Crusader's Cross

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

We slept late the next morning, then had breakfast in the backyard on the old redwood table from my house that had burned. I had forgotten how fine it was to eat breakfast on a lovely morning, under oak trees on a tidal stream, with a woman you loved. And I also had forgotten how good it was to be free of booze again and on the square with my AA program, the world, and my Higher Power.

At first Tripod had been unsure about Molly, until she gave him a bowl of smoked salmon. Then she couldn't get rid of him. While she tried to eat, he climbed in her lap, sticking his head up between her food and mouth, turning in circles, his tail hitting her in the face. I started to put him in his hutch.

"He'll settle down in a minute," Molly said.

"Tripod has a little problem with incontinence."

"That's different," she said.

But before I could gather him out of her lap, his head lifted up suddenly and his nose sniffed at the wind blowing from the front of the house. He scampered up a live oak and peered back down at us from a leafy bough. I heard the doorbell ring.

"Be right back!" I said to Molly.

Raphael Chalons was at my front door, dressed in slacks and a sports coat out of the 1940s, a Panama hat hooked on one finger, his shoulders and back as straight as a soldier's. "You were very thoughtful in paying for my purchase yesterday at the Wal-Mart store. But I forgot to reimburse you," he said. He held up a five-dollar bill that was folded stiffly between two fingers.

I opened the screen and took the money from his hand. I had hoped his mission was a single-purpose one. But he remained on the gallery, gazing at the trees in the yard and the squirrels that darted across the grass. "Can I invite you in?" I said.

"Thank you," he said, and stepped inside, his eyes examining the interior of my home. "I want to hire you to find the man who murdered my daughter, Mr. Robicheaux."

"I'm a sheriff's detective, Mr. Chalons, not a private investigator."

"A man is what he does. Titles are a distraction created to deceive obtuse people. I want the monster who killed my daughter either in jail or dead."

"My fingerprints were at the crime scene. In some people's eyes I should be a suspect."

"Those might be my son's perceptions, but they're not mine. Valentine is sometimes not a good judge of character. You may have a penchant for alcohol, Mr. Robicheaux, but you're not a murderer. That's an absurdity. I know it and so do you."

"I'm complimented by your offer, but it's not an appropriate one."

"I think a degenerate or psychotic person wandered in from the highway and did this terrible thing to my daughter. But I can't seem to convince anyone else of that. Some speculate it's the Baton Rouge serial killer."

"The Baton Rouge guy abducts his victims and rapes them before killing them. Bondage is part of his M.O., as well as baiting the authorities. The guy who killed Honoria is somebody else."

He pulled at an earlobe. "I have to find out who. If nothing else, I have to exclude people who might have had opportunity or motivation," he said, glancing sideways at me. "I can't live in ignorance about the circumstances of her death. I just cannot do that. No father can."

There was no point in continuing the conversation. For a lifetime his money had bought him access and control, and now it was of no value to him.

"As you suggest, it may have been a random killing, Mr. Chalons. Deranged and faceless men wander the country. Sometimes they commit horrible crimes over a period of decades and are not caught." I made no reference to the fact a cross had been incised inside Honoria's hairline.

"So you do think that could be the case with my daughter?"

I saw what seemed a hopeful glimmer in his eye, as though I had presented him with good news. Or maybe I was reading him wrong. "I have no idea, sir," I replied.

He unhooked his hat from his finger and straightened the brim, then glanced through the back window into the yard. "Ah, the outlaw nun who's purchased you an inordinate amount of negative attention," he said.

"The outlaw nun is now my wife."

"Is that meant as a joke?"

"That's Molly Robicheaux out there, Mr. Chalons – not a nun, not an outlaw, but my wife."

"Well, she's a disciple of liberation theology and has been at odds with our government's policies in Central America, but no matter. Chacun a son gout, huh?"

He let himself out without saying goodbye, then paused on the gallery and fitted on his Panama hat. I followed him outside. "Run that statement by me again?"

