The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“It doesn’t belong to me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“A juju woman told me I was wearing a ball and chain. She’s probably right. But I think you’re in the same club, Des.”

“You know your real problem, Dave? You smear your guilt on anyone you can.”

Then I said something I had not intended to say. “Bailey and I interviewed your father.”

His face tightened like the skin on a shrunken head. His knuckles were white on the handle of the spatula. “Say that again?”

“His name is Ennis Patout. He owns a wrecker service outside Opelousas.”

He resumed scraping eggs out of the skillet. “I never had a father. Someone may say he’s my father, but he’s not. Are we clear on that?”

“He seemed to have remorse about your childhood. He said you were a good little boy.”

“You’d better get out of my life, Dave.”

“My father was a drunk and a barroom fighter and an adulterer. But he wasn’t capable of being anything else. Accept people for what they are.”

Desmond turned off the stove, then pulled open the sliding doors that gave onto the deck. The wind was whistling, the waves bursting on the shoreline. “Come in, Antoine. Dave is heading back to New Iberia. Help me eat this lovely breakfast.”

He was a foot from my face. I tried to hold his stare, but it was hard. His eyes seemed sightless, like none I had seen except in the faces of the dead. There was no twitch in his mouth or cheek or flutter in his throat or sign that he possessed any emotion other than hatred of the world and specifically me.

“You scare me, Des.”

“I’m glad. Now get out of my house.”

• • •

THAT EVENING, FALL was in the air, and I wanted to rid myself of stories about the evil that men do and the duplicitous enterprises that govern much of our daily lives. Piled leaves were burning in the gutters along East Main, the wind puffing them alight and scudding serpentine lines of fire along the asphalt. I could smell the cold autumnal odor of gas and pine needles and ponded water and lichen on stone and candles burning inside carved pumpkins. Alafair and Bailey and I ate a fine dinner on the redwood picnic table in the backyard, then went to a late movie and came home and ate bowls of ice cream and blackberries in the living room. I had almost forgotten how wonderful the life of family could be.

After Bailey was gone, Alafair said, “You and Bailey seem to be hitting it off pretty well these days.”

“That’s a fact.”

She smiled with her eyes. I looked through the window at the sparks spiraling off the ashes of a leaf fire. “She’s a nice lady,” I added.

“No one could argue with that,” she said. She punched me on the arm.

• • •

THE NEXT DAY was Friday. At 9:17 a.m. my desk phone rang. I don’t know how, but I knew who it was, in the same way you know when you’ve stepped on chewing gum or when it’s the knock of a paranoid neighbor who believes your cat is deliberately spraying his vegetable garden.

“Robicheaux,” I answered.

“Guess who,” the voice said.

“You need to go somewhere else, Mr. Tillinger,” I said.

“Thought you’d be glad to hear from me.”

“Those two killers in Cameron Parish almost put you out of business. Maybe it’s a good time for you to visit Nebraska or Antarctica.”

“If I read the newspaper right, they might be the two guys that got fried by a flamethrower. What’s that tell you?”

“It doesn’t tell me anything,” I replied.

“I got the Man Upstairs on my side.”