“Throw in with them? I’m going to have a small part in the film: a union woman who was at the Ludlow Massacre. Why are you talking to me like this?”
I thought more of you. “I read the book. It’s not a small part. You become the lifelong companion of a Texas Ranger who put John Wesley Hardin in jail.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re ashamed of me.”
I went to the window and opened the curtains and gazed at the buttes in the distance. The heat lightning had died, and the heavens were bursting with stars. I was sure the trail that Henry Fonda had followed into the buttes was still there, stretching over the edge of the earth, teasing us into tomorrow and the chance to build the life we should have had. I felt the room tilt under my feet. When I turned around, Bailey Ribbons was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
I FLEW HOME IN the morning on a commercial flight, although I could sorely afford the cost. The next day I called Helen and the head of Internal Affairs and left messages saying I was at their disposal. Then I sat in the silence of the kitchen and stared at the leaves dropping from the oaks in the backyard. It felt strange to be home alone in the middle of the workday, separated from my profession and all the symbols of my identity: my badge, the cruiser that was always available for me, the deference and respect that came from years of earning the trust of others. I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered whom I was about to become.
That afternoon I walked downtown and across the drawbridge and into the park and sat by myself at a picnic table next to the softball diamond. The park was empty, the grass blown with tiny pieces of leaves chopped up by the mower, a plastic tarp stretched across the swimming pool. At dusk I walked back home and passed people on the bridge whom I did not know and who did not respond to my greeting. Clete would not return from Arizona until the next day, and Alafair was staying on with Desmond until the weekend. I fed Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon, then showered and shaved and dressed in a pair of pressed slacks and a Hawaiian shirt I let hang over my belt. Rain was falling out of the sky, which seemed turned upside down, like a barrel of dark water with stars inside it. I put on a rain hat and drove to the club on the bayou where the blues weren’t just music but a way of life.
• • •
BELLA DELAHOUSSAYE WAS singing a song by a Lafayette musician named Lazy Lester. Inside the din, the only line I could make out was Don’t ever write your name on the jailhouse wall. I sat at the end of the bar in the shadows and ordered a chicken barbecue sandwich and a 7Up with a lime slice. Ten minutes later, a heavyset man spun the stool next to me as though announcing his presence, then sat on it, a cloud of nicotine and dried sweat whooshing out of his clothes. “I think they fucked you, Robicheaux.”
His head had the dimensions of a football, swollen in the center and tapered at the top and the chin. His small mouth was circled with salt-and-pepper whiskers he clipped daily. When he spoke, his mouth looked both bovine and feral. His name was Frenchie Lautrec. He ordered a shot and a water back. Before joining the department, he was a brig chaser in the Crotch and a bondsman. He was also a longtime friend of Axel Devereaux.
“Did you hear what I said?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “So who fucked me?”
“The Queen Bitch, Helen Soileau. Who else?”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“No problem. I still think she stuck it to you. What are you drinking?”
My glass was half empty. “Nothing.”
“You staying off the hooch?”
“What are you after, Frenchie?”
“I hear IA has got you by the short hairs. You been over the line too many times. I heard the prick running your case say it.”
“Who’s the prick running my case?”
“I’m trying to cut you a break, Robicheaux. You need some help, maybe a job, a little income, I’m here. That’s what old school is about. We take care of each other.”
“I’ll get by.”
“I admire that. But if you need a gig, let me know.”
“Doing what?”
“Greasing the wheels.”
“What kind of wheels?”
“This is the Cajun Riviera, right? Use your imagination.”
“Maybe I’ll get back to you.”