"Your wife is a traitor, Mr. Robicheaux. Perhaps she's done many good deeds for the Negroes in our area, but she is nonetheless a traitor. If you choose to marry her, that's your business. I'm an old man and many of my attitudes are probably overly traditional."

I stepped close to him. "I don't wish to offend you, Mr. Chalons -" I began, a phosphorous match flaming alight somewhere in the center of my head.

"But what?"

I sucked in my cheeks and widened my eyes and looked out at the tranquility of the day. "Nothing, sir. My wife and I both wish you the very best and extend our sympathies and hope that all good things come to you and your family."

Then I rejoined Molly in the backyard and did not mention my exchange with Raphael Chalons. Tripod climbed down from his perch in the live oak, and Snuggs appeared out of the bamboo, his tail pointed straight up, as stiff as a broomstick. The four of us commenced to share breakfast at the redwood table.

When the world presents itself in the form of a green-gold playground, blessed with water and flowers and wind and centuries-old oak trees, and when you're allowed to share all these things on a fine Sunday morning with people and animals you love, why take on the burden of the spiritually afflicted?

That afternoon I jogged through City Park and saw Clete sailing a Frisbee with a bunch of black kids by the baseball diamond. He was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of swim trunks and his porkpie hat, his skin running with sweat.

"Married?" he said.

"Right. Last night. Got something smart to say?" I said.

"Know somebody a few weeks, start a shitstorm all over town, then hit the altar with about three hours planning… Seems normal to me," he said.

I told him about Raphael Chalons's offer to put me on his payroll.

"That's what rich guys do. I don't see the big deal there," he said.

"No, I think he wants to prove to himself that someone close to him didn't kill his daughter."

Clete sailed the Frisbee to a black kid, then sat on a bench in the shade and drank from a glass of iced tea. He wiped his hair and chest with a towel. There were strawberry bruises ringed around his brow and scabs in his scalp where his tormentors in Miami had wrapped a chain around his head. "So you told the old man to fuck himself?" he said.

"Not in those words."

"You should have. We need to take it to them."

"In what way?" I said.

"Same rules as when we were at NOPD – bust 'em or dust 'em."

"That's why we're not at NOPD any longer."

"It's not over between me and this Lou Kale dude, either. By the way, where's Jimmie?"

"I think he may have gone to find Ida Durbin."

"Think?"

"I don't have his umbilical cord stapled to the corner of my desk. You're the one who brought back the story about Ida saving your ass. Now, give it a rest."

"Married life must really be agreeing with you."

"Clete, you can absolutely drive people crazy. I mean it. You need your own Zip code and time zone. Every time I have a conversation with you, I feel like I have blood coming out of my ears."

"What'd I say?" he replied, genuinely perplexed.

The only sound was the creak of the trees and the kids playing by the ball diamond. "Molly wants you to come over for dinner this evening. We called earlier but you weren't home," I said.

"Why didn't you try my cell?"

"I don't remember."

"Better check with your wife again."

You didn't put the slide on Clete Purcel. But at 6:00 p.m. he was at the house anyway, resplendent in a new blue suit, his face glowing with aftershave. He clutched a dozen red roses in each meaty paw, a wedding gift wrapped in ribbon and satin paper clamped under one arm. It contained a sterling silver jewelry box that probably cost him several hundred dollars. "I'm really happy for Dave," I heard him say to Molly when I was in another room. "He's got polka dot giraffes running around in his head, but he's the best guy I've ever known."

On Monday morning I undertook a task that no drunk willingly embarks upon. I tried to find out what I had done during a blackout, where I had gone, and the identity of the people who had seen me commit acts that were so embarrassing, depraved, or even monstrous that my conscious mind would not allow me to remember them.

I checked out a cruiser and returned to the camp in the Atchafalaya Basin where I had awakened on a Sunday morning, hovering on the edges of psychosis, praying the sky might rain Jack Daniel's at any moment and let my drunkard's game go into extra innings.

