t have anyone to look after them.”

“You did fine, Bobby Joe.”

“Does that business about an amphibian mean anything to you?” he asked.

I found Clete up by the stage. The band had just finished playing “Ida Red” and was giving up the stage to a full orchestra, one dressed in summer tuxes irrespective of the season, just like Harry James’s orchestra. Clete was shielding his eyes from the glare of the spotlights while he searched the crowd for any sign of Gretchen and Alafair and Julie Ardoin. I told him what Bobby Joe Guidry had said. “You think those two asswipes were talking about the seaplane you saw behind Varina’s place? They were talking about throwing somebody out of a plane?” he asked.

“That’s what Guidry said.”

Clete’s face was pale, his eyes looking inward at an image he obviously didn’t want to see. “I saw that once.”

I could hardly hear him above the noise of the audience. “Say again?”

“Some intelligence guys brought two VC onto the Jolly Green. They were roped up and blindfolded. The guy who was the target had to watch the other guy get thrown out the door. We were probably five hundred feet over the canopy.”

“Clean that stuff out of your head. You think Julie Ardoin is in on this?”

“Nobody could take down Gretchen unless she trusted the wrong person.”

“You’re saying Julie is dirty?”

“I don’t know, Dave. Look at my history. I’ve trusted the wrong women all my life.”

“Where do you want to start?” I said.

His eyes swept the balcony and the crowd and the beer concession. “I don’t have any idea. I’ve made a mess of things, and I can’t sort anything out.”

“Follow me,” I said.

We began at the women’s restroom. I banged on the door with my fist and hung my badge holder inside. “Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department,” I said. “Excuse us, ladies, but we need to come inside.”

I pushed open the door. There was immediate laughter. “Boy, you guys are hard up!” a woman yelled.

“We’re looking for Alafair Robicheaux and Gretchen Horowitz and Julie Ardoin,” I said. “They may be in danger. We need your help.”

The laughter and smiles died. “I know Julie and Alafair,” a woman at a lavatory said. “They ain’t in here, suh.”

“How about in the stalls?” I said.

“They ain’t in here,” the woman repeated.

Regardless, I went from stall to stall, knocking on each door or pushing it open. Clete was looking from side to side, his face burning. “Has anyone in here seen Alafair Robicheaux or Julie Ardoin this evening?” I shouted out.

“By the ice-cream truck,” another woman said.

“Was anyone with them?”

“I wasn’t paying attention,” she replied.

The room smelled of perfume and urinated beer. Toilets were flushing. Everyone in the room was staring at me, the frivolous moment gone, a deadness in every person’s face, as though a cold wind had blown through the windows high up on the wall. “Thanks for your help, ladies. We apologize for bothering y’all,” I said.

We went back out in the concourse and climbed the stairs to the balcony and then went back downstairs and through the crowd again. The orchestra had just finished pounding out Louis Prima’s “Sing, Sing, Sing.” No one I recognized or spoke to had seen Alafair or Julie Ardoin, at least not in the last twenty minutes. I saw Clete opening and closing his hands at his sides, a bone flexing in his cheek. “This is a pile of shit,” he said.

“They weren’t abducted by a UFO. Somebody saw them,” I said.

“Except we can’t find that somebody,” he said.

“Where haven’t we looked?”

“Behind the stage?” he said.

“It’s Grand Central Station back there,” I said.

“No, I chased a bail skip in there once. He was at a picnic and tried to hide in a room full of paint buckets and stage costumes.”

“How do we get in?”

He thought about it. “There’s a back door.”

We went back outside into the cold and the damp, musky smell of leaves that had turned from green to yellow and black inside pools of water. We scraped open a heavy metal door in the back of the building just as the orchestra went into Will Bradley and Freddie Slack’s boogie-woogie composition “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar.”

“God, that gives me the willies,” Clete said.

“What does?”

“That song is on your iPod, the one you said Tee Jolie Melton gave you.”

We were inside a dark hallway, one that smelled of dust and Murphy Oil Soap. “That’s right, Tee Jolie gave it to me. You believe me now?” I said.

