Creole Belle

“See, you’re an honest man,” she said.

  Before Clete could reply, the minister said, “Mr. Purcel, may I sit down? I’m afraid I was running to get out of the rain and got a bit winded. Age is a peculiar kind of thief. It slips up on you and steps inside your skin and is so quiet and methodical in its work that you never realize it has stolen your youth until you look into the mirror one morning and see a man you don’t recognize.”

  “Would y’all like some coffee?” Clete said.

  “That would be very nice,” the minister said. When he sat down, a tinge of discomfort registered in his face, as though his weight were pressing his bones against the wood of the chair.

  “Are you all right?” Clete said.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” he said, breathing through his mouth. “What a magnificent view you have. Did you know that during the War Between the States, a Union flotilla came up the bayou and moored right at the spot by the drawbridge? The troops were turned loose on the town, mostly upon Negro women. It was a deliberate act of terrorism, just like Sherman at the burning of Atlanta.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Clete said.

  “Unfortunately, history books are written by the victors.” The minister’s cheeks were soft and flecked with tiny blue and red capillaries, and his mouth formed a small oval when he pronounced his o’s. The cadences of his speech seemed to come from another era and were almost hypnotic. “Do you know who wrote those words?”

  “Adolf Hitler did,” Clete replied.

  “It’s very important that you help Ms. Leboeuf. Her husband is not what he seems. He’s a fraudulent and perhaps dangerous man. I think he may have had dealings with criminals in New Orleans, men who are involved in the sale of stolen paintings. I’m not sure, so I don’t want to treat the man unjustly, but I have no doubt he wants to make Ms. Leboeuf’s life miserable.”

  Varina had sat down, smoothing her dress, her gaze fixed on the rain falling on the bayou. Every few seconds, her eyes settled on Clete’s, unembarrassed, taking his measure.

  “What do you base that on?” Clete asked.

  “I’m Ms. Leboeuf’s spiritual adviser.” The minister hesitated. “She’s confided certain aspects of his behavior to me that normally are difficult to talk about except in a confidential setting.”

  “I can speak for myself, Amidee,” Varina said.

  “No, no, this was my idea. Mr. Purcel, Pierre Dupree is a dependent and infantile man. In matters of marital congress, he has the appetites of a child. If the implication has unpleasant Freudian overtones, that’s my intention. Do you understand what I’m saying, sir?”

  “I don’t think I need an audiovisual, Reverend,” Clete said. “Why is Dupree a threat to Ms. Leboeuf?”

  “Because he has the business instincts of a simpleton and is teetering on bankruptcy. He sees Ms. Leboeuf as the source of all his troubles and believes she’s out to cause him financial ruin. He’s a weak and frightened man, and like most frightened men, he wishes to blame his failure on his wife. Last night she went out to the Dupree home to get her dog. Pierre told her he’d had it put down.”

  “The dog named Vick?” Clete said to Varina.

  “Pierre said Vick had distemper,” she said. “That’s a lie. You saw him. He was fine. Either Pierre or his grandfather did something to him, maybe hurt him in some way, then had him injected. I feel so bad about Vick, I want to cry. I hate Pierre and his hypocrisy and his arrogance and his two-thousand-dollar suits and his greasy smell. I can’t stand the thought that I let him kill my dog.”

  “No good comes of blaming ourselves for what other people do,” Clete said. “I understand you’re filing a civil suit against the sheriff’s department over an incident at your father’s place. The incident involved Dave Robicheaux. That creates a conflict of interest for me, Ms. Leboeuf. I’d like to help you, but in this instance, I don’t think I can.”

  “I’ve already dropped the suit. It’s not worth the trouble,” she replied.

  Don’t do what you’re about to do, a voice in Clete’s head told him.

  “My husband is a pervert. I will not discuss the kinds of things he has asked me to participate in,” she said. “He wasn’t drunk when he did it, either. Frankly, I feel sick at the mention of this. The fact that he’s considered a great artist locally is laughable. He has no understanding of intimacy or mutual respect inside a relationship. That’s why he studied commercial art. It has no emotion. If he ever painted what was on his mind, he’d be put in a cage.” Her eyes were moist, her small fists knotted in her lap.