I found the Creole woman who had watched over me that morning and who had told me I had been in the company of poachers and men who carried knives. Her name was Clarise Lantier, and she was picking up trash behind the lakefront bar her husband operated, stuffing it heavily into a gunnysack. She wore trousers and men's work shoes, and when she stooped over and stared at me sideways, her recessed, milky-blue eye and misshapen face were like those of a female Quasimodo.

"Who were these poachers and men with knives, Miss Clarise?" I asked.

"They live yonder, 'cross the lake. Don't ax me their names, either, 'cause they don't give them. Maybe they from up nort'."

"How do you know?"

"They talk different from us."

"You're not telling me a whole lot."

"They dangerous men, Mr. Dave. That's enough to know, ain't it?" she said.

But she gave me directions to their camp, anyway. I drove on a dirt track around the northern rim of the lake, through stands of swamp maples and persimmon and gum trees. The interior of the woods was dark with shade, the grass a pale green, the canopy rippling in the wind. On the east shore I saw a shack built on stilts by the water's edge, an outboard and a pirogue tied under it. A pickup with crab traps in back and a Tennessee plate was parked up on the high ground, a bullet hole in the rear window.

There are not many places left in the United States where people can get off the computer, stop filing tax returns, and in effect become invisible. The rain forests in the Cascades and parts of West Montana come to mind, and perhaps the 'Glades still offer hope to those who wish to resign from modern times. The other place is the Atchafalaya Basin.

I got out of the cruiser and stood behind the opened door, my right hand on the butt of my.45. "It's Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department. I need somebody to come down here and talk to me," I called up at the shack.

A dark-haired man with a ragged beard appeared in the back doorway, just above the wood steps that led down to dry ground. "Holy shit, you're a cop?" he said.

"Keep your hands where I can see them, please," I said. "Who else is in the camp?"

"Nobody. They went to run the trot line."

"Come down here, please," I said.

His body was so thin it looked skeletal. His jeans and T-shirt were filthy, his neck beaded with dirt rings. He walked slowly down the steps, as though his connective tissue barely held his bones together. It was impossible to tell his age or estimate his potential. He seemed ageless, without cultural reference, painted on the air. He had teeth on one side of his mouth and none on the other. There was a black glaze in his eyes, a long, tapered skinning knife in a scabbard on his belt. His odor was like scrapings from an animal hide that have burned in a fire.

"I sure didn't make you for no lawman," he said.

"What's your name, podna?"

"Same name it was when we met you 'cross the lake at the bar – Vassar Twitty."

"I'm not here to bother you guys about game regulations, Vassar. I don't care what kind of history you might have in other places, either. But I've got a personal problem I think you might be able to help me with. I went on a bender and don't know what I did."

It felt easier saying it than I had thought. He sat down on a step, his knees splayed, and looked about the ground with an idiotic grin on his face.

"Want to let me in on the joke?" I asked.

"You was pretty pissed off. We kept telling you to just have another drink and come coon hunting with us. But you was set on getting even with some guy."

"Which guy?" I said.

"Some TV newsman you said was jamming you up. We tried to get your keys away from you, but there wasn't nothing for it."

"For what?" I said, swallowing.

"When a man wants to rip somebody from his liver to his lights, you leave him alone. We left you alone. I reckon nothing bad happened or you wouldn't be driving a cruiser. Right? Boy, you was sure stewed," he said.

The wind gusted off the lake. It must have been ninety in the shade, but my face felt as cold and bright as if I had bathed it in ice water.

I wasn't in a good state of mind when I got back to the department. Could I have gone to Valentine Chalons's guesthouse and in a bloodlust attacked his sister? How do you reach memories that are locked inside a black box?

I had another problem, too, one I had kept pushing to the edges of my consciousness. I went into Helen's office and closed the door behind me. "You don't look too hot," she said.

"I found a guy in the Basin I was drinking with the night Honoria Chalons was murdered. He said I talked about ripping up Val Chalons. He said he and his friends tried to stop me but I took off in my truck."

"I think we know all that, don't we?"

"You've been protecting me, Helen."

"No," she said.

"I gave you that CD with a blood smear on it. You didn't turn it over to Doogie Dugas."

