DR14 - Crusader's Cross

  I convinced myself my attendance Saturday morning at the picnic was innocent in nature. It was a fine day, the sun covered by rain clouds, the wind flecked with salt, the Spanish moss straightening in the oak trees along the bayou, Frisbees sailing through the air. What could be wrong in eating ice cream and grilled frankfurters among people of color for whom a plastic duck race down the bayou was a grand event?

  But it wasn't long before I found ways to put myself next to Sister Molly Boyle. I helped her set tables, turn franks on a flame-streaked grill, paint margarine on hot dog buns, and finally to dip ten ducks out of the water with a crab net.

  It was all in the spirit of fun, wasn't it?

  But regardless of what I was doing, my eye would travel to wherever she was on the grounds. I felt foolish and wondered if I had entered that self-deluded stage in an aging man's life when others have to protect him from knowledge about himself.

  She was certainly lovely to look at. She was hard-bodied, her jeans stretched tight on her rump and hips, her shoulders powdered with freckles, her red hair feathered with light when the wind blew it, her eyes interested in whatever was being said to her, without any sign of impatience or hidden thoughts in them that I could see. My brother was a light-bearer. I believed Molly Boyle was probably one, too.

  I went into the office to use the restroom. As I was coming out, I saw a little boy wandering in the hallway, about to wet his pants. I took him into the restroom and helped him use the toilet and wash his hands. When I came back out, his mother was standing by the door, fat and angry, her print dress damp against her distended dugs. "You didn't have no bidness taking him in there," she said. Then she pointed her finger at the little boy. "You gonna get it, you."

  I started to speak, then saw Molly Boyle come through the door, the sun bright and hot at her back. "There was a man in a boat up the bayou. The children say he had a rifle in his boat," she said.

  The angry, fat woman pulled her child down the hall and slammed the door behind her.

  "Where's this guy now?" I said to Molly.

  She went to a window and looked across the lawn at a line of cypress trees on the bayou. I stood behind her and could smell the heat from the grill in her clothes and a warm odor like flowers and shampoo in her hair. "He's gone. He was just behind those trees. He had a pair of binoculars. I think he was watching you walk into the building," she said.

  When she turned around, her chin was pointed upwards. She seemed smaller, shorter, her face both beautiful and vulnerable, in a way that made my throat dry and caused my loins to tingle. "Can you describe what he looked like, Sister?" I said.

  "Don't call me that again, will you?" she said.

  "I won't."

  "He was white. He had a cap on. But I didn't get a good look at him. Is someone after you?"

  "Could be."

  Her eyes moved over my face. "Are you feeling okay? Our air-conditioning is broken," she said.

  "The heat doesn't bother me," I said.

  "Would you like a glass of water?"

  "No. No thanks," I said. I opened my cell phone and punched in a 911 call.

  She stepped away from me, then looked back over her shoulder, waiting for me to follow her down the hall. "I'm glad you came today. The children really enjoyed meeting you. Spend more time with us," she said.

  I stared at her, puzzled, unsure what I should say next. "By the way, I helped a little boy go to the restroom. I'm afraid I angered his mother."

  "That's Mrs. Poche. You're lucky she didn't club you with her purse. She was angry the day she was born."

  In the next five minutes cruisers from both Jeanerette and New Iberia arrived on the drawbridges to the north and south of us. But no one saw any sign of a man in a boat with binoculars and a rifle. I talked to a little black boy who had seen the man in the boat through a canebrake.

  "He had a rifle. It looked like he had a tin can stuck on the end of the barrel," the boy said.

  A silencer?

  But contract killers don't pop you in broad daylight in front of large numbers of witnesses, I told myself.

  Tell that to President Kennedy or Jimmy Hoffa, I thought.

  Jimmie had gone back to New Orleans and I was alone again. I had never done well with solitude. But I had another enemy, too, one that did not depart with age. I suspect monastic saints tossed in their sleep with it, waking fatigued and throbbing at first light, their fingers knotted in prayer as they tried to extricate themselves from the soft shapes that beckoned to them from their dreams. For that reason alone I always admired them, but my admiration for them did not make my own problem with celibacy any the less, perhaps because I was a drunk as well as one of those for whom the sybaritic life was only a wink of the eye away.