  “Maybe I can recommend a couple of PIs in Lafayette,” Clete said.

  “I’m going to be staying at my father’s house at Cypremort Point. I’m at the end of my rope, Mr. Purcel. I have to take care of my father, and I can’t be looking over my shoulder in fear of my husband. If you’d rather I go somewhere else, I will. I’ve made my livelihood in electronic security, but that will not protect me from a man who would euthanize a loving pet who was part of our household for five years. I feel such rage right now, I can’t express it. If you want us to leave, please say so. But don’t try to push me off on some seedy private investigator in Lafayette.”

  Clete could feel a strand of piano wire tightening along the side of his head. “You dropped the suit against the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department?”

  “I already told you that.”

  “What if I give you my cell phone number and the number of my answering service? Plus, I can have a talk with your husband about your dog.”

  “It’s a bit late for that. Furthermore, I’d like more than talk when it comes to Pierre.”

  “Pardon?” Clete said.

  “That’s wishful thinking on my part. Don’t pay attention to what I just said.”

  “Ms. Leboeuf sometimes speaks sharply, but she’s a religious woman, Mr. Purcel, even though she might get mad at me for saying that,” the minister said.

  “My fee is seventy dollars an hour plus expenses,” Clete said.

  “You’ve been very kind,” Varina said, her eyes crinkling.

  “You’ll probably find you don’t need me, Ms. Leboeuf,” Clete said. “In this kind of situation, a little time passes, and the lawyers agree on division of the assets, and both parties walk away and start new lives. At least the smart ones do.”

  “You sound like a man of the world,” she said.

  “Dave Robicheaux and I were plainclothes detectives at NOPD. Neither of us is now. That says more than I like to think about,” he replied.

  When they had gone and Clete had shut the door behind them, he remained standing in the center of the room, as though he couldn’t remember where he was or what had just transpired in his life. The wind was whipping the rain against his window, obscuring the bayou and the drawbridge and smudging the lights on the cars crossing the steel grid. His stomach was churning, and pinpoints of sweat were breaking on his forehead. He wondered if he was coming down with the flu.

  Gretchen opened the door without knocking. “Why did you let her do that to you?”

  “Do what?”

  “She’s a cunt.”

  “Don’t use that word.”

  “That’s what she is.”

  “That word is never used in this office. Not by me, not by the skells, not by you, not by anyone in our acquaintance. That one doesn’t flush. Do you understand that?”

  “All right, she’s the C-word from head to toe, from the way she points her boobs at you to the way she crosses her legs to give you a little preview of what might be waiting. You don’t know how mad you make me.”

  “I’m your employer, Gretchen, and you’re my employee. I think you’re really a good kid, but while we’re on the job, you need to show some respect.”

  “Don’t you call me a kid. You don’t know what I’m capable of.” Her cheeks were wet, her bottom lip trembling. Her down-in-the-ass jeans hung low on her hips, exposing her navel; her broad shoulders were rounded, her eyes filled with sorrow. In that moment, she l
ooked more like a man than a woman. She sat down in the chair the minister had occupied and stared into space.

  “I’d never deliberately hurt you,” Clete said.

  “If you want to be a dildo, go be a dildo. Don’t let on like you’re a man, though.”

  “Gretchen, I’ve been with a lot of women. I liked them all, but there was only one I really loved. What I’m saying is I feel a special kind of affection for you. We’re kindred spirits, know what I mean? Let me take you to dinner.”

  “Who was the one you loved?”

  “She was a Eurasian girl. She lived on a sampan on the edge of the South China Sea.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “The VC killed her because she was sleeping with the enemy. Come on, let’s go down to Bojangles.”

  Gretchen wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. “Call up your new douchebag and ask her. She’s more your style.”

