Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

The man did not reply. He had not shaved that morning, and there were gray whiskers among the red and blue veins in his cheeks. His smile was twisted, one eye squinted behind the lens of his glasses, as though he were arbitrarily defining the situation in his own mind.

"You came to the rectory… In the rain," the priest said.

"Could be. But I need you to hep me with this chore. That's our number one job here."

The man draped his arm across the priest's shoulders and walked him inside the cabin. He smelled of deodorant and chewing tobacco, and in spite of his age his arm was thick and meaty, the crook of it like a yoke on the back of the priest's neck.

"Your soul will be forfeit," the priest said, because he could think of no other words to use.

"Yeah, I heard that one before. Usually when a preacher was trying to get me to write a check. The funny thing is, the preacher never wanted Jesus's name on the check."

Then the man in the hat pulled apart the staples on the paper bag he had carried on board and took out a velvet curtain rope and a roll of tape and a plastic bag. He began tying a loop in the end of the rope, concentrating on his work as though it were an interesting, minor task in an ordinary day.

The priest turned away from him, toward the window and the sun breaking through the flooded cypress, his head lowered, his fingers pinched on his eyelids.

The parishioner's sixteen-gauge pump shotgun was propped just to the left of the console. Father Mulcahy picked it up and leveled the barrel at the chest of the man in the Stetson hat and clicked off the safety.

"Get off this boat," he said.

"You didn't pump a shell into it. There probably ain't nothing in the chamber," the man said.

"That could be true. Would you like to find out?"

"You're a feisty old rooster, ain't you?"

"You sicken me, sir."

The man in yellow-tinted glasses reached in his shirt pocket with his thumb and two fingers and filled his jaw with tobacco.

"Piss on you," he said, and opened the cabin door to go back outside.

"Leave the bag," the priest said.

* * *

FIFTEEN

THE PRIEST CALLED THE SHERIFF'S office in St. Martin Parish, where his encounter with the man in the Stetson had taken place, then contacted me when he got back to New Iberia. The sheriff and I interviewed him together at the rectory.

"The bag had a velvet cord and a plastic sack and a roll of tape in it?" the sheriff said.

"That's right. I left it all with the sheriff in St. Martinville," Father Mulcahy said. His eyes were flat, as though discussing his thoughts would only add to the level of degradation he felt.

"You know why he's after you, don't you, Father?" I said.

"Yes, I believe I do."

"You know what he was going to do, too. It would have probably been written off as a heart attack. There would have been no rope burns, nothing to indicate any force or violence," I said.

"You don't have to tell me that, sir," he replied.

"It's time to talk about Lila Terrebonne," I said.

"It's her prerogative to talk with you as much as she wishes. But not mine," he said.

"Hubris isn't a virtue, Father," I said.

His face flared. "Probably not. But I'll be damned if I'll be altered by a sonofabitch like the man who climbed on my boat."