Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

He didn't raise his eyes or look at me again. He finished his beer and sandwich at the bar, then put on his coat and stood at the screen door, looking at the mist blowing under the colonnade and at the cars passing in the neon-streaked wetness in front of Goldie's bar. Clete Purcel fired up his Cadillac and rattled down the street, turning at the end of the block.

The man with the impish face and curls that hung on the back of his neck stepped outside and breathed the air like a man out for a walk, then got into a Honda and drove up Magazine toward the Garden District. A moment later Clete Purcel pulled around the block and picked me up.

"Can you catch him?" I asked.

"I don't have to. That's Gunner Ardoin. He lives in a dump off Tchoupitoulas," he said.

"Gunner? He's a button man?"

"No, he's been in two or three of Fat Sammy Figorelli's porn films. He mules crystal in the projects, too."

"Would he bust up a priest?" I asked.

Clete looked massive behind the steering wheel, his upper arms like big, cured hams inside his tropical shirt. His hair was sandy, cut short like a little boy's. A diagonal scar ran through his left eyebrow.

"Gunner?" he said. "It doesn't sound like him. But a guy who performs oral sex for a hometown audience? Who knows?"

We caught up with the Honda at Napoleon Avenue, then followed it through a dilapidated neighborhood of narrow streets and shotgun houses to Tchoupitoulas. The driver turned on a side street and parked under a live oak in front of a darkened cottage. He walked up a shell driveway and entered the back door with a key and turned on a light inside.

Clete circled the block, then parked four houses up the street from Gunner Ardoin's place and cut the engine. He studied my face.

"You look a little wired," he said.

"Not me," I said.

The rain on the windshield made rippling shadows on his face and arms. "I made my peace with N.O.P.D.," he said.

"Really?"

"Most of the guys who did us dirt are gone. I let it be known I'm not in the O.K. Corral business anymore. It makes life a lot easier," he said.

Through the overhang of the trees I could see the Mississippi levee at the foot of the street and fog billowing up from the other side. Boat lights were shining inside the fog so that the fog looked like electrified steam rising off the water.

"Are you coming?" I asked.

He pulled an unlit cigarette from his mouth and threw it out the window. "Why not?" he said.

We walked up Gunner Ardoin's driveway, past a garbage can overflowing with shrimp husks. Banana trees grew against the side of the house and the leaves were slick and green and denting in the rainwater that slid off the roof. I jerked the back screen off the latch and went into Gunner Ardoin's kitchen.

"You beat up Catholic priests, do you?" I said.

"What?" he said, turning from the sink with a metal coffeepot in his hand. He wore draw-string, tin-colored workout pants and a ribbed undershirt. His skin was white, clean of jailhouse art, his underarms shaved. A weight set rested on the floor behind him.

"Lose the innocent monkey face, Gunner. You used a steel pipe on a priest name of Jimmie Dolan," Clete said.

Gunner set the coffeepot down on the counter. He studied both of us briefly, then lowered his eyes and folded his arms on his chest, his back resting against the sink. His nipples looked like small brown dimes through the fabric of his undershirt. "Do what you have to do," he said.

"Better rethink that statement," Clete said.

But Gunner only stared at the floor, his elbows cupped in his palms. Clete looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

"My name's Dave Robicheaux. I'm a homicide detective with the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department," I said, opening my badge holder. "But my visit here is personal."

"I didn't beat up a priest. You think I did, then I'm probably in the shitter. I can't change that." He began picking at the calluses on his palm.

"You get that at a twelve-step session up at Angola?" Clete said.

Gunner Ardoin looked at nothing and suppressed a yawn.