Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"You bet," I said, knowing that Jimmie, like all brave people, would continue to believe in the world, regardless of what it did to him

.

A little after nine, Wally, our overweight dispatcher and self-appointed departmental comic, buzzed my phone. "There's a newsman down here wants to see you. Should I send him up?" he said.

"Which newsman?"

"The one on TV looks like an icicle."

"Valentine Chalons?"

"That's the one."

"Why don't you just say so?"

" 'Cause he looks like an icicle. Or I could call him the TV guy wit' a broom up his ass trying to give me a bad time. By the way, that nun left a note for you."

I couldn't begin to follow his words. "Wally —" I began.

"That nun, the one who builds homes for poor people, she was here to see you. I buzzed your phone but you wasn't at your desk. So she left a note. It's in your mailbox. She went out when the TV guy was coming in. You want to see the TV guy or not?"

Three minutes later Valentine Chalons opened my office door without knocking and closed it behind him., his eyes locked on mine. "I'll make this simple. My sister is a grown woman and can associate with whomever she pleases. But I'll be damned if you'll use her to get at my father," he said.

"Sorry to see you interpret things that way, Val," I said.

"My father is a heart patient. He probably doesn't have long to live. What are you trying to do to him?"

"Your sister had a problem with her car. I gave her a ride home."

"You're looking me in the face, telling me you have no issue with my father?"

"If I do, it doesn't involve your sister."

"How about Sister Molly? It's just coincidence I saw her leaving here this morning?"

"I don't know what it is, because I didn't see or talk with her."

"Our handyman told me he saw you at her office yesterday."

"Yeah, I did see her yesterday. But that's none of your business."

"Let me set you straight about that hypocritical bitch. She's a closet Marxist who uses the Church to stir up class hatred in ignorant and gullible people. Except she's not a real nun. She's got some kind of half-ass status that doesn't require her to take vows. So she hides behind the veil and gets to have it both ways."

"What's she got on you, partner?"

He put his hands on his hips, like a drill instructor, and looked sideways out a window, as though the room was too small for the level of anger he needed to express. Then he snuffed down in his nose and shook it off. "Give my dad a break, will you?"

"He's a heart patient but he smokes cigars?" I said.

"You're a beaut, Dave," he said.

Molly Boyle's note was a simple one: Please call. Thanks — Molly B. I rang her office number and was told she was mowing the grass and would return my call later. But why wait, I asked myself, and headed down the road in a cruiser toward Jeanerette.

Then I had to ask myself a more serious question: What was so urgent about seeing Molly Boyle? Why not just wait for her call? The answer that started to suggest itself was one I quickly put out of my mind.

When I pulled in to her agency I saw her seated on a tractor, towing a grass-cutter though a field of buttercups, a little black boy in the seat with her. She turned at the end of a long swath, then saw me walking toward her and shut off the engine. She wore a baseball cap and cotton gloves and a sleeveless blouse that was peppered with sweat. The tops of her arms were dusty and sprinkled with sun freckles. She introduced the little black boy as Tee Bleu Bergeron. "His daddy is our best birdhouse builder," she said.

"Your father works for the Chalons family?" I said.