  Sometimes I thought I heard Bootsie telling me I should not be alone. Didn't the story in Genesis indicate the same? Was it not a form of pride to set a standard above that of ordinary men?

  That evening I went to Clete's cottage at the motor court, where he was waxing his Caddy under a mimosa tree. He was bare-chested and wore a Marine Corps utility cap on the back of his head and a huge pair of electric-blue Everlast boxing trunks that hung to his knees. The shadows of the mimosa branches looked like feathers moving on his skin.

  "Where have you been for the last three days?" I said.

  "Chasing down a couple of child molesters. They run every time. I don't know why Nig and Willie —"

  "Why don't you answer your cell phone?" I said.

  "I lost it somewhere. I think maybe a gal rolled me. I can't deal with working for Nig and Willie anymore. It's really affecting my stability. You think I could get on with the department?"

  "In Iberia Parish?" I said.

  "Something wrong with that?"

  "Nothing," I said, my face empty.

  "Can you run it by Helen? Salary is not a factor. Long as it's detective grade," he said.

  "Sure," I said.

  "I'd really like that," he said, rubbing a soft rag along a tailfin on his Cadillac, whistling to himself, as though somehow I had reassured him that people such as ourselves were not out of sync with the rest of the world.

  Then I told him about the death of Billy Joe Pitts. "Pitts got hit in the head with his own motorboat?" he said.

  "That's what the sheriff says."

  Clete opened a Budweiser and drank from it, his throat working, his eyes flat. "You figure somebody took him off the board?" he asked.

  "Who knows?"

  He watched the way I was looking at him. He wiped the beer off his lips with his hand. "Get yourself a Dr Pepper out of the icebox."

  "I don't want one," I said.

  "What's bugging you?" he said.

  "Nothing," I replied.

  He picked up a pint bottle of whiskey from inside the open top of his Caddy. It was wrapped inside a brown paper bag, a shaft of sunlight flashing on the broken seal affixed to the cap. He took a hit from the neck and chased it with beer from his Budweiser can. He lit a cigarette and drank again from the whiskey, then ground the cigarette out in the gravel, his cheeks blooming with color. Unconsciously I wet my bottom lip. His eyes wandered over my face and I saw a great sadness in them.

  "I'm a bad example. You stop having the thoughts you're having," he said.

  "I'm not having any thoughts. I worry about you," I lied.

  "Right," he said.

  I headed for my truck.

  "I'll put the booze up. I'll drive you to a meeting. Dave, come back here. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" he said.

  I put on my running shorts and lifted weights in the backyard, did three sets of push-ups, with my feet propped on a picnic bench — thirty reps to each set — and jogged two miles through City Park, then hit it hard back across the drawbridge to home. But I could not rid myself of the restlessness that seemed to invade my metabolism without cause, nor the thoughts and images that kept drifting before my eyes.

  There was no question about their nature. They had to do with the smell of perf
ume, the amber splash that sour mash makes when it's first poured on ice, a woman's face framed softly inside the thickness of her hair, the shine of bar light on the tops of her breasts, perhaps a cherry held between her teeth, her hand curved on the neck of a freshly opened bottle of champagne, bursting with white foam.

  I opened a bottle of Talking Rain and drank it empty, then showered, put on my pajama bottoms, and tried to read, my shield, handcuffs, slapjack, and .45 on the nightstand beside me. The last of the summer light had gone out of the sky, and in the yard I could hear the bamboo rattling in the breeze and the first patter of rain on the trees. Sometime just before midnight I fell asleep with my hand over my eyes. I had not locked the front door.

  When I woke, the room was black. I went to the bathroom and got back in bed. Outside, dry lightning flickered on the trees. I drifted off to sleep and dreamed I was inside a cave, my arm twisted behind me. That's when I heard the rocking chair moving back and forth in the corner.