"Because it didn't come from the crime scene. Because Doogie is an incompetent idiot."

"I know that's Honoria's blood on it."

"No, you don't. Listen, Dave, Val Chalons has done everything in his power to put your head on a stick. But luminol doesn't lie. There were no blood traces in your truck, your clothes, or in your house. Now stop building a case against yourself."

"Raphael Chalons came to my house yesterday and tried to put me on his payroll," I said.

"That's interesting," she said, looking at the tops of her nails.

"One other item. Molly Boyle and I got married Saturday night."

Her elbow was propped on her desk. She rested her chin on her knuckles, her face softening. She seemed to think a long time before she spoke. "You did it."

"Did what?"

"Figured out a way to marry your own church. No, don't say anything. Just quietly disappear. Bwana say 'bye' now."

Jimmie's resourcefulness rarely let him down. His friendship with police officers, private investigators, and people in the life extended from Key Biscayne, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas, which was the long, sickle-shaped rim of America's sexual playground long before the invention of Vegas or Atlantic City. Three hours after his flight had arrived in Miami, he obtained the home address of the man who now called himself Lou Coyne. He also obtained the name of his wife, a woman who called herself Connie Coyne and who lived three houses down from her husband on a canal in Miami Beach.

Jimmie stayed that night in a hotel that fronted the ocean. In the morning, he dressed in a linen suit and lavender silk shirt, had his shoes shined in the hotel lobby, then took a cab to a two-story white stucco house, one with a faded red tile roof, scrolled iron balconies, heavy, brass-ringed oak doors, and gated walls that towered over the grounds. Each house on the street was similar in ambiance, a fortress unto itself, the name of its security service prominently displayed. But even though it was Saturday, there were no people on this dead-end street, no sounds of children playing on a ficus-shaded lawn.

A Hispanic gardener came to the gate after Jimmie pushed the buzzer. The St. Augustine grass was closely clipped and thick, the bluish-green of a Caribbean lagoon. The flower beds bloomed with every tropical plant imaginable, and royal palms touched the eaves of the second story. Off to one side of the yard Jimmie could see a lime-colored swimming pool coated with leaves, the cracked dome of a 1950s underground atomic-bomb shelter protruding from the sod, like the top of a giant toadstool, and a boat dock that offered a sweeping view of the ocean.

"Is Ms. Coyne at home?" Jimmie asked.

"Si,"the gardener replied.

"Would you tell her Jimmie Robicheaux would like to speak to her?"

"Si," the gardener replied, staring into Jimmie's face.

"Would you go get her, please?"

"Si," the gardener replied, obviously not comprehending a word.

"Quien es?" a woman said from inside the fronds of a giant philodendron, where she was pulling weeds on her knees and dropping them in a bucket.

"My name is Jimmie Robicheaux, Ms. Coyne. I'm looking for an old friend and thought you might be able to help me," Jimmie said.

The woman stood up, brushing grains of dirt off a pair of cotton work gloves. She was slender, her hair a silvery-red. She wore a straw hat on the back of her head and a halter and Capri pants, and her shoulders were sprinkled with freckles. She walked to the gate, her eyes examining Jimmie's face.

"How can I help you, Mr. Robicheaux?" she said.

But the formality of her speech couldn't hide her regional inflection, nor disguise the fact she had correctly pronounced Jimmie's last name, after hearing it only once, which most people outside Louisiana are not able to do easily.

"Ida Durbin is the name of the lady I need to find," he said.

She looked at her watch and rubbed the glass with her thumb, more as an idle distraction from her own thoughts than as an effort to know the time.

"How's your friend, the private investigator?" she said.

"Clete Purcel? He's doing all right. I think he'd like to have a talk with your husband, though."

She stepped near the gate and closed her hand around one of the twisted iron spikes inside the grillework. "And yourself? You been doin' okay, Jimmie?"

"Life's a breeze. How's it with you, Ida?"

She reached into the bugle vine growing on the wall and pushed a button, buzzing the gate open. "Come on in, sailor, and let me tell you a story of hearts and flowers," she said.