  FRIDAY EVENING MOLLY and I had people over for a crab boil in the backyard. The sky had turned from gold and purple to green as the sun descended into a bank of thunderheads in the west. The breeze smelled of rain falling from clouds that had drawn water out of the Gulf and fish eggs out of the wetlands; it smelled of newly mowed grass and sprinklers striking warm concrete and charcoal starter flaring on a grill; it smelled of chrysanthemums blooming in gardens dark with shadow, telling us that the season was not yet done, that life was still a party and should not be surrendered prematurely to the coming of night. Molly had strung Japanese lanterns through the live oaks and set the redwood table with bowls of potato salad and dirty rice and chopped-up fruit and corn on the cob, and I had lit the butane burner under the crab boiler, right next to an apple crate crawling with blue crabs. Across the bayou in City Park, the electric lights were blazing above the baseball diamond, where boys who had refused to accept the passing of summer were chasing line drives smacked by a coach at home plate. It was the kind of evening that people of my generation associate with a more predictable era, one that may have been unjust in many ways but possessed a far greater level of civility and trust and shared sense of virtue that, for good or bad, seemed to define who we were. It wasn’t a bad way to be, having drinks in one’s backyard, watching the sunset or a paddle wheeler passing on the bayou, couples dancing to a band on the upper deck. At a certain time in one’s life, the ebb and flow of a tidal stream and the setting of the sun are not insignificant events.

  As our guests began arriving, I looked around for Alafair, who I had assumed was joining us.

  “Alafair is going to a movie with a new friend she’s made,” Molly said, apparently reading my thoughts.

  “She has a date?” I asked.

  “Clete has a new assistant. Alafair just met her this morning. They must have hit it off.”

  “Where is Alafair?” I said.

  “She was looking for her car keys a minute ago. You don’t want her to go?”

  I went inside, then saw Alafair getting into her used Honda out front. I went through the front door, waving at her to stop, trying at the same time to be polite to the guests coming up the walk. In the meantime, Alafair pulled away from the curb. I walked down the street, still waving my arms. Her brake lights went on, and she turned out of the traffic and parked by the Shadows. She leaned down so she could see me through the passenger window. “Didn’t Molly tell you where I was going?” she said.

  I got in the front seat and closed the door. “You’re seeing a movie with Gretchen Horowitz?”

  “Yeah, I kind of had an argument with her this morning at Clete’s office. But she turned out to be a nice person. I asked her to go to a show. Is there something wrong?”

  “That’s hard to say. I haven’t met her. I have the sense she comes from a pretty rough background. Maybe she knew some bad guys in Miami.”

  “Which bad guys?”

  “Mobbed-up Cubans, for openers.”

  “She works for Clete. He must think she’s okay.”

  “Alafair, I’m not sure who this girl is. Clete believes she’s his daughter. What he doesn’t want to believe is that she may be a contract killer, one who’s known in the life as Caruso. She might have capped two or three members of the old Giacano crowd, two in New Orleans, one in the Baton Rouge bus depot.”

  “This can’t be the same person.”

  “Yeah, it can,” I said.

  Alafair stared straight ahead at the deepening shade under the live oaks. The wind was blowing off the Gulf, and the wall of bamboo that grew in front of the Shadows rattled against the piked fence. “Are you certain about any of this?” she said.

  “No, I only know what Clete has told me.”

  “Does Helen Soileau know?”

  “More or less.”

  “Why doesn’t she want to do something about it?”

  “Because sometimes neither she nor I trust Clete’s perceptions. Because you don’t give up your friends, no matter what they do.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “You’re still going to the movies with her?”

  “Gretchen is waiting for me at the motor court. She’s pretty angry at Clete.”

  “What for?”

  “Something about Varina Leboeuf. Clete was driving down to Cypremort Point to see her tonight.”

  “Do you have any aspirin?” I asked.

  “In the glove box. Is Gretchen involved somehow with the Dupree family?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You believe Gretchen will give you a lead into the disappearance of Tee Jolie Melton and the death of her sister, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If y’all are still in the backyard later, can I invite Gretchen to join us?”

  “I don’t think that’s a real good idea.”

  “I don’t believe she’s a killer. I think she has no friends and she’s lived a hard life and she feels betrayed because Clete is seeing Varina Leboeuf. Is that the kind of person our family shuts the door on? Look me in the face and tell me that, Dave. When did we start being afraid of someone who is friendless and alone?”