“I’m not sure. I got a feeling this isn’t real, Dave.”

“What isn’t?”

“Like I said before. We were supposed to die in the gig on the bayou. The real surprise is maybe we did die. We just haven’t figured it out yet. I’ve heard stories about people’s souls wandering for a long time before they’re willing to let go of the world.”

“We’ve got one issue here, Cletus: to find Alafair and Gretchen and bring them home. Come on, podna, lock and load. Let go of all this other stuff.”

His pupils were dilated, his skin stretched tight on his face. He coughed into his palm and wiped it inside his pocket. He pulled his. 38 snub from his shoulder holster and let it hang loosely from his right hand. Through a curtain, we could see the orchestra kicking into overdrive. The pianist’s fingers were dancing on the keys, the double-pedal beat of two bass drums building into a throaty roar the way Louie Bellson used to do it, the sound of the saxophones slowly rising in volume like a living presence, starting to compete and blend in with the stenciled clarity of Freddie Slack’s piano score, all of it in four-four time.

“I’m going to kill every one of them, Streak,” Clete said.

I started to argue with him, but I didn’t. Though bloodlust and fear and a black flag had served us poorly in the past, sometimes the situation had not been of our choosing, and we’d had little recourse. Ethics aside, when it’s over, you’re always left with the same emotion: You’re glad you’re alive and the others are dead instead of you.

At the end of the hallway was a narrow space through which I could see people dancing in a cleared area below the stage. All of them were having a good time. A young dark-haired woman in a sequined evening dress was dancing with her eyes tightly shut, her arms pumped, the back of her neck glazed with sweat. She was drunk and her bra strap was showing, and her lipsticked mouth was partially open in an almost lascivious fashion. All of her energies seemed concentrated on a solitary thought, as though she were reaching an orgasmic peak deep inside herself, totally indifferent to her surroundings. The trombone players rose to their feet, the blare of their horns shaking the glass in the windows. I didn’t care about the band or the secret erotic pleasure of others. I wanted my daughter back.

Clete Purcel was staring at his left palm. In it was a bright scarlet star that looked like it had been freshly painted on his skin.

I thought he had coughed the blood into his hand. Then I saw him raise his eyes to the plank ceiling above our heads. I slipped my army-issue 1911-model. 45 automatic from the leather holster clipped onto my belt. I heard the members of the orchestra pause in the middle of the melody and shout in unison:

When he jams with the bass and guitar, They all holler, “Beat me Daddy, eight to the bar.”

A two-tiered staircase made of rough-hewn lumber led through an opening in the ceiling. I went ahead of Clete, my. 45 held upward. A line of blood drops preceded me up the steps, like red dimes that had spilled from a hole in someone’s trouser pocket. I walked up the last three steps, my left hand on the rail, peering into the darkness. I slipped a penlight out of my coat pocket and clicked it on. The room was stacked with storage boxes and paint cans and Christmas decorations and papier-mache figures used in the Mardi Gras parade. I shone the light along the boards toward the rear of the room and saw a pool of blood next to a pile of boxes that must have filled a fifteen-inch radius. On the edge of the blood, I saw the gleam of a gold chain and a tiny stamped religious icon.

Clete was standing behind me and had not seen the blood nor its thickness and amount. “Cover my back,” I said.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Stay on my back, Clete. Please,” I said.

I stepped forward and shone the light directly on the blood and the gold chain and Star of David. Then I went past the boxes and raised the penlight and moved its small beam across the face of Julie Ardoin. Her throat had been cut and her nails and nose broken; her forearms were sliced with defensive wounds. She had bled out, and her face was white and stark and had the surprised and violated expression that the dead forever stamp on the inside of our eyelids.

I heard Clete’s weight on the boards behind me. He still had not seen the body. “That’s Gretchen’s chain and medal,” he said.

“It’s not Gretchen, Clete.”

“Who?” he asked.

“It’s Julie. Call it in. Don’t look.”

He almost knocked me down getting to the body. Downstairs, the orchestra had gone into a thunderous drum and horn and saxophone finale that deafened the ears and left the audience screaming for more.