The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“I’ve been cutting back on sugar and the deep-fried stuff. Can you tell?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said.

We found a table in the corner and started eating. I wondered how long it would take for him to get to the subject at hand, whatever it was.

“Why the suit?” I asked finally.

“I’m going over to East Texas. There’s a service for Hugo Tillinger.” He stared innocuously at the door as though he had said nothing of consequence.

“You don’t owe Tillinger anything, Clete.”

“If I’d called in a 911 when he jumped off the top of that freight train, maybe a lot of this stuff wouldn’t have happened. Later I had a chance to bust him, and I didn’t do that either.”

“He wasn’t a player. Lose the sackcloth and ashes. And leave those people in Texas alone.”

“Think so?”

Once again I had become his priest. “Yeah, over the gunnels with the doodah.” But I was bothered by Tillinger’s death, too. I thought he got a raw shake all the way around. I tried to change the subject. “Did you and Alafair have a good time at Red Lerille’s last night?”

“She didn’t tell you about the run-in with Tee Boy Ladrine?”

“The jail guard who got fired?”

“Yeah, Lou Wexler deliberately plows into him, then apologizes by pounding on his back until the guy can’t breathe.”

“Wexler has a beef with him or something?”

“Something about civil rights and how the inmates got treated in the jail. He got a little sensitive with me.”

“You?”

“So I tell him he’s quite a guy, and he starts talking about Desmond Cormier and Roncevaux and how much he loves and pities Cormier.”

“Alafair didn’t tell me any of this.”

“Wexler’s gay?”

“I don’t know. He seems attracted to Alafair.”

“What’s this stuff about Roncevaux?”

“It’s high up in the Pyrenees. A battle took place there in the eighth century. The Song of Roland is a celebration of it.”

“So what do medieval guys clanking around like bags of beer cans have to do with Hollywood?”

“It’s a little more complex than that.”

“Speak slowly and I’ll try to catch on. Use flash cards if you have to.”

“Clete, I was trying to—”

“Forget it,” he said.

“There are people who believe that the legends of King Arthur and the search for the Holy Grail and the horns blowing along the road to Roncevaux make it all worthwhile.”

“Make what worthwhile?”

“Being born. Dying. That kind of thing.”