  I felt sorry for the litigators who would have to face Alafair in a courtroom.

  IN THE DARKNESS of the theater, Gretchen Horowitz sat totally still, enraptured by every detail of the film from the opening scene until the fade-out, never taking her eyes off the screen. Alafair had never seen anyone watch a film with such intensity. Even when the credits had finishing rolling, Gretchen waited until the trademark of the studio and the date of production had trailed off the screen before she allowed herself to detach. The film was Pirates of the Caribbean.

  “Do you know what John Dillinger’s last words were?” she asked.

  “No,” Alafair replied.

  “It was in Chicago, at the Biograph Theater. He had just come out of seeing Manhattan Melodrama with the two prostitutes who sold him out to the feds. You’ve heard about the lady in red, right? Actually, she was wearing orange. Anyway, John Dillinger said, ‘Now, that’s what I call a movie.’ Did you see Public Enemies? Johnny Depp played Dillinger. God, he was great. The critics didn’t understand what the film was about, though. That’s because a lot of them are stupid. It’s a really a love story, see. John Dillinger’s girlfriend was an Indian named Billie Frechette. She was beautiful. In the last scene, the fed who shot Dillinger goes to see Billie in jail and tells her that Johnny’s last words were ‘Tell Billie bye-bye blackbird.’ That scene made me cry.”

  “Why were you holding your cell phone all during the movie?” Alafair asked. “You expecting a call?”

  “A guy I know in Florida is making a nuisance of himself. Did you hear what I said about Dillinger and Billie Frechette?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  They were outside the theater now, not far from one of the bridges over the Teche. The air had cooled and smelled of the bayou, and on the horizon giant clouds of smoke were rising from the sugar refinery, which was lit as brightly as a battleship. “You like it here?” Gretchen asked.
/>
  “It’s where I grew up,” Alafair said. “I was born in El Salvador. But I don’t remember much of life there, except a massacre I saw in my village.”

  Gretchen stopped walking and looked at her. “No shit. You saw something like that?”

  “A Maryknoll priest flew my mother and me into the country. We crashed by Southwest Pass. Somebody had put a bomb on board. My mother was killed. Dave dove down without enough air in his tank and pulled me from the wreck.”

  “Is that in your book, the one that’s about to come out?”

  “Some of it.”

  “I wish I could write. I’d like to be a screenwriter. I have an associate’s degree and fifteen hours at Florida Atlantic. You think I could get into film school at the University of Texas?”

  “Why would you not be able to?”

  “I wasn’t the best student in the world. I think half the time my male professors were grading my jugs. I kind of had a way of choosing almost all male professors for my classes. Oops, there goes my phone. I’ll be just a minute.”

  Gretchen walked across the parking lot and began speaking into the phone as she rounded the corner of the theater. Some middle-school kids cutting through from the street to the parking lot passed her, then looked back and started laughing. “What’s so funny, you guys?” Alafair asked.

  “That lady over there dropped her phone in the mud puddle. She knows some cuss words, yeah,” one boy said.

  Alafair looked at her watch, then walked to the corner of the building. She could hear Gretchen’s voice in the darkness. Perhaps secretly, she hoped to hear a profane tirade at a lover or a family member. Or a confession of need or an attempt at reconciliation or an argument over money. But the voice she heard was not one dependent on profanity to intimidate the listener. Nor was it the voice of the Gretchen Horowitz enamored by the love story of Billie Frechette and John Dillinger.

  “Here’s what it is, and you’d better get it right the first time,” Gretchen said. “I’m out. Don’t leave anything in the drop box. The last deal was on the house. No, you don’t talk, Raymond. You listen. You take my number out of your directory, and do not make the mistake of contacting me again.” There was a pause. “That’s the breaks. Go back to Cuba. Open a beans-and-rice stand on the beach. I think you’re worrying about nothing. The people who pay us pay us for one reason: They’re not up to the job themselves. So adiós and hasta la cucaracha and have a good life and stay away from me.”