  I opened my eyes and saw a silhouette seated in the chair. When I tried to sit up, my right wrist came tight against the handcuffs that were clipped around it and the brass bedstead. I reached with my left hand for the nightstand, where my .45 should have been. It was gone, along with my slapjack. The figure in the chair stopped rocking.

  "I was watching you sleep," a woman's voice said.

  "Honoria?" I said.

  "Your front door was unlocked. That's a dangerous thing to do," she said.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I came in to see you."

  My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, but I could see her face now, a pale orb wrapped in shadow. "Where's my piece?" I said.

  "Your what?"

  "My forty-five, where is it?"

  She stood up from the chair and walked to the side of the bed. She wore Mexican-style jeans, gold sandals, hoop earrings, and a white blouse that was fluffy with lace. She sat down beside me, her rump pressing deep into the mattress. "I hid it," she said.

  I couldn't smell alcohol on her, nor even cigarette smoke, which meant she had probably not been in a bar. "My handcuff key is in my pants. You need to unhook me, Honoria," I said.

  "Why?"

  "Because friends don't do this to one another," I replied.

  She looked into my face and brushed back my hair, then leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. "You like me, don't you?" she said.

  "I'm too old for you."

  "No, you're not." She placed her hand on my stomach and leaned down again.

  "What you're doing is no good for either of us, Honoria," I said.

  She took her hand away and sat very still. I could see her breasts rising and falling against the light from the street.

  "I think the devil lives under the bayou. I think the devil lives in my father, too," she said.

  "I believe you need some help with this stuff. I know a doctor in Lafayette," I said.

  "A therapist?"

  "I used to see him after my wife Annie was killed. He helped me a lot," I said.

  She looked at nothing, her small hand by my hip. "Do you mind if I stay with you a while?"

  "No, but I —"

  "Just say yes or no."

  "No, I don't mind."

  "I didn't think you would. I always liked you, Dave. You're a misplaced figure from Elizabethan theater, you know. Your tragedy is the fact no one ever explained that to you."

  And with that, she curled up next to me, her face on my shoulder, her arm across my stomach, and went to sleep.

  The sun was above the rooftops when I woke. The space beside me was empty and my right wrist was free of the handcuffs that hung from the bedstead. My .45 and slapjack had been replaced on the nightstand, along with the key to my cuffs. From the kitchen I could hear someone clattering pots or pans on the stove.

  After I used the bathroom, I pulled on my khakis and went into the kitchen. Honoria was dripping coffee, heating a pan of milk and stirring a pot of oatmeal. Both Snuggs and Tripod were eating out of their pet bowls on the floor. Honoria's hair was brushed and her face made up, but when she glanced in my direction her face had the stark expression of someone who has been caught unawares by a photographer's flash.

  "There was no water in the cat's bowl," she said.

  "He drinks out of the toilet," I said.

  "That's disgusting."

  "That's what I've been telling him," I said.

  But she saw no humor in my remark. She served oatmeal in two bowls and placed them on the breakfast table, then began hunting for spoons and coffee cups. I looked at my watch. "I'm running a little bit late for Mass," I lied.

  "Where's your butter dish?"

  "I don't have one. Look, Honoria —"

  "The oatmeal is getting cold. I fixed it for you. It would be nice if you ate it."

  "Sure," I said, and sat down at the table.

  She poured coffee, and placed toast, jam, and sugar in front of me, preoccupied, her eyes darting about the room, as though somehow she needed to impose order on it. "Your cat is climbing in the sink," she said.

  "Snuggs is his own man," I said.

  "You should train your animals," she said, lifting him off the drainboard and scooting him out the back door. "Don't you ever rake your leaves? A couple of days' work and this place would look fine."

  "Last night you said the devil lived under the bayou and also inside your father."

  "Where'd you get that?" she said, smiling for the first time that morning.

  I studied her eyes. They were dark brown, like warm chocolate, possessed of visions and privy to voices and sounds that I believed only she saw and heard. They were the eyes of someone who would never be changed by therapy, analysis, Twelve-Step programs, religion, or medical treatment.

  "Do you know what you did in your sleep last night?" she said.

  "Nothing," I said.

  "Have it your way. I don't kiss and tell," she said.

  "This bullshit ends now, kiddo. The Robicheaux Fun House is officially closed. Thanks for fixing breakfast," I said, and dumped my food into a sack under the sink.

  She took a half pint of gin from her purse, poured a three-finger shot into a glass, and drank it at the back door, staring in a desultory fashion at the yard. "Have you ever spent the spring in Paris? I fell in love there with a boy who was gay. My father hounded him without mercy. He drowned himself in the Seine," she said.

  But I was all out of Purple Hearts and had decided that Honoria was going to leave of her own accord or be picked up by a cruiser. My determination suddenly dissipated when I looked out the front window and saw the Chalonses' handyman, with his son and Sister Molly next to him, turn into my driveway.

  "I'm going to talk to some people out front. There's no need for you to leave right now," I said to Honoria.

  "Too late, my love," she said. She walked out the front door and down the street toward the Shadows, her purse swinging from a shoulder string.

  I stood on the gallery, barefoot, unshaved, looking down at Molly Boyle, my face burning.

  "I should have called first, I guess, but Tee Bleu says he knows where the boat is," she said, speaking awkwardly and too fast, trying to hide her embarrassment at my situation.

  "Which boat?" I said.

  "The one the man with the gun was in. Tee Bleu says it's moored in a canebrake the other side of the drawbridge."

  But I couldn't concentrate on her words. "There's a misunderstanding about what you just saw here. The lady who just left has some mental problems. I left my door unlocked and she —"

  "I know who she is. You don't have to explain."

  "No, hear me out. She hooked me up to my bed with my cuffs. I was trying to get her out of the house when you arrived."

  "Locked you in your own handcuffs?"

  "Right. I was asleep."

  "I didn't mean to intrude. I thought you should know about the boat."

  "You didn't intrude. Y'all come inside."

  "No, we'd better run. Thank
you. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"

  She tried to smile over her shoulder as she got into her car.

  Way to go again, Robicheaux, I thought, my stomach churning. "Give me ten minutes. I'd really appreciate it," I said.

  I followed Molly and the handyman and his son to the drawbridge south of Molly's agency. The little boy pointed at a boat that had floated into a flooded clump of reeds and bamboo. I waded into the water and dragged the boat's hull up on the mudbank. The boat was old, made of wood, the stern printed with rust where the engine mounts had been removed. There were no tags or registration numbers of any kind on it. "What makes you think this was the man's boat, Tee Bleu?" I asked.

  "It got blue paint on the front end," he replied.

  "Thanks for telling me about this," I said.

  "I seen the gun. I ain't made it up. Seen the man, too. He was old," he said.

  "Y'all gonna dust the boat for fingerprints?" his father said.

  "It doesn't work quite like that," I said.

  The father's half-moon eyebrows gave him a happy look, even when he wasn't smiling. He had a habit of turning his whole head as he glanced about himself, like a curious owl on a tree branch. "I got to make my deliveries. Can y'all run Tee Bleu home for me?" he said.

  "Show Dave your birdhouses," Molly said.

  "They ain't that much to look at," he said.

  "No, show him," she said.

  He opened up the trunk of his car, exposing a half dozen or so notched and pegged cypress birdhouses lying on a blanket, each with a wood plug in the roof. "See, the trick is not to get no foreign smells inside the house. I stain the outside with vegetable oil and that way it don't have no paint smell. I got a plug in the roof and a feeder shelf inside so you can pour the feed t'rew the hole and not get no human smells on it. If you stick this house up in your tree, every kind of bird there is gonna be flying around in your backyard. They're t'irty-five dol'ars, if you want one."

  Thanks, Molly, I thought.

  "I already have one. Maybe another time," I said.

  " 'Cause I got 'em, ready and waiting," he replied.