Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

“Mr. Wellstone, we didn’t ask to get involved in your family’s business affairs or your personal lives,” I said. “You brought the trouble to us. In the meantime, two college kids died terrible deaths. I think your house is about to come down on your head. But Clete and I didn’t do it to you. Quince Whitley was a federal informant. I suspect he screwed you good with the feds before he cashed in.”

I could see the attention grow in Wellstone’s eyes. “Who was Whitley’s best friend?” I asked. “None other than Mr. Hobbs over there. You taking good care of Mr. Hobbs?”

“Questioning the altruism of my employees, are you?” Wellstone said.

“No, I’m questioning the loyalty of everybody around you, including your wife,” I said. “How about Sonny Click, man

of the cloth that he was? Guys like Click don’t bounce themselves off a rafter. I think he was about to do some serious damage to your reputation, and he got taken off the board. I think it’s got something to do with sex.”

“You have a nasty tongue on you, Mr. Robicheaux,” Wellstone said.

Clete just had to do it. “We also know your entourage of gumballs here isn’t entirely about us,” he said. “You think Jimmy Dale Greenwood is out there climbing your old lady. If that’s true, it’s because you made her life purely awful. I think you’ve got the same problem I have, Mr. Wellstone. It’s called the reverse King Midas touch. Everything we put our hands on turns to shit.”

Leslie Wellstone stepped closer to me. I could feel his breath on my skin and smell an odor, perhaps imagined, perhaps not, that was like the afterburn of kerosene. His eyes stared like a lizard’s out of his encrusted face. They were liquid, as though fluid from a systemic malignancy had pooled inside them. His voice became a hiss. “You read Shakespeare, Mr. Robicheaux? The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman. But don’t underestimate his power.”

Involuntarily I stepped back from him, the lip of the lake touching my shoe.

He turned and walked away, his men falling in beside him.

“Keep your wick dry, Sally,” Clete said at his back.

But if Leslie Wellstone was Sally Dio, he didn’t take the bait. Instead, he kept walking toward his Mercedes, his gaze lifted to the hooded blue jays in the tree branches overhead.

Then I gave it a try. “Comment va votre famille à Galveston?”

This time Wellstone turned around. “Bien, merci,” he replied.

Got you, motherfucker, I thought.

But Leslie Wellstone wasn’t one to be easily undone. “We have relatives in Galveston, Mr. Robicheaux. I’m sure that’s whom you were referring to,” he said.

WE DROVE BACK to Albert’s ranch, west of Lolo, and I made another call to Sheriff Helen Soileau, my boss down in New Iberia. “I think some heavy stuff is about to go down here,” I said.

“Why now?”

“This escaped convict, Jimmy Dale Greenwood, is probably planning to run off with Leslie Wellstone’s wife.”

“What do you need?” she said, barely able to hide the fatigue in her voice.

“We’re looking at four open homicide cases and one questionable suicide,” I replied. “I think they’re all related, but I can’t fit one net over all five of them. I think the motivation has to do with sex, but I’m not sure.”

“Money buys sex. It also buys power. I’d follow the money, Streak.”

“That’s why I’m calling. You remember when you gave me the background on the murder of Ridley Wellstone’s ex-wife and stepdaughter? You said the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Houston PD thought the target might have been the stepdaughter rather than the wife, because the daughter had dropped the dime on an Australian porn actor after she got pinched holding a brick of marijuana.”

“You have to forgive me if the details are a little vague,” she said.

“One of the homicide victims up here was a porn film producer from Malibu. Maybe it’s just coincidence.”

“Could be,” she said.

I couldn’t blame her for her level of response. She had enough to do in the post-Katrina, post-Rita world of southern Louisiana, a place that had once been an almost Edenic paradise. Now I was calling from thousands of miles away and, like the obsessed man railing in sackcloth, expecting others to rally to my cause.

“Run a guy by the name of Harold Waxman for me,” I said. “He’s a bartender and a seasonal truck driver.”

“You’re calling him a person of interest?”

“I don’t know what he is. Maybe he’s just a bartender and part-time truck driver. None of this stuff makes any sense. Remember the name of Sally Dio?”