Robicheaux

Chapter 32

I wasn’t done. I went to Levon Broussard’s home on Loreauville Road. His wife’s car was in the garage, but his was not. I parked in front and waited. A few minutes later, his SUV turned off the road and came up the driveway. He got out and walked toward me, his engine still running. I could see Rowena watching from the gallery.

“You crazy fuck,” he said to me.

“Problem?”

“I saw it all. Approximately a hundred and fifty other people did, too.”

“My daughter took the screenwriting job because she respects you and your work. Her faith was repaid by Nemo’s insults and his attempt to degrade her. To my knowledge, you didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“I didn’t know about it.”

“You do now.”

“I’m supposed to kick him off the set? He’s the goddamn producer.”

I could feel my anger returning, my palms tingling, a dryness in my mouth, a flame inching its way across the lining of my stomach. “What’s wrong with you, Levon? You’ve devoted your entire life to good causes. How could you hook up with a guy like Tony Nine Ball?”

“It’s what the situation demanded.”

“You want him to rig a jury for you? He’ll end up owning your soul.”

“I didn’t kill Kevin Penny. A lot of people believe I did. Some have even congratulated me.”

I stepped closer to him. I saw Rowena walk into the yard, a flowering tree in bloom behind her.

“Look me straight in the face and tell me you didn’t do it,” I said. “Your prints were on the drill only because you tried to save his life. Tell me that.”

“It’s as you say.” There was not a flutter of emotion in his face or his eyes.

“He raped your wife. He put his mouth all over her body. He put his seed in her.”

“You want me to knock you down?”

“You don’t like the imagery? What do you think your trial is going to be like?”

“Tell Alafair I’m sorry. Ask her to come back on the set.”

“Dream on.”

“What can I say?”

“The truth.”

“White Doves at Morning is one of my best books and one of the least read. I wanted to see it on the screen. Nemo obtained the funding. If I had gotten it myself, I would have ended up dealing with the same Hollywood people he deals with. When you get off the phone with them, you want to clean your ear with baby wipes.”

“Who killed Penny?”

“I didn’t.”

“There’s something you’re hiding. I don’t buy your story about the drill. It’s too coincidental that you show up just after someone turns him into Swiss cheese.”

“You never mention Jimmy Nightingale or his sister,” he said. “He’s headed for the Senate and maybe even bigger things. He’s a fascist who’s lying to all these poor people who think he’s going to make their lives better. But you’re worried about justice for the guy who raped my wife and maybe killed some of the Jeff Davis Eight.”

“Seen any good movies?” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said.

But it wasn’t over. Rowena walked across the grass to the edge of the driveway, wearing jeans and a beige T-shirt with paint on it and no bra. “Don’t talk to him like that, Levon. Come in, Mr. Robicheaux. Have some tea with us.”

She lived up to her name, right out of Sir Walter Scott. “You’re a grand lady, madam,” I said. “All the best to both of you.”

On the way home, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I flipped it open. The caller was Melvin LeBlanc, the physician.

“What’s the haps, Mel?” I said.

“I’m at Iberia General. The head nurse thinks you should get over here.”

“Regarding what?”

“Spade Labiche. She says he keeps repeating the word ‘Robo.’ Mean anything?”

I parked under the oaks in front of the hospital and went inside. A nurse walked with me to the ICU. “Is he a friend of yours, Detective?”

“We work together.”

“I wondered if he had any immediate family in the area.”

“Maybe in New Orleans.”

“I see.”

“Why do you ask?”

“If he belongs to a church, this would be an appropriate time for his pastor to visit.”

I went inside the room. The left side of his face was encased in bandages, except for the eye. He was breathing through his mouth, his lips formed in a cone as though he had eaten hot food and was trying to cool his tongue.

“It’s me, Spade,” I said. “Dave Robicheaux.”

He seemed not to hear me. The fingers of his right hand twitched.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, partner,” I said. “You got a bad deal.” No reply, no reaction. I looked over my shoulder. The nurse had gone. “You want to tell me something?”

His fingers moved again, up and down, as though he were beckoning. I leaned over, my ear close to his mouth. “Tell me what it is.”

His breath contained a stench like decomposition in a shallow burial or a body bag in a tropical country. “You.”

“You what?” I said.

“You want save...” His voice trailed off.

The neurologist had told me his hearing was destroyed. But maybe that wasn’t the case.

“Give it another try,” I said.

“Dartez... Seizure.”

I took a Kleenex from a box on the nightstand and wiped his spittle from my cheek. I eased my hand under his and held it. “If you can’t do it, Spade, you can’t do it. In your mind, just tell the Man Upstairs you’re sorry for the mistakes you made. Don’t worry about anything else.”

I thought his left eye had been blinded. But it looked straight into mine. His voice was hoarse and coated with phlegm, the words rising from his throat like bubbles of foul air. “Epilepsy... he was strangling... something was in his throat... you tried to save him.”

“Go on.”

I felt his hand go limp in mine. “Hang in there, Spade. Come on, bud. Don’t slip loose.”

If you have attended the dying, you know what their last moments are like. They anticipate the separation of themselves from the world of the living before you do, and they accept it with dignity and without complaint, and for just a moment they seem to recede from your vision and somehow become lighter, as though the soul has departed or perhaps because they have surrendered a burden they told no one of.

I had brought nothing to record his words, but I didn’t care. I owed Spade a debt and wanted to repay it. I removed my religious medal and silver chain from my neck and poured it into his palm and folded his fingers on it and placed his hand and arm on his chest.

I walked down the corridor and ran into the nurse by the elevator.

“Is everything all right, Detective Robicheaux?”

“Just fine,” I said.

“Is he resting all right? It’s time for his sponge bath. Then we’ll be transferring him to hospice.”

“I think Spade will be okay,” I said.

“I’m sure he appreciated your visit. The poor man. What a horrible fate. It’s funny the things they say to you, isn’t it?”

“Pardon?”

“At the end, men usually ask for their mothers. But he asked for you. You must be very close.”

I drove home and fixed a cup of café au lait in a big mug and sat on the back steps. Snuggs flopped down on my lap, then sharpened his claws on the inside of my thigh. I set him down next to me, and like two old gentlemen, we watched a rainstorm march across the wetlands and let loose a torrent of hailstones that danced like mothballs all